Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred thirty-first chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look, in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight M at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome.

>> Brie Carlisle: To bite at a time books where we read you your favorite

classics, one byte at a time. my name is Bre

Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to share

my passion with listeners like you. If you want

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les Miserable by Victor

Hugo chapter

two the convent as an historical

fact from the point of

view of history, of reason, and of

truth, monasticism is

condemned. Monasteries,

when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its

circulation, cumbrous

establishments, centers of idleness, where

centers of labor should exist.

Monastic communities are to the great social

community what the mistletoe is to the

oak, what the wart is to the human

body. Their prosperity and their

fatness mean the impoverishment of the country. the

monastic regime, good at the beginning of

civilization, useful in the reduction of the

brutal by the spiritual. is bad when peoples have

reached their manhood. Moreover, when it

becomes relaxed and when it enters into its period

of disorder, it becomes bad for the very

reasons which rendered it salutary in its period of

purity, because it still continues to set the

example. Claustration

has had its day. Cloisters,

useful in the early education of modern civilization,

have embarrassed its growth and are injurious

to its development so far as

institution and formation with relation to man are

concerned. Monasteries, which were good

in the 10th century, questionable in the

15th, are detestable in the

19th. The leprosy of

monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton. Two

wonderful nations, Italy and Spain.

The one the light, the other the splendor of

Europe for centuries. And at the present day,

these two illustrious peoples are but just beginning to

convalesce. Thanks to the healthy and vigorous

hygiene of 1789 alone.

The convent, the ancient female

convent in particular, such as it still

presents itself on the threshold of this century, in Italy,

in Austria, in Spain. Is one of the

most somber concretions of the Middle Ages.

The cloister. That cloister

is the point of intersection of horrors. The

catholic cloister, properly speaking, is

wholly filled with the black radiance of death.

The spanish convent is the most funereal of

all. There rise in

obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloom,

beneath domes vague with shadow. Massive

altars of Babel as high as cathedrals.

There, immense white crucifixes hang from chains. In the

dark, there are extended, all nude, on the

ebony, great christs of ivory, more than

bleeding, bloody, hideous, and

magnificent with their elbows displaying the

bones, their knee pans showing their

integuments, their wounds showing their

flesh crowned with silver thorns

nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops of

rubies on their brows and diamond tears

in their eyes. The diamonds and rubies

seem wet and make veiled. Beings in the shadow below

weep. Their sides bruised with the

hair shirt and their iron tipped scourges.

Their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles,

their knees excoriated with prayer.

Women who think themselves wives,

specters who think themselves seraphim.

Do these women think? No.

Have they any will? No.

Do they love? No. Do they

live? No. Their nerves have

turned to bone, their bones have turned to

stone. Their veil is of woven night.

Their breath under their veil resembles the indescribably

tragic respiration of death. The abbess,

a spectre, sanctifies them and terrifies them.

The Immaculate one is there, and very fierce.

Such are the ancient monasteries of Spain.

Liars of terrible devotion, caverns of

virgin, ferocious places.

Catholic Spain is more roman than Rome

herself. The spanish convent was above all

others, the catholic convent. There was a

flavor of the Orient about it. The

archbishop, the kisla arga of

heaven, locked up and kept watch over the

seraglio of souls reserved for God.

The nun was the adalisk. The

priest was the eunuch, the fervent were

chosen in dreams and possessed Christ.

At night, the beautiful nude young man

descended from the cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered

one. Lofty walls guarded the

mystic sultana, who had the crucified for her

sultan from all living distraction.

A glance on the outer world was infidelity. the inn

piece replaced the leather sack. That

which was cast into the sea in the east was thrown into the ground in

the west. In both quarters, women wrung their

hands. The waves for the first,

the grave, for the last. Hear the drowned

there, the buried, monstrous parallel.

Today, the upholders of the

past, unable to deny these things, have

adopted the expedient of smiling at them.

There has come into fashion a strange and easy manner

of suppressing the revelations of history, of

invalidating the commentaries of philosophy,

of alighting all embarrassing facts and all gloomy

questions. A matter for declamations,

say the clever declamations, repeat the

foolish Jean Jacques, a

declaimer. Diderot, a declaimer.

Voltaire on Calais, labarre and Servan

declaimers I know Nott who has

recently discovered that Tacitus was a declaimer, that

Nero was a victim. And that pity is decidedly due to that

poor hall of ferns.

Facts, however, are, awkward things to disconcert,

and they are obstinate. The author of this

book has seen with his own eyes eight leagues distant

from Brussels. There are relics of the Middle

Ages there which are attainable for everybody. At

the abbey of villiers, the whole of the obiolettes

in the middle of the field, which was formerly the courtyard of the

cloister. And on the banks of the thiel,

four stone dungeons, half underground,

half under the water. They were in

pace. each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron

door, a vault and a grated opening which

on the outside is 2ft above the level of the river.

And on the inside, 6ft above the level of the ground,

4ft of river flow past along the outside wall.

The ground is always soaked. The

occupant of the in pace has this wet soil for his

bedev. In one of these dungeons, theres a fragment

of an iron necklet riveted to the wall.

In another can be seen a square box made of four slabs of

granite, too short for a person to lie down

in, too low for him to stand upright

in. A human being was put inside with a

coverlet of stone on top. This

exists. It can be seen,

it can be touched. These in pace, these

dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets,

that lofty peephole. On a level with the rivers

current, that box of stone closed with a lid of

granite like a tomb with this

difference that the dead man here

was a living being. That soil, which is but

mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls.

What declaimers thank

you for joining Byte at a time books today while we read a

bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle and I

hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of

Le Miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Dont forget to sign up for our

newsletter@biteautotimebooks.com and check

out the shop. You can check out the show notes or

our website, byteaditimebooks.com, for

the rest of the links for our show. wed love to hear from you on

social media as well.

>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look and let's

see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter one

time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

take your words go word line by

line one bite at a time.