CHAPTER XXV
A DISCOMFITED BISHOP
Next morning, as usual, I was up early, and walked down to the village. There I found Father Benart, the good little man, just coming out of the church. He told me he had got word that his brother, the bishop, was coming to visit him and Madame Cheverny that day, and he knew a sharp disappointment was in store for the bishop when he should find Madame Riano absent. Then Father Benart asked me some very intelligent questions about Count Saxe’s exploits in the Rhine campaigns. As we talked we walked along a narrow road by a field, in which some women were at work, digging and planting. Among the workers I recognized at once the unfortunate Lisa. She was poorly but cleanly clad, and although it was plain she labored hard, she was inexpert, and did not accomplish a great deal.
All of the women, except Lisa, were coarse peasant women, with stout arms and legs, broad backs, and but little inferior in physical strength to men. Lisa, on the contrary, was more delicate, more thin and pale than she had ever been before. She worked steadily, neither turning to the right nor to the left, not even when one of the women pointed to her and uttered a jeer, which was greeted with coarse laughter. Her 320 pale face colored faintly, but she made no response, going on with her work. Father Benart opened his mouth to call out a reproof to the women, who joined in taunting the unfortunate girl, but changed his mind.
“No,” he said aloud, “it is just that she should bear her punishment, and this public shame may save some other girl from the same downward path, but God is more merciful than man.”
While we were standing in the road beside the field we saw a great, lumbering coach approaching, which the little priest at once recognized as that of his brother, the bishop. His Grace had not been expected until the afternoon, but here he was at eight o’clock in the morning. I suspected the bishop had not enjoyed a very good lodging the night before. When the coach drew near we saw the bishop sitting in it alone. As soon as it was close enough it was stopped, and the bishop called to his brother, invited him to step within, and recognizing me as the Tatar prince with whom he was acquainted, extended the same civility to me. We both accepted and mounted into the coach, which proceeded toward the château of Capello, where his Grace said he was going on a particular errand. I fancied the bishop preferred the cookery of the château to that of Father Benart’s housekeeper.
His Grace had sharp eyes, and had observed the scene going on in the fields, about which he inquired. Father Benart told him it was Lisa, with whose story the bishop was perfectly acquainted.
“That is one of the things that I wish especially to speak to you about,” said the bishop to Father Benart, in the tone of a schoolmaster and without regarding 321 my presence in the least. “My brother, it is with grief that I learn of what has been going on in your parish of late, of the sin and evil behavior.”
“Alas, my brother,” responded Father Benart gravely, “there is always sin and evil behavior of some sort in this parish, and I greatly fear, until mankind is totally changed from what it has ever been, that a certain portion of sin and evil behavior must abide with us.”
The bishop scowled.