Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the fourth 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.

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Values today well be continuing les miserable by Victor Hugo chapter four works corresponding to words his conversation was gay and affable.

He put himself on a level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him.

When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy.

Madame Magloire liked to call him your grace.

One day he rose from his armchair and went to his library in search of a book.

This book was on one of the upper shelves.

As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it.

Madame Magloire said he, fetch me a chair.

My greatness does not reach as far as that shelf.

One of his distant relatives, Madame le Comtesse de Lau, rarely allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating in his presence what she designated as the expectations of her three sons.

She had numerous relatives who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons were the natural heirs.

The youngest of the three was to receive from a grandant a good hundred thousand livres of income.

The second was the heir by entail to the title of the duke.

His uncle, the eldest, was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather, the bishop was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts.

On one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual.

While Madame Deslo was relating once again the details of all these inheritances and all these expectations, she interrupted herself impatiently.

Mon Dieu, cousin, what are you thinking about?

I am thinking, replied the bishop, of a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St.

Augustine.

Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.

Add another time on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the countryside, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives spread over an entire page.

What a stout back death has.

He exclaimed.

What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him.

And how much wit must men have in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity?

He was gifted on occasion with a gentle raillery, which almost always concealed a serious meaning.

In the course of one lent, a youthful vicar came to d and preached in the cathedral.

He was tolerably eloquent.

The subject of his sermon was charity.

He urged the rich to give to the poor in order to avoid h***, which he depicted in the most frightful manner of which he was capable, and twin paradise, which he represented as charming and desirable.

Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant who was somewhat of a usurer named Monsieur Gibrand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges and woolen gallons.

Never in his whole life had Monsieur Gebarand bestowed alms on any poor wretched.

After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old beggar woman at the door of the cathedral.

There were six of them to share it.

One day the bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister with a smile, there is Monsieur Gibberand purchasing paradise for a sou.

When it was a question of charity.

He was not to be rebuffed, even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which induced reflection.

Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing room of the town, there was present the marquis de Champtanchire, a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be at one and the same time an ultra royalist and an ultravolatarian.

This variety of man has actually existed.

When the bishop came to him, he touched his arm.

You must give me something, Monsieur le Marquis.

The marquis turned round and answered dryly, I have poor people of my own, monseigneur.

Give them to me, replied the bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral.

My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are 13 20,000 peasants dwelling in France which have but three openings, 18 17,000 hovels which have but two openings, a door and one window, and 346,000 cabins, besides, which have but one opening the door.

And this arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows.

Just put poor families, old women and little children in those buildings, and behold the fevers and maladies which result.

Alas, God gives air to men, and law sells it to them.

I do not blame the law, but I bless God.

In the department of the Aesir and Navarre, in the two departments of the alps, the hotties and the basses, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows.

They transport their manure on the backs of men.

They have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks and bits of rope dipped in pitch.

That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hilly country of Dauphine.

They make bread for six months at one time.

They bake it with dried cow dung.

In the winter, they break this sprout up with an axe, and they soak it for 24 hours in order to render it eatable.

My brethren, have pity.

Behold the suffering on all sides of you.

Born a proven sol, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south.

He en be monsieur, ce sag, as in lower Languedoc, unte honoris posse, as in the boss alps, moir te un bunen mute em be un bunen fromis grasse.

As an upper dauphin.

This pleased the people extremely and contributed not a little to win him access to all spirits.

He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains.

He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms.

As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the lower classes.

He condemned nothing in haste, and without taking circumstances into account, he said, examine the road over which the fault is passed.

Being as he described himself, with a smile in ex sinner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation.

He drags it with him and yields to it.

He must watch it, check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity.

There may be some fault even in this obedience.

But the fault thus committed is venial.

It is a fall, but a fall on the knees, which may terminate in prayer.

To be a saint is the exception.

To be an upright man is the rule.

Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

The least possible sin is the law of man.

No sin at all is the dream of the angel.

All which is terrestrial is subject to sin.

Sin is a gravitation.

When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly and growing angry very quickly.

Oh, oh, he said with a smile, to all appearance this is a great crime which all the world commits.

These are hypocrisies which have taken fright and are in haste to make protest and to put themselves under shelter.

He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of human society rest.

He said, the faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent and the ignorant, are the faults of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich and the wise.

He said, moreover, teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible.

Society is culpable in that it does not afford instruction gratis.

It is responsible for the night which it produces.

His soul is full of shadow.

Sin is therein committed.

The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things.

I suspect that he obtained it from the gospel.

One day he heard a criminal case which was in preparation and on the point of trial, discussed in a drawing room.

A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money out of love for a woman and for the child which he had had by her.

Counterfeiting was still punishable with death.

At that epoch the woman had been arrested in the act of passing the first false peace made by the man.

She was held, but there were no proofs except against her.

She alone could accuse her lover and destroy him.

By her confession.

She denied.

They insisted.

She persisted in her denial.

Thereupon an idea occurred to the attorney for the crown.

He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and that the man was deceiving her.

Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

The man was ruined.

He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice.

They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate.

By bringing jealousy into play he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath.

He had adduced the justice of revenge.

The bishop listened to all this in silence.

When they had finished, he inquired, where are this man and woman to be tried?

At the court of assizes.

He went on, and where will the advocate of the crown be tried?

A tragic event occurred at d.

A man was condemned to death for murder.

He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant, who had been a Monte bank affairs and a writer for the public.

The town took a great interest in the trial.

On the eve of the day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill.

A priest was needed to attend the criminal.

In his last moments they sent for the cure.

It seems that he refused to come, saying, that is no affair of mine.

I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mount bank I too am ill, and besides, it is not my place.

This reply was reported to the bishop, who said, monsieur le Curie is right, it is not his place, it is mine.

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the Monte bank, called him by name, took him by the hand and spoke to him.

He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the condemned man for his own.

He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple.

He was father, brother, friend.

He was bishop only to bless.

He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him.

The man was on the point of dying in despair.

Death was an abyss to him.

As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror.

He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent.

His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had in a manner broken through here and there that wall which separates us from the mystery of things and which we call life.

He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness.

The bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the bishop was still there.

He followed him and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camel, and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal, bound with cords, he mounted the tumbril with him he mounted the scaffold with him.

The sufferer who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day it was radiant.

He felt that his soul was reconciled, and, he hoped, in God.

The bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him, God raises from the dead him whom man slays.

He whom his brothers have rejected, finds his father once more.

Pray, believe, enter into life.

The father is there.

He descended from the scaffold.

There was something in his look which made the people draw aside to let him pass.

They did not know which was most worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity.

On his return to the humble dwelling, which he designated with a smile as his palace, he said to his sister, I have just officiated pontifically, since the most sublime things are often those which are the least understood.

There were people in the town who said, when commenting on this conduct of the bishop, it is affection.

This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing rooms.

The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched and admired him.

As for the bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine.

And it was a long time before he recovered from it.

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it is something about it which produces hallucination.

1 may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty.

1 may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with ones own eyes.

But if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent.

One is forced to decide and to take part for or against.

Some admire it like de magistre, others execrate it like bacteria.

The guillotine is the concretion of the law.

It is called vindicate.

It is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral.

He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.

All social problems erect their interrogation point around this chopping knife.

The scaffold is a vision.

The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry.

The scaffold is not a machine.

The scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being possessed of I know not what somber initiative.

One would say that this piece of carpenter's work saw that this machine heard that this mechanism understood that this wood, this iron and these cords were possessed of will.

In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul, the scaffold appears in terrible guise.

And as though taking part in whats going on, the scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner it devours, it eats flesh.

It drinks blood.

The scaffold is a sort of monster, fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a specter which seems to live with.

A horrible vitality composed of all the.

Death which it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound.

On the day following the execution and on many succeeding days, the bishop appeared to be crushed.

The almost violent serenity of the funeral moment had disappeared.

The phantom of social justice tormented him.

He who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself.

At times.

He talked to himself and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice.

This is one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved.

I did not think that it was so monstrous.

It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law.

Death belongs to God alone.

By what right do men touch that unknown thing?

In the course of time, these impressions weakened and probably vanished.

Nevertheless, it was observed that the bishop thenceforth avoided passing the place of execution.

Monsieur Miriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and dying.

He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty and his greatest labor.

Widowed and orphaned families had no need to summon him.

He came of his own accord.

He understood how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his love, of the mother who had lost her child.

As he knew the moment for silence, he also knew the moment for speech.

O admirable consoler, he sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope.

He said, have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead.

Think not of that which perishes.

Gaze steadily.

You will perceive the living light of your well beloved dead in the depths of heaven.

He knew that faith is wholesome.

He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we wrote 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.

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

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So many adventures and mountains we can climb to get words go word line by line, one bite at a time.