Bab Bab 5 · WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS

His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with

the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he

laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call

him Your Grace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his armchair,

and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of

the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could

not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” said he, “fetch me a chair. My

greatness [_grandeur_] does not reach as far as that shelf.”

One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely allowed

an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she

designated as “the expectations” of her three sons. She had numerous

relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons

were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a

grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the

heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to

succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to

listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On

one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,

while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these

inheritances and all these “expectations.” She interrupted herself

impatiently: “Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?” “I am

thinking,” replied the Bishop, “of a singular remark, which is to be

found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—‘Place your hopes in the man from

whom you do not inherit.’”

At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a

gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the

dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his

relatives, spread over an entire page: “What a stout back Death has!”

he exclaimed. “What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on

him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb

into the service of vanity!”

He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always

concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful

vicar came to D——, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably

eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to

give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most

frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he

represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a

wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.

Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse

cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.

Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that

sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old

beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to

share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of

bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, “There is

M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.”

When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a

refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which

induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room

of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy

and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,

an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has

actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm,

_“You must give me something, M. le Marquis.”_ The Marquis turned round

and answered dryly, _“I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.” “Give

them to me,”_ replied the Bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:—

“My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and

twenty thousand peasants’ dwellings in France which have but three

openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but

two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six

thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this

arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just

put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings,

and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to

men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God.

In the department of the Isère, in the Var, in the two departments of

the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even

wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they

have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped

in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the

hilly country of Dauphiné. They make bread for six months at one time;

they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread

up with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to

render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all

sides of you!”

Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of

the south. He said, _“En bé! moussu, sés sagé?”_ as in lower Languedoc;

_“Onté anaras passa?”_ as in the Basses-Alpes; _“Puerte un bouen moutu

embe un bouen fromage grase,”_ as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased the

people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all

spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the

mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most

vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the

lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking

circumstances into account. He said, “Examine the road over which the

fault has passed.”

Being, as he described himself with a smile, an _ex-sinner_, he had

none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal

of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a

doctrine which may be summed up as follows:—

“Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his

temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it,

check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may

be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is

venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in

prayer.

“To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err,

fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

“The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream

of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a

gravitation.”

When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very

quickly, “Oh! oh!” he said, with a smile; “to all appearance, this is a

great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisies which

have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put

themselves under shelter.”

He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of

human society rest. He said, “The faults of women, of children, of the

feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands,

the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.”

He said, moreover, “Teach those who are ignorant as many things as

possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction

gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is

full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the

person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the

shadow.”

It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of

judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the

point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being at

the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for

a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was

still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested

in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was

held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could

accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they

insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to

the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of

the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly

presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival,

and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy,

she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his

accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing

enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy

into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had

educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in

silence. When they had finished, he inquired,—

“Where are this man and woman to be tried?”

“At the Court of Assizes.”

He went on, “And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?”

A tragic event occurred at D—— A man was condemned to death for murder.

He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant,

who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The

town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed

for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell

ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments.

They sent for the curé. It seems that he refused to come, saying, “That

is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task,

and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my

place.” This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, _“Monsieur le

Curé is right: it is not his place; it is mine.”_

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the

“mountebank,” called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to

him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,

praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the

condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also

the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to

bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man

was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he

stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was

not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His

condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken

through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery

of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this

world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The

Bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the

Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the

eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross

upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The

sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day,

was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God.

The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to

fall, he said to him: “God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he

whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray,

believe, enter into life: the Father is there.” When he descended from

the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people

draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of

admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble

dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as _his palace_, he said

to his sister, _“I have just officiated pontifically.”_

Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least

understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on

this conduct of the Bishop, _“It is affectation.”_

This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms.

The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and

admired him.

As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine,

and it was a long time before he recovered from it.

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has

something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain

indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing

upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a

guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the

shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or

against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like

Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called

_vindicate_; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain

neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.

All social problems erect their interrogation point around this

chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece

of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an

inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre

initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that

this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood,

this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful

meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears

in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The

scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats

flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by

the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a

horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day

following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop

appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal

moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him.

He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant

satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to

himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is

one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: “I did not

think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the

divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs

to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?”

In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.

Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided

passing the place of execution.

M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and

dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty

and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to

summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down

and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife

of his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the

moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable

consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to

magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:—

“Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think

not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living

light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.” He knew that

faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man,

by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief

which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze

upon a star.