The Clergy and the Pulpit in Their Relations to the People. Isidore Mullois
in such breasts, chords which may be made to vibrate, hearts not yet dead, good sentiments which are capable of cultivation.
Such are the French people taken in the mass; such their merits and defects. The head is not their better part, and they might almost be described as having a good heart but a bad head. In order to lead them, they must be seized where they present the best hold. To do this effectually requires sound sense and a kindly heart, moderate reasoning, and very little metaphysics. An opposite course, however, is too frequently pursued. Crotchets, fancies, theories, vapid ideas—such is the stuff wherewith attempts have been made to influence them. Is it surprising that they have not always yielded to such guidance?
On points of wit, argument, and right, the Frenchman is acute, punctilious, headstrong. On points of generosity and devotedness he is tractable, liberal, admirable. Demand any thing from him as a right, and he will refuse it. Ask the same thing of him, appealing to his heart, and he will often grant it with the best possible grace. But, above all, if you wish to restore him to equanimity and a right mind, get him to perform an act of charity.
To prove that the heart rarely disappears, and that it always retains a hold on the mind, I must be permitted to cite an example combining the good and the bad qualities which are to be met with in the lower grades of society. I shall frequently refer to facts; for in morals, as in many other matters, they bring us sooner to the point aimed at.
It was in one of the most wretched quarters of Paris that a priest went to visit a rag-woman who was dangerously ill. She was lying on straw so damp that it was fit only for the dung-hill. The visitor had reached the landing-place, and was reflecting how he might best minister to the poor woman's wants, when he heard the cry of another female from the end of a dark corridor, exclaiming: "Help! murder!"
He ran toward the spot, and pushing open a door saw two young children crying. Extended on the floor lay the unfortunate woman, while a tall man with a sinister countenance, and clad only in a pair of pantaloons and a ragged shirt, stood over her, kicking her. Her face was already black and blue from his violence.
The priest sprang towards the man and said: "Wretch! what are you about? Will you not desist?" He did desist, but it was to attack the speaker. He seized him suddenly by the breast, thrust two fingers under his cassock, and then, without uttering a word, lifted him as if he had been an infant, and carried him to an open window. There he angrily told him that he would not have priests intermeddling with his affairs, and disturbing the peace of his household, and that he intended to pitch him out of the window forthwith. In fact, he was preparing to put the threat into execution; but, as if wishing to gloat over his victim, he continued to glare at him with the eyes of a tiger, holding him all the while as with an arm of steel.
The priest was alarmed, but God enabled him not to betray it. He regarded his antagonist calmly, and said almost with a smile: "Gently, my friend; you are much too hasty. Do you really mean to throw me out of the window? Is that the most pressing business on hand? You who are always talking about fraternity and charity; do you know what was taking place while you were beating your wife? Another woman was dying on a dung-heap in your house. I am sure you would be horrified at such a thing. Now, let us both see what we can do on her behalf; for you are by no means such a bad fellow as you wish to appear. I will pay for some clean straw, if you will go and fetch it." Terror, combined with the desire of winning over his assailant, made the priest eloquent, and he had hardly ended his appeal before the lion was tamed. The man's countenance rapidly changed, and he relaxed his hold at once; then taking off his shabby cap and placing it under his arm, he assumed a respectful attitude, like that of a soldier in presence of a superior officer, and replied:—"If you talk in that style, sir, the case is different. I have always been humane, and will readily help you to assist the poor woman. I will, in fact, do any thing you please; for it won't do to let a fellow-creature die in that plight." Thereupon the priest gave him the money, and he went out to purchase two bundles of clean straw.
In the mean time the women of the neighborhood, attracted by the altercation, had rushed to the spot, and on seeing the priest expostulated with him in these terms:—"What are you about? Do you know where you are? You are in the clutches of the worst man in the quarter. He is so outrageous that even cut-throats are afraid of him, and he has often said that nothing would give him more pleasure than to break a man's neck, especially if that man were a priest." These remonstrances were by no means encouraging; but those who urged them little knew the power of charity.
The sturdy fellow soon returned with the bundles on his shoulder. He was calm, and his countenance had become almost honest. On entering the room where the poor woman lay, he took half a bundle of straw and spread it on the floor. The most touching part of the scene followed. He lifted the sufferer in his arms with the tenderness of a mother, placed her on the clean straw, then made her bed, and finally laid her upon it, just as a mother would her child. A female wished to help him, but he pushed her aside, remarking that he was well able to do a humane act unassisted.
The man was in tears, and the priest perceiving that he wished to address him, retired toward the window. But his new acquaintance could not utter a word; emotion choked him. The priest gave him his hand, and the stalwart workman squeezed it as in a vice, in token of his affection. "Well done, my friend," said the priest, "well done; I quite understand you. I knew full well that you were not as bad as you wanted to make me believe. I knew you were capable of doing a good action." "You have done it all," was the reply; "four men could not master me, and yet you have overcome me with as many words. You must be a true pastor."
The priest hastened to turn this favorable opportunity to profit, by pleading the cause of the wife, and rejoined:—"But, my friend, you have done something which is not becoming. You have ill-used your wife; and a man does not marry a woman to beat her. I have no doubt she has her failings, and you also have yours. You should bear with one another. Come, promise me that you will never strike her again." At these words, his face assumed somewhat of its former sullenness, and dropping the priest's hand he said frankly:—"I am very sorry that I cannot do as you wish. I will not promise because I should not keep my word." … The priest returned to the charge, and among other remarks which made some impression on the man, he was quite brought to bay by the following:—"So you won't promise not to beat your wife? That is simply because you don't reflect. Surely, you who have just done an act of kindness to a strange woman, cannot, with any decency, continue to beat your own wife." After much hesitation, he pledged his word, backing it with a tremendous oath. Since then, he has never been intoxicated, neither has he once struck his wife. You should have seen with what gratitude the woman welcomed her preserver on his next visit. "What a blessing my acquaintance with you has proved," said she. "Since your last visit you have saved me from two floorers. My husband does not drink now, but he still goes into violent passions. He raises his fist, and I fear he is about to strike me; but he forbears. He calms down at once, and says: 'Tis well for you that that abbé came, otherwise I would have floored you again."
Not long after, he was reclaimed to a Christian life; he confessed and communicated, and it is now rare to find a man of more exalted sentiments. He refused assistance from every one, saying that he was able to earn his own livelihood, and to provide for his family. To do this, he worked all day and part of the night also. Peace and comfort were restored to his home, which his wife now likens to a paradise.
To give an instance of his noble disposition, I may mention that toward the end of last December he called on the priest, to whom he had become greatly attached, and said to him with his characteristic frankness:—"I am very sad to-day, Monsieur l'Abbé."
"Why, my friend?"
"Because I am poor. In the course of my lifetime I have suffered misery enough. I have cursed the rich, and that Providence which gave them their wealth. Nevertheless, I don't believe I ever felt the wretchedness of being poor as much as I do to-day; although it is for a different reason."
"What is it, then, my good friend?"
"Well, it is this. Here we are close upon the beginning of a new year, and I wished to make you a small present—for you have been very kind to me and I have no money. However, be assured of this, at least, that you have in me a devoted friend, and that