Kabanata Kabanata 7 · WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM

The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground

floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three

chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a

garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the

first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on

the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and

the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory,

except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without

passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the

oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of

hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom

business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D——

The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to

the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a

kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a

stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in

which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk

they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick

people in the hospital.

_“I am paying my tithes,”_ he said.

His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad

weather. As wood is extremely dear at D——, he hit upon the idea of

having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he

passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his

_winter salon_.

In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other

furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated

chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an

antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar

sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the

Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.

His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D—— had more than once

assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for

Monseigneur’s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had

given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,” he said, “is the

soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”

In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an

armchair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received

seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the

staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little

seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the

stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the

bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for

the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.

It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop

then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front

of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it

was summer.

There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was

half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service

only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in

her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been

gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been

obliged to hoist this bergère up to the first story through the window,

as the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned

among the possibilities in the way of furniture.

Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition had been to be able to purchase a

set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a

rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan’s neck style, with a sofa. But

this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the

fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten

sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by

renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop’s

bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the

bed,—a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the

shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,

which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there

were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the

other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was

a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of

wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the

chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two

garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with

silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the

chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off,

fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which

the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an

inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes;

before the table an armchair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu,

borrowed from the oratory.

Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of

the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at

the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented, one

the Abbé of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbé

Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux,

diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after

the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left

them. They were priests, and probably donors—two reasons for respecting

them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had been

appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his

benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire

having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these

particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper,

yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbé

of Grand-Champ with four wafers.

At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff,

which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a

new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very

middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often

called attention to it: “How delightful that is!” he said.

All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground

floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is

a fashion in barracks and hospitals.

However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the

paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment

of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming

a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the

Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red

bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all

the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two

women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole

luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, _“That takes nothing from

the poor.”_

It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former

possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame

Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened

splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting

the Bishop of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had said

more than once, “I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver

dishes.”

To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive

silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks

held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop’s

chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted

the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.

In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small

cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and

forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that

the key was never removed.

The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which

we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating

from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted

the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four

square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire

cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some

flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had

once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: “Monseigneur, you who turn

everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would

be better to grow salads there than bouquets.” “Madame Magloire,”

retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as

the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”

This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost

as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,

trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into

which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener

could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to

botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest

effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took

part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu

against Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He

respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;

and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his

flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.

The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the

dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral

square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door

of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this

door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything

except the latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour,

was to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried

by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D—— had said to

them, “Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.” They had

ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they

shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for

the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated,

in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, “This is

the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be

shut, the door of the priest should always be open.”

On another book, entitled _Philosophy of the Medical Science_, he had

written this other note: “Am not I a physician like them? I also have

my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.”

Again he wrote: “Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of

you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs

shelter.”

It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of

Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him

one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether

Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a

certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the

mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he

did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little

guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said

to him, _“Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui

custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch

who guard it._

Then he spoke of something else.

He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the

bravery of a colonel of dragoons,—only,” he added, “ours must be

tranquil.”