1.F.1.1. M. MYRIEL
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.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the
real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be
superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points,
to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had
been in circulation about him from the very moment when he
arrived 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, 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. 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. There his
wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long
suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the
fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society 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 terror, — did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude
to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions,
these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly
smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which
sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom
public 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 precisely known —
took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom
he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal
Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his
uncle, the worthy 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 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 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. Myriel'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 months which 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, the rumors with which his name was connected were
rumors only, — noise, sayings, words; less than words — 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 into 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 Madame Magloire,
who, after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now assumed
the double title of maid to 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. She 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 transparency 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 pretext for a soul's remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent
and bustling; always out of breath, — in 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 Imperial decrees, which
class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor
and the president paid 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.