Page 918 - les-miserables

order has produced forty popes, two hundred cardinals, fif-
ty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four thousand
six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, for-
ty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred
canonized saints, and has been in existence for fourteen
hundred years. On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the
agent of the sanitary department! On one side Saint Benoit,
on the other the inspector of public ways! The state, the road
commissioners, the public undertaker, regulations, the ad-
ministration, what do we know of all that? There is not a
chance passer-by who would not be indignant to see how
we are treated. We have not even the right to give our dust
to Jesus Christ! Your sanitary department is a revolutionary
invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police;
such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!’
Fauchelevent was but ill at ease under this shower bath.
The prioress continued:—
‘No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture.
Only fanatics and those in error deny it. We live in times of
terrible confusion. We do not know that which it is neces-
sary to know, and we know that which we should ignore. We
are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist people who
do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard
and the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics,
a certain good ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth cen-
tury. Others are so blasphemous as to compare the scaffold
of Louis XVI. to the cross of Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was
merely a king. Let us beware of God! There is no longer
just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the

918 Les Miserables