6 (10)
THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
A LITTLE WHILE later, the bishop performed an act, which the whole town thought far more perilous than his excursion across the mountains infested by the bandits.
In the country near D—, there was a man who lived alone. This man, to state the startling fact without preface, had been a member of the National Convention.3 His name was G—.
The little circle of D—spoke of the conventionist with a certain sort of horror. A conventionist, think of it; that was in the time when folks thee-and-thoued one another, and said “citizen.” This man came very near being a monster; he had not exactly voted for the execution of the king, but almost; he was half a regicide, and had been a terrible creature altogether. How was it, then, on the return of the legitimate princes, that they had not arraigned this man before the provost court?j He would not have been beheaded, perhaps, but even if clemency were necessary he might have been banished for life; in fact, an example, etc., etc. Besides, he was an atheist, as all those people are. Babblings of geese against a vulture!
But was this G—a vulture? Yes, if one should judge him by the savageness of his solitude. As he had not voted for the king’s execution, he was not included in the sentence of exile, and could remain in France.
He lived about an hour’s walk from the town, far from any hamlet or road, in a secluded ravine of a very wild valley. It was said he had a sort of resting-place there, a hole, a den. He had no neighbours or even passers-by. Since he had lived there the path which led to the place had become overgrown, and people spoke of it as of the house of a hangman.
From time to time, however, the bishop reflectingly gazed upon the horizon at the spot where a clump of trees indicated the ravine of the aged conventionist, and he would say: “There lives a soul which is alone.” And in the depths of his thought he would add “I owe him a visit.”
But this idea, we must confess, though it appeared natural at first, yet, after a few moments’ reflection, seemed strange, impracticable, and almost repulsive. For at heart he shared the general impression and the conventionist inspired him, he knew not how, with that sentiment which is the fringe of hatred, and which the word “aversion” so well expresses.
However, the shepherd should not recoil from the diseased sheep. Ah! but what a sheep!
The good bishop was perplexed: sometimes he walked in that direction, but he returned.
At last, one day the news was circulated in the town that the young herdsboy who served the conventionist G—in his retreat, had come for a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that he was becoming paralyzed, and could not live through the night. “Thank God!” added many.
The bishop took his cane, put on his overcoat, because his cassock was badly worn, as we have said, and besides the night wind was evidently rising, and set out.
The sun was setting; it had nearly touched the horizon when the bishop reached the accursed spot. He felt a certain quickening of the pulse as he drew near the den. He strode over a ditch, crossed through a hedge, lifted a pole out of his way, found himself in a dilapidated garden, and after a bold advance across the open ground, suddenly, behind some high brushwood, he discovered the retreat.
It was a low, poverty-stricken hut, small and clean, with a little vine nailed up in front.
Before the door in an old chair on rollers, a peasant’s armchair, there sat a man with white hair, looking with smiling gaze upon the setting sun.
The young herdsboy stood near him, handing him a bowl of milk.
While the bishop was looking, the old man raised his voice.
“Thank you,” he said, “I shall need nothing more;” and his smile changed from the sun to rest upon the boy.
The bishop stepped forward. At the sound of his footsteps the old man turned his head, and his face expressed as much surprise as one can feel after a long life.
“This is the first time since I have lived here,” said he, “that I have had a visitor. Who are you, monsieur?”
“My name is Bienvenu-Myriel,” the bishop replied.
“Bienvenu-Myriel? I have heard that name before. Are you he whom the people call Monseigneur Bienvenu?”
“I am.”
The old man continued half-smiling. “Then you are my bishop?”
“A bit.”
“Come in, monsieur.”
The conventionist extended his hand to the bishop, who did not take it. He only said:
“I am glad to find that I have been misinformed. You do not appear to me very ill.”
“Monsieur,” replied the old man, “I shall soon be better.”
He paused and said:
“I shall be dead in three hours.”
Then he continued:
“I am something of a physician; I know the steps by which death approaches; yesterday my feet only were cold; to-day the cold has crept to my knees, now it has reached the waist; when it touches the heart all will be over. The sunset is lovely, is it not? I had myself wheeled out to get a final look at nature. You can speak to me; that will not tire me. You do well to come to see a man who is dying. It is good that these moments should have witnesses. Every one has his fancy; I should like to live until the dawn, but I know I have scarcely life for three hours. It will be night, but no matter: to end is a very simple thing. One does not need morning for that. So be it; I shall die in the starlight.”
The old man turned towards the herdsboy:
“Little one, go to bed: thou didst watch the other night: thou art weary.”
