Les Miserables

mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes
overwhelm, by smiting to the heart, the man whom public disasters
could not shake, by aiming at life or fortune? No one could have
answered; all that was known was that when he returned from Italy he
was a priest.
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|I ^paragraph 5}
In 1804, M. Myriel was cure of B__ (Brignolles). He was then an
old man, and lived in the deepest seclusion.
Near the time of the coronation, a trifling matter of business
belonging to his curacy- what it was, is not now known precisely- took
him to Paris.
Among other personages of authority he went to Cardinal Fesch on
behalf of his parishioners.
One day, when the emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy
cure, who was waiting in the ante-room, happened to be on the way of
his Majesty. Napoleon noticing that the old man looked at him with a
certain curiousness, turned around and said brusquely:
"Who is this goodman who looks at me?"
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|I ^paragraph 10}
"Sire," said Myriel, "you behold a good man, and I a great man. Each
of us may profit by it."
That evening the emperor asked the cardinal the name of the cure,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was overwhelmed with surprise on
learning that he had been appointed Bishop of D__.
Beyond this, no one knew how much truth there was in the stories
which passed current concerning the first portion of M. Myriel's life.
But few families had known the Myriels before the revolution.
M. Myriel had to submit to the fate of every new-comer in a small
town, where there are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to
think. He had to submit, although he was bishop, and because he was
bishop. But after all, the gossip with which his name was connected,
was only gossip: noise, talk, words, less than words- palabres, as
they say in the forcible language of the South.

{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|I ^paragraph 15}
Be that as it may, after nine years of episcopacy, and of
residence in D__, all these stories, topics of talk, which engross
at first petty towns and petty people, were entirely forgotten. Nobody
would have dared to speak of, or even to remember them.
When M. Myriel came to D__ he was accompanied by an old lady,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, ten years younger than
himself.
Their only domestic was a woman of about the same age as
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was called Madame Magloire, and who,
after having been the servant of M. le cure, now took the double title
of femme de chambre of Mademoiselle and housekeeper of Monseigneur.
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|I ^paragraph 20}
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a tall, pale, thin, sweet person. She
fully realised the idea which is expressed by the word
"respectable;" for it seems as if it were necessary that a woman
should be a mother to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her
whole life, which had been but