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WHAT HE THOUGHT
One last word.
Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present
moment, and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop
of D---- a certain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and
induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he
entertained one of those personal philosophies which are peculiar
to our century, which sometimes spring up in solitary spirits,
and there take on a form and grow until they usurp the place of
religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those persons who
knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself authorized
to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this man
was his heart.
His wisdom was made of the light which comes from there.
No systems; many works.
Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, there is nothing
to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. The apostle
may be daring, but the bishop must be timid.
He would probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far
in advance certain problems which are, in a manner, reserved for
terrible great minds. There is a sacred horror beneath the porches
of the enigma; those gloomy openings stand yawning there, but
something tells you, you, a passer-by in life, that you must not
enter. Woe to him who penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure
speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose
their ideas to God.
Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adoration
interrogates.
This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility
for him who attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits.
At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into
its own bedazzlement.
One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction,
it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds
us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the
contemplators are contemplated.
However that may be, there are on earth men who--are they men?--
perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of revery the
heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the
infinite mountain.
Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome
was not a genius.
He would have feared those sublimities whence some very great
men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity.
Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility,
and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection.
As for him, he took the path which shortens,-- the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of
Elijah's mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell
of events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things;
he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about
him. This humble soul loved, and that was all.
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration
is probable:
but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much;
and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa
and Saint Jerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates.
The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere
he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and,
without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound.
The terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness
in him; he was occupied only in finding for himself, and in inspiring
others with the best way to compassionate and relieve.
That which exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent
subject of sadness which sought consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the
extraction of pity.
Universal misery was his mine.
The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for
unfailing kindness.
Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired
nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine.
One day, that man who believed himself to be a "philosopher,"
the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop:
"Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against
all; the strongest has the most wit.
Your love each other is nonsense."--"Well,"
replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, "if
it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl
in the oyster."
Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely
satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions
which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction,
the precipices of metaphysics--all those profundities which converge,
for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny,
good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience
of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation
in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains,
the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent
_I_, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul,
nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities,
where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable
abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate
with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on
the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the
exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and
without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in
his own soul a grave respect for darkness.
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