Les Miserables

he would again hold up 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 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."
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|III ^paragraph 5}
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.

{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|IV
IV
WORKS ANSWERING 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 school-boy.
Madame Magloire usually called him Your Greatness. One day he rose
from his arm-chair, 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."
One of his distant relatives, the Countess of Lo, rarely let an
occasion escape of enumerating in his presence what she called "the
expectations" of her three sons. She had several relatives, very old
and near their death, of whom her sons were the legal heirs. The
youngest of the three was to receive from a great-aunt a hundred
thousand livres in the funds; the second was to take the title of duke
from his uncle; the eldest would succeed to the peerage of his
grandfather. The bishop commonly listened in silence to these innocent
and pardonable maternal displays. Once, however, he appeared more
dreamy than was his custom, while Madame de Lo rehearsed the detail of
all these successions and all these "expectations." Stopping suddenly,
with some impatience, she exclaimed, "My goodness, cousin, what are
you thinking about?" "I am thinking," said the bishop, "of a strange
thing which is, I believe, in St. Augustine: 'Place your
expectations on him to whom there is no succession!'"
On another occasion, when he received a letter announcing the
decease of a gentleman of the country, in which were detailed, at
great length, not only the dignities of the departed, but the feudal
and titular honours of all his relatives, he exclaimed: "What a
broad back has death! What a wondrous load of titles will he
cheerfully carry and what hardihood must men