Page 34 - les-miserables

hours, etc.,—charges to write, sermons to authorize, cures
and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an ad-
ministrative 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 en-
tering 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 lu-
minous 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

34 Les Miserables