tain delicate points. He took very little part
in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on
questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had
been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an
ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and
since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he
was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he
gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He
refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island
of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor
in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a
general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency.
He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command
in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general
had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the
Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous
of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the
ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue
Cassette, remained more affectionate.

Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour
of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment
traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any
political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are
not confounding what is called "political opinions" with the grand
aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic,
humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous
intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly
connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It
would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist,
and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from
that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the
fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of
human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice,
and charity.

While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created