In 1815 the Bishop of Digne is an old man of about seventy-five named Myriel.
As a young man, people say, he was talked about in society. When the Revolution came he left for Italy, his wife died there, and when he came back he was a priest. What happened in between, nobody knows.
He became a bishop almost by accident. He had gone to Paris on business for his country parish and found himself in a waiting room as the Emperor passed. Napoleon asked who this old fellow staring at him was, and Myriel answered that His Majesty was looking at an old fellow and he himself was looking at a great man, so each of them stood to gain something. Not long afterward he learned, to his surprise, that he had been named Bishop of Digne.
A house traded for a hospital
The bishop’s palace in Digne is a large, handsome house of stone. The hospital next to it is a narrow, low building of one storey.
On his third day in the town the bishop walks through the hospital and then invites its director to his house. He asks how many patients there are, and the answer is twenty-six. The beds touch each other, the director adds, and the rooms are too small for the air to move.
The bishop looks around his own great dining room. Twenty beds would fit in this one room, he says.
The next day twenty-six poor patients are carried into the palace, and the bishop moves into the hospital.
Of the salary the state pays him, he keeps a very small share for his household. The rest goes out, line by line, to a list of charities: the prisoners, poor women in childbirth. Even the allowance he is paid for keeping a carriage is split up among broth for the hospital patients, the orphans and poor mothers.
A door with the bolts taken off
There is not a single door in that house that locks with a key.
The dining room door opens straight onto the cathedral square, and it once had locks and bolts like a prison door. The bishop had them all removed, and since then the door has been held shut, night and day, by nothing but a latch, so that anyone passing could simply push it open.
The two women who live with him were badly frightened by that door at first. One is his sister, Baptistine. The other is Madame Magloire, who runs the household. The bishop told them only this: if it troubles you, put bolts on your own bedroom doors.
Baptistine came round to her brother’s view. Madame Magloire acted as if she had, and was still afraid now and then.
In the margin of his Bible the bishop wrote that a doctor’s door must never be shut and a priest’s door must always be open. Elsewhere he wrote that you should not ask the name of someone who asks you for a bed for the night, because the person whose name is a burden is the one most in need of shelter.
A priest from a nearby parish once hinted at his worry. Leaving the door open day and night, wouldn’t something bad happen one day? The bishop touched his shoulder lightly and recited a line from the Psalms in Latin: unless the Lord keeps the house, the watchmen stay awake for nothing. Then he talked about something else.
The old man alone at the end of the valley
In a lonely valley near Digne lives an old man by himself.
During the Revolution he sat in the National Convention. People in town call him only G., and they shudder when they say it. He did not vote for the king’s death, but he nearly did, they say, and he is a monster who does not even believe in God. The path to his valley has disappeared under the grass, and people speak of the place as if it were the executioner’s house.
Sometimes the bishop would look toward the clump of trees that marked the valley and say that there was a soul out there that was alone. Privately, he thought he ought to go.
But as soon as the thought came, it turned strange and uncomfortable. The bishop felt the same aversion to the old man that the whole town felt. He set out in that direction a few times and turned back.
One day a rumour goes round. The old man is paralysed and dying and will not last the night. Some people say thank God.
The bishop picks up his stick and goes.
The sun is touching the horizon when he reaches the valley. Behind a thicket stands a low, small cabin, and in front of it, in a chair on wheels, a white-haired old man sits smiling at the sunlight.
The old man is astonished. Since he came here, he says, no one has ever come into his place.
When the bishop gives his name, the old man asks whether he is the one the common people call Monseigneur Bienvenu, and then, half smiling, whether that makes him his bishop. He holds out his hand. The bishop does not take it.
The old man says calmly that he will die in three hours. Yesterday only his feet were cold; today the cold reached his knees, and now he can feel it at his waist. When it reaches his heart, he will stop.
The one who asked for a blessing
It bothers the bishop a little that the old man does not call him Monseigneur. He is almost tempted to call him Citizen in return.
He sits down on a stone and opens almost as if he were scolding. I congratulate you, he says. You still did not vote for the king’s death. There is a thorn in that word still.
The smile leaves the old man’s face. He voted for the end of the tyrant, he answers. Mankind has a tyrant called ignorance, and that is the one he meant to end. As for Louis XVI, he voted no. He does not believe he has the right to kill a man.
The bishop brings up the blood the Revolution shed. He brings up the year 1793, and the little prince who died locked in a tower.
The old man grips the bishop’s arm. Whom are you weeping for, he asks. If it is for an innocent child, he will weep too. But a boy hanged in a public square for no crime except being a thief’s brother was just as innocent. I will weep for the children of kings with you, he says, as long as you weep with me for the people’s children too.
