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

nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well now, when the father dies, in a family, the boys go away to seek their fortunes, and leave the property to the girls, so that they may get husbands.” In those cantons where people liked to sue each other, and where the farmers were ruining themselves paying for notarized documents, he would say, ”Look at those good peasants of the valley of Queyras. There are three thousand souls there. Why, it is like a little republic! Neither judge nor constable is known there. The mayor does everything. He taxes each one according to his judgment, resolves their disputes without charge, distributes their patrimony without fees, gives judgment without expense; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple-hearted men.” In the villages which he found without a schoolmaster, he would again refer to the valley of Queyras. ”Do you know how they do?” he would say. ”As a little district of twelve or fifteen houses cannot always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters that are paid by the whole valley, who go around from village to village, passing a week in this place, and ten days in that, and give instruction. These masters attend the fairs, where I have seen them. They are known by quills which they wear in their hatband. Those who teach only how to read have one quill; those who teach reading and arithmetic have two; and those who teach reading, arithmetic, and Latin, have three; the latter are esteemed great scholars. But what a shame to be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras.”
    In such fashion would he talk, gravely and paternally, in default of examples he would invent parables, going straight to his object, with few phrases and many images, which was the very eloquence of Jesus Christ, convincing and persuasive.

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    GOOD WORKS THAT MATCH THE WORDS
    His CONVERSATION was affable and pleasant. He adapted himself to the capacity of the two old women who lived with him, but when he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy.
    Madame Magloire usually called him Your Greatness. One day he rose from his armchair, and went to his library for a book. It was upon one of the upper shelves, and as the bishop was rather short, he could not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” said he, “bring me a chair. My greatness does not extend to this shelf.”
    When soliciting aid for any charity, he was not silenced by a refusal; he was at no loss for words that would set the hearers thinking. One day, he was receiving alms for the poor in a parlour in the city, where the Marquis of Champtercier, who was old, rich, and miserly, was present. The marquis managed to be, at the same time, an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairean, a species of which he was not the only representative. d The bishop coming to him in turn, touched his arm and said, “Monsieur le Marquis, you must give me something.” The marquis turned and answered drily, “Monseigneur, I have my own poor.” “Give them to me,” said the bishop.
    One day he preached this sermon in the cathedral:—
    “My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are in France thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasants’ cottages that have but three openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand that have two, the door and one window; and finally, three hundred and forty-six thousand cabins, with only one opening—the door. And this is in consequence of what is called the excise upon doors and windows. In these poor families, among the aged women and the little children, dwelling in these huts, how abundant is fever and disease? Alas! God gives light to men; the law sells it. I do not blame the law, but I bless God. In Isère, in Var, and in the Upper and the Lower Alps, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows, they carry the manure on their backs; they have no candles, but burn pine knots, and bits of rope soaked in pitch. And the same is the case all through the upper part of Dauphiné. They make bread once in six