Author: Victor Hugo
Category: Literature
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CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D---- He wasan old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the seeof D---- since 1806.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substanceof what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merelyfor the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the variousrumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the verymoment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is saidof men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above allin their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of acouncillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobilityof the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir ofhis own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty,in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent inparliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was saidthat Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed,though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; thewhole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world andto gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; theparliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed.M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of theRevolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which shehad long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fateof M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fallof his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps,even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance,with the magnifying powers of terror,--did these cause the ideas ofrenunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst ofthese distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenlysmitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimesoverwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastropheswould not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No onecould have told: all that was known was, that when he returned fromItaly he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B---- [Brignolles]. He was alreadyadvanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected withhis curacy--just what, is not precisely known--took him to Paris.Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for hisparishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperorhad come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in theanteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon,on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man,turned round and said abruptly:--
"Who is this good man who is staring at me?"
"Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a greatman. Each of us can profit by it."
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé,and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn thathe had been appointed Bishop of D----
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented asto the early portion of M. Myriel's life? No one knew. Very few familieshad been acquainted with the Myriel family before the Revolution.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town,where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and becausehe was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his namewas connected were rumors only,--noise, sayings, words; less thanwords--_palabres_, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and ofresidence in D----, all the stories and subjects of conversation whichengross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen intoprofound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one wouldhave dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D---- accompanied by an elderly spinster,Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as MademoiselleBaptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been _theservant of M. le Curé_, now assumed the double title of maid toMademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; sherealized the ideal expressed by the word "respectable"; for it seemsthat a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. Shehad never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but asuccession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort ofpallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquiredwhat may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness inher youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneityallowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Herperson seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body toprovide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes foreverdrooping;--a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent andbustling; always out of breath,--in the first place, because of heractivity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace withthe honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishopimmediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid thefirst call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the generaland the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.