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 mouths 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.
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