If you have read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, you know the novel is long, and the author goes off on numerous tangents. These can be engaging, depending on the reader’s personality. None of them make it into the movies. One side story is how the evil innkeeper, Thénardier, had previously been at Waterloo with Napolean. However, he was not a soldier. He was a scavenger of anything valuable he could find on dead bodies abandoned on the field of battle.
I draw your attention to a slight tangent, a side track taken by the Bishop of D−. Hugo calls him by that abbreviation in the novel. Another character is G−, about whom I will shortly say more. Perhaps Hugo uses these abbreviations as a sly clue that a few of his fictional characters are based on real people personally known to him. In fact, at one point, he calls the Bishop Myriel or Monseigneur Bienvenu. Thus, today, we can read a Wikipedia article describing D− as the town in Southwest France of Digne and the fictional Bishop based on the person of Bienvenu de Miollis, who was the real Bishop of Digne at that time.
About the priest, Hugo says straight out in the novel, “We do not claim that the portrait which we present here is a true one; we say only that it resembles him.” This bishop is crucial to Hugo’s long story, and the most essential part is included in the movies (obviously must be). He has mercy on the convict, Jean Valjean, in such a compassionate way that the oppressed man is changed forever, which is borne out in the remainder of the novel and movies.
The novel has much more to say about the priest, which is worth meditating on, but I will point you only to his visit to a hermit, G−, about whom no one has come up with a Wikipedia article. Since I want to quote extensively and give you the ability to go look it up yourself, we must contend with the way this 19th Century tome was laid out: Volumes, Books, and Chapters. Hugo divides the novel into five Volumes, each having eight or nine “Books” (except one has fifteen), and each Book generally contains over ten “Chapters.”
This story tangent requires quoting extensively below. I hope the content itself will interest you. But why do I draw your attention to this neglected part of the novel? As you read Hugo’s words, draw your own conclusions. But I will also reflect afterward.
To get to what I want to relate, we should grant Hugo the chance to show why he begins the first Chapter (titled M. Myriel) of the first Book (titled A Just Man) of Volume One by introducing the Bishop. Yet, the key to his character may best come from a later chapter:
Volume One, Book First, Chapter 13, What He Believed (p. 50):
“The point at which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. It was in that quarter, quia multum amiavit—because he loved much—that he was regarded as vulnerable by “serious men,” “grave persons,” and “reasonable people”; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence that overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain.”
further down the page:
“The Bishop of D− had none of that harshness, which is peculiar to many priests… Hideousness of aspect, deformity of instinct, troubled him not and did not arouse his indignation. He was touched, even softened by them.
But for the tangent I wish to explore, we must now back up in the novel to Volume One, Book First, Chapter 10, The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light (p. 34). He will visit a parishioner, as the Bishop sees his role as ministering to all those entrusted by God to his care:
“In the country near D— a man lived quite alone. This man, we will state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G−.”
[blogger’s explanatory note:] Hugo wrote Les Misérables in 1862, but set it in the early 19th-century timeframe, well after the French Revolution and after the reign of Napolean Bonaparte. These decades saw considerable unrest and political instability in France. For a time, they reinstated kingship but also constrained the monarch. Hugo’s “Convention” referred to a delegation of men who, in 1793, were to decide the fate of King Louis XVI. France had become an unstable republic, but royalists considered him the rightful monarch of France. The Convention agreed he should die. Hugo’s characters, the Bishop and G−, are both older men who will have lived through this post-revolutionary time decades earlier. The Bishop knew what it meant that G− had been a member of the Convention. He had helped decide the fate of Louis XVI. Hugo conveys that the political contentions of the time continued in bitterness for decades. Many lamented the loss of the monarchy in France.
The man, G−, apparently voted against the execution of the king and, in the political turmoil, was exiled by the majority who voted for it. Rather than leave France, however, G− became a hermit and hid in a remote cave in the southern area around Digne.
Further down the page, Hugo says:
“He dwelled 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 dwelled in that valley, the path that led there had disappeared under a growth of grass.”
And, in thinking about visiting the hermit:
“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 that is lonely.’ And he added, deep in his own mind, ‘I owe him a visit.’”
Yet…
“The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction; then he returned.”
“Finally, the rumor one day spread… …that the old wretch was dying…”
“The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening breeze that 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, leaped 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, 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 the 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 Bienvenu Myriel.’
“‘Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the people call Monseigneur 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 three hours hence.’
“Then he continued, ‘I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws on… …I know that I shall hardly live three 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.’”
further down:
“The Bishop was not touched as it seems he should have been. He did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying…
“G−, 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 epoch. In this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so near to his end, 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 sepulcher, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G− seemed to be dying because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony.
On page 37 they converse about the Convention vote, which did not spare the king. The Bishop thinks G− voted against the killing:
“‘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.’
“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 is 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 Bienvenu 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 man, 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, and today, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy that 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.’
(The two men converse for several pages about the events of that time, their efficacy, and how things in France turned out.)
“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 I of the infinite is God.’
“The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld someone… …That which he had just said brought him nearer to him who is in 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 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 that 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 sixty years of age when my country called me…’
He goes on for a page, and the reader may wonder if the priest thought that he had been wrong in assuming the older man was about to breathe his last. G− finishes with:
“‘Now I am eighty-six 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 that 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 member of the Convention G−; he contented himself with pointing heavenward.
“From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling toward all children and sufferers.
“Any illusion 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.”
Well…
These are from the earliest pages of the epic novel. The Bishop will play a critical role in meeting the convict, Jean Valjean. He will give the released convict a new motivation for every action he proceeds to take in the story. We understand why Hugo wants to provide us with a solid grounding for the Bishop’s character.
We get the impression that the Bishop knew how to withhold judgment of people. Yet, he did come into the hermit’s lair with some preconceptions that one could call judgmental. He did want to bring the possibility of conversion to an old atheist before he died. But he also listened to the man. They conversed about a shared history. G− captivated the Bishop with a well-considered point of view that the priest had never before heard. It made him drop any preconceived judgments. The Bishop saw the dying man as he would have any other downtrodden but dignified person in his care. He realized that God loved this man, too. And his supposed atheism was not so black and white, not as all or nothing as we tend to think of people’s atheism. Apparently, there were slivers of some kind of belief.
According to Hugo, the Bishop ended up remaining true to his characteristic of possessing an excess of love. We who follow Jesus might say that most humans cannot come anywhere near having an excess of love. If you get what Jesus was trying to give to the world, you would have to suspect that he would put no limit on love. No one could have an excess.
However, professional Christian theologians, such as Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, should be held to a high standard when it comes to following the tenets of their faith. It is too easy for religious institutions to add extraneous orthodoxy and get hung up on things untraceable directly to the teaching of Jesus.
Hugo shows us what someone can do, whose focus remains on the critical teaching to love and not judge. Jesus calls us to a depth of expressing love that extends to enemies. For that reason, this tangential story of the final hours of the life of G− is worth revisiting. Many local parishioners considered him an enemy. The Bishop knew better, but he did begin with wariness. The Bishop realized that God loved a person who could be completely different and hold possibly opposite opinions, someone identifiable as an ideological enemy. But the Bishop demonstrated how we should treat such people. Listen to them, patiently hear them, and learn to accept them as dignified fellow humans.
If you get what Les Misérables has to teach us, apply it now in America. The French Revolution set off a century of political turmoil in their country. Will the hate of Christians for those they see as enemies of God set off decades of chaos in the so-called United States?