The man was doomed. Both would be tried and he would be convicted. The tale was told, and everyone was in raptures over the artfulness of the Prosecutor, who had brought the truth to light and caused justice to be done by appealing to jealousy and the instinct of revenge. The bishop listened to it all in silence and finally asked:

‘Where are this man and woman to be tried?’

‘At the Assizes in Aix.’

‘And where will the Prosecutor be tried?’

A tragic event occurred in Digne. A man was sentenced to death for murder. He was a man, neither wholly educated nor illiterate, who had been a fairground performer and public letter-writer. His trial had aroused great interest in the town. On the even of the day fixed for his execution the prison almoner fell ill. A priest was needed to solace the condemned man’s last moments. The curé was sent for, but it seems that he refused to come, saying that it was no concern of his, that he had had nothing to do with the mountebank in question, that he was himself unwell and that in any case it was not his place. When this was reported to the bishop he said: ‘The curé is right. It is not his place but mine.’

He went at once to the prison and to the ‘mountebank’s’ cell, where he addressed him by name, took his hand and talked to him. He spent the rest of the day and the night with him, without food or sleep, praying to God for his soul and exhorting the man to have regard for it himself. He repeated the greatest truths, which are the simplest. He was the man’s father, brother, friend; his bishop only to bless him. The man had been about to die in utter despair. Death to him was an abyss, and trembling upon that awful threshold he recoiled in horror. He was not so ignorant as to be wholly unmoved. The profound shock of his condemnation had in some sort pierced the veil which separates us from the mystery of things and which we call life. Peering beyond this world through those fateful rents he saw nothing but darkness. The bishop caused him to see light.

When they came for the man next day the bishop went with him showing himself to the crowd at the side of the fettered wretch, in his purple hood and with the episcopal cross hanging from his neck. He went with him in the tumbril and on to the scaffold. The man who had been so desolate the day before was now radiant. His soul was at peace and he hoped for God. The bishop kissed him and said when the knife was about to fall: ‘Whom man kills God restores to life; whom the brothers pursue the Father redeems. Pray and believe and go onward into life. Your Father is there.’ When he came down from the scaffold there was something in his gaze which caused the people to draw back. No one could have said which was the more striking, his pallor or his serenity. Returning to the humble abode which he smilingly called his palace, he said to his sister: ‘I have been performing one of the duties of my office.’

Since the most sublime acts are often the least understood, there were people in the town who said it was all affectation. But this was drawing-room comment.