Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  ‘Your blessing,’ said the bishop, and fell on his knees.

  When at length the bishop raised his head there was a look of grandeur on the old man’s face. He had died.

  The bishop returned home deeply absorbed in thought. He passed the night in prayer. When on the next day a few importunates sought to question him about the man of the people he merely pointed to the sky. Thereafter his tenderness and solicitude for the defenceless and suffering were doubled.

  Any reference to ‘that old scoundrel’ caused him to lapse into a state of singular withdrawal. It would be impossible to say that the passing of that spirit in his presence, and the reflection of that lofty conscience upon his own, went for nothing in his own striving for perfection.

  His ‘pastoral visit’ was, of course, a subject of considerable comment in local circles.

  Was it the place of a bishop to be at the death-bed of a man like that, when clearly no conversion was to be looked for? Those revolutionaries are all apostates. So why had he gone? What business was it of his? He must have been very anxious to see a soul carried off by the devil.

  A dowager, one of those ladies who mistake audacity for wit, rallied him as follows: ‘We are all wondering, Monseigneur, when your lordship will be wearing a red revolutionary bonnet.’

  ‘Red is an all-embracing colour,’ said the bishop. ‘How fortunate that those who despise it in a bonnet revere it in a hat.’

  XI

  A reservation

  It would be a mistake to conclude from this that Monseigneur Bienvenu was a ‘philosopher bishop’ or a ‘patriot priest’. His encounter, which could almost be called his communion, with the man of the people, left in him a kind of amazement which made him still more gentle. That was all.

  Although no one could have been less concerned with politics, it is perhaps appropriate that at this point we should give some account of his attitude to the events of the day, supposing him ever to have adopted an attitude. We must therefore go back a few years.

  Shortly after he was raised to the episcopacy the Emperor created him a Baron of the Empire, together with a number of other bishops. The arrest of the Pope, as we know, took place during the night of 5–6 July 1809. In consequence of this M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to attend the synod of French and Italian bishops convened in Paris. This council was held in Notre-Dame, assembling for the first time on 15 June 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was among the ninety-five bishops who were present. But he attended only one full assembly and three or four lesser meetings. It appears that, coming from his mountain diocese where he lived so close to nature and in such rustic simplicity, he brought to the illustrious gathering notions which had a damping effect. He very soon went back to Digne. When questioned about his prompt return he said: ‘I made them uncomfortable. I brought a draught of outside air with me. It was as though someone had left the door open.’

  He also remarked: ‘What would you expect? Those gentlemen are princes. I’m nothing but a peasant bishop.’

  The fact is that he incurred displeasure. Among his disconcerting utterances was one that he let fall one evening in the home of one of his most eminent colleagues: ‘So many handsome clocks and carpets! So many rich liveries! It must be very embarrassing. I would not care to live with all this luxury around me, constantly reminding me that there are people who are cold and hungry. There are the poor! There are the poor!’

  Let it be said in passing that the hatred of luxury is not a sensible hatred. It implies a hatred of the arts. But in a churchman, outside his rites and ceremonies, luxury is a defect. It suggests an attitude of mind in which there is little true charity. A wealthy priest is a contradiction. A priest should be close to the poor. But can a man live in daily and nightly contact with all the forms of distress and hardship without some of that wretchedness clinging to him like the dust of toil? Can we imagine a man at a brazier who does not feel the heat, a man working all day long at a furnace who never singes his hair, or blackens a fingernail, or has a drop of sweat or a speck of ash on his face? The first proof of charity in a priest, above all in a bishop, is poverty.

  This was assuredly the view of the Bishop of Digne, but that is not to say that in certain ticklish matters he did not share what we may call the ‘ideas of the century’. He took little part in the theological disputes of the time and expressed no opinion on questions affecting the relationship between Church and State; but if he had been obliged to declare himself he would, it seems, have been found to be more Ultramontane than Gallican. Since we are painting a portrait, and wish to conceal nothing, we must add that he was decidedly opposed to Napoleon in his decline. From 1813 onwards he supported or applauded every hostile demonstration. He refused to meet the Emperor when he passed through the diocese on his return from Elba and refrained from ordering public prayers for him during the Hundred Days.

  In addition to his sister he had two brothers, one a general and the other a prefect, with both of whom he corresponded. For a time he was chilly towards the general because, holding a command in Provence, he had set out with a force of 1200 men in pursuit of Napoleon when he landed at Cannes, but had done so in a manner which suggested that he did not mean to overtake him. With the other brother, the former prefect, a good and worthy man who now lived in retirement in Paris, the bishop remained on affectionate terms.

