Victor Hugo describes the story of his masterpiece, Les Miserables, as one of redemption. Obviously, Jean Valjean is the man redeemed. However, every story of conversion and redemption has a point where things change. Often there is a person who influences the moment of conversion. For Valjean, that person is the Bishop of Digne.
A Brief History of Charles Myriel
The Bishop’s full name was Charles-Francois-Beinvenu Myriel. Hugo shares that in Myriel’s youth and early manhood, he had been a passionate and sometimes even violent man. “His universal tenderness was less an instinct of nature than the result of a strong conviction.” (52)
After the fighting in the Revolution and losing his wife to lung disease, Myriel becomes a priest. In 1804, Myriel was a cure in Brignolles. During this time, he had business that took him to Paris. While there he went to see the Cardinal. The Cardinal was Napoleon’s uncle.
When Napoleon saw the country priest staring at him he asked “Who is this good man looking at me?” Myriel replied “you are looking at a good man, and I at a great one. May we both be the better for it.” (2) Shortly after the incident, M. Myriel became the Bishop of Digne. It was in Digne that Valjean meets the saintly Bishop.
The Actions of the Bishop of Digne
When he moved to Digne, one of Myriel’s first actions revealed what kind of man he was. He discovered that the bishop’s palace was next door to a small hospital. He felt that it was wrong for the Bishop to live in a spacious palace when the patients were crammed closely together and immediately switched habitations with the hospital.
In addition to surrendering the Bishop’s palace, Myriel created a budget that lasted for his lifetime. Of the fifteen thousand livre budget, the Bishop reserved 1000 livre for personal and household expenses, the rest of the money was given to the poor and invalid.
Myriel befriended a man who was condemned to death for murder. He stayed with the man from the day of sentencing to the day of execution. When they came to take the man away, the Bishop “climbed onto the cart with him, ascended the scaffold with him. The sufferer, so desolated and overwhelmed the day before was now radiant with hope. He felt his soul was reconciled, and he trusted in God.” (15)
The Bishop stayed by his side until after the ax fell. When contemplating the terrible event, Myriel said, “I didn’t believe it could be so monstrous. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?” (16)
The actions portrayed here are just a few of the Bishop’s actions that Hugo catalogs in Les Miserables. Myriel’s actions fit two categories. 1.) Myriel surrendered personal wealth in order to meet the physical needs of his parish. 2.) Myriel always placed himself in sympathy with the most abject members of his parish and walked with them for as long as necessary.
The Character of the Bishop of Digne
He was not a philosopher Bishop who spent his time in his books, he was a man of action and he suited his actions to his beliefs. Although he filled his days with action, he ends them alone in his garden meditating “in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament.” (54)
Hugo concludes the chapter, What He Believed, by asking “What more was needed by this old man… A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven.” (55)
In the following chapter, What He Thought, Hugo provides a succinct statement on the Bishop’s beliefs “Love one another: He declared that to be complete; he desired nothing more, and it was his whole doctrine.” (57)
M. Myriel’s Influence on Jean Valjean
Valjean steals the Bishop’s only valuable objects a silver table service. When the police carry Valjean to the Bishop’s door the Bishop tells them that he had given the silver to Valjean and that Valjean was not a thief. The Bishop proceeds to reprimand Valjean for not taking the candlesticks and presses them into his hands.
After the police leave, the Bishop tells Valjean “Do not forget, ever, that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man…you no longer belong to evil but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!” (106) Valjean flees.
However, it isn’t long before Valjean finds himself confronted with himself “It seemed to him that he was looking at Satan by the light of Paradise.” (113) It is Valjean’s first battle with darkness. He returns to the Bishop’s home at night and kneels on the pavement in front of the house as if in prayer.
Valjean’s inner battle is repeated throughout the book. Near the end of the book when Valjean once again fights the inner battle Hugo writes, “He had reached the last intersection of good and evil.” (1384) And when the heroic Valjean is at death’s door, he tells them he doesn’t need a priest, he has one. He stares at the ceiling as if there is someone there, could it be the Bishop Bienvenu?
Valjean’s last word’s are “I see a light. Come nearer. I am dying happy. Let me put my hands on your dear beloved heads.” And so, Hugo’s synopsis of Les Miserables is fulfilled: “The book the reader has now before his eyes—from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details…is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day.”
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables. Signet Classic. 1987. ISBN 0-451-52526-4
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