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At the sound which he made in walking, the old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the surprise which a man can still feel after a long life. "This is the first time since I have been here," said he, "that any one has entered here. Who are you, sir?" The Bishop answered: "My name is Bienvenu Myriel." "Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name.
He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the 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, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution.
It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk.
M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand:
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, M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened at Paris.
She was poor; there's a great deal of meaning in that word, my friend. Some people say "poor but honest." I say, Bah! Bishop Myriel bought six bunches of asparagus. This good man had one charming failing; he was fond of asparagus. He gave her a franc and received three sous change. The sous were bad, counterfeit. What did this good Bishop do?
In that wonderful picture of modern life which is the greatest work of one of the great seers of our time, Victor Hugo gives a concrete illustration of the working of Christ's methods. In the saintlike career of Bishop Myriel, and in the transformation which his example works in the character of the hardened outlaw Jean Valjean, we have a most powerful commentary on the Sermon on the Mount.
In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D since 1806.
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.
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.
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