I weep for every one of them, the bishop answers. Equally? the old man shoots back. If the scale has to tip, let it tip toward the people. They have suffered longer.
Then the old man bursts out with a question. Who are you? He knows the bishop has a carriage, servants in front and behind, and a salary from the state, but none of that tells him what kind of man the bishop is.
The bishop lowers his head and answers in two words of Latin: I am a worm.
A worm in a carriage, the old man mutters. Then he puts a hand to his forehead and apologises. You are a guest in my house, he says, and it was wrong of me to use your wealth as a weapon in the argument. I will not do it again.
They argue a while longer. The old man’s breath grows short. The last ground the bishop holds is this: a man who does not believe in God cannot lead mankind.
The old man does not answer. He looks up at the sky and a tear slowly fills his eye. Almost to himself, in a shaking voice, he says that the ideal alone exists; then he raises a finger toward the sky and goes on, clearly now. The infinite has a self, he says, and that self is God.
The sun goes down. The bishop takes the cold old hand, bends close, and says they should not let this hour be wasted.
The old man opens his eyes and slowly tells his life. He was sixty when his country called him and he went. He fought what was wrong, and when the country was invaded he offered his own chest. When the treasury was so full of gold that the walls had to be propped up, he ate dinners that cost twenty-two sous. He once saved a convent belonging to the very people who were his opponents. After that he was hunted, mocked and cursed, and without hating anyone he accepted the loneliness that hatred leaves you.
Now he is eighty-six, he says, and about to die. Then he asks: what have you come to ask of me?
Your blessing, the bishop answers.
And he kneels.
When the bishop raises his head, the old man has died.
That night the bishop goes home and prays until morning. The next day, when people ask him about the old man, he only points to the sky. For a while the town has a great deal to say about a bishop going to the bedside of such a man.
The evening the yellow passport arrived first
Early in October 1815, an hour or so before the sun goes down, a man comes walking into Digne.
He is a sturdy man of about forty-six or forty-eight. He wears a cap with a leather peak pulled low, a work smock in rags, a soldier’s pack that looks almost new, and he carries a heavy, knotted stick. His hair is cropped short and his beard is long. No one knows him.
He stops at the town hall, shows something there, and then goes to the best inn in town. In the kitchen a dinner is cooking for twelve carters. He asks for a meal and a bed, and the innkeeper says that is easy enough, if he pays. The man shows a leather purse.
But while he warms himself at the fire, the innkeeper writes a note and sends his kitchen boy to the town hall with it. When he reads the reply, he says there is no room. Not the stable, not a bundle of straw in the loft. All that food is spoken for.
When the man will not leave, the innkeeper leans down and says into his ear that he knows his name is Jean Valjean, and he knows what he is. Get out.
He lowers his head and goes. At the next tavern a customer whispers to the owner, and the owner puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him to leave. Children throw stones at him.
He pulls the bell at the prison gate and asks to be put up for one night. A prison is not an inn, the voice answers; get yourself arrested and we will open. The little window shuts.
Through a lit window he sees a family laughing, a child on its father’s knee. He taps on the glass three times. The father opens the door and listens to the stranger offer to pay, but when he hears that both inns turned him away, his face changes. Are you the man? he asks, and takes his gun down from the wall. The stranger asks only for a glass of water. A bullet, the father says, and he bolts the door twice and closes the shutters.
In a corner of a garden there is a little hut with walls of turf. He crawls in and lies down on the straw. Something growls low. It is a dog’s kennel. He beats the dog back with his stick, gets out, drops onto a stone by the road and cries out that he is not even a dog.
He walks out of town to the fields, and turns back from a hill that looks too desolate under the low clouds. The town gates are shut, so he comes back in through a gap in the old wall.
At about eight that night he lies down on the stone bench at the door of a printer’s shop on the cathedral square.
An old woman coming out of the church sees him. When she asks what he is doing there, he answers roughly. Can’t you see, my good woman? I’m going to sleep. I’ve had a wooden mattress for nineteen years, and tonight it’s a stone one.
She gives him the four sous in her purse. That won’t get you into an inn, she says; surely someone would put you up out of charity. He has knocked at every door, he answers, and been driven off from every one.
The old woman points across the square to a small, low house beside the bishop’s palace.
Did you knock at that door?
No.
Knock there.
The evening someone brought up the bolts
That evening the bishop writes in his room until late and then comes into the dining room. A lamp is on the table and a decent fire is burning in the grate.
Madame Magloire is laying the table and holding forth to Baptistine. It is something she heard while out shopping. A suspicious vagrant has come into town, the inn would not take him, and he is wandering about somewhere. So tonight, at least, they should send for the locksmith and put the old bolts back, because nothing is more frightening than a door anyone can open from outside just by lifting the latch.
