Page 81 - les-miserables

murmur of comment in all the little local coteries.
‘Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the prop-
er place for a bishop? There was evidently no conversion to
be expected. All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then
why go there? What was there to be seen there? He must
have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried off by
the devil.’
One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks
herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him, ‘Monseigneur,
people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the
red cap!’—‘Oh! oh! that’s a coarse color,’ replied the Bishop.
‘It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a
hat.’

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