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Values today we'll be continuing les miserable by Victor Hugo.

Chapter ten the Bishop in the presence of an unknown light at an epic, a little later than the date of the letter cited in the preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains infested with bandits.

In the country near Dee, a man lived quite alone.

This man, we will state at once, was a former member of the convention.

His name was G.

Member of the convention G was mentioned with a sort of horror in the world of D.

A member of the convention.

Can you imagine such a thing that existed from the time when people call each other thou and when they said citizen?

This man was almost a monster.

He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost he was a quasi regicide.

He had been a terrible man.

How did it happen that such a man had not been brought before a provost's court on the return of the legitimate princes?

They need not have cut off his head.

If you please.

Clemency must be exorcised agreed.

But a good banishment for life, an example, in short, etcetera.

Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of those people.

Gossip of the geese about the vulture was g a vulture after all.

Yes, if he were to be judged by the element of ferocity in this solitude of his, as he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of exile and had been able to remain in France.

He dwelt at a distance of three quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild valley.

No one knew exactly where he had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair.

There were no neighbors, not even passersby.

Since he had dwelt in that valley.

The path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass.

The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.

Nevertheless, the bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked the valley of the former member of the convention.

And he said, there is a soul yonder which is lonely.

And he added, deep in his own mind, I owe him a visit, but let us avow it.

This idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him after a moments reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive.

For at bottom he shared the general impression, and the old member of the convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.

Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil?

No, but what a sheep.

The good bishop was perplexed.

Sometimes he set out in that direction.

Then he returned.

Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young shepherd, who served the member of the convention in his hovel, had come in quest of a doctor, that the old wretch was dying, that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live overnight.

Thank God, some added.

The bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his two threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening breeze, which was sure to rise soon and set out, the sun was setting and had almost touched the horizon.

When the bishop arrived at the excommunicated spot with a certain beating of the heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair.

He strode over a ditch, leapt a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the wasteland and behind lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.

It was a very low hut, poor, small and clean, with a vine nailed against the outside.

Near the door, in an old wheelchair, the armchair of the peasants, there was a white haired man smiling at the sun.

Near the seated man stood a young boy.

At the shepherd lad he was offering the old man a jar of milk.

While the bishop was watching him, the old man spoke.

Thank you, he said.

I need nothing.

And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the child.

The bishop stepped forward at the sound which he made in walking.

The old man turned his head and his face expressed the sum total of a surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.

This is the first time since I have been here, said he, that anyone has entered here.

Who are you, sir?

The bishop answered.

My name is Bienvenue Muriel.

Bienvenue Miriel.

I have heard that name.

Are you the man whom the people call Monsignor?

Welcome, I am.

The old man resumed with a half smile.

In that case, you are my bishop.

Something of that sort.

Enter, sir.

The member of the convention extended his hand to the bishop, but the bishop did not take it.

The bishop confined himself to the remark.

I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed.

You certainly do not seem to me.

To be ill, monsieur, replied the old man.

I am going to recover.

He paused and then said, I shall die 3 hours hence.

Then he continued, I am something of a doctor.

I know in what fashion the last hour draws on.

Yesterday only my feet were cold.

Today the chill has ascended to my knees.

Now I feel it mounting to my waist.

When it reaches the heart, I shall stop.

The sun is beautiful, is it not?

I had myself wheeled out here to take a last look at things.

You can talk to me.

It does not fatigue me.

You have done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death.

It is well that there should be witnesses.

At that moment.

One has ones caprices.

I should have liked to last until the dawn.

But I know that I shall hardly live 3 hours.

It will be night then.

What does it matter?

After all, dying is a simple affair.

One has no need of the light for that.

So be it.

I shall die by starlight.

The old man turned to the shepherd lad.

Go to thy bed.

Thou wert awake all last night.

Thou art tired.

The child entered the hut.

The old man followed him with his.

Eyes and added, as though speaking to himself, I shall die while he sleeps.

