Chapter 8 6 Who does he entrust to watch over his house

The house he lives in, as we have already said, is a one-story building with three rooms downstairs, three rooms upstairs, an air tower on the top, and a quarter-acre garden behind it.The two women lived upstairs and the bishop downstairs.The first room facing the street is his dining room, the second is his bedroom, and the third is the scripture hall.When you leave the scripture hall, you must pass through the bedroom; when you leave the bedroom, you must pass through the dining room.At the bottom of the scripture hall, there is half a small greenhouse, which can only accommodate one bed for guests to board.The bishop used to give up that bed to country priests who came to Digne on business or need of the district.

The hospital pharmacy used to be a small house connected to the main house and built in the garden. Now it has been converted into a kitchen and a place to store food. In addition, there is a barn on the grounds, originally the kitchen of the almshouse, where the bishop now keeps two cows.No matter how much milk the two cows provide, he always gives half of it to the patients in the hospital every morning. "This is my tithe," he said. His room was quite large, and it was difficult to keep warm in bad seasons.As firewood was very expensive in Digne, he managed to partition off a small room in the cowshed.In the severe cold season, it became the place where he lived at night.He called it "winter fast".

In the winter room, as in the dining room, there was no other furniture except a square table of white wood and four chairs made of straw.In the dining room, however, there was still an old cupboard covered with pale red glue.A similar cupboard, suitably draped with white drapery and false lace, served as an altar for the bishop, and adorned his chapel. The rich penitents and pious women of Digne had repeatedly pooled money for a handsome new altarpiece for the Bishop's chapel, and each time he took money he gave it to the poor. "The most beautiful altar," he said, "is the soul of a suffering man who thanks God for comfort."

He has two straw-heart prayer chairs in his oratory, and an armchair in his bedroom, also straw-heart.If he received seven or eight people at the same time, the governor, the general, or the staff of the garrison, or a few students in the priesthood, they had to look for chairs for winter fasting in the cowshed, and prayer chairs in the scripture hall. Find the armchair in the bedroom.In this way, they can collect eleven seats for hospitality.Every time someone visits, a room has to be vacated. Sometimes twelve people came, and to conceal the embarrassment the Bishop stood by the fireplace if it was winter, and suggested a walk in the garden if it was summer.

In the small conservatory, there was indeed a chair, but half of the straw had been stripped from the chair, and it had only three legs, which could only be used by leaning against the wall.Miss Baptistine also had a large wooden armchair, formerly lacquered in gilt and covered with brocade; As motorized furniture. Miss Baptistine's extravagant wish is to buy a set of Dutch yellow velvet velvet with swan-neck rosewood frames for the living room, and a couch to match.But that would cost at least five hundred francs.She saved only forty-two francs and ten sous for five years on such a set, and gave up the idea.And who can realize their ideals?

It couldn't be easier to imagine a bishop's bedroom.One window opened onto the garden, and on the opposite side was the bed--a hospital bed, of iron, with curtains in green serge.In the shadow of the bed, behind the curtains, there are still dressing utensils, remnants of the beautiful habits of his old life in the prosperous society; two doors, one near the fireplace, leading to the scripture hall, and the other near the bookcase, leading to the scripture hall. Dining room; the bookcase was a large glass case, full of books; the wood frame of the fireplace, painted with imitation marble patterns, in which there is usually no fire; and two vases encircled with clusters of flowers and stripes and pasted with silver foil, a luxury of the episcopal class; above, where mirrors usually hung, a bronze The cross, nailed to a shabby piece of black velvet, was placed in a golden dark wooden frame.Beside the window door, there is a large table with an ink bottle, and scattered papers and large books are piled on the table.In front of the table, a straw chair.In front of the bed, there is a prayer chair brought from the scripture hall.Two oil busts in oval frames hung on the walls on either side of his bed.On the sober background of the pictures, beside the portraits, there are small letters in gold, indicating that one is that of the Priest Chariot, bishop of St. A portrait of Priest Durdeau, Vicar of Agde.The bishop had seen the two portraits when he had been admitted to that room after the hospital patients, and had left them hanging in their place.They were priests and perhaps benefactors, and these were the two reasons which made him respect them.All he knew about the two persons was that they were appointed by the king on the same day, April 27, 1785, to confer a diocese on one and land on the other.Madame Magloire had taken down the two paintings to dust them off, and the bishop saw behind the portrait of the abbot of Daejeon Seminary on a small square paper that had been yellowed with age and its four corners were glued together. The origins of these two characters are infused with light ink.

