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."



CHAPTER XI

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 cure." 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.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician,
this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his
attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur
Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.

Let us, then, go back a few years.

Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate,
the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many
other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows,
on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion,