The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three
chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a
garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the
first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on
the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and
the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory,
except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without
passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the
oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of
hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom
business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D——
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to
the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a
kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a
stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk
they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick
people in the hospital.
_“I am paying my tithes,”_ he said.
His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad
weather. As wood is extremely dear at D——, he hit upon the idea of
having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he
passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his
_winter salon_.
In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other
furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated
chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an
antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the
Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D—— had more than once
assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for
Monseigneur’s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had
given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,” he said, “is the
soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”
In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an
armchair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received
seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the
staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little
seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the
stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the
bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for
the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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