Then, raising his voice:--

"So it seems to me."

　　"And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents."

　　"That was what I said to myself."

　　"In case of epidemics,--we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times,--we know not what to do."

　　"That is the thought which occurred to me."

　　"What would you have, Monseigneur?" said the director.

　　"One must resign one's self."

　　This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground-floor.

　　The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital.

　　"Monsieur," said he, "how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?"

　　"Monseigneur's dining-room?" exclaimed the stupefied director.

　　The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes.

　　"It would hold full twenty beds," said he, as though speaking to himself.

　　Then, raising his voice:--

　　"Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here.

　　There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms.

　　There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty.

　　There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours.

　　Give me back my house; you are at home here."

　　On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop's palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.

　　M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution.

　　His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage.

　　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:--

　　 NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

"Twenty-six, Monseigneur."

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.

BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN

CHAPTER II

　　M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME

　　The episcopal palace of D---- adjoins the hospital.

　　The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D---- in 1712.

　　This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,--the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

　　The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.

　　Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house.

　　"Monsieur the director of the hospital," said he to him, "how many sick people have you at the present moment?"

　　"Twenty-six, Monseigneur."

　　"That was the number which I counted," said the Bishop.

　　"The beds," pursued the director, "are very much crowded against each other."

　　"That is what I observed."

　　"The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in them."

M. Myriel had arrived at D---- accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

You’ve only just missed him,” said the orderly.

The staff quarters were two miles and a half from Salzeneck. Not having found him at home, Rostov took his horse and rode to the quarters of the staff. In the village, where the staff was quartered, there was a restaurant which the officers frequented. Rostov reached the restaurant and saw Telyanin’s horse at the entry.

In the second room the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of sausages and a bottle of wine.

“Ah, you have come here too, young man,” he said, smiling and lifting his eyebrows.

“Yes,” said Rostov, speaking as though the utterance of the word cost him great effort; and he sat down at the nearest table.

Both were silent; there were two Germans and a Russian officer in the room. Every one was mute, and the only sounds audible were the clatter of knives on the plates and the munching of the lieutenant. When Telyanin had finished his lunch, he took out of his pocket a double purse; with his little white fingers, that were curved at the tips, he parted the rings, took out some gold, and raising his eyebrows, gave the money to the attendant.

“Make haste, please,” he said.

The gold was new. Rostov got up and went to Telyanin.

“Let me look at the purse,” he said in a low voice, scarcely audible.

With shifting eyes, but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin gave him the purse.

“Yes, it’s a pretty purse … yes …” he said, and suddenly he turned white. “You can look at it, young man,” he added.

Rostov took the purse in his hand and looked both at it and at the money in it, and also at Telyanin. The lieutenant looked about him, as his way was, and seemed suddenly to have grown very good-humoured.

“If we go to Vienna, I suspect I shall leave it all there, but now there’s nowhere to spend our money in these wretched little places,” he said. “Come, give it me, young man; I’m going.”

Rostov did not speak.

“What are you going to do? have lunch too? They give you decent food,” Telyanin went on. “Give it me.” He put out his hand and took. hold of the purse. Rostov let go of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly dropping it into the pocket of his riding trousers, while his eyebrows were carelessly lifted and his mouth stood a little open, as though he would say: “Yes, yes, I’m putting my purse in my pocket, and that’s a very simple matter, and no one has anything to do with it.” ed: Y m n �� �]� ; 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.

No one would have dared to mention them

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.

M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution.

PREFACE

　　So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century-- the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light-- are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;--in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

　　HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.

 Victor Hugo

BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN

CHAPTER I

　　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:

`Yes, I do.'

`Here's a man of business--a man of years--a man of experience--in a Bank,' said Stryver; `and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all! Says it with his head on!' Mr. Stryver remarked upon tile peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.

`When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,' said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, `the young lady. The young lady goes before all.'

`Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,' said Stryver, squaring his elbows, `that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?'

`Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,' said Mr. Lorry, reddening, `that I will hear no disrespectful word Of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man--which I hope I do not--whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.'

The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.

`That is what I mean to tell you, sir,' said Mr. Lorry. `Pray let there be no mistake about it.'

Mr. Stryver sucked tile end of a ruler for a little while and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which' probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:

`This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself--myself, Stryver of the King's Bench bar?'

`Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?'

`Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.'

Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver.

`My meaning,' answered the man of business, `is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and--in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But--really, you know, Mr. Stryver ---' Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, `you know there really is so much too much of you!'

`Well!' said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, `if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged!'

Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.

`D--n it all, sir!' said Stryver, staring at him, `am I not eligible?'

`Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible!' said Mr. Lorry. `If you say eligible, you are eligible.'

`Am I not prosperous?' asked Stryver.

`Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,' said Mr. Lorry.

`And advancing?'

`If you come to advancing, you know,' said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, `nobody can doubt that.'

`Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?' demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.

`Well! I Were you going there now?' asked Mr. Lorry. `Straight!' said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk. `Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you.'

`Why?' said Stryver. `Now, I'll put you in a corner,' forensically shaking a forefinger at him. `You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason.

Why wouldn't you go?'

`Because,' said Mr. Lorry, `I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.'

`D--n ME!' cried Stryver, `but this beats everything.'

Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver.