Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER XI.

  A RESTRICTION.

  We should run a strong risk of making a mistake were we to concludefrom this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophic bishop," or"a patriotic cur?." His meeting, which might almost be called hisconjunction, with the conventionalist G---- produced in him a sort ofamazement, which rendered him more gentle than ever. That was all.

  Though Monseigneur was anything rather than a politician, this isperhaps the place to indicate briefly what was his attitude in theevents of that period, supposing that Monseigneur ever dreamed ofhaving an attitude. We will, therefore, go back for a few years. Ashort time after M. Myriel's elevation to the Episcopate, the Emperormade him a Baron, simultaneously with some other bishops. The arrestof the Pope took place, as is well known, on the night of July 5,1809, at which time M. Myriel was called by Napoleon to the Synod ofFrench and Italian Bishops convened at Paris. This Synod was held atNotre Dame and assembled for the first time on June 15, 1811, underthe Presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-fivebishops convened, but he was only present at one session and three orfour private conferences. As bishop of a mountain diocese, living sonear to nature in rusticity and poverty, it seems that he introducedamong these eminent personages ideas which changed the temperature ofthe assembly. He went back very soon to D----, and when questionedabout this hurried return, he replied, "I was troublesome to them.The external air came in with me and I produced the effect of an opendoor upon them." Another time he said, "What would you have? thoseMesseigneurs are princes, while I am only a poor peasant bishop."

  The fact is, that he displeased: among other strange things he let thefollowing remarks slip out, one evening when he was visiting one of hismost influential colleagues: "What fine clocks! What splendid carpets!What magnificent liveries! You must find all that very troublesome? Oh!I should not like to have such superfluities to yell incessantly in myears: there are people who are hungry; there are people who are cold;there are poor, there are poor."

  Let us remark parenthetically, that a hatred of luxury would not be anintelligent hatred, for it would imply a hatred of the arts. Still inchurchmen any luxury beyond that connected with their sacred office iswrong, for it seems to reveal habits which are not truly charitable.An opulent priest is a paradox, for he is bound to live with the poor.Now, can a man incessantly both night and day come in contact withdistress, misfortune, and want, without having about him a little ofthat holy wretchedness, like the dust of toil? Can we imagine a mansitting close to a stove and not feeling hot? Can we imagine a workmanconstantly toiling at a furnace, and have neither a hair burned, a nailblackened, nor a drop of perspiration, nor grain of soot on his face?The first proof of charity in a priest, in a bishop especially, ispoverty. This was doubtless the opinion of the Bishop of D----.

  We must not believe either that he shared what we might call the "ideasof the age" on certain delicate, points; he mingled but slightly inthe theological questions of the moment, in which Church and State arecompromised; but had he been greatly pressed we fancy he would havebeen found to be Ultramontane rather than Gallican. As we are drawinga portrait, and do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to addthat he was frigid toward the setting Napoleon. From 1813 he adheredto or applauded all hostile demonstrations, he refused to see him whenhe passed through on his return from Elba, and abstained from orderingpublic prayers for the Emperor during the Hundred Days.

  Besides his sister, Mlle. Baptistine, he had two brothers, one ageneral, the other a prefect. He wrote very frequently to both of them.For some time he owed the former a grudge, because the General, whoat the time of the landing at Cannes held a command in Provence, puthimself at the head of twelve hundred men and pursued the Emperor as ifhe wished to let him escape. His correspondence was more affectionatewith the other brother, the ex-prefect, a worthy, honest man, who livedretired at Paris.

  Monseigneur Welcome, therefore, also had his hour of partisan spirit,his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of themoment fell athwart this gentle and great mind, which was occupied bythings eternal. Certainly such a man would have deserved to have nopolitical opinions. Pray let there be no mistake as to our meaning: wedo not confound what are called "political opinions" with the grandaspiration for progress, with that sublime, patriotic, democratic andhuman faith, which in our days must be the foundation of all generousintelligence. Without entering into questions which only indirectlyaffect the subject of this book, we say, it would have been better hadMonseigneur Welcome not been a Royalist, and if his eye had not turnedaway, even for a moment, from that serene contemplation, in which thethree pure lights of Truth, Justice, and Charity are seen beaming abovethe fictions and hatreds of this world, and above the stormy ebb andflow of human affairs.

  While allowing that GOD had not created Monseigneur Welcome forpolitical functions, we could have understood and admired a protest inthe name of justice and liberty, a proud opposition, a perilous andjust resistance offered to Napoleon, all-powerful. But conduct whichpleases us towards those who are rising, pleases us less towards thosewho are falling. We only like the contest so long as there is danger;and, in any case, only the combatants from the beginning have a rightto be the exterminators at the end. A man who has not been an obstinateaccuser during prosperity must be silent when the crash comes; thedenouncer of success is the sole legitimate judge of the fell. For ourpart, when Providence interferes and strikes we let it do so. 1812begins to disarm us; in 1813 the cowardly rupture of silence by thetaciturn legislative corps, emboldened by catastrophes, could onlyarouse indignation; in 1814, in the presence of the traitor Marshals,in the presence of that senate, passing from one atrocity to another,and insulting after deifying, and before the idolaters kicking theiridol and spitting on it, it was a duty to turn one's head away; in1815, as supreme disasters were in the air, as France had a shudderof their sinister approach, as Waterloo, already open before Napoleoncould be vaguely distinguished, the dolorous acclamation offered by thearmy and the people had nothing laughable about it, and--leaving thedespot out of the question--a heart like the Bishop of D----'s oughtnot to have misunderstood how much there was august and affecting inthis close embrace between a great nation and a great man on the vergeof an abyss.

  With this exception, the Bishop was in all things just, true,equitable, intelligent, humble, and worthy; beneficent, and benevolent,which is another form of beneficence. He was a priest, a sage, and aman. Even in the political opinions with which we have reproached him,and which we are inclined to judge almost severely, we are bound toadd that he was tolerant and facile, more so perhaps than the writerof these lines. The porter of the Town Hall had been appointed by theEmperor; he was an ex-non-commissioned officer of the old guard, alegionary of Austerlitz, and as Bonapartist as the eagle. This poorfellow now and then made thoughtless remarks, which the law of thatday qualified as seditious. From the moment when the Imperial profiledisappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never put on his uniformagain, that he might not be obliged, as he said, to bear his cross. Hehad himself devotedly removed the Imperial effigy from the cross whichNapoleon had given him with his own hands, and though this made a holehe would not let anything be put in its place. "Sooner die," he wouldsay, "than wear the three frogs on my heart." He was fond of ridiculingLouis XVIII. aloud. "The old gouty fellow with his English gaiters,let him be off to Prussia with his salsifies." It delighted him thusto combine in one imprecation the two things he hated most, Englandand Prussia. He went on thus till he lost his place, and then he wasstarving in the street with wife and children. The Bishop sent for him,gave him a gentle lecturing, and appointed him Beadle to the cathedral.

  In nine years, through his good deeds and gentle manners, MonseigneurWelcome had filled the town of D---- with a sort of tender and filialveneration. Even his conduct to Napoleon had been accepted, and, as itwere, tacitly pardoned, by the people, an honest weak flock of sheep,who adored their Emperor but loved their Bishop.