Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Victor Hugo

sometimes that there were twelve; then the bishop concealed the embarrassment of the situation by standing before the fire if it were winter, or by walking in the garden if it were summer.
    We must confess that he still retained of what he had formerly, six silver dishes and a silver soup ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with new joy as they shone on the coarse, white, linen table-cloth. And as we are drawing the portrait of the Bishop of D—just as he was, we must add that he had said, more than once, “It would be difficult for me to give up eating from silver.”
    With this silver ware should be counted two large, massive silver candlesticks which he inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks held two wax-candles, and their place was upon the bishop’s mantel. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and placed the two candlesticks upon the table.
    There was in the bishop’s chamber, at the head of his bed, a small cupboard in which Madame Magloire placed the six silver dishes and the great ladle every evening. But the key was never taken out of it.
    Not a door in the house had a lock. The door of the dining-room which, we have mentioned, opened into the cathedral grounds, was formerly loaded with bars and bolts like the door of a prison. The bishop had had all this iron-work taken off, and the door, by night as well as by day, was closed only with a latch. The passer-by, whatever might be the hour, could open it with a simple push. At first the two women had been very much troubled at the door being never locked; but Monseigneur de D—said to them: “Have bolts on your own doors, if you like.” They shared his confidence at last, or at least acted as if they shared it. Madame Magloire alone had occasional attacks of fear. As to the bishop, the reason for this is explained, or at least pointed at in these three lines written by him in the margin of a Bible: “This is the shade of meaning; the door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open.”
    In another book, entitled Philosophie de la Science Medicale, he wrote this further note: “Am I not a physician as well as they? I also have my patients; first I have theirs, whom they call the sick; and then I have my own, whom I call the unfortunate.”
    Yet again he had written: “Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum.”
    It occurred to a worthy cure, I am not sure whether it was the cure of Couloubroux or the cure of Pomprierry, to ask him one day probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, if monseigneur were quite sure that there was not a degree of imprudence in leaving his door, day and night, at the mercy of whoever might wish to enter, and if he did not fear that some evil would befall a house so poorly defended. The bishop touched him gently on the shoulder, and said: “Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam. ” i
    And then he changed the subject.
    He very often said: “There is a bravery for the priest as well as a bravery for the colonel of dragoons.” “Only,” added he, “ours should be quiet.”

5 (7)
    CRAVATTE
    THIS IS THE PROPER PLACE for an incident which we must not omit, for it is one of those which most clearly shows what manner of man the Bishop of D—was.
    After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, which had infested the gorges of Ollivolles, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the remnant of the troop of Gaspard Bès, in the county of Nice, then made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France in the neighbourhood of Barcelonnette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He concealed himself in the caverns of the Joug de l’ Aigle, from which he made descents upon the hamlets and villages by the ravines of Ubaye and