The child went into the hut.
The old man followed him with his eyes and added, as if speaking to himself: “While he is sleeping, I shall lie: the two slumbers keep fit company.”
The bishop was not as much affected as he might have been: it was not his idea of a godly death; we must tell all for the little inconsistencies of great souls should be mentioned; he who had laughed so heartily at “His Highness,” was still slightly shocked at not being called monseigneur, and was almost tempted to answer “citizen.” He felt a desire to use the brusque familiarity common enough with doctors and priests, but which was not customary with him.
This conventionist after all, this representative of the people, had been a power on the earth; and perhaps for the first time in his life the bishop felt himself in a mood to be severe. The conventionist, however, watched him with a modest cordiality, in which perhaps might have been discerned that humility which is befitting to one so nearly dust unto dust.
The bishop, on his side, although he generally kept himself free from curiosity, which he thought was almost offensive, could not avoid examining the conventionist with an attention for which, as it had not its source in sympathy, his conscience would have condemned him as to any other man; but a conventionist he looked upon as an outlaw, even beyond the law of charity.
G—, with his self-possessed manner, erect figure, and resonant voice, was one of those noble octogenarians who are the marvel of the physiologist. The revolution produced many of these men equal to the epoch: one felt that here was a man who had endured ordeals. Though so near death, he preserved all the appearance of health. His bright glances, his firm accent, and the muscular movements of his shoulders seemed almost sufficient to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mahometan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, thinking he had mistaken the door. G—appeared to be dying because he wished to die. There was freedom in his agony; his legs only were paralysed; his feet were cold and dead, but his head lived in full power of life and light. At this solemn moment G—seemed like the king in the oriental tale, flesh above and marble below. The bishop seated himself upon a stone near by. The beginning of their conversation was ex abrupto:
“I congratulate you,” he said, in a tone of reprimand. “At least you did not vote for the execution of the king.”
The conventionist did not seem to notice the bitter emphasis placed upon the words “at least.” The smiles vanished from his face and he replied:
“Do not congratulate me too much, monsieur; I did vote for the destruction of the tyrant.”
And the tone of austerity confronted the tone of severity.
“What do you mean?” asked the bishop.
“I mean that man has a tyrant, Ignorance. I voted for the abolition of that tyrant. That tyrant has begotten royalty, which is authority springing from the False, while science is authority springing from the True. Man should be governed by science.”
“And conscience,” added the bishop.
“The same thing: conscience is innate knowledge that we have.”
Monsieur Bienvenu listened with some amazement to this language, novel as it was to him.
The conventionist went on:
“As to Louis XVI: I said no. I do not believe that I have the right to kill a man, but I feel it a duty to exterminate evil. I voted for the downfall of the tyrant; that is to say, for the abolition of prostitution for woman, of slavery for man, of night for the child. In voting for the republic I voted for that: I voted for fraternity, for harmony, for light. I assisted in casting down prejudices and errors: their downfall brings light! We caused the old world to fall; the old world, a vase of misery, overturned, becomes an urn of joy to the human race.”
“Joy alloyed,” said the bishop.
“You might say joy troubled, and, at present, after this fatal return of the past which we call 1814, joy disappeared.k Alas! the work was imperfect I admit; we demolished the ancient order of things physically, but not entirely in the idea. To destroy abuses is not enough; habits must be changed. The windmill has gone, but the Wind is there yet.”
“You have demolished. To demolish may be useful, but I distrust a demolition effected in anger!”
“Justice has its anger, Monsieur Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever may be said matters not, the French revolution is the greatest step forward taken by mankind since the advent of Christ; incomplete it may be, but it is sublime. It loosened all the secret bonds of society, it softened all hearts, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it made the waves of civilisation flow over the earth; it was good. The French revolution is the consecration of humanity.”
The bishop could not help murmuring: “Yes, ‘93!”l
The conventionist raised himself in his chair with a solemnity well nigh mournful, and as nearly as a dying person could exclaim, he exclaimed:
“Ah! you are there! ‘93! I was expecting that. A cloud had been forming for fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen centuries it burst. You condemn the thunderbolt.”
Without perhaps acknowledging it to himself, the bishop felt that something in him had been struck; however, he made the best of it, and replied:
“The judge speaks in the name of justice, the priest in the name of pity, which is only a more exalted justice. A thunderbolt should not be mistaken.”
And he added, looking fixedly at the conventionist; “Louis XVII?”
The conventionist stretched out his hand and seized the bishop’s arm.
