บทที่ บทที่ 12 · A RESTRICTION

We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to

conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical

bishop,” or a “patriotic curé.” His meeting, which may almost be

designated as his union, with conventionary G——, left behind it in his

mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That

is all.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is,

perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in

the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever

dreamed of having an attitude.

Let us, then, go back a few years.

Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the

Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other

bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the

night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel

was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and

Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and

assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the

presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five

bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at

three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living

so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that

he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the

temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D—— He was

interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: _“I embarrassed

them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them

the effect of an open door.”_

On another occasion he said, _“What would you have? Those gentlemen are

princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.”_

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is

said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at

the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful

clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a

great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying

incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are

people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’”

Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an

intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.

Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with

representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have

very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a

contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one

come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all

these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one’s own

person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible

to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a

workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed

hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on

his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop

especially, is poverty.

This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D—— thought.

It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the

“ideas of the century” on certain delicate points. He took very little

part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence

on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had

been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an

ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait,

and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that

he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he

gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He

refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island

of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor

in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a

general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable

frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding

a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the

general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had

pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is

desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other

brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at

Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.

Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour

of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment

traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any

political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are

not confounding what is called “political opinions” with the grand

aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic,

humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every

generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only

indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say

this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a

Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant,

turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly

discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above

the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three

pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.

While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created

Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest

in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but

perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which

pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of

people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is

danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone

the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a

stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of

ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of

the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it

work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of

silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe,

possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to

applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in

the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another,

insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which

was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,—it was a duty to turn

aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air,

when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when

Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful

acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had

nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the

despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to

have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by

the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the

abyss.

With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,

intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only

another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It

must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have

just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with

severity, he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are

speaking here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the

Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a

member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist

as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate

remarks, which the law then stigmatized as _seditious speeches_. After

the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never

dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not

be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the

imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him; this made

a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. _“I will die,”_ he

said, _“rather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!”_ He liked to

scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. “The gouty old creature in English

gaiters!” he said; _“let him take himself off to Prussia with that

queue of his.”_ He was happy to combine in the same imprecation the two

things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often

that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his

wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved

him gently, and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.

In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy

deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D——with a sort of tender

and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been

accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and

weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.