“Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried off by the devil.”

One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him, “Monseigneur, people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!”⁠—“Oh! oh! that’s a coarse color,” replied the Bishop. “It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.”

A Restriction

We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical bishop,” or a “patriotic curé.” His meeting, which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G⁠⸺, left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.