Two slumbers may be good neighbors.

The bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been.

He did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying.

Let us say the whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated like the rest.

He who on occasion was so fond of laughing at his grace, was rather shocked at not being addressed as monseigneur, and he was almost tempted to retort citizen.

He was assailed by a fancy for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but which was not habitual with him.

This man, after all, this member of the convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the powerful ones of the earth.

For the first time in his life, probably the bishop felt in a mood to be severe.

Meanwhile, the member of the convention had been surveying him with a modest cordiality in which one could have distinguished, possibly that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to dust.

The bishop on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity, which in his opinion bordered on a fault, could not refrain from examining the member of the convention with an attention which, as it.

Did not have its course in sympathy.

Would have served his conscience as a matter of reproach in connection with any other man, a member of the convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity.

Gee.

Calm.

His body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist.

The revolution had many of these men proportioned to the epic.

In this old man, one was conscious of a man put to the proof, though so near to his end of.

He preserved all the gestures of health.

In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death.

Azrael, the mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back and thought that he had mistaken the door.

Jesus seemed to be dying because he willed it so.

There was freedom in his agony.

His legs alone were motionless.

It was there that the shadows held him fast.

His feet were cold and dead, but.

His head survived with all the power.

Of life and seemed full of light.

Ji, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient, who was flesh above and marble below.

There was a stone there.

The bishop sat down.

The exordium was abrupt.

I congratulate you, said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand.

You did not vote for the death of the king after all.

The old member of the convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning underlying the words.

After all, he replied.

The smile had quite disappeared from his face.

Do not congratulate me too much, sir.

I did vote for the death of the tyrant.

It was the tone of austerity, answering the tone of severity.

What do you mean to say?

Resumed the bishop.

I mean to say that man has a tyrant.

Ignorance.

I voted for the death of that tyrant.

That tyrant engendered royalty which his authority falsely understood.

While science is authority rightly understood, man should be governed only by science and.

Conscience, added the bishop.

It is the same thing.

Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within us.

Monseigneur Bienvenue listened in some astonishment to this language, which was very new to him.

The member of the convention resumed.

So far as Louis XVI was concerned, I said no.

I did not think that I had the right to kill a man, but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil.

I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for women, the end of slavery for men, the end of night for the child.

In voting for the republic, I voted for that.

I voted for fraternity.

Concord the dawn.

I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors.

The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light.

We have caused the fall of the old world.

And the old world that vase of miseries has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy.

Mixed joy, said the bishop.

You may say troubled joy in today, after that fatal return of the past which is called 1814.

Joy which has disappeared.

Alas, the work was incomplete, I admit.

We demolished the ancient regime in deeds.

We were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas.

To destroy abuses is not sufficient.

Customs must be modified.

The mill is there no longer.

The wind is still there.

You have demolished.

It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.

Right has its wrath, bishop, and the wrath of right is an element of progress.

In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ.

Incomplete it may be, but sublime.

It set free all the unknown social quantities.

It softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened.

It caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth.

It was a good thing.

The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.

The bishop could not refrain from murmuring.

Yes.

93.

A member of the convention straightened himself up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation.

Ah, there you go.

93 I was expecting that word.

A cloud had been forming for the space of 1500 years, and at the end of 1500 years it burst.

You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.

The bishop felt, without perhaps confessing it, that something within him had suffered extinction.

Nevertheless, he put a good face on the matter.

He replied, the judge speaks in the name of justice.

The priest speaks in the name of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice.

A thunderbolt should commit no error.

And he added, regarding the member of the convention, steadily, the Louis XVII, the conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the bishops arm.

Louis XVII, let us see.

For whom do you mourn?

Is it for the innocent child?

Very good.

In that case, I mourn with you.

Is it for the royal child?

I demand time for reflection.

To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in a place to grieve until death ensued.

For the sole crime of having been the brother of Cartouche is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV, an innocent child martyred in the tower of the temple, for the sole crime of having been grandson of Louis XVI.

