Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the first chapter of Les Miserables.
Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!
Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.
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.
Speaker:
Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your favorite classics one bite at a time.
Speaker:
My name is Bre Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.
Speaker:
If you want to know whats coming next and vote on upcoming books, sign up for our newsletter@biteatamebooks.com dot.
Speaker:
Youll also find our new t shirts in the shop, including podcast shirts and quote shirts from your favorite classic novels.
Speaker:
Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.
Speaker:
You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also our website byteadatimebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our Patreon to support the show and YouTube where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.
Speaker:
We are part of the Byte at a Time Books productions network.
Speaker:
If youd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic authors to write their novels and what was going on in the world at the time, check out the bite at a time books behind the story podcast.
Speaker:
Wherever you listen to podcasts, please note, while we try to keep the text as close to the original as possible, some words have been changed to honor the marginalized communities who've identified the words as harmful and to stay in alignment with Byte at a time book's brand.
Speaker:
Values today we will be beginning les miserable by Victor Hugo, volume one Fantine book first a just man chapter one Monsieur Muriel in 1815, Monsieur Charles Francois Bernoulli Muriel was bishop of D.
Speaker:
He was an old man of about 75 years of age.
Speaker:
He had occupied the see of D since 1806.
Speaker:
Although this detail had no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous if merely for the sake of exactness.
Speaker:
In all points to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese.
Speaker:
True or false, that which is set of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, is that which they do.
Speaker:
Monsieur Muriel was the son of a councillor of the parliament of Aix.
Speaker:
Hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar.
Speaker:
It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, 18 or 20, in accordance with the custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families in spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Muriel created a great deal of talk.
Speaker:
He was well formed, though rather shortened stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent.
Speaker:
The whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to galleantry.
Speaker:
The revolution came.
Speaker:
Events succeeded each other with precipitation.
Speaker:
The parliamentary families decimated, pursued, hunted down, or dispersed.
Speaker:
Monsieur Charles Muriel immigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the revolution.
Speaker:
There his wife died of a malady of the chest from which she had long suffered.
Speaker:
He had no children.
Speaker:
What took place next in the fate of Monsieur Muriel?
Speaker:
The ruin of the french society, of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of 93, which were perhaps even more alarming to the emigrants, who viewed them from a distance with the magnifying powers of terror.
Speaker:
Did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him?
Speaker:
Was he in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed its life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm by striking to his heart a man whom public catastrophes would not shake by striking at his existence and his fortune?
Speaker:
No one could have told.
Speaker:
All that was known was that when he returned from Italy, he was a priest.
Speaker:
In 1804, Monsieur Mariel was the cure of bee.
Speaker:
He was already advanced in years and lived in a very retired manner about the epic of the coronation.
Speaker:
Some petty affair connected with his curacy.
Speaker:
Just what is not precisely known, took him to Paris.
Speaker:
Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was Monsieur le Cardinal Fesch.
Speaker:
One day, when the emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy cure, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when his majesty passed.
Speaker:
Napoleon, on, finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly, who is this good man who is staring at me?
Speaker:
Sire, said Monsieur Muriel, you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man, and I at a great man.
Speaker:
Each of us can profit by it.
Speaker:
That very evening, the emperor asked the cardinal the name of the cure, and sometime afterwards, Monsieur Muriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed bishop of D.
Speaker:
What truth was there.
Speaker:
After all, in the stories which were.
Speaker:
Invented as to the early portion of Monsieur Miriels life?
Speaker:
No one knew.
Speaker:
Very few families had been acquainted with the Muriel family before the revolution.
Speaker:
Monsieur Muriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town where there are many mouths which talk and very few heads which think.
Speaker:
He was obliged to undergo it, although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop.
Speaker:
But after all the rumors with which his name was connected were rumors, noise, sayings, words less than words, plabre, as the energetic language of the south expresses it.
Speaker:
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D, all the stories and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into profound oblivion.
Speaker:
No one would have dared to mention them.
Speaker:
No one would have dared to recall them.
Speaker:
Monsieur Muriel had arrived at d accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister and ten years his junior.
Speaker:
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of Monsieur le Cure, now assumed the double title of of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to monseigneur.
Speaker:
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature.
Speaker:
She realized the ideal expressed by the word respectable, for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable.
Speaker:
She had never been pretty her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency.
Speaker:
And as she advanced in years, she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness.
Speaker:
What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity.
Speaker:
And this diaphaniety allowed the angel to be seen.
Speaker:
She was a soul rather than a virgin.
Speaker:
Her person seemed made of a shadow.
Speaker:
There was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex, a little matter enclosing a light, large eyes forever drooping, a mere pretext for a souls remaining on the earth.
Speaker:
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling, always out of breath in the first place because of her activity, and in the next because of her asthma.
Speaker:
On his arrival, Monsieur Muriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the imperial decrees, which class A bishop.
Speaker:
Immediately after a major general, the mayor, and the president paid the first call on him, and he in turn paid the first call on the general and the prefect.
Speaker:
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.
Speaker:
Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
Speaker:
Again, my name is Bre Carlisle, and I hope you join us tomorrow for the next bite of Le Miserable.
Speaker:
Dont forget to sign up for our newsletter@byteadatimebooks.com comma.
Speaker:
And check out the shop.
Speaker:
You can check out the show notes or our website, byteaditimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.
Speaker:
Wed love to hear from you on social media as well.
Speaker:
Many adventures and mountains we can climb take your word forward, line by line, one bite at a time.
