ents, delays
in procedure, publicity and scandal. Before the slow march and
inconveniences of such a trial, the bishop often avoided giving
judgment, and all the more because his verdicts, even when confirmed by
the ecclesiastical court, might be warded off or rendered ineffective
by the lay tribunal; for, from the former to the latter, there was
an appeal under writ of error, and the latter, a jealous rival of the
former, was ill-disposed towards the sacerdotal authorities;[5229]
besides, in the latter case, far more than in the former, the bishop
found confronting him not merely the more or less legal right of his own
party, but again the allies and patrons of his party, corporations and
individuals who, according to an accepted usage, interfered through
their solicitations with the judges and openly placed their credit at
the service of their protege. With so many spokes in the wheels, the
working of an administrative machine was difficult; to give it effective
motion, it required the steady pressure, the constant starting, the
watchful and persistent efforts of a laborious, energetic, and callous
hand, while, under the ancient regime, the delicate white hands of a
gentleman-prelate were ill-adapted to this rude business; they were
too nicely washed, too soft. To manage personally and on the spot a
provincial, complicated and rusty machine, always creaking and groaning,
to give one's self up to it, to urge and adjust twenty local wheels, to
put up with knocks and splashes, to become a business man, that is to
say a hard worker--nothing was less desirable for a grand seignior of
that epoch. In the Church as in the State, he made the most of his rank;
he collected and enjoyed its fruits, that is to say money, honors and
gratifications, and, among these gratifications, the principal one,
leisure; hence, he abandoned every special duty, the daily manipulation
of men and things, the practical direction, all effective government, to
his ecclesiastical or lay intendants, to subordinates whom he scarcely
looked after and who, at his own house, on his own domain, replaced
him as fixed residents. The bishop, in his own diocese, left the
administration in the hands of his canons and grand-vicars; "the
official decided without his meddling."[5230] The machine thus worked
alone and by itself, with very few shocks, in the old rut established by
routine; he helped it along only by the influence he exercised at Paris
and Versailles,