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
arm-chair, 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 Lo, 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 grand-aunt 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 Lo 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. Geborand, who had amassed two
millions in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woollen
galloons. Never in his whole life had M. Geborand 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.
Geborand 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 Isere, 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 Dauphine. 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 Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the
dialect of the south. He said, "En be! moussu, ses sage?" as in
lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the Basses-Alpes;
"Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper
Dauphine. 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, cheek 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 cure. 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 Cure 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 vindicte; 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.