LXII.
THE HAPPY CURÉ
"Such was Socrates said to have been, because the outside beholders, and those estimating him by his external appearance, would not have given the slice of an onion, so plain was he in his person, and ridiculous in his bearing … simple in habits, poor in fortune, unfortunate with women, unfit for all the offices of the republic, always laughing, always drinking with one or another, always sporting, always concealing his divine wisdom."
RABELAIS (Gargantua).
Monsieur Ridoux was a very good fellow, but he was not handsome. A big nose, a big belly, blinking eyes, an enormous mouth, hair on end, the arm of a chimpanzee, and the legs of a Greenlander. At first sight, he gave me the impression of a monkey with young.
But what is a man's outward form? The vessel, more or less regular, filled with a baneful or beneficent liquid, and you all know that the shape of the flagon has no influence on the quality of the wine.
The outward form is the wrapper of the goods: very often that wrapper is brilliant and gilded, of satin or watered silk, and the goods are adulterated and spoiled. At other times the wrapper is rough and coarse, but it enfolds precious commodities.
The stamp of genius is usually found only on countenances with fantastic features. Have you ever seen on the fair insipid faces of our young swells the imprint of a powerful and fertile intelligence?
The body nearly always is adorned at the expense of the mind.
Of all the deformities of nature, the hunchbacks are intellectual in proportion as the handsome men are not.
Enquire of the army its opinion on its pre-eminently fine man, the drum-major.
Vincent Voiture, who had, as he confessed himself, the silly face of a dreaming sheep, used to say that nature usually likes to place the most precious souls in ill-favoured, puny bodies, as jewellers set the richest diamonds in a small quantity of gold.
Accordingly, the pitiful wrapper of the Abbé Ridoux covered an excellent soul. With his ugly face and his old stained cassock, he reminded me of those dirty bottles, coated with spider-webs and dust, which we place daintily on the table on days of rejoicing, and which lord it majestically among the glittering decanters, soon to be despised, when their dusty sides appear.
Thus Monsieur Ridoux lorded it amongst his curates, younger, handsomer, fresher, more tasty than himself, and eclipsed them by all the brilliancy of his good-sense, his tact, and his experience.
He had certainly his little failings!… Who can say that he is exempt from them? But his mind was sound. A good companion, besides, and of a cheerful disposition. "We have reached a period," he used to say, "when the priest must lay aside the stern front and the anathema. There is already much to obtain pardon for in the colour of his robe. Let us be cheerful, let us be insinuating, let us be compassionate to human weaknesses. Let us sin, if need be, with discretion and propriety; but, in heaven's name, let us not terrify. Let us promise paradise to all. There are always plenty enough whose life is a hell."
In that he was not of Veuillot's opinion, that rigid saint, who wished to see all the world damned for the love of God.
Therefore, on seeing this cheerful countenance, this openness of manner, this freedom of speech, this unrestrained good-nature, even those who had been warned, could not help saying: "Well indeed! this Curé has a pleasant phiz!"
Slanderous tongues, Voltairians—who is sheltered from the stings of that race of vipers?—slanderous tongues affirmed that beneath this Rabelaisian exterior, he was profoundly vicious, artful, and hypocritical. Marcel, who had been brought up by him, and was acquainted with the most secret details of his inmost life, has always assured me that he was nothing of the kind, and that his uncle Ridoux, endowed with the ugliness of Socrates, had also his wisdom.
Nevertheless, I would not dare to assert that he did not like to pinch the young girls' chins, especially of those who had made their first communion and were near to the marriageable age; a familiarity which, thanks to his gray hairs, and the development of his abdomen, he thought was permitted him, but which, however, is not always without danger.
Cazotte, a wise man, used to say to his daughters: "When you are alone with young people, distrust yourselves; but if you find yourselves with old men, distrust them, and avoid allowing them to take hold of your chin."
Cazotte was right, for old men begin with that. I would not dare either to assert that the charms of his cook were safe from his indiscreet curiosity, for it is there too that old men finish; and we must swear not at all. Everybody knows the wise man's precept: "When in doubt, abstain."
At the period of which I am speaking to you, he reigned in a good parish, well frequented by devout ladies, both young and middle-aged, where from the height of his pulpit he laid down his laws to his kneeling people, without hindrance or control.
He was happy, as all wise men ought to be. Happy to be in the world, satisfied to be a Curé. "It is the first of professions," he often used to say, and there is not one of them which can be compared to it.
"I am a village Curé,
Where I live most modestly;
I'm no important person,
But I'm happy and content
No, I do not envy aught,
For my wants they are but small.
How I love to pass my days
Within the house of God!"
But if he had complained, it would have been very hard, and everybody in the diocese, from Monseigneur the Bishop to his sexton, would have risen with indignation and called him, "Ungrateful wretch." For Ridoux was favoured above all his colleagues; above all his colleagues Divine Providence bad overwhelmed him with its favours. He possessed in his parish, in his very church, at his door, beneath his eyes, beneath his hand, a real blessing from Heaven, a grace of God, a Pactolus always rolling down a mine of Peru, a secret of an alchemist, the veritable philosopher's stone caught sight of by Nicolas Flamel, and vainly sought for till the time of Cagliostro, a marvel which made him at once honoured and envied, which made his name celebrated, which gave him a preponderant voice in the Chapter and a place in the episcopal Council, which swelled his heart with pride and his money-bag with crowns; he had in the choir of his church behind the mother altar, in a splendid glass-case, laid on a bed of blue velvet … an old yellow skeleton! The relics of a saint.
But there are saints and saints; those which do miracles, and those which do them not, those which work and those which rest.
Monsieur Ridoux's saint worked.