Les Miserables

anxiety
and of responsibility for him who would scale its walls.
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|XIV ^paragraph 5}
Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyses and
dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of
splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world which
surrounds us returns what it receives; it is probable that the
contemplators are contemplated. However that may be, there are men
on the earth- if they are nothing more- who distinctly perceive the
heights of the absolute in the horizon of their contemplation, and who
have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur
Bienvenu was not one of those men; Monseigneur Bienvenu was not a
genius. He would have dreaded those sublimities from which some very
great men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have glided into insanity.
Certainly, these tremendous reveries have their moral use; and by
these arduous routes there is an approach to ideal perfection. But for
his part, he took the straight road, which is short- the Gospel.
He did not attempt to make his robe assume the folds of Elijah's
mantle; he cast no ray of the future upon the dark scroll of events;
he sought not to condense into a flame the glimmer of things; he had
nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician. His humble soul
loved; that was all.
That he raised his prayer to a superhuman aspiration, is probable;
but one can no more pray too much than love too much; and, if it was a
heresy to pray beyond the written form, St. Theresa and St. Jerome
were heretics.
He inclined towards the distressed and the repentant. The universe
appeared to him like a vast disease; he perceived fever everywhere, he
auscultated suffering everywhere, and, without essaying to solve the
enigma, he endeavoured to staunch the wound. The formidable
spectacle of created things developed a tenderness in him; he was
always busy in finding for himself, and inspiring others with the best
way of sympathising and solacing; the whole world was to this good and
rare priest a permanent subject of sadness seeking to be consoled.
There are men who labour for the extraction of gold; he worked for
the extraction of pity. The misery of the universe was his mine. Grief
everywhere was only an occasion for good always. Love one another;
he declared that to be complete; he desired nothing more, and it was
his whole doctrine. One day, this man, who counted himself "a
philosopher," this senator before mentioned, said to the bishop:
"See now, what the world shows; each fighting against all others;
the strongest man is the best man. Your love one another is a
stupidity." "Well," replied Monseigneur Bienvenu, without
discussion, "if it be a stupidity, the soul ought to shut itself up
in it, like the pearl in the oyster." And he shut himself up in it,
he lived in it, he was satisfied absolutely with it, laying aside
the mysterious questions