  Monseigneur Bienvenu, then, had his moments of partisanship like other men, his moments of bitterness and of illusion. The passions of the day did not leave that gentle spirit wholly undisturbed in its preoccupation with eternal things. Certainly a man such as he would have been better without political opinions. And here we must not be misunderstood; we are not confusing what are called political opinions with the belief in progress and the high patriotic, democratic, and human faith which in these days must be the basis of all large-minded thinking. Without going deeply into matters with which this book is only indirectly concerned, we may say this: it would have been better if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a monarchist and if his gaze had not for an instant been distracted from that serene contemplation in which, above the turbulence of human affairs, the pure rays of the three first principles, Truth, Justice, and Charity, are seen to shine.

  While agreeing that it was not for any political purpose that God had created Monsiegneur Bienvenu, we would nevertheless have admired him had he, in the name of justice and liberty, pursued a course of high-minded and perilous resistance to Napoleon when the Emperor was at the height of his power. But what is admirable in the case of a rising star is less so when the star is setting. We can respect the struggle only when it is dangerous; and in any case, only those who fight from the beginning deserve the final victory. The man who did not speak out in the time of prosperity does better to keep silent in the time of adversity; only the assailant of success is the legitimate instrument of its downfall. For our own part, when Providence intervenes we bow our heads. The year 1812 was the beginning. The cowardly breaking of silence in 1813 by a hitherto acquiescent legislature now emboldened by disaster was a matter for disgust which it was shameful to applaud; and from the events of 1814– the treacherous marshals, the Senate sinking into degradation, insulting what it had deified; idolatry turning its coat and spitting on its idol – it was a duty to avert our gaze. And in 1815, when final disaster was in the air and all France shuddered at its approach, when the shadow of Waterloo could be dimly discerned as it gathered over Napoleon, the agonized greeting extended by the Army and the people to the man condemned by Destiny was no subject for laughter. With every reservation made regarding the despot, a spirit such as that of the Bishop of Digne should surely not have failed to perceive all that was noble and touching in this embrace between a great nation and a great man on the edge of the abyss.

  Except for this he was in all things just, true, fair-minded, intelligent, humble, and worthy; beneficent and benevolent, which is another beneficence. He was a priest, a sage and a man. And it must be said that eve
n in that political stance of which we disapprove, and for which we have come near to condemning him, he was tolerant and magnanimous – more so, perhaps, than we who write. The commissionaire at the Town Hall had been put there by the Emperor. He was a sergeant of the Old Guard, a legionary of Austerlitz, as Bonapartist as the eagle itself. Now and then he rashly let fall remarks which the law of the day classed as seditious. Since the imperial profile had disappeared from the insignia of the Légion d’honneur he no longer turned out in full regalia, as he put it, so as to avoid wearing his medals. He had removed the cross Napoleon awarded him, leaving a gap on his tunic which he had no wish to fill. ‘Better die,’ he said, ‘than wear three toads over my heart,’ by which he meant the fleur-de-lis. Nor was he tactful in his outspoken references to Louis XVIII. ‘Old Gout-in-English-gaiters,’ he said; ‘he can take himself and his side-whiskers to Prussia,’ thus combining in a single anathema the two first objects of his abhorrence, Prussia and England. He said these things so often that he lost his job and found himself penniless with a wife and children. The bishop sent for him, scolded him gently, and engaged him as caretaker at the cathedral.

  Monseigneur Bienvenu was a true pastor of his diocese, the friend of all men. In the nine years of his residence in Digne his gentle goodness had come to inspire a kind of filial devotion. Even his attitude to Napoleon had been accepted and as it were tacitly forgiven by the people, that warm-hearted, simple-minded flock who worshipped their Emperor but loved their bishop.

  XII

  The loneliness of Monseigneur Bienvenu

  Nearly every bishop has his retinue of young priests, just as an army general has his gaggle of young officers. They are what St Francis de Sales has called ‘the cubs’, les prêtres blancs-becs. Every calling has its aspirants who cling to the skirts of authority; no power is without its votaries, no fortune without its court. Those with an eye to the future flutter round the illustrious present. Every bishop possessing any influence has a bevy of acolytes to run his errands and perform palace duties, eager thereby to win his lordship’s regard. To stand well with the bishop is to set a foot on the ladder of promotion. Careers have to be considered, and the priesthood does not disdain sinecures.

