You may recognize them by the quills stuck in their hatbands. Those who only teach reading wear a single quill, those who teach reading and arithmetic wear two quills, and the teachers of reading, arithmetic and Latin wear three. Those last are very learned men. But how shameful it is to be ignorant! You should do as they do in Queyras.’

That was how he talked, gravely and paternally, inventing parables when no example came to hand, going straight to the point with little phrase-making and frequent imagery, using Christ’s own eloquence, persuaded and persuading.

IV
Works matching words

His conversation was friendly and light-hearted. He put himself on the level of the two old women who shared his life, and when he laughed it was the laughter of a schoolboy.

Mme Magloire was pleased to address him as Your Greatness. On one occasion he rose from his armchair to get a book which was on a top shelf. He was short in stature and could not reach it. ‘Mme Magloire,’ he said, ‘will you be so good as to fetch a chair. My greatness does not extend so high.’

A distant connection, the Comtesse de Lo, seldom missed an opportunity, when she was with him, of talking about what she called the ‘hopes’ of her three sons. She had several very aged relatives of whom her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest was due to inherit an income of a hundred thousand francs from a great-aunt; the second was the adopted heir of his uncle, a duke; and the oldest was direct heir to a peerage. As a rule the bishop listened in silence to these blameless and forgivable maternal effusions. But on one occasion he appeared more abstracted than usual. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Cousin,’ said the lady in mild exasperation, ‘what are you thinking about?’ – ‘I am thinking,’ said the bishop, ‘of the words uttered by, I believe, St Augustine – “Put your hope in Him who has no successor.”’

On another occasion, upon receiving a letter informing him of the death of one of the local gentry which set forth in great detail the deceased’s many titles of nobility and those of his family, he exclaimed: ‘Death has a broad back! What a great load of honours it can be made to bear, and how assiduous are the minds of men that they can use even the tomb in the service of vanity.’

He had recourse at times to gentle raillery in which there was nearly always a serious note. During one Lent a youthful vicar came to preach in the cathedral at Digne and did so with some eloquence. His theme was charity. He urged the rich to give to the poor so that they might escape the torments of Hell, which he depicted in hideous terms, and attain to Paradise, which he made to sound altogether delightful. Among the congregation was a Monsieur Geborand, a wealthy and grasping retired merchant, who had made a fortune in the cloth-trade but had never been known to give anything to the poor. It was observed, after this sermon, that on Sundays he handed a single sou to the old beggar-women clustered outside the cathedral door. There were six of them to share it. Noting the event, the bishop smiled and said to his sister: ‘Monsieur Geborand is buying a penny-worth of Paradise.’

He was not to be deterred in his labours for charity even by a direct refusal, and he found things to say which lingered in the mind. Among the company in a fashionable salon where he went to solicit alms was the Marquis de Champtercier, a rich, elderly miser who contrived to be both ultra-royalist and ultra-Voltairian. The type existed in those days. The bishop touched him on the arm and said, ‘Monsieur le Marquis, you must indeed give me something.’ The marquis turned away, saying curtly, ‘Monseigneur, I have my own poor.’ – ‘Give them to me,’ said the bishop.

He preached the following sermon in the cathedral:

‘My brothers and friends, there are in France thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasant cottages which have only three outlets, eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand which have only two, a door and one window, and three hundred and forty-six thousand which have only a door. This is due to something known as the tax on doors and windows. Consider the fate of poor families, old women and young children, living in those hovels, the fevers and other maladies! God gives air to mankind and the law sells it. I do not assail the law but I give thanks to God. In Isère, in Var, and in the upper and lower Alps the peasants do not even possess barrows but carry the dung on their backs. They have no candles but burn twigs and lengths of rope steeped in resin. That is what happens throughout the highlands of Dauphiné.