Baptistine stays out of it. Whatever her brother does is right, is all she says.
The bishop listens as he warms himself, then turns with a smile. So we are in some great danger, are we?
Madame Magloire is in the middle of telling the whole story over again when there is a loud knock at the door.
Come in, says the bishop.
Another place at the table
The door swings wide and a man walks in.
With his pack on his shoulder and his stick in his hand, he takes one step inside and stops, leaving the door open behind him. The firelight falls on a rough, exhausted face. Madame Magloire cannot even scream, and Baptistine half rises, looks at her brother’s face, and grows calm again.
Before the bishop can ask what he wants, the man speaks first, loudly.
His name is Jean Valjean, he says, and he has spent nineteen years in prison. He was released four days ago and is on his way from Toulon to Pontarlier, and today he walked twelve leagues. He showed his yellow passport and was thrown out of the inn; the prison would not open; even the dog in its kennel bit him and drove him off. An old woman on the square pointed him to this door. Is this an inn? He has money, he says. He will pay, with the hundred and nine francs fifteen sous he earned by nineteen years of work.
The bishop says: Madame Magloire, please set another place.
The man tries again. You didn’t understand, he says. I am a convict out of prison. He unfolds a yellow paper and reads it aloud. Jean Valjean, released convict. Nineteen years in prison. Five years for breaking in and stealing, fourteen for trying to escape four times. A very dangerous man.
Madame Magloire, says the bishop, please make up the alcove bed with white sheets.
Then he turns to the man. Sit down and warm yourself, Monsieur. We will have supper in a moment, and your bed will be made while we eat.
The man’s face turns in turn to astonishment, doubt and joy. You’re keeping me? he stammers. You’re not throwing me out, a convict? You call me Monsieur? Everyone else says, get out, dog. He has not slept in a bed for nineteen years. Then he asks: you are the innkeeper, aren’t you?
I am a priest who lives here, the bishop answers.
While the man is talking, the bishop goes and shuts the door, which has been standing wide open.
The bishop calls his guest Monsieur. He calls him that when he asks whether the night wind has chilled him, and again when he has his place moved closer to the fire. Each time the word comes, the man’s face lights up.
When the bishop remarks that the lamp gives a poor light, Madame Magloire fetches the two silver candlesticks from the mantel in his bedroom, lights them and sets them on the table.
The man says: You are good, Father. You don’t look down on me. You even light your candles for me, and I didn’t hide where I come from.
The bishop rests a hand gently on his. You did not need to tell me who you were, he says. This house is not mine, he says; it belongs to Jesus Christ.
“Cette porte ne demande pas à celui qui entre s’il a un nom, mais s’il a une douleur.” This door does not ask whoever comes in whether he has a name, but whether he has a pain. (Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 3)
So there is nothing to thank him for, the bishop adds. And he knew the man’s name before he said it. When the man stares and asks if that is true, the bishop answers: your name is my brother.
The man says he was very hungry when he came in, and now he no longer knows what he is hungry for.
Madame Magloire brings supper. A soup made from water, oil, bread and salt, with a little bacon, some mutton, some figs, fresh cheese and a big rye loaf. Without being asked, she has added a bottle of old wine.
As he always does with a guest, the bishop seats the man on his right and serves the soup himself. The man eats ravenously.
Then the bishop says: something seems to be missing from this table.
It is an old habit of the house to set out all six silver place settings when there is a guest. Madame Magloire had put down only the three that were needed. She goes out without a word, and a moment later three silver settings shine in neat rows in front of the three of them.
Today, a door that does not ask a name
This chapter is full of doors.
The innkeeper’s door, the tavern’s door, the little window in the prison gate, the door of the father who took down his gun, the narrow mouth of the kennel. And the bishop’s door, held shut by a single latch.
Every closed door had its reason in front of it. The innkeeper asked the town hall and shut his door once he had the answer. The father of two small children heard that the man had been turned away from both inns and took down his gun in front of his wife and babies. The prison porter recited the rule as it stood.
Only the bishop’s door opened the other way.
It was not the first time he had not done what he was supposed to. He went to the valley of the old man the town called a monster, and the one who went there to reprove came back having knelt. And that evening, to the man at his own door, he did not even ask what he had done.
Taking the bolts off was the bishop’s decision alone. But three people sleep beside that door every night. That very evening Madame Magloire wanted to send for the locksmith, and Baptistine only said that whatever her brother did was right.
For forty chapters this series follows moments like this one. On one side there is a rule, and on the other there is the person in front of you. Someone chooses one, and someone pays for it.
Have you ever called someone by a certain name and watched their face change?