Madame Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: "Monseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot.

It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," retorted the Bishop, "you are mistaken.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps." This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost as much as did his books.

He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds.

He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to see him.