BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER IV
WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable.
He put himself on a level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy.
Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur]. One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper shelves.
As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it.
"Madame Magloire," said he, "fetch me a chair.
My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as far as that shelf."
One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lo, rarely allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she designated as "the expectations" of her three sons. She had numerous relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons were the natural heirs.
The youngest of the three was to receive from a grand-aunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather.
The Bishop was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts.
On one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame de Lo was relating once again the details of all these inheritances and all these "expectations."
She interrupted herself impatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin!
What are you thinking about?"
"I am thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine,--`Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.'"
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page:
"What a stout back Death has!" he exclaimed.
"What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!"