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THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of
little abbes, just as a general is by a covey of young officers.
This is what that charming Saint Francois de Sales calls somewhere
"les pretres blancs-becs," callow priests.
Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those
who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has
not its dependents.
There is no fortune which has not its court.
The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present.
Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop
who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of
cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round, and maintains
good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur's
smile.
To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one's foot in
the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one's
path discreetly; the apostleship does not disdain the canonship.
Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres
in the Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court,
who are rich, well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who
know how to pray, no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who
feel little scruple at making a whole diocese dance attendance
in their person, who are connecting links between the sacristy
and diplomacy, who are abbes rather than priests, prelates rather
than bishops. Happy those who approach them!
Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them,
upon the assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men
who understand the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends,
archidiaconates, chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting
episcopal honors.
As they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to
progress also; it is a whole solar system on the march.
Their radiance casts a gleam of purple over their suite.
Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the scenes, into nice
little promotions.
The larger the diocese of the patron, the fatter the curacy
for the favorite.
And then, there is Rome.
A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop
who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist;
you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium,
and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then
monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and
between the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of
a ballot.
Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays
the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what
a king! the supreme king.
Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary!
How many blushing choristers, how many youthful abbes bear
on their heads Perrette's pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is
for ambition to call itself vocation? in good faith, perchance,
and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted
among the big mitres.
This was plain from the complete absence of young priests
about him.
We have seen that he "did not take" in Paris.
Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary
old man.
Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting
forth its foliage in his shadow.
His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar
like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit
to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this difference,
that they were finished and he was completed.
The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu
was so well understood, that no sooner had the young men whom
he ordained left the seminary than they got themselves recommended
to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great
hurry.
For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed.
A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous
neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable
poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement,
and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious
virtue is avoided.
Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu.
We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is
the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing.
Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy.
Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,--history.
Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day, a philosophy
which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the
livery of success, and performs the service of its antechamber.
Succeed:
theory.
Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold!
you are a clever man.
He who triumphs is venerated.
Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies
in that.
Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people
will think you great.
Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which compose the
splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing but
short-sightedness. Gilding is gold.
It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure chance, so
long as you do arrive.
The common herd is an old Narcissus who adores himself, and
who applauds the vulgar herd.
That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, Aeschylus,
Dante, Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the
spot, and by acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in
whatsoever it may consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into
a deputy:
let a false Corneille compose Tiridate; let a eunuch come
to possess a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win
the decisive battle of an epoch; let an apothecary invent cardboard
shoe-soles for the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct
for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred
thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer espouse usury, and
cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of which he is
the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher become
a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine
family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister
of finances,--and men call that Genius, just as they call the
face of Mousqueton Beauty, and the mien of Claude Majesty.
With the constellations of space they confound the stars of
the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the
feet of ducks.
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