Monsieur, said the bishop, I like not this conjunction of names.

Gartouche, Louis XV.

To which of the two do you object?

A momentary silence ensued.

The bishop almost regretted having come, and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.

The conventionary resumed.

Ah, Monsieur priest, you love not the crudities of the true.

Christ loved them.

He seized a rod and cleared out the temple.

His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths.

When he cried senit Parvulis, he made no distinction between the children.

It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the dolphin of barbarous and the dolphin of Herod.

Innocence, monsieur, is its own crown.

Innocence has no need to be a highness.

It is as august in rags as in fleur de lis.

That is true, said the bishop in a low voice.

I persist, continued the conventionary.

G.

You have mentioned Louis XVII to me.

Let us come to an understanding.

Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted?

I agree to that.

But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than 93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVI.

I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.

I weep for all, said the bishop equally, exclaimed conventionary g.

And if the.

Balance must incline, let it be on the side of the people.

They have been suffering longer.

Another silence ensued.

The conventionary was the first to break it.

He raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and judges, and appealed to the bishop with a gaze full of all the forces of the death agony.

It was almost an explosion.

Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while and hold that is not all either.

Why have you just questioned me and talked to me about Louis XVII?

I know you not.

Ever since ive been in these parts, I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside and seeing no one but that child who helps me.

Your name has reached me in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must admit, but that signifies nothing.

Clever men have so many ways of imposing on that, honest goodman, the people.

By the way, I did not hear the sound of your carriage.

You have left it yonder behind the coppice, at the fork of the roads, no doubt.

I do not know, I tell you.

You have told me that you are the bishop, but that affords me no information as to your moral personality.

In short, I repeat my question.

Who are you?

You are a bishop, that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends, bisrapic of d, 15,000 francs, settled income, 10,000 in perquisites, total 25,000 francs, who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat Moorhens on Friday, who strut about to Lackey before, lackey behind in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ, who went barefoot.

You are a prelate.

Revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life.

You have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it.

It is well.

But this says either too much or too little.

This does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.

To whom do I speak?

Who are you?

The bishop hung his head and replied, there, miss some, I am a worm.

A worm of the earth in a.

Carriage, growled the conventionary.

It was the conventionarys turn to be arrogant and the bishops to be humble.

The bishop resumed mildly, so be it, sir, but explain to me, how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table in the moorhens, which I eat on Friday, out.

My 25,000 francs income, out.

My palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty and that 93 was not inexorable.

The commissionary passed his hand across his brow as though to sweep away a cloud.

Before replying to you, he said, I beseech you to pardon me.

I have just committed a wrong.

Sir.

You are at my house, you are my guest.

I owe you courtesy.

You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments.

Your riches and your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate.

But good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them.

I promise you to make no use of them in the future.

I thank you, said the bishop.

She resumed, let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me.

Where were we?

What were you saying to me?

That 93 was inexorable.

Inexorable?

Yes, said the bishop.

What think you of Murat, clapping his.

Hands at the guillotine?

What think you of beaucet chanting the te deum over the dragonades?

The retort was a harsh one, but.

It attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel.

The bishop quivered under it.

No reply occurred to him, but he was offended by this mode of alluding to the best of minds will have their fetishes, and they sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respective logic.

The conventionary began to pant.

The asthma of the agony which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice.

Still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes.

He went on, let me say a few words more in this.

In that direction I am willing.

Apart from the revolution, which taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, 93 is, alas, a rejoinder.

You think it inexorable, sir?

But what of the whole monarchy, sir?

Carrier is a bandit.

But what name do you give to Montrevel?

Fouquer Taineville is a rascal.

What is your opinion as to le Mignon Beauville Mallard is terrible, but saltavanes, if you please, is ferocious.

But what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier Jordancotet is a monster, but not so great a one as m.

The marquis de Louvois.

Sir.

Sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen, but I am also sorry for that poor huguenot woman.

Who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance.

Her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish.

The little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized.

The executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse abjure, giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience.

What say you to that?

Torture of Tantalus is applied to a mother?

Bear this well in mind, sir.

The french revolution had its reasons for existence.

Its wrath will be absolved by the future.

Its result is the world made better from its most terrible blows.

There comes forth a caress for the human race.

I abridge, I stop.

I have too much the advantage.

Moreover, I am dying and ceasing to.

Gaze at the bishop.

The conventionary concluded his thoughts in these tranquil words.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions when they are over.

This fact is recognized that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.

The conventionary doubted not that he had successfully conquered all the inmost entrenchments of the bishop.

One remained, however, and from this entrenchment the last resource of Monsignor bienvenues resistance came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the beginning.

Progress should be believed in God good cannot have an impious servitor.

He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.

The former representative of the people made no reply.

He was seized with a fit of trembling.

He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly.

When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were.

Plunged in the depths of o thou, o ideal, thou alone existest.

The bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said, the infinite.

Is he is there.

If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit.

It would not be infinite.

In other words, it would not exist.

There is then an I.

That eye of the infinite is God.

The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice and with a shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld someone.

When he had spoken, his eyes closed.

The effort had exhausted him.

It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to him.

That which he had said brought him nearer to him.

Who is death?

The supreme moment was approaching.

The bishop understood.

This time pressed, it was as a priest that he had come from extreme coldness.

He had passed by degrees to extreme emotion.

He gazed at those closed eyes.

He took that wrinkled, aged and ice cold hand in his and bent over the dying man.

This hour is the hour of God.

Do you not think that it would be regrettable if we had met in vain?

The conventionary opened his eyes again.

A gravity mingled with gloom was imprinted on his countenance.

Bishop, said he with a slowness which.

Probably arose more from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength.

I have passed my life in meditation, study and contemplation.

I was 60 years of age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its affairs.

I obeyed.

Abuses existed.

I combated them.

Tyrannies existed, I destroyed them.

Rights and principles existed.

I proclaimed and confessed them.

Our territory was invaded.

I defended it.

France was menaced.

I offered my breast.

I was not rich.

I am poor.

I have been one of the masters of the state.

The vaults of the treasury were encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and silver.

I dined in dead Tree street at 22 sous.

I have succored the oppressed.

I have comforted the suffering.

I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true, but it was to bind up the wounds of my country.

I have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light.

And I have sometimes resisted progress without pity.

I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own adversaries, men of your profession.

And there is, at Pettyjem in Flanders, at the very spot where the moravigian kings had their summer palace, a convent of urbanists, the abbey of St.

Clair in Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793.

I have done my duty according to my powers and all the good that I was able to, after which I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, prescribed.

For many years past, I, with my white hair, have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me.

To the poor, ignorant masses, I present the visage of one damned.

And I accept this isolation of hatred without hating anyone myself.

Now I am 86 years old.

I am on the point of death.

What is it that you have come to ask of me?

Your blessing, said the bishop, and he knelt down.

When the bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had become august.

He had just expired.

The bishop returned home deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be known to us, he passed the whole night in prayer.

On the following morning, some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about the member of the convention, G.

He contented himself with pointing heavenward.

From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling towards all children and sufferers.

Any allusion to that old wretch of a g caused him to fall into a singular preoccupation.

No one could say that the passage of that soul before his and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did not count for something in his approach to perfection.

This pastoral visit naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of comment in all the little local coteries.

Whats the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a bishop?

There was evidently no conversion to be expected.

All those revolutionists are backsliders.

Then why go there?

What was there to be seen there?

He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried off by the devil.

One day a dowager of the impertinent variety, who thinks herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him.

Monseigneur, people are inquiring when your greatness will receive the red cap.

Oh, oh, thats a coarse color, replied the bishop.

It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.

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 Brie Carlisle and.

I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Le Miserable.

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