“Louis XVII. Let us see! For whom do you weep?—for the innocent child? It is well; I weep with you. For the royal child? I ask time to reflect. To my view the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child, hung by a rope under his arms in the Place de Grève till he died, for the sole crime of being the brother of Cartouche, is no less sad sight than the grandson of Louis XV; an innocent child, murdered in the tower of the Temple for the sole crime of being the grandson of Louis XV.”
“Monsieur,” said the bishop, “I dislike this coupling of names.”
“Cartouche or Louis XV; for which are you concerned?”
There was a moment of silence; the bishop regretted almost that he had come, and yet he felt strangely and inexplicably moved.
The conventionist resumed: “Oh, Monsieur Priest! you do not love the harshness of the truth, but Christ loved it. He took a scourge and purged the temple; his flashing whip was a harsh speaker of truths; when he said, ‘Sinite parvulos,’ he made no distinctions among the little ones.m He was not pained at coupling the dauphin of Barabbas with the dauphin of Herod. Monsieur, innocence is its own crown! Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as in the fleur de lys.”
“That is true,” said the bishop, in a low tone.
“I repeat,” continued the old man; “you have mentioned Louis XVII. Let us weep together for all the innocent, for all the martyrs, for all the children, for the low as well as for the high. I am one of them, but then, as I have told you, we must go further back than ‘93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep for the children of kings with you, if you will weep with me for the little ones of the people.”
“I weep for all,” said the bishop.
“Equally,” exclaimed G—, “and if the balance inclines, let it be on the side of the people; they have suffered longer.”
There was silence again, broken at last by the old man. He raised himself upon one elbow, took a pinch of his cheek between his thumb and his bent forefinger, as one does mechanically in questioning and forming an opinion, and addressed the bishop with a look full of all the energies of agony. It was almost an anathema.
“Yes, Monsieur, it is for a long time that the people have been suffering, and then, sir, that is not all; why do you come to question me and to speak to me of Louis XVII? I do not know you. Since I have been in this region I have lived within this plot alone, never passing beyond it, seeing none but this child who helps me. Your name, has, it is true, reached me faintly, and I must say with rather favorable reports, but that matters not. Adroit men have so many ways of imposing upon this good simple people. For instance I did not hear the sound of your carriage. You left it doubtless behind the thicket, down there at the branching of the road. You have told me that you were the bishop, but that tells me nothing about your moral personality. Now, then, I repeat my question—Who are you? You are a bishop, a prince of the church, one of those men who are covered with gold, with a coat of arms, and wealth, who have fat livings—the see of D—, fifteen thousand francs regular, ten thousand francs contingent, total twenty-five thousand francs—who have kitchens, who have retinues, who give good dinners, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about in your gaudy coach, like peacocks, with lackeys before and lackeys behind, and who have palaces, and who roll in your carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went bare-footed. You are a prelate; rents, palaces, horses, valets, a good table, all the pleasures of life, you have these like all the rest, and you enjoy them like all the rest; very well, but that says too much or not enough; that does not enlighten me as to your intrinsic worth, that which is peculiar to yourself, you who come probably with the claim of bringing me wisdom. To whom am I speaking? Who are you?”
The bishop bowed his head and replied, “Vermis sum.”
“A worm of the earth in a carriage!” grumbled the old man.
It was the turn of the conventionist to be haughty, and of the bishop to be humble.
The bishop replied with mildness:
“Monsieur, be it so. But explain to me how my carriage, which is there a few steps behind the trees, how my good table and the moor-fowl that I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand livres of income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that pity is not a virtue, that kindness is not a duty, and that ‘93 was not inexorable?”
The old man passed his hand across his forehead as if to dispel a cloud.
“Before answering you,” said he, “I beg your pardon. I have done wrong, monsieur; you are in my house, you are my guest. I owe you courtesy. You are discussing my ideas; it is fitting that I confine myself to combating your reasoning. Your riches and your enjoyments are advantages that I have over you in the debate, but it is not in good taste to avail myself of them. I promise you to use them no more.”
“I thank you,” said the bishop.
G—went on:
“Let us get back to the explanation that you asked of me. Where were we? What were you saying to me? that ‘93 was inexorable?”
“Inexorable, yes,” said the bishop. “What do you think of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?”
“What do you think of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?” 4
The answer was severe, but it reached its aim with the keenness of a dagger. The bishop was staggered, no reply presented itself; but it shocked him to hear Bossuet spoken of in that manner. The best men have their fetishes, and sometimes they feel vaguely wounded at the little respect that logic shows them.
