After the band of Gaspard Bes is destroyed, his lieutenant Cravatte hides in Nice, then Piedmont, then the ravines of the Ubaye, and one night strips the sacristy at Embrun. The gendarmes cannot catch him. The Bishop is making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor meets him and begs him to turn back: Cravatte holds the mountains as far as Arche, and an escort would only waste three or four gendarmes. The Bishop intends to go without escort, in an hour, alone. Yonder is a tiny community of shepherds he has not seen in three years: one goat in thirty, woollen cords, six-hole flutes. They need to be told of the good God. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? The mayor names a flock of wolves. The Bishop answers that this flock may be the one Jesus made him shepherd of. He has nothing. An old priest mumbling prayers is not worth killing. If he meets them he will beg alms of them for his poor. He is not in the world to guard his own life, but to guard souls.
They have to let him. He takes a child as guide, neither sister nor Magloire, meets no one on the mule track, and stays a fortnight preaching, administering the sacrament, teaching, exhorting. He wants a pontifical Te Deum. The village has only threadbare chasubles of imitation lace. Two unknown horsemen leave a chest in the presbytery and ride off: a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre with diamonds, an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier, all the vestments stolen a month earlier from Notre Dame d'Embrun, and a paper, From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu. To him who contents himself with a curate's surplice, God sends an archbishop's cope. The curé murmurs God, or the Devil. The Bishop looks at him and repeats, with authority, God.
On the road home people come out to stare as at a curiosity. He tells Baptistine he went with empty hands and comes back with a cathedral's treasure. Before bed he says not to fear robbers or murderers. Those are petty dangers from without. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. Never a precaution of the priest against his fellow-man. Pray not for yourselves, but that your brother may not fall into sin on your account. Such incidents are rare. One month of his year resembles one hour of his day. As for the treasure, Hugo will not assert what became of it. An obscure note among the papers asks whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital.
Coming Up in Chapter 8
A clever senator, an old attorney who marched past conscience toward interest, sits at the prefect's dessert slightly exhilarated and still dignified. He tells the Bishop they are two augurs who should wink, that he has a philosophy of his own, and that the Bishop is about to hear it.
