PREFACE
    So long as there
        shall exist,
           by virtue of law
               and custom,
         decrees of damnation
              pronounced by society,
           artificially creating hells
               amid the civilization of earth,
         and adding the element
               of human fate
              to divine destiny;
        so long
               as the three great problems
                   of the century
         -- the degradation of man
               through pauperism,
             the corruption of woman
                   through hunger,
             the crippling of children
                   through lack of light--
            are unsolved;
        so long as social asphyxia
            is possible
                   in any part
                       of the world;-
        -in other words,
           and with a
              still wider significance,
         so long
               as ignorance and poverty
              exist on earth,
           books of the nature
               of Les Miserables
            cannot fail
                  to be of use.

   HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.

 
  BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN

 
  CHAPTER I M. MYRIEL

    In 1815,
           M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel
            was Bishop of D
         ---- He
            was an old man of
                   about seventy-five years of age;
            he had occupied the
                  see of D
              --
           -- since 1806.

    Although this detail
        has no connection
         whatever with
               the real substance of
         what we
            are about to relate,
           it will not be superfluous,
         if merely
               for the sake of exactness
             in all points,
           to mention here
               the various rumors
             and remarks
              which had been in circulation
                   about him
                       from the very moment
             when he
                arrived in the diocese.

    True or false,
           that which
            is said of men often
                occupies as important a place
                       in their lives,
         and above all
               in their destinies,
           as that which they do.

    M. Myriel
        was the son
               of a councillor
             of the Parliament of Aix;
        hence he
            belonged to the nobility
                   of the bar.

    It was said
         that his father,
           destining him
              to be the heir
                   of his own post,
         had married him
               at a very early age,
           eighteen or twenty,
         in accordance with a custom
              which is
                   rather widely prevalent
                       in parliamentary families.

    In spite of this marriage,
           however,
         it was said
             that Charles Myriel
               created a great
                   deal of talk.

    He was well formed,
           though rather short in stature,
         elegant,
           graceful,
         intelligent;
        the whole
               of the first portion
             of his life
            had been
                  devoted to the world
                       and to gallantry.

    The Revolution came;
        events succeeded each other
               with precipitation;
        the parliamentary families,
           decimated,
         pursued,
           hunted down,
         were dispersed.

    M. Charles Myriel emigrated
           to Italy
         at the very
          beginning of the Revolution.

    There his wife
        died of a malady
               of the chest,
           from which
             she had long suffered.

    He had no children.

    What took place next
           in the fate
               of M. Myriel? The
          ruin of the French society
               of the olden days,
           the fall
               of his own family,
         the tragic spectacles of
           '93,
               which were,
             perhaps,
               even more
                  alarming to the emigrants
                 who viewed them
                       from a distance,
             with the magnifying
                   powers of terror,
              --did these cause the ideas
                   of renunciation
                 and solitude
                  to germinate in him?

    Was he,
           in the midst
               of these distractions,
         these affections
              which absorbed his life,
           suddenly smitten
               with one of those mysterious
                   and terrible blows
              which sometimes overwhelm,
         by striking to his heart,
           a man whom public catastrophes
            would not shake,
         by striking
               at his existence
                   and his fortune?

    No one could have told:
         all that was known was,
           that when
             he returned from Italy
               he was a priest.

    In 1804,