Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the sixth chapter of Les Miserables.

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Take it chapter by chapter one fight at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word, line by line one bite at a time.

Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your favorite classics one bite at a time.

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Values today we'll be continuing les miserable by Victor Hugo, chapter six who guarded his house for him.

The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor and one story above, three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above.

Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent.

The two women occupied the first floor.

The bishop was lodged below.

The first room opening on the street served him his dining room.

The second was his bedroom and the third his oratory.

There was no exit possible from this oratory except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom without passing through the dining room.

At the end of the suite in the oratory there was a detached alcove with a bed for use in cases of hospitality.

The bishop offered this bed the country curates, whom business of the requirements of the parishes brought to d the pharmacy of the hospital.

A small building which had been added to the house and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a kitchen and cellar.

In addition to this, there was in the garden a stable which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in which the bishop kept two cows.

No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital.

I am paying my tithes, he said.

His bedroom was tolerably large and rather difficult to warm in bad weather, and wood is extremely dear.

At d he hit upon the idea of having a compartment of boards constructed in the cowshed.

Here he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold.

He called it his winter salon.

In this winter salon, as in the dining room, there was no other furniture than a square table in white wood and four straw seated chairs.

In addition to this, the dining room was ornamented with an antique sideboard painted pink in watercolors.

Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.

His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of Dee had more than once assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for Monseigneur's oratory.

On each occasion he had taken the money and had given it to the poor.

The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled in Nanking God.

In this oratory there were two straw prie dieu, and there was an armchair also in straw, in his bedroom.

When by chance he received seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect or the general or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the stable, the prie dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the bedroom.

In this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for the visitors.

A room was dismantled for each new guest.

It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party.

The bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it was summer.

There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service only when propped against the wall.

Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in her own room a very large, easy chair of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which was covered with flowering pecan.

But they had been obliged to hoist this brugiere up to the first story through the window.

As the staircase was too narrow.

It could not therefore be reckoned among the possibilities in the way of furniture.

Mademoiselle Baptistines ambition had been to be able to purchase a set of drawing room furniture in yellow utrich velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany, in swans neck style with a sofa.

But this would have cost 500 francs at least, and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by 42 francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing the idea.

However, who is there who has attained his ideal?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the bishops bedchamber.

A glazed door opened on the garden opposite this was the bed, a hospital bed of iron with a canopy of green serge.

In the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were utensils of the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world.

There were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory, the other near the bookcase, opening into the dining room.

The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books.

The chimney was of wood, painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire.

In the chimney stood a pair of fire dogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases and flutings, which had formerly been silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury.

Above the chimney piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the gilding had fallen.

Near the glass door, a large table with an inkstand loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes.

Before the table, an armchair of straw in front of the bed, a prie dieu borrowed from the oratory.

Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of the bed.

Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at the side of these figures indicated that the portraits one the abbe of Charliat, bishop of St.

Claude, the other the abbe Torchio, like our general of Agde, abbe of Grand Champ, order of Citieu, diocese of Chartres.

When the bishop succeeded to this apartment after the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there and had left them.

They were priests and probably donors, two reasons for respecting them.

All that he knew about these two persons was that they had been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopic, the other to his benefice.

On the same day, the 27 April 1785, Madame Magloire, having taken the pictures down to dust, the bishop had discovered these particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper, yellowed by time and attached to the back of the portrait of the abbe of Grandchamp with four wafers at his window, he had an antique curtain of coarse woolen stuff, which finally became so old that in order to avoid the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very middle of it.

This seam took the form of a cross.

The bishop often called attention to it.

How delightful that is, he said.

All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground floor, as well as those on the first floor, were whitewashed, which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.

However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the paper which had been washed over paintings, ornamenting the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine.

As we shall see further on, before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the bourgeois.

Hence this decoration.

The chambers were paved in red bricks, which were washed every week with straw mats in front of all the beds.

Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom.

This was the sole luxury which the bishop permitted, he said, that takes nothing from the poor.

It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former possessions six silver knives and forks, and a soup ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth.

And since we are not painting the bishop of D, as he was in reality, we must add that he had said more than once, I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver dishes.

To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive silver, which he had inherited from a great aunt.

These candlesticks held two axe candles and usually figured on the bishops chimneypiece.

When he had anyone to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table in the bishops own chamber.

At the head of his bed there was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night.

But it is necessary to add that the key was never removed.

The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross form, radiating from a tank.

Another walk made the circuit of the garden and skirted the white wall which enclosed it.

These alleys left behind them four square plots rimmed with box.

In three of these, Madame Magloire cultivated vegetables.

In the fourth, the bishop had planted some flowers.

Here and there stood a few fruit trees.

Madame Magloire at once remarked with a sort of gentle malice, monseigneur.

You, who turn everything to account, have nevertheless one useless plot.

It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets, Madame Megalor, retorted the bishop.

You are mistaken.

The beautiful is as useful as the usual, he added after a pause.

More so, perhaps.

This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the bishop almost as much as did his books.

He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth into which he dropped seeds.

He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to see him.

Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany.

He ignored groups and consistency.

He made not the slightest effort to decide between Turkenefort and the natural method.

He took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons nor with Jesu against Linnaeus.

He did not study plants.

He loved flowers.

He respected learned men greatly.

He respected the ignorant still more.

And without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flower beds every summer evening with a tin watering pot painted green.

The house had not a single door which could be locked.

The door of the dining room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts, like the door of a prison.

The bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the latch.

All that the first passerby had to do at any hour was to give it a push.

At first the two women had been very much tried by this door, which was never fastened.

But Monsignor Ded had said to them, have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.

Theyd ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they shared it.

Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time.

As for the bishop, his thought can be found, explained, or at least indicated in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible.

This is a shade of difference.

The door of the physician should never be shut.

The door of the priest should always be open.

On another book entitled philosophy of the medical science, he had written this other note.

Am not I a physician?

Like them?

I also have my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.

Again he wrote, do not inquire the name of him who asks the shelter of you.

The very man whos embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter.

It chanced that a worthy cure.

I know not whether it was the cure of Colebrew or the cure of Pompieri took it into his head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monsignor was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion to a certain extent in leaving his door unfastened day and night at the mercy of anyone who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little guarded.

The bishop touched his shoulder with gentle gravity and said to ni si dominist custiriit domum invenum vigilant qui custodiat eam.

Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch you guard it.

Then he spoke of something else he was fond of saying, there is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons.

Only, he added, ours must be tranquil.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Bree Carlisle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Le Miserable.

Dont forget to sign up for our newsletter@byteadatimebooks.com comma and check out the shop.

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Many adventures and mountains we can climb take your words go word, line by line, one bite at a time.