Les Misérables Page 11

  CHAPTER IV--WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS

  His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with thetwo 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 YourGrace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his arm-chair, and wentto his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the uppershelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could notreach 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 allowedan opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what shedesignated as "the expectations" of her three sons. She had numerousrelatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sonswere the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from agrandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was theheir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was tosucceed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed tolisten in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. Onone occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all theseinheritances and all these "expectations." She interrupted herselfimpatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?" "I amthinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to befound, I believe, in St. Augustine,--'Place your hopes in the man fromwhom you do not inherit.'"

  At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of agentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of thedead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all hisrelatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!"he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposedon him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tombinto the service of vanity!"

  He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost alwaysconcealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful vicarcame 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 thepoor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightfulmanner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which herepresented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there wasa wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarsecloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of thatsermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor oldbeggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them toshare it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowingthis 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 bya refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks whichinduced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-roomof the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthyand avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man hasactually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm, _"Youmust give me something, M. le Marquis."_ The Marquis turned round andanswered dryly, _"I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur." "Give themto me,"_ replied the Bishop.

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

  "My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundredand twenty thousand peasants' dwellings in France which have but threeopenings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have buttwo openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-sixthousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And thisarises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Justput poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings,and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air tomen; 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 departmentsof the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not evenwheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they haveno candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped inpitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hillycountry of Dauphiné. They make bread for six months at one time; theybake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread up withan axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to render iteatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all sides ofyou!"

  Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect ofthe south. He said, _"En bé! moussu, sés sagé?"_ as in lower Languedoc;_"Onté anaras passa?"_ as in the Basses-Alpes; _"Puerte un bouen moutuembe un bouen fromage grase,"_ as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased thepeople extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to allspirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in themountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the mostvulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

  Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towardsthe lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without takingcircumstances into account. He said, "Examine the road over which thefault has passed."

  Being, as he described himself with a smile, an _ex-sinner_, he had noneof the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good dealof distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, adoctrine which may be summed up as follows:--

  "Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and histemptation. 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 maybe some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed isvenial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate inprayer.

  "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 dreamof the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is agravitation."

  When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry veryquickly, "Oh! oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all appearance, this isa great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisieswhich have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to putthemselves under shelter."

  He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden ofhuman society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of thefeeble, 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 aspossible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instructiongratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soulis full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not theperson who has committed the sin, but the person who has created theshadow."

  It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judgingthings: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

  One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on thepoint of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being atthe end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love fora woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting wasstill punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrestedin the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She washeld, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone couldaccuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; theyinsisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred tothe attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part ofthe lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunninglypresented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, andthat the man
was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, shedenounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

  The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with hisaccomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressingenthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousyinto play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he hadeduced the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this insilence. 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 formurder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactlyignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for thepublic. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of theday fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of theprison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in hislast 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 thatunpleasant 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 tohim. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying thecondemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are alsothe most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only tobless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The manwas on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As hestood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. Hewas not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. Hiscondemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, brokenthrough, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mysteryof things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond thisworld through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishopmade him see light.

  On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, theBishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to theeyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross uponhis neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

  He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. Thesufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, wasradiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. TheBishop 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 whomhis brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe,enter into life: the Father is there." When he descended from thescaffold, there was something in his look which made the people drawaside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy ofadmiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humbledwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as _his palace_, he said tohis sister, _"I have just officiated pontifically."_

  Since the most sublime things are often those which are the leastunderstood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting onthis 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, andadmired 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 hassomething about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certainindifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing uponit, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine withone'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 admireit, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotineis the concretion of the law; it is called _vindicate_; it is notneutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees itshivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erecttheir interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is avision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is nota machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed ofwood, iron and cords.

  It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombreinitiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter's work saw, thatthis machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood,this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightfulmeditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appearsin terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. Thescaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eatsflesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricatedby the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with ahorrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

  Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the dayfollowing the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishopappeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funerealmoment 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, andstammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is one which hissister overheard one evening and preserved: "I did not think that it wasso monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such adegree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By whatright do men touch that unknown thing?"

  In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoidedpassing the place of execution.

  M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick anddying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty andhis greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to summonhim; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down and holdhis peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of hislove, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment forsilence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! Hesought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignifyit by hope. He said:--

  "Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Thinknot of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the livinglight of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven." He knew thatfaith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, bypointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief whichgazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon astar.