Part I, Book 1, Chapter 7
Cravatte
Years ago at a restaurant in Paris, my husband and I were seated at a table next to an apparent newlywed couple so utterly bewildering that we still quote them and wonder what’s become of them to this very day. The girl, who among other things referred to Bordeaux as “Bore-door” (like “Mordor” with a B), gasped when her partner suggested they detour to Italy, and said, with 100% genuine fear, “Isn’t Italy really dangerous, because of mafia?”
Turns out, she shouldn’t have been as afraid of Italy as the country she was currently in, because in Chapter 7, we find that the French countryside is beset by GANGS. [whatever the 1800s French equivalent of Fox News is starts playing]
Oh folks, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City outlaws and brigands on the run. The lieutenant of a notorious gang is running around committing robberies and has recently looted a cathedral (this is important). A local mayor in the area tries to talk the bishop out of doing his pastoral visits, donkey or no, and what transpires is the type of debate you have with a teenager.
Mayor: If you travel, you’ll put your armed escort at risk!
Bishop: So I’ll go without an escort.
Mayor: What if you encounter the gang members??
Bishop: I mean, gang members need God too.
Mayor: They’ll rob you!
Bishop: Not a problem, I’ve got nothing for them to rob!
Mayor: Seriously, what if you run into them?
Bishop: I’ll ask them to donate to the poor.
Mayor: What if they kill you??
Bishop: “I’m not in this world to protect my life but to protect souls.”
Move over, John McClane, only the bishop can drive someone that crazy.
The bishop goes to the tiny remote village he’d planned to visit, everything is totally fine, no outlaws to be found. When he gets there he finds there’s none of the gear he needs to sing a special song (look, I’m not Catholic, I am hanging on best I can here) and none of the local churches have jack. He moves ahead planning his service anyway, because this is a man whose personal altar is an old cloth on a discarded sideboard.
Then two horsemen ride up, yeet a huge chest at the church, and peace out. The residents open the chest and it’s full of all the treasures stolen from the cathedral, with a note saying “From Cravatte [the gang lieutenant] to Monseigneur Bienvenu.”
I love this. What a delightful, heartwarming story. Even notorious gangs respect Hot Bishop!
What I want to know—and I can’t believe I actually want even more backstory from Victor Hugo—is how the gang knew the bishop needed the cathedral gear. Like, I’m picturing some of the outlaws crouched outside someone’s house, getting ready to rob it, and then overhearing someone go “It’s such a shame the hot bishop doesn’t have fancy robes to sing his special song, our little village is so poor,” and then the outlaws running back to their hideout going “Look, chief, it’s actually really sad, we gotta give them that stuff we got from the cathedral!” And for some reason the outlaws in my head have Bostonian accents.
The bishop, of course, turns this all into a Teaching Moment about how this is why you can’t give in to fear and that the greatest dangers are what endanger your soul. And Hugo is very cagey about what becomes of the treasure, only noting that the bishop is at one point torn over whether it should go back to the cathedral or be given to the hospital, and of course we know what he ends up doing.
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