that he knew of these two personages was that they had been named by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his living, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire having taken down the pictures to wipe off the dust, the Bishop had found this circumstance written in a faded ink upon a little square piece of paper, yellow with time, stuck with four wafers on the back of the portrait of the Abbé of Grand-champs.

He had at his window an antique curtain of coarse woollen stuff, which finally became so old that, to save the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was obliged to put a large patch in the very middle of it. This patch was in the form of a cross. The Bishop often called attention to it. "How fortunate that is," he would say.

Every room in the house, on the ground floor as well as in the upper story, without exception, was whitewashed, as is the custom in barracks and in hospitals.

However, in later years, as we shall see by-and-by, Madame Magloire found, under the wall-paper, some paintings, which decorated the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine. Before it was a hospital, the house had been a sort of gathering-place for the citizens, at which time these decorations were introduced. The floors of the chambers were paved with red brick, which were scoured every week, and before the beds straw matting was spread. In all respects the house was kept by the two women exquisitely neat from top to bottom. This was the only luxury that the Bishop would permit. He would say, takes nothing from the poor."

"That

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. as we are drawing the portrait of the Bishop of D as he was, we must add that he had said, more than once,

And

just

"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.

The garden, which was somewhat marred by the unsightly structures of which we have spoken, was laid out with four walks, crossing at the drain-well in the centre. There was another walk round the garden, along the white wall which enclosed it. These walks left four square plats, which were bordered with box. In three of them Madame Magloire cultivated vegetables; in the fourth the Bishop had planted flowers, and here and there were a few fruit trees.

Madame Magloire once said to him, with a kind of gentle reproach: "Monseigneur, you are always anxious to make everything useful, but yet here is a plat that is of no use. It would be much better to have salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," replied the Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added, after a moment's silence, " perhaps more so."

This plat, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop nearly as much as his books. He usually passed an hour or two there, trimming, weeding, and making holcs here and there in the ground, and planting seeds. He was as much averse to insects as a gardener would have wished. He made no pretensions to botany, and knew nothing of groups or classification; he did not care in the

least to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took no part, either for the utricles against the cotyledons, or for Jussieu against Linnæus. He did not study plants, he loved flowers. He had much respect for the learned, but still more for the ignorant; and, while he fulfilled his duty in both these respects, he watered his beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.

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 on 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 Médicale, 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 curé, I am not sure whether it was the curé of Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry,

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, in the words of Scripture: "Unless God protects a house, they who guard it watch in vain."

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, 66 ours should be quiet."

VII.

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 Ubayette.

He even pushed as far as Embrun, and one night broke into the cathedral and stripped the sacristy. His robberies

desolated the country. The gensdarmes were put upon his trail, but in vain. He always escaped; sometimes by forcible resistance. He was a bold wretch. In the midst of all this terror, the Bishop arrived. He was making his visit to Chastelar. The mayor came to see him, and urged him to turn back. Cravatte held the mountains as far as Arche, and beyond; it would be dangerous, even with an escort. It would expose three or four poor gensdarmes to useless danger.

"And so," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without an escort."

"Do not think of such a thing," exclaimed the Mayor. "I think so much of it, that I absolutely refuse the gensdarmes, and I am going to start in an hour." "To start?"

"To start." "Alone?"

"Alone."

Monseigneur, you will not do it."

"There is on the mountain," replied the Bishop, "a humble little commune, that I have not seen for three years; and they are good friends of mine, kind and honest peasants. They own one goat out of thirty that they pasture. They make pretty woollen thread of various colours, and they play their mountain airs upon small sixholed flutes. They need some one occasionally to tell them of the goodness of God. What would they say of a Bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I should not go there?"

"But, Monseigneur, the brigands ?"

"True," said the Bishop, "I am thinking of that. You are right. I may meet them. They too must need some one to tell them of the goodness of God."

66

Monseigneur, but it is a band! a pack of wolves!"

"Monsieur Mayor, perhaps Jesus has made me the