A bishop is almost always surrounded by a squadron of little abbés, as a general is by young officers. Saint Francis de Sales called them callow priests. Every career has its train. Seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. To please a bishop is to get a foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. There are big mitres: men who stand well at Court, who know how to pray and also how to beg, links between sacristy and diplomacy. Happy those who approach them. They rain large parishes, prebends, chaplaincies on the assiduous, a solar system on the march, purple crumbling into nice little promotions. And then there is Rome. A skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is the only man who can become a king in a regular manner. A seminary is a nursery of aspirations. How easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation, in good faith, and deceive itself.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. He did not take in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of grafting itself on this solitary old man. His canons were good old men, vulgar like himself, walled up in the diocese without an exit to a cardinalship. The young men he ordained got themselves recommended to Aix or Auch and left in a hurry. Men wish to be pushed. A saint in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbour. He might communicate an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints useful in advancement, more renunciation than you desire. Infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. Success, Hugo says, is the lesson that falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing: success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses it has almost the same profile as supremacy. Win in the lottery, and behold, you are a clever man. Be lucky, and you will have the rest; be happy, and people will think you great. Gilding is gold. The multitude awards the ability of Moses or Dante, on the spot, to whoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist. Let a pork-packer espouse usury, or a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl, and men call that Genius. With the constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.
Coming Up in Chapter 13
Hugo will not sound the Bishop of D on orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul the mood is respect. The conscience of the just man should be accepted on his word. What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? Those secrets enter the tomb naked.
