Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to rela
te, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here t
he various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he a
rrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place
in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a
councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that
his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eight
een or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary familie
s. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk.
He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of th
e first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, dec
imated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very begin
ning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffer
ed. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French societ
y of the olden days, the fall of 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 t
error,--did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the m
idst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of t
hose mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom p
ublic catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have
told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B-- [Brignolles]. He was already advanced in years, and lived in
a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy--just what, is not pr
ecisely known--took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for hi
s parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch.One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the w
orthy Cure, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon
, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abrupt
ly:--
"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 great man. Each of us can profit
by it."
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Cure, and some time afterwards M.
Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D----
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as to the early portion of M. My
riel's life? No one knew.
Very few families had 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 wh
ich talk, and very few heads which think.
He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, t
he rumors with which his name was connected were rumors only,--noise, sayings, words; less than word
s-- palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D----, all the stories
and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen int
o profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would have 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 Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madam
e Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now assumed the double title of maid t
o Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by
the word "respectable"; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable.S
he had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had
finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had
acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become t
ransparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen.
She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient
body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;-- a mere p
retext for a soul's remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath,--i
n the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Impe
rial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president pa
id the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.