The conventionist began to gasp; the agonising asthma, which mingles with the latest breath, made his voice broken; nevertheless, his soul yet appeared perfectly lucid in his eyes. He continued:
“Let us have a few more words here and there—I would like it. Outside of the revolution which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, ‘93, alas! is a reply. You think it inexorable, but the whole monarchy, monsieur? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a wretch; but what is your opinion of Lamoignon Bâville? Maillard is frightful, but Saulx Tavannes, if you please? Le père Duchene is ferocious, but what epithet will you furnish me for le père Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tête is a monster, but less than the Marquis of Louvois. Monsieur, monsieur, I lament Marie Antoinette, arch-duchess and queen, but I lament also that poor Huguenot woman who, in 1685, under Louis le Grand, monsieur, while nursing her child, was stripped to the waist and tied to a post, while her child was held before her; her breast swelled with milk, and her heart with anguish; the little one, weak and famished, seeing the breast, cried with agony; and the executioner said to the woman, to the nursing mother, ‘Recant!’ giving her the choice between the death of her child and the death of her conscience. What say you to this Tantalus torture adapted to a mother? Monsieur, forget not this; the French revolution had its reasons. Its wrath will be pardoned by the future; its result is a better world. From its most terrible blows comes a caress for the human race. I must be brief. I must stop. I have too good a cause; and I am dying.”
And, ceasing to look at the bishop, the old man completed his idea in these few tranquil words:
“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”
The conventionist thought that he had borne down successively one after the other all the inner defenses of the bishop. There was one left, however, and from this, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s resistance, came forth these words, in which nearly all the rudeness of the exordium reappeared.
“Progress must believe in God. The good cannot have an impious servi tor. An atheist is an evil leader of the human race.”
The old representative of the people did not answer. He was trembling. He looked up into the sky, and a tear gathered slowly in his eye. When the lid was full, the tear rolled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost stammering, low, and talking to himself, his eye lost in the depths:
“O thou! O ideal! thou alone dost exist!”
The bishop felt a kind of inexpressible emotion.
After brief silence, the old man raised his finger towards heaven, and said:
“The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had no selfhood, the self would be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words it would not be. But it is. Therefore it has a self. This selfhood of the infinite is God.”
The dying man pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with a shudder of ecstasy, as if he saw some one. When he ceased, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had lived through in one minute the few hours that remained to him. What he had said had brought him near to him who is in death. The last moment was at hand.
The bishop perceived it, time was pressing. He had come as a priest; from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; he looked upon those closed eyes, he took that old, wrinkled and icy hand, and drew closer to the dying man.
“This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think it would be a source of regret, if we should have met in vain?”
The conventionist re-opened his eyes. Seriousness mingled with shadow imprinted itself upon his face.
“Monsieur Bishop,” said he with a deliberation which perhaps came still more from the dignity of his soul than from the ebb of his strength, “I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years old when my country called me, and ordered me to take part in her affairs. I obeyed. There were abuses, I fought them; there were tyrannies, I destroyed them; there were rights and principles, I proclaimed and confessed them. The soil was invaded, I defended it; France was threatened, I offered her my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I was one of the masters of the state, the vaults of the bank were piled with specie, so that we had to strengthen the walls or they would have fallen under the weight of gold and of silver; I dined in the Rue de l‘Arbre-Sec at twenty-two sous for the meal. I succoured the oppressed, I solaced the suffering. True, I tore the drapery from the altar; but it was to staunch the wounds of the country. I have always supported the forward march of the human race towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted a progress which was without pity. I have, on occasion, protected my own adversaries, your friends. There is at Peteghem in Flanders, at the very place where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a monastery of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire in Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793, I have done my duty according to my strength, and the good that I could. After which I was hunted, hounded, pursued, persecuted, slandered, railed at, spit upon, cursed, proscribed. For many years now, with my white hairs, I have perceived that many people believed they had a right to despise me; to the poor, ignorant crowd I have the face of the damned, and I accept, hating no man myself, the isolation of hatred. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am about to die. What have you come to ask of me?”
“Your blessing,” said the bishop. And he fell upon his knees.
When the bishop raised his head, the face of the old man had become august. He had expired.
The bishop went home deeply absorbed in ineffable thoughts. He spent the whole night in prayer. The next day, some persons, emboldened by curiosity, tried to talk with him of the conventionist G—; he merely pointed to Heaven.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly love for the weak and the suffering.
Every allusion to “that old scoundrel G—,” threw him into a strange reverie. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his own, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his own had not had its effect upon his approach to perfection.