| WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of
a ground floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground
floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above.
Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent.
The two women occupied the first floor; the Bishop was lodged
below.
The first room, opening on the street, served him as dining-room,
the second was his bedroom, and the third his oratory.
There was no exit possible from this oratory, except by passing
through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without passing through
the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the oratory, there
was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of hospitality.
The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom business
or the requirements of their parishes brought to D----
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been
added to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed
into a kitchen and cellar.
In addition to this, there was in the garden a stable, which
had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in which the
Bishop kept two cows.
No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably
sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital.
"I am paying my tithes," he said.
His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm
in bad weather.
As wood is extremely dear at D----, he hit upon the idea of
having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here
he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called
it his winter salon.
In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no
other furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated
chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with
an antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors.
Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white napery
and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed the altar which
decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D---- had more
than once assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar
for Monseigneur's oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money
and had given it to the poor.
"The most beautiful of altars," he said, "is
the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God."
In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was
an arm-chair, also in straw, in his bedroom.
When, by chance, he received seven or eight persons at one
time, the prefect,
or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several
pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched
from the winter salon in the stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory,
and the arm-chair from the bedroom:
in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for
the visitors.
A room was dismantled for each new guest.
It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party;
the Bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by
standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling
in the garden if it was summer.
There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but
the straw was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so
that it was of service only when propped against the wall.
Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in her own room a very large
easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which
was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been obliged to
hoist this bergere up to the first story through the window, as
the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned
among the possibilities in the way of furniture.
Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to
purchase a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet,
stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan's neck
style, with a sofa.
But this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and
in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two
francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years,
she had ended by renouncing the idea.
However, who is there who has attained his ideal?
Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the
Bishop's bedchamber.
A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the
bed,--a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in
the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of
the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man
of the world: there were two doors, one near the chimney, opening
into the oratory; the other near the bookcase, opening into the
dining-room. The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors
filled with books; the chimney was of wood painted to represent
marble, and habitually without fire. In the chimney stood a pair
of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases,
and flutings which had formerly been silvered with silver leaf,
which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the chimney-piece
hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on
a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which
the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with
an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes;
before the table an arm-chair of straw; in front of the bed a
prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on
each side of the bed.
Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth
at the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented,
one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the
Abbe Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbe of Grand-Champ, order
of Citeaux, diocese of Chartres.
When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after the hospital
patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left them.
They were priests, and probably donors--two reasons for respecting
them.
All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had
been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other
to his benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785.
Madame Magloire having taken the pictures down to dust, the
Bishop had discovered these particulars written in whitish ink
on a little square of paper, yellowed by time, and attached to
the back of the portrait of the Abbe of Grand-Champ with four
wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen
stuff, which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the
expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large
seam in the very middle of it.
This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often called
attention to it:
"How delightful that is!" he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the
ground floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed,
which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered
beneath the paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting
the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further
on. Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient
parliament house of the Bourgeois.
Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red bricks,
which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all
the beds.
Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two
women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom.
This was the sole luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said,
"That takes nothing from the poor."
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from
his former possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle,
which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as
they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since
we are now painting the Bishop of D---- as he was in reality,
we must add that he had said more than once, "I find it difficult
to renounce eating from silver dishes."
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of
massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These
candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured on the
Bishop's chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame
Magloire lighted the two candles and set the candlesticks on the
table.
In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there
was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six
silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night. But it
is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings
which we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form,
radiating from a tank.
Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the
white wall which enclosed it.
These alleys left behind them four square plots rimmed with
box.
In three of these, Madame Magloire cultivated vegetables;
in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some flowers; here and there
stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had once remarked, with
a sort of gentle malice: "Monseigneur, you who turn everything
to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot.
It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets."
"Madame Magloire," retorted the Bishop, "you are
mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful."
He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the
Bishop almost as much as did his books.
He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and
making holes here and there in the earth, into which he dropped
seeds.
He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have
wished to see him.
Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he ignored groups
and consistency; he made not the slightest effort to decide between
Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the
buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu against Linnaeus.
He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected learned
men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without
ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flower-beds
every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked.
The door of the dining-room, which, as we have said, opened
directly on the cathedral square, had formerly been ornamented
with locks and bolts like the door of a prison.
The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this door
was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except
the latch.
All that the first passerby had to do at any hour, was to
give it a push.
At first, the two women had been very much tried by this door,
which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D---- had said to them,
"Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you."
They had ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting
as though they shared it.
Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time.
As for the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or
at least indicated, in the three lines which he wrote on the margin
of a Bible, "This is the shade of difference:
the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of
the priest should always be open."
On another book, entitled Philosophy of the Medical Science,
he had written this other note:
"Am not I a physician like them? I also have my patients,
and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates."
Again he wrote:
"Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of
you.
The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who
needs shelter."
It chanced that a worthy cure, I know not whether it was the
cure of Couloubroux or the cure of Pompierry, took it into his
head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame
Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing
an indiscretion, to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened
day and night, at the mercy of any one who should choose to enter,
and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might
occur in a house so little guarded.
The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and
said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant
qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in
vain do they watch who guard it.
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest
as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only,"
he added, "ours must be tranquil."
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