Les Miserables

I. Monsieur Myriel In 1815, Monsieur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was bishop of Digne.1 He was an elderly man of about seventy-five and he had occupied the seat of Digne since 1806. There is something we might mention that has no bearing whatsoever on the tale we have to tellnot even on the background. Yet it may well serve some purpose, if only in the interests of precision, to jot down here the rumors and gossip that had circulated about him the moment he first popped up in the diocese. True or false, what is said about people often has as much bearing on their lives and especially on their destinies as what they do. Monsieur Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Aix parliament, a member of the noblesse de robe.2 They reckoned his father had put him down to inherit his position and so had married him off very early in the piece when he was only eighteen or twenty, as they used to do quite a lot in parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, married or no, had, they said, set tongues wagging. He was a good-looking young man, if on the short side, elegant, charming, and witty; he had given the best years of his life thus far to worldly pursuits and love affairs. Then the Revolution came along, events spiraled, parliamentary families were wiped out, chased away, hunted, scattered. Monsieur Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy soon after the Revolution broke out. His wife died there of the chest infection she'd had for ages. They had no children. What happened next in the destiny of Monsieur Myriel? The collapse of the old society in France, the fall of his own family, the tragic scenes of '93,3 which were, perhaps, even more frightening for emigres4 watching them from afar with the magnifying power of dreaddid these things cause notions of renunciation and solitude to germinate in his mind? Was he, in the middle of the distractions and amorous diversions that filled his life, suddenly hit by one of those mysterious and terrible jolts that sometimes come and strike at the heart, bowling over the man public calamities couldn't shake, threatening as these did only his existence and his fortune? No one could say; all that was known was that, when he came back from Italy, he was a priest. In 1804,5 Monsieur Myriel was the cure of Brignolles.6 He was already old and lived like a real recluse in profound seclusion. Around the time of the coronation, a small parish matterwho can remember what now?took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons, he called on Cardinal Fesch,7 Napoleon's uncle, to petition him on his parishioners' behalf. One day when the emperor was visiting his uncle, the worthy cure, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself in His Majesty's path. Napoleon, seeing the old boy give him the once-over with a certain curiosity, wheeled round and said brusquely: "Who is this little man staring at me?" "Your Majesty," said Monsieur Myriel, "you see a little man, and I see a great man. Both of us may benefit." That very night, the emperor asked the cardinal what the cure's name was and some time after that Monsieur Myriel was stunned to learn that he'd been named bishop of Digne. But, when all's said and done, what was true in the tales told about the first phase of Monsieur Myriel's life? No one could tell. Few families had known the Myriel family before the Revolution. Monsieur Myriel had to endure the fate of every newcomer in a small town, where there are always plenty of mouths blathering and not many brains working. He had to endure it even though he was the bishop, and because he was the bishop. But, after all, the talk in which his name cropped up was perhaps nothing more than taRose, Julie is the author of 'Les Miserables' with ISBN 9780679643333 and ISBN 0679643338.