BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER V
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.
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