Les Miserables

return he dined. His dinner was like his breakfast.
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|V ^paragraph 10}
At half-past eight in the evening he took supper with his sister,
Madame Magloire standing behind them and waiting on the table. Nothing
could be more frugal than this meal. If, however, the bishop had one
of his cures to supper, Madame Magloire improved the occasion to serve
her master with some excellent fish from the lakes, or some fine
game from the mountain. Every cure was a pretext for a fine meal;
the bishop did not interfere. With these exceptions, there was
rarely seen upon his table more than boiled vegetables, or bread
warmed with oil. And so it came to be a saying in the city, "When
the bishop does not entertain a cure, he entertains a Trappist."
After supper he would chat for half an hour with Mademoiselle
Baptistine and Madame Magloire, and then go to his own room and write,
sometimes upon loose sheets, sometimes on the margin of one of his
folios. He was a well-read and even a learned man. He has left five or
six very curious manuscripts behind him; among them is a
dissertation upon this passage in Genesis: In the beginning the
spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. He contrasts this
with three other versions; the Arabic, which has: the winds of God
blew; Flavius Josephus, who says: a wind from on high fell upon
all the earth; and finally the Chaldean paraphrase of Onkelos,
which reads: a wind coming from God blew upon the face of the
waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological work
of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais, a distant relative of the writer of this
book, and proves that sundry little tracts, published in the last
century under the pseudonym of Barleycourt, should be attributed to
that prelate.
Sometimes in the midst of his reading, no matter what book he
might have in his hands, he would suddenly fall into deep
meditation, and when it was over, would write a few lines on
whatever page was open before him. These lines often have no
connection with the book in which they are written. We have under
our own eyes a note written by him upon the margin of a quarto
volume entitled: "Correspondance du Lord Germain avec les gereraux
Clinton, Cornwallis, et les amiraux de la Station de l'Amerique. A
Versailles, chez Poincot, Libraire, et a Paris, chez Pissot, Quai
des Augustins."
And this is the note:
"Oh Thou who art!
{FANTINE|BOOK_1ST|V ^paragraph 15}
"Ecclesiastes names thee the Almighty; Maccabees names thee Creator;
the Epistle to the Ephesians names thee Liberty; Baruch names thee
Immensity; the Psalms name thee Wisdom and Truth; John names thee
Light; the book of Kings names thee Lord; Exodus calls thee
Providence; Leviticus, Holiness; Esdras, Justice; Creation calls
thee God; man names thee Father; but Solomon names thee Compassion,
and that is the most beautiful of all thy names."
Towards nine o'clock in the evening