  The Church, like other walks of life, has its potentates. These are the fashionable bishops, well-endowed and urbane dignitaries, on excellent terms with the world, who doubtless know how to pray but also know how to lobby; men who do not scruple to constitute themselves the antechamber of a diocese, links between the sacristy and diplomacy, abbots rather than priests and prelates rather than bishops. Happy is he who has their ear. Being men of credit they can shower fat livings, prebends, archdeaconries, cathedral offices – steps on the road to higher preferment – upon the ambitious and the favoured, and upon the young who know how to please. In furthering their own interests they further those of their satellites; it is like a solar system in motion. They shed a glow of purple on their followers, and their prosperity, discreetly shared, is like bread scattered on the water. And in the background is Rome. The bishop who becomes an archbishop, the archbishop who becomes a cardinal, may carry others with him. There are secretarial appointments; there is the Rota, the Conclave, the pallium. From Lordship to Eminence is but a step, and between Eminence and Holiness there is only the wisp of smoke from a burnt voting-slip. Every tonsure may dream of a crown. The priest is the only man in our time who may legitimately become a king – and what a king, the highest of them all! So there is no greater hothouse of ambition than a seminary. Who shall say how many pink-cheeked choir-boys and youthful abbés share the day-dreams of the dairymaid Perrette, or how often ambition wears the guise of vocation, perhaps in all good faith?

  But Monseigneur Bienvenu, humble, penurious, and retiring, was not among these potentates, a fact which was manifest in the total absence of young priests around him. In Paris, as we have seen, he had failed to please. No rosy future beckoned to the solitary old man, and no sprouting ambition unwisely sought to blossom in his shadow. His canons and parish vicars were excellent men, somewhat of the people as he was himself, immured as he was in the diocese with no access to higher preferment, resembling their bishop in all things except one, that they had reached the end of the road and he had achieved completeness. The impossibility of rising under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so apparent that the young priests he ordained secured introductions to the Archbishops of Aix or Auch and made off as soon as possible. For we must repeat, a man needs help. A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement – in word, with more renunciation than you care for – and so you flee the contagion. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a squalid society. Success: that is the message seeping, drop by drop, down from the overriding corruption.

  It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History. Juvenal and Tacitus alone mistrust it. In these days an almost official philosophy has come to dwell in the house of Success, wear its livery, receive callers in its ante-chamber. Success in principle and for its own sake. Prosperity presupposes ability. Win a lottery-prize and you are a clever man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great. With a handful of tremendous exceptions which constitute the glory of a century, the popular esteem is singularly short-sighted. Gilt is as good as gold. No harm in being a chance arrival provided you arrive. The populace is an aged Narcissus which worships itself and applauds the commonplace. The tremendous qualities of a Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo or a Napoleon are readily ascribed by the multitude to any man, in any sphere, who has got what he set out to get – the notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. The profiteer who supplies the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse with boot-soles of cardboard and earns himself an income of four hundred thousand a year; the huckster who espouses usury and brings her to bed of seven or eight millions; the preacher who becomes a bishop by loudly braying; the bailiff of a great estate who so enriches himself that on retirement he is made Minister of Finance – all this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

  XIII

  What he believed

  It is not for us to scrutinize the Bishop of Digne in terms of religious orthodoxy. A spirit such as his can inspire only respect. The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.

  As to the view he took of this or that dogma or mystery, these are secrets only to be revealed when the soul passes naked beyond the tomb. What we may assert with confidence is that for him no problem of faith was ever hypocritically resolved. The diamond is incorruptible. He believed as much as he could. Credo in Patrem was his constant cry, reinforced by the acts of his daily life which satisfied his conscience and assured him that he was true to God.

  But what we are obliged to note is that, outside his faith and, so to speak, beyond it, the bishop overflowed with love. It was in this, quia multum amavit, that he was held to be weak by ‘the sober-minded’, by ‘responsible citizens’ and ‘sensible people’, those clichés of a tawdry world in which egotism takes its time from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence embracing all men and extending even beyond them. He lived disdaining nothing, indulgent to all God’s creation. Even the best of men has in him a core of unconsidered callousness which he reserves for what is animal. The Bishop of Digne lacked this intoleranc
e, which is nevertheless found in many priests. Although he did not go as far as the Brahmins, he had assuredly pondered the verse of Ecclesiastes which runs: ‘Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?’ Ugliness of aspect and deformities of instinct neither dismayed nor outraged him. He was moved by them and sometimes grieved, seeming to search, beneath the appearances of life, for a reason, an explanation or an excuse. He seemed to be asking God to rearrange things. He contemplated without anger, rather in the manner of a scholar deciphering a palimpsest, the chaos that still exists in nature, and his reflections sometimes drew from him strange utterances, as on one occasion when he was walking in his garden. He thought himself alone, but his sister was a few paces behind him. He stopped suddenly, staring at something on the ground. It was a very large spider, black, hairy, and repellent. She heard him say: ‘The poor creature, it’s not its fault.’

  Why not record these almost sublime absurdities of goodness? They were childish indeed, but it was the childishness of St Francis of Assisi and Marcus Aurelius. He strained a muscle once in avoiding treading on an ant. Thus did he live. Sometimes he fell asleep in the garden, and never did he seem more worthy of veneration.

  From the reports of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s youth and early manhood it would seem that he had been a man of strong passions, even perhaps of violence. His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of a man, as in a rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.