| MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts
as his public life.
The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D---- lived,
would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could
have viewed it close at hand.
Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept
little. This brief slumber was profound.
In the morning he meditated for an hour, then he said his
mass, either at the cathedral or in his own house. His mass said,
he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows.
Then he set to work.
A Bishop is a very busy man:
he must every day receive the secretary of the bishopric,
who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his vicars-general.
He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a whole
ecclesiastical library to examine,-- prayer-books, diocesan catechisms,
books of hours, etc.,--charges to write, sermons to authorize,
cures and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative
correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the Holy See;
and a thousand matters of business.
What time was left to him, after these thousand details of
business, and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first
on the necessitous, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which
was left to him from the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous,
he devoted to work. Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he
read or wrote.
He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called
them gardening. "The mind is a garden," said he.
Towards mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went forth
and took a stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly
dwellings. He was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts,
his eyes cast down, supporting himself on his long cane, clad
in his wadded purple garment of silk, which was very warm, wearing
purple stockings inside his coarse shoes, and surmounted by a
flat hat which allowed three golden tassels of large bullion to
droop from its three points.
It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared.
One would have said that his presence had something warming
and luminous about it. The children and the old people came out
to the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the sun.
He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. They pointed
out his house to any one who was in need of anything.
Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls,
and smiled upon the mothers.
He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no
longer had any, he visited the rich.
As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish
to have it noticed, he never went out in the town without his
wadded purple cloak.
This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.
On his return, he dined.
The dinner resembled his breakfast.
At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister,
Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table.
Nothing could be more frugal than this repast.
If, however, the Bishop had one of his cures to supper, Madame
Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur
with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some fine game
from the mountains.
Every cure furnished the pretext for a good meal:
the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his ordinary
diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in water, and oil soup.
Thus it was said in the town, when the Bishop does not indulge
in the cheer of a cure, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist.
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle
Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room
and set to writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the
margin of some folio. He was a man of letters and rather learned.
He left behind him five or six very curious manuscripts; among
others, a dissertation on this verse in Genesis, In the beginning,
the spirit of God floated upon the waters.
With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic verse
which says, The winds of God blew; Flavius Josephus who says,
A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth; and finally,
the Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, A wind coming
from God blew upon the face of the waters. In another dissertation,
he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais,
great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes
the fact, that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little
works published during the last century, under the pseudonym of
Barleycourt.
Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the
book might be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall
into a profound meditation, whence he only emerged to write a
few lines on the pages of the volume itself.
These lines have often no connection whatever with the book
which contains them.
We now have under our eyes a note written by him on the margin
of a quarto entitled Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals
Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the American station.
Versailles, Poincot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot, bookseller,
Quai des Augustins.
Here is the note:--
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees
call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty;
Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth;
John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus
calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the
creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls
you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names."
Toward nine o'clock in the evening the two women retired and
betook themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving
him alone until morning on the ground floor.
It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact
idea of the dwelling of the Bishop of D----
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