Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Victor Hugo

bishop’s palace, and the bishop was in the hospital.
    M. Myriel had no property, his family having been impoverished by the revolution. His sister had a life income of five hundred francs which in the vicarage sufficed for her personal needs. M. Myriel received from the government as bishop a salary of fifteen thousand francs.
     
    Bishop Myriel receives a salary of 15,000 francs a year. Instead of tithing—giving 10 percent of his income to the poor—he gives them 90 percent, carefully accounted for in his household budget.
     
    Mademoiselle Baptistine accepted this arrangement with entire submission; for that saintly woman, M. Myriel was at once her brother and her bishop, her companion by ties of blood and her superior by ecclesiastical authority. She loved and venerated him unaffectedly; when he spoke, she obeyed; when he acted, she gave him her co-operation. Madame Magloire, however, their servant, grumbled a little. The bishop, as will be seen, had reserved but a thousand francs for himself; this, added to the income of Mademoiselle Baptistine, gave them a yearly independence of fifteen hundred francs, upon which the three old people subsisted.
    Thanks, however, to the rigid economy of Madame Magloire, and the excellent management of Mademoiselle Baptistine, whenever a curate came to D—, the bishop found means to extend to him his hospitality.
    About three months after the installation, the bishop said one day, “With all this money I have to scrimp a good deal.” “I think so too,” said Madame Magloire: “Monseigneur has not even asked for the sum due him by the department for his carriage expenses in town, and in his circuits in the diocese. It was formerly the custom with all bishops.”
    “Yes!” said the bishop; “you are right, Madame Magloire.”
    He made his application.
    Some time afterwards the conseil-général took his claim into consideration and voted him an annual stipend of three thousand francs under this head: “Allowance to the bishop for carriage expenses, and travelling expenses for pastoral visits.”
    The bourgeoisie of the town complained vociferously and a senator of the empire, formerly a member of the Council of Five Hundred, formerly in favor of the Eighteenth Brumaire and now provided with a rich senatorial seat near D—, wrote to M. Bigot de Préameneu, Minister of Public Worship, a fault-finding confidential epistle, 1 from which we make the following extract:—
    “Carriage expenses! What can he want it for in a town of fewer than 4000 inhabitants? Expenses of pastoral visits! And what good do they do, in the first place; and then, how is it possible to travel by post in this mountain region? There are no roads; he can go only on horseback. Even the bridge over the Durance at Château-Arnoux is scarcely passable for oxcarts. These priests are always so; greedy and miserly. This one played the good apostle at the outset: now he acts like the rest; he must have a carriage and post-chaise. He must have luxury like the former bishops. Bah! this whole priesthood! Monsieur le Comte, things will never be better till the emperor delivers us from these macaroni priests. Down with the pope! (Relations with Rome were becoming tense.) As for me, I am for Cæsar alone,” etc., etc., etc.
    This application, on the other hand, pleased Madame Magloire exceedingly. “Good,” said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; “Monseigneur began with others, but he has found at last that he must end by taking care of himself. He has arranged all his charities, and so now here are three thousand francs for us.”
     
    Bishop Myriel drafts and gives to his sister, who had hoped for a little more comfort, a budget for his “carriage expenses”: all of this extra money will be given to the poor.
     
    Such was the budget of M. Myriel.
    In regard to the official perquisites, payments for marriage licenses, dispensations, private baptisms, and preaching, consecrations of churches or chapels, marriages,