Les Misérables, page 21
CHAPTER XIV--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---- acertain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and induce the belief, eitherto his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personalphilosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes springup in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until theyusurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one ofthose persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himselfauthorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened thisman was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes fromthere.
No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no,there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. Theapostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid. He would probablyhave felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain problemswhich are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is asacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openingsstand 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 toGod. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adorationinterrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety andresponsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzesand digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that bya sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysteriousworld which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it isprobable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be,there are on earth men who--are they men?--perceive distinctly at theverge of the horizons of revery the heights of the absolute, and whohave the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcomewas one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He wouldhave feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, likeSwedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, thesepowerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous pathsone approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path whichshortens,--the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah'smantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell ofevents; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; hehad nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. Thishumble soul loved, and that was all.
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration isprobable: 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 SaintJerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universeappeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever,everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking tosolve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacleof created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied onlyin finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way tocompassionate and relieve. That which exists was for this good and rarepriest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extractionof pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reignedeverywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. _Love each other;_he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that wasthe whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to bea "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to, said tothe Bishop: "Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war againstall; the strongest has the most wit. Your _love each other_ isnonsense."--_"Well,"_ replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contestingthe point, _"if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, asthe pearl in the oyster."_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, hewas absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigiousquestions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives ofabstraction, the precipices of metaphysics--all those profunditieswhich converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness;destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscienceof man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformationin death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, theincomprehensible 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, wherelean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses,which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyesflashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite tocause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior ofmysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troublinghis own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a graverespect for darkness.
BOOK SECOND--THE FALL
