บทที่ บทที่ 11 · THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT

At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the

preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be

believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains

infested with bandits.

In the country near D—— a man lived quite alone. This man, we will

state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G——

Member of the Convention, G—— was mentioned with a sort of horror in

the little world of D—— A member of the Convention—can you imagine such

a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other

_thou_, and when they said “citizen.” This man was almost a monster. He

had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a

quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such

a man had not been brought before a provost’s court, on the return of

the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you

please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for

life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all

the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.

Was G—— a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the

element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for

the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of

exile, and had been able to remain in France.

He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far

from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild

valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of

field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by.

Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had

disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as

though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.

Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to

time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked

the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, “There

is a soul yonder which is lonely.”

And he added, deep in his own mind, “I owe him a visit.”

But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first

blush, appeared to him after a moment’s reflection, as strange,

impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general

impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without

his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment

which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word

estrangement.

Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No.

But what a sheep!

The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction;

then he returned.

Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young

shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had

come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that

paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over

night.—“Thank God!” some added.

The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too

threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening

breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.

The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop

arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the

heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over

a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs,

entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of

boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind

lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.

It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed

against the outside.

Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the armchair of the peasants,

there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.

Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was

offering the old man a jar of milk.

While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: “Thank you,” he

said, “I need nothing.” And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the

child.

The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the

old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the

surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.

“This is the first time since I have been here,” said he, “that any one

has entered here. Who are you, sir?”

The Bishop answered:—

“My name is Bienvenu Myriel.”

“Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the

people call Monseigneur Welcome?”

“I am.”

The old man resumed with a half-smile

“In that case, you are my bishop?”

“Something of that sort.”

“Enter, sir.”

The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the

Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark:—

“I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not

seem to me to be ill.”

“Monsieur,” replied the old man, “I am going to recover.”

He paused, and then said:—

“I shall die three hours hence.”

Then he continued:—

“I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws

on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill has ascended

to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the

heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself

wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it

does not fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who

is on the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at

that moment. One has one’s caprices; I should have liked to last until

the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be

night then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair.

One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by

starlight.”

The old man turned to the shepherd lad:—

“Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired.”

The child entered the hut.

The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking

to himself:—

“I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors.”

The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did

not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the

whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated

like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at “His

Grace,” was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and

he was almost tempted to retort “citizen.” He was assailed by a fancy

for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but

which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of

the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the

powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably,

the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.

Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a

modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly,

that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning

to dust.

The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his

curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not

refrain from examining the member of the Convention with an attention

which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his

conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A

member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being

outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G——, calm, his

body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those

octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist.

The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In

this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so

near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear

glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders,

there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the

Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought

that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed

it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless.

It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and

dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full

of light. G——, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale

of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below.

There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.

“I congratulate you,” said he, in the tone which one uses for a

reprimand. “You did not vote for the death of the king, after all.”

The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter

meaning underlying the words “after all.” He replied. The smile had

quite disappeared from his face.

“Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the

tyrant.”

It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.

“What do you mean to say?” resumed the Bishop.

“I mean to say that man has a tyrant,—ignorance. I voted for the death

of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority

falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man

should be governed only by science.”

“And conscience,” added the Bishop.

“It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science

which we have within us.”

Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language,

which was very new to him.

The member of the Convention resumed:—

“So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said ‘no.’ I did not think that

I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate

evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of

prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night

for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted

for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of

prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors

causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old

world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon

the human race, an urn of joy.”

“Mixed joy,” said the Bishop.

“You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the

past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work

was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we

were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is

not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer;

the wind is still there.”

“You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a

demolition complicated with wrath.”

“Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of

progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French

Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the

advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all

the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed,

appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over

the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the

consecration of humanity.”

The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:—

“Yes? ’93!”

The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with

an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is

capable of exclamation:—

“Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been

forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen

hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.”

