W: LP: LG: VH: LM: part 1

Book One of "Fantine"

In the first part of Les Misérables, called “Fantine”, in book one, we have more than fifty pages given to introduce the Bishop of Digne, M. Myriel. Since Victor Hugo (VH) is a bit of a Romantic, we see an idealized version of the “good priest”, and some today may sneer at this too perfect person, but even in this character and his interactions with other characters, we see the sublime and beautiful. The bishop is orthodox, but not doctrinaire, as in this passage:

Being, as he smilingly described himself, an ex-sinner, he had none of the inaccessibility of a rigid moralist, and would boldly profess without the raised eyebrows of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine that might be summarized as follows:
“Man has a body that is both his burden and his temptation. He drags it along and gives in to it.
“He ought to watch over it, keep it in bounds, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. It may be wrong to obey even then, but if so, the fault is venial. It is a fall, but a fall onto the knees, which may end in prayer.
“To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright.
“To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live entirely without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything on this earth is subject to sin . Sin is like gravity.”

(Obviously the view related above comes from the RC p.o.v., but it is an interesting way to try to live with the reality of our fallen-ness as we strive for holiness.)

M. Myriel cares for the poor and his reaction to the misery of life is to succor the poor and downtrodden. Here is a passage that gives a picture of this attitude:

He was indulgent toward women and the poor, upon whom the weight of society falls most heavily.

The bishop lives what others only talk about, and although he is mild mannered and not given to offense he does have a biting sense of sarcasm to point out the bankruptcy of false viewpoints. Here are a few passages that demonstrate this:

There was a wealthy retired merchant at the service, somewhat inclined to usury, a M. Géborand, who had accumulated an estate of two million from manufacturing coarse cloth and woolens. Never in all his life had M. Géborand given alms to the unfortunate; but from the day of this sermon {preached by a young priest about the dangers of hell and the desirability of heaven} it was noticed that regularly every Sunday he gave a penny to the old beggar women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to share it. One day the bishop, seeing him perform this act of charity, said to his sister with a smile, “There’s Monsieur Géborand, buying a pennyworth of paradise.”

The bishop’s response to a certain Monsieur le Comte’s extensive verbiage at dinner one night about his own philosophy of the virtue of selfishness goes like this:

The bishop clapped his hands.
“That’s the idea,” he exclaimed. “Materialism is excellent, truly marvelous; reject it at your risk. Ah! Once you have it, you’re no one’s fool; you don’t stupidly allow yourself to be exiled like Cato or stoned like Stephen or burned alive like Joan of Arc. Those who have acquired this admirable materialism have all the joy of feeling irresponsible, of thinking they can calmly devour everything – high positions, sinecures, honors, power rightly or wrongly acquired, lucrative retractions, useful betrayals, delectable lapses of conscience – and that they will enter their graves with it all totally digested. How nice! I’m not referring to you, my dear Senator. Nevertheless, I must congratulate you. You great lords have, as you say, your very own philosophy – exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all occasions, admirably seasoning the pleasures of life. This philosophy comes form great depths, unearthed by specialists. But you are good princes, and you are quite willing to let belief in the good Lord be the philosophy of the people, much as a goose with onions is the turkey with truffles of the poor.”

And just when one would think that the bishop is too perfect, we have the incident where the bishop meets an old man who was a revolutionary and finds in him a greater sense of justice than he had himself. The bishop, a royalist, has some difficulty at first in conversing with this man. But the man makes himself clear that he did not vote for the execution of the king, but he goes on to point out that the many people who suffered under the aristocracy were no better or worse than the aristocracy who suffered under the revolution. I like this passage of the opening of these characters’ conversation:

“I congratulate you,” he said, in a tone of reprimand. “At least you did not vote for the king’s execution.”
The conventionist did not seem to notice the bitter emphasis placed on the words “at least.” The smile vanished from his face. “Do not congratulate me too much, Monsieur; I did vote for the destruction of the tyrant.”
And the tone of austerity confronted the tone of severity.
“What do you mean?” asked the bishop.
“I mean that man has one tyrant, Ignorance. I voted for the abolition of that tyrant. That tyrant fathered royalty, which is authority springing from the False, whereas science is authority springing from the True. Man should be governed by science.”
“And conscience,” added the bishop.
“They are the same: Conscience is science.”
Monsieur Bienvenu {another name for the bishop} listened with some amazement to this language, as it was new to him.

The passage goes on, but I recommend reading the whole of chapter ten of book one. After this encounter the bishop is even more diligent in his charitable works. Because he did not seek earthly glory, but gave himself as a humble, poor, private person, he did not have any followers like many of the other more influential bishops. So, as we leave the bishop to talk about the next major character to be introduced, I will leave you with this passage about the average human’s desire for self aggrandizement:

Monseigneur Bienvenu, a humble, poor, private person, was not counted among the rich miters. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests around him. We have seen that in Paris he did not fit in. No glorious future dreamed of alighting upon this solitary old man. No budding ambition was foolish enough to ripen in his shadow. His canons and his grand vicars were good old men, rather common like himself, and like him immured in that diocese from which there was no road to promotion, and they resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished, and he was perfected. The impossibility of getting ahead under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so plain that fresh from the seminary, the young men ordained by him procured recommendations to the Archbishop of Aix or of Auch, and left immediately. For after all, we repeat, men like advancement. A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed -- that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption.

In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men. To the masses, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe--history. Juvenal and Tacitus only reject it. In our day, an almost official philosophy has entered into its service, wears its livery, and waits in its antechamber. Success: That is the theory. Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery, and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. To be born with a caul is everything. Have luck alone and you will have the rest; be happy, and you will be thought great. Beyond the five or six great exceptions, the wonders of their age, contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. Gilt is gold. To be a chance comer is no drawback, provided you have improved your chances. The common herd is an old Narcissus, who adores himself and applauds the common. That mighty genius, by which one becomes a Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo, or a Napoleon, the multitude attributes at once and by acclamation to whoever succeeds in his object, whatever it may be. Let a notary rise to be a deputy; let a sham Corneille write Tiridate; let a eunuch come into the possession of a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an era; let a pharmacist invent cardboard soles for army shoes and put aside, by selling this cardboard as leather for the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, four hundred thousand livres in income; let a peddler marry usury and have her bear seven or eight million, of which he is the father and she the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by talking platitudes; let the steward of a good house become so rich that on leaving service he is made Minister of Finance – men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton, Beauty, and the bearing of Claude, Majesty. They confuse heaven’s radiant stars with a duck’s footprint left in the mud.

A little like our own age, eh?