Page 83 - les-miserables

Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June,
1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel
was one of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he
was present only at one sitting and at three or four private
conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very
close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that
he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which
altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon re-
turned to D—— He was interrogated as to this speedy
return, and he replied: ‘I embarrassed them. The outside air
penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the ef-
fect of an open door.’
On another occasion he said, ‘What would you have?
Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bish-
op.’
The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange
things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening,
when he found himself at the house of one of his most
notable colleagues: ‘What beautiful clocks! What beauti-
ful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great
trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying in-
cessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry!
There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There
are poor people!’’
Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not
an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred
of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong,
except in connection with representations and ceremonies.
It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is chari-

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