The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within

him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the

matter. He replied:—

“The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name

of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt

should commit no error.” And he added, regarding the member of the

Convention steadily the while, “Louis XVII.?”

The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop’s

arm.

“Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent

child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal

child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche,

an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Grève,

until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of

Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an

innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime

of having been grandson of Louis XV.”

“Monsieur,” said the Bishop, “I like not this conjunction of names.”

“Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?”

A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come,

and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.

The conventionary resumed:—

“Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ

loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge,

full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried,

_‘Sinite parvulos,’_ he made no distinction between the little

children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the

Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is

its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august

in rags as in fleurs de lys.”

“That is true,” said the Bishop in a low voice.

“I persist,” continued the conventionary G—— “You have mentioned Louis

XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the

innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted?

I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back

further than ’93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will

weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep

with me over the children of the people.”

“I weep for all,” said the Bishop.

“Equally!” exclaimed conventionary G——; “and if the balance must

incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering

longer.”

Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He

raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb

and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and

judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces

of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.

“Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that

is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me

about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these

parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside,

and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me

in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must

admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of

imposing on that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear

the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice

at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You

have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no

information as to your moral personality. In short, I repeat my

question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of

the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and

revenues, who have vast prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand

francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five

thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good

cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a

lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in

their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are

a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the

sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest,

you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little;

this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of

the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.

To whom do I speak? Who are you?”

The Bishop hung his head and replied, _“Vermis sum_—I am a worm.”

“A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary.

It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be

humble.

The Bishop resumed mildly:—

“So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces

off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which

I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my

palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ’93

was not inexorable.”

The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep

away a cloud.

“Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me. I have

just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I

owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine

myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are

advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates

that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them

in the future.”

“I thank you,” said the Bishop.

G—— resumed.

“Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where

were we? What were you saying to me? That ’93 was inexorable?”

“Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop. “What think you of Marat clapping

his hands at the guillotine?”

“What think you of Bossuet chanting the _Te Deum_ over the

dragonnades?”

The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the

directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply

occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to

Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes

feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.

The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is

mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a

perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:—

“Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing.

Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human

affirmation, ’93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir;

but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name

do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is

your opinion as to Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is terrible; but

Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchêne senior is ferocious; but what

epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tetê

is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir,

sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am

also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the

Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist,

to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with

milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale,

beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the

woman, a mother and a nurse, ‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between

the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you

to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in

mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its

wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made

better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the

human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover,

I am dying.”

And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his

thoughts in these tranquil words:—

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are

over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated

harshly, but that it has progressed.”

The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all

the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from

this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s

resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the

harshness of the beginning:—

“Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.

He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.”

The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized

with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a

tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down

his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to

himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:—

“O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!”

The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:—

“The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person

would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it

would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is

God.”

The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with

the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had

spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident

that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been

left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in

death. The supreme moment was approaching.

The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he

had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme

emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and

ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.

“This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be

regrettable if we had met in vain?”

The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom

was imprinted on his countenance.

“Bishop,” said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his

dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, “I have passed

my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of

age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with

its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies

existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed

and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France

was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have

been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were

encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up

the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of

gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I

have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the

cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of

my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race,

forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress

without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own

adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in

Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer

palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu,

which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and

all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued,

persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many

years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people

think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I

present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of

hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I

am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?”

_“Your blessing,”_ said the Bishop.

And he knelt down.

When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary

had become august. He had just expired.

The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be

known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following

morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about

member of the Convention G——; he contented himself with pointing

heavenward.

From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling

towards all children and sufferers.

Any allusion to “that old wretch of a G——” caused him to fall into a

singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul

before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did

not count for something in his approach to perfection.

This “pastoral visit” naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of

comment in all the little local coteries.

“Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a

bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those

revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be

seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried

off by the devil.”

One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself

spiritual, addressed this sally to him, “Monseigneur, people are

inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!”—“Oh! oh!

that’s a coarse color,” replied the Bishop. “It is lucky that those who

despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.”