There was an old dungaree curtain over the window, which was so worn out that Madame Magloire, in order to save the cost of buying a new one, had to sew a great deal in the middle, making a cross.Bishops often ask people to look at them. "How well this is sewn!" he said. There was not a single room in that house, upstairs or downstairs, that was not plastered, as was the case with the barracks and the hospital. In later years, however, Madame Magloire discovered some frescoes under the mounted wallpaper in the room of the Baptistine girl (we shall return to this below).The house, before it became a hospital, had been a gathering place for some gentlemen.So there will be that decoration.The floor of each house is covered with red bricks, which are washed once a week, and straw mats are spread in front of the beds.In short, the house, under the care of the two women, has become exceptionally clean from top to bottom.That was the only luxury the bishop allowed.He said:

"It doesn't hurt the poor." But let us make it clear that, among his former possessions, there remained six sets of silver flatware and a large silver spoon, which Madam Magloire gazed with joy every day on the white sackcloth rug. It radiates brilliant light.Since we are going to write the bishop of Digne as it is, we should mention that he said several times: "I don't think it is easy to ask me to eat without silverware." Besides the silverware there were two heavy silver candlesticks which had come from an inheritance of one of his great-aunts.There are two candles in the pair of candlesticks, which are often displayed on the bishop's fireplace.Whenever he dined with guests, Madame Magloire always lit the two candles and placed them on the table with the candle holder.

In the Bishop's bedroom, near the bed, was a cupboard in which Madame Magloire kept the six sets of silverware and the large spoons every evening.The key on the cupboard door is never taken away. The garden, too, was somewhat detracted from the rather ugly buildings of which we have spoken.There are four paths in the garden, which intersect in a cross shape, and there is a water tank at the intersection; another path goes around the garden along the white wall.Between the trails, four squares are formed, and boxwood is planted on the edge.Madame Magloire grew vegetables on three squares, and on the fourth the Bishop planted flowers.Several fruit trees are scattered throughout.

Madame Magloire once teased him kindly: "You are planning everything, but here is a square of land that is useless. Wouldn't it be better to plant some lettuce instead of flowers?" "Madame Magloire," replied the Bishop, "You are mistaken. Beauty is as useful as usefulness." After a pause, he added: "Perhaps more useful." That square field was divided into three or four borders, and the bishop expended the same labor on the land as he expended on the books.He would gladly spend an hour or two here, pruning, weeding, here and there, poking holes in the soil, laying out seeds.He doesn't hate insects the way gardeners do.He had no illusions about botany; he knew no divisions, no morbidity theory; he never studied the trade-offs between Dunafort and natural manipulation, neither for cysts nor for cotyledons, nor for cotyledons. Shu Xier opposed Linnei.He does not study plants, but admires flowers.He respects scientists very much, and respects ignorant people even more. With equal respect for both, he always carries a green-painted white iron watering can to water his flower beds at dusk in summer.

There was not a single door in that house that could be locked.The door of the dining room, as we have already said, opens into the square in front of the Catholic Church. It was once locked and barred, just like a prison door.The bishop had already ordered the iron parts to be taken away, so the door was only fastened with a dead bolt no matter day or night.Anyone passing by, at any moment, can shake it away.At first, the two women were very worried about the door that was never closed, but the Bishop of Digne said to them: "If you like, you may as well put iron bars on your doors." , and they were relieved, or at least they pretended to be relieved.Madame Magloire still had occasional fears.The bishop's thoughts are stated, or at least suggested, in these three lines he wrote in the margin of the Bible: "There is only the slightest difference here: the doctor's door should never be closed, and the priest's door , should always be open." In a book called "The Philosophy of Medicine", he wrote this passage: "Aren't we doctors like them? I have my patients. First I have patients they call patients, and second I And the patients I call the unfortunate." In another place, he also wrote: "For those who ask you for lodging, you must not ask their names. Those who are inconvenient to tell others their names are often the ones who need to find a place to live the most." One day, a famous priest came suddenly. I can’t remember whether it was the priest of Gulouburu or Peng Bili. I remembered to ask the bishop (it may be under the instruction of Madame Magloire) to open the gate day and night. Then, everybody could come in, and was the Bishop quite sure that some accident would not happen, that some misfortune might happen to that house so laxly guarded.The Bishop nodded him on the shoulder, solemnly and gently, and said to him, "Unless God protects the family, the guards are of no use." He went on to other matters. He was fond of saying: "A priest has the courage of a priest, just as a captain of a dragoon has the courage of a captain of a dragoon." However, he added: "Our courage should be serene."