I do not know you, I tell you.
You have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no information as to your moral personality.
In short, I repeat my question. Who are you?
You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot!
You are a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.
To whom do I speak?
Who are you?”
The Bishop hung his head and replied,
“Vermis sum—I am a worm.”
“A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary.
It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be humble.
The Bishop resumed mildly:— “So be it, sir.
But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ‘93 was not inexorable.”
The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep away a cloud.
“Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me.
I have just committed a wrong, sir.
You are at my house, you are my guest, I owe you courtesy.
You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments.
Your riches and your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them.
I promise you to make no use of them in the future.”
“I thank you,” said the Bishop.
G—— resumed. “Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we?
What were you saying to me?
That ‘93 was inexorable?”
“Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop.
“What think you of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?”
“What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?”
The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel.
The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet.
The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.
The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes.
He went on:—
“Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing.
Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, ‘93 is, alas! a rejoinder.
You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir?
Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel?
Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to Lamoignon-Baville?
Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes, if you please?
Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier?
Jourdan-Coupe-Tete is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois.
Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse,
‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience.
What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother?
Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better.
From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race.
I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying.”
And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his thoughts in these tranquil words:—
“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.
When they are over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.”
The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop.