Bishop Myriel

In 1815, His Reverence Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was bishop of D——.

One day someone knocked at the door of the episcopal residence.

“Enter,” the bishop responded.

The door opened at once, flung wide open, as though someone had pushed it from outside with all his strength.

A man entered, took a step forward, and stopped without closing the door behind him. He had a knapsack on his shoulders and a stick in his hand. His face was bold, angry, weary, and coarse. The fire in the hearth lit him up.

The bishop looked calmly at the man who had entered. He had just opened his mouth to ask what he wanted when the visitor, leaning on his stick with both hands and surveying the old man with his eyes, began to speak:

“Here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict. Nineteen years I spent in the galleys. Four days ago I was released, and now I am going to Pontarlier, where I have been assigned. Four days I have been walking from Toulon. Today I walked thirty versts. At the inn here they threw me out because of my yellow passport. I went to another inn, and there too they would not have me. ‘Get out!’ they said. I went to the prison—the guard would not let me in. I went to a dog’s kennel—the dog bit me and drove me away, as though it too were a person, as though it too knew who I was. I wanted to sleep in the field—but it was dark; I thought it would rain, and I came back to town to lie down somewhere under a gateway. I was just about to lie down to sleep on a stone bench when some old woman pointed to your door and said: ‘Knock there!’ So I knocked. What is this place? An inn? I have money—one hundred nine francs—earned on the galleys. I will pay. There’s money. I’m tired—I’ve walked thirty versts, after all—and I’m hungry. Well, may I stay?”

“Madame Magloire,” said the bishop to his servant, “put another place at the table.”

The traveler took three steps forward and moved toward the lamp standing on the table.

“Listen,” he said, as though he had not quite understood the order. “You heard that I’m a convict? Straight from the galleys.”—He took from his pocket and unfolded a yellow sheet.—“Here is my passport. Yellow—see. Because of it I’m driven out everywhere. Do you want to read it? I can read; I learned on the galleys. There’s a school there for those who want it. Look what’s written: ‘Jean Valjean, released convict, native of’—that’s all the same to you. ‘Spent nineteen years on the galleys. Five years for burglary; fourteen for four attempts to escape. Very dangerous.’ That’s why everyone drives me away; but will you let me in? Or don’t you have a stable?”

“Madame Magloire, put clean linen on the bed in the alcove.”

Madame Magloire went to carry out the order. The bishop turned to the visitor.

“Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We shall soon have supper; during supper your bed will be prepared.”

The traveler evidently understood. His expression, gloomy and harsh, changed to one of surprise, distrust, and joy, and he began to mumble like a man thrown off balance:

“Is that so? Just look at that! So I may stay? You don’t drive me away! A convict! You call me ‘sir.’ You say ‘you’ and not ‘thou’! You don’t say: ‘Get out, dog!’ as everyone said to me. I was expecting you to push me out. That’s why I told you right away who I was. But you invite me to supper and to a bed with linen, like anyone! Nineteen years I haven’t slept in a bed! Good people you are! Excuse me, Mr. Innkeeper, what is your name? I’ll pay whatever you ask. You’re an honest man. You’re an innkeeper, aren’t you?”

“I am a priest,” the bishop answered.

“A priest!” the convict exclaimed. “You must be the priest of that big church? Really, I must be a fool not to have noticed your skullcap.”

As he spoke, he put his knapsack and stick in the corner, put his passport in his pocket, and sat down.

While he was speaking, the bishop rose and closed the door that had been left open.

Madame Magloire returned. She brought another place setting and put it on the table.

“Madame Magloire,” said the bishop, “put the place setting closer to the fire,” and, turning to his guest, he added: “The night wind is cold in the Alps. You must be frozen, sir?”

Every time he pronounced the word “sir” in his serious, gentle voice, the convict’s face beamed.

To call a convict “sir” is the same as giving a glass of water to one who thirsts. Degradation thirsts for respect.

“How dimly this lamp burns!” remarked the bishop.

Madame Magloire understood and went to the bishop’s bedroom for the silver candlesticks, which she brought with lighted candles and placed on the table. She knew that the bishop liked to have them lit when he had guests.

“You are kind,” said the convict. “You do not despise me. You have received me. I did not hide from you where I come from and who I am.”

The bishop gently took the convict’s hand: “You need not have told me who you are. This house is not mine but God’s. This door does not ask the one who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You are suffering; you are tormented by hunger and thirst; welcome, come in. I do not receive you into my house; the master here is the one who needs shelter. All that is here is yours. Why should I know your name? Before you told me, I already knew what to call you.”

The guest looked at him with surprise.

“Really? You knew my name?”

“Yes,” replied the bishop, “I knew that your name is—my brother.”

“Yes, I was hungry when I came in here,” said the guest, “but you have so astonished me that my hunger has passed!”

The bishop looked at him and asked:

“You have suffered much?”

“Ah, the red jacket, a cannonball chained to my leg, a plank for a bed, cold, heat, labor, blows with a stick, double chains for every trifle, solitary confinement for a word of reply, and chains even in bed, even in the hospital. Dogs, dogs are happier! And this for nineteen years. Now I’m forty-six years old. Go and live with a yellow passport!”

“Yes,” said the bishop, “you have come from a place of sorrow. But listen: there will be more joy in heaven over the tear-stained face of a repentant sinner than over the unstained robe of a hundred righteous men. If you have brought out of that abode of suffering malice and hatred against men, you are worthy of pity; but if you have brought feelings of gentleness, peace, and forbearance—you are better than all of us.”

Meanwhile Madame Magloire had brought supper.

The bishop’s face suddenly took on the cheerful expression of a hospitable host.

“Please come to the table,” he said with the animation with which he usually invited guests to sit down.

The bishop said grace and then served the soup. The guest eagerly began to eat.

“It seems to me that something is lacking on the table,” the bishop said suddenly.

Indeed, Madame Magloire had set out only three place settings. Meanwhile it was the custom to place all six silver settings on the table when anyone from outside dined with them.

Madame Magloire understood the hint, silently left, and a moment later the settings the bishop had called for were already gleaming on the tablecloth, symmetrically arranged before each person at the table.

After supper the bishop took one of the silver candlesticks from the table, gave the other to his guest, and said:

“I will show you to your room.”

The convict followed him. At the moment when they passed through the bedroom, Madame Magloire was putting away the silver in a wall cupboard above the head of the bishop’s bed. She did this every evening before going to bed.

The bishop led his guest to the alcove, where a clean bed had been prepared, put the candlestick on a small table, and, wishing him a peaceful night, withdrew.

When the cathedral clock struck two, Jean Valjean awoke.

What woke him was that the bed was too soft. For twenty years he had not slept in a good bed, and although he had lain down without undressing, the unfamiliar sensation prevented him from sleeping soundly. Many different thoughts came into his head, but one kept returning and crowding out the others: he had noticed the six silver settings and the large soup ladle that Madame Magloire had put on the table. These settings gave him no peace. They were there, a few steps away from him. As he had passed through the bedroom, he had seen the old servant putting them away in the cupboard above the head of the bed. He had noted the cupboard well. It was on the right as you came out of the dining room. The settings were massive, of old silver; if sold, he could get twice as much for them as he had earned in his nineteen years on the galleys.

He spent a whole hour in hesitation and struggle.

Three o’clock struck. He opened his eyes, raised himself in bed, stretched out his arms and felt for the knapsack he had thrown into the corner of the alcove, then lowered his feet and sat up.

He remained for several minutes lost in thought in this position, then rose to his feet and stood a few more minutes in indecision, listening: all was quiet in the house. Then he thrust his shoes into his pocket, tightened the straps of his knapsack and put it on his shoulders. Holding his breath and stepping cautiously, he made his way toward the adjoining room, which served as the bishop’s bedroom. The bedroom door was ajar: the bishop had not even locked it behind him. Jean Valjean pulled his cap down over his forehead and walked quickly past the bishop without looking at him, straight to the cupboard. The key was in the door; he opened it. The first thing that caught his eye was the basket of silver; he took it, walked quickly across the room without any precautions and without paying attention to the noise he made, reached the window, seized his stick, stepped over the windowsill, thrust the silver into his knapsack, and, quickly crossing the garden, climbed over the fence and disappeared.

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The next day, at sunrise, the bishop was walking in his garden.

Madame Magloire came running to him in alarm.

“Your Reverence! He has left and taken our silver! Look, he climbed over here!”

The bishop stood silent for a moment, then, raising his thoughtful eyes, said gently:

“First of all, we must ask whether this silver was really ours? I have long wrongly kept it in my possession; it belongs to the poor. And this man is poor.”

A little later the bishop sat down to breakfast at the same table at which Jean Valjean had sat the evening before.

He was just about to rise from the table when there came a knock at the door.

“Enter,” the bishop responded.

The door opened. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three were gendarmes; the fourth was Jean Valjean.

The bishop came toward them with all the liveliness his advanced age permitted.

“Ah, it’s you!” he said, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am very glad to see you. But listen, I gave you the candlesticks too—they are silver, like all the rest. Why didn’t you take them along with the settings?”

Jean Valjean raised his eyes and looked at the bishop with an expression that no human tongue can convey.

“So this man was telling the truth, Your Reverence?” asked one of the gendarmes. “We met him; he looked like a fugitive. We stopped him, searched him, and found the silver…”

“And he told you,” said the bishop, smiling, “that an old priest had given it to him, after putting him up for the night? And you brought him here? It is a misunderstanding.”

“So we may let him go?”

“Without a doubt,” replied the bishop.

The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who drew back.

“Is it true that I am being released?” he said soundlessly, as people speak in their sleep.

“Yes, you are being released; don’t you hear?” said one of the gendarmes.

“My friend,” the bishop addressed him, “before you go, take your candlesticks. Here they are.”

He went to the mantelpiece, took the silver candlesticks, and handed them to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean was trembling all over. He took the candlesticks mechanically and looked at them in bewilderment.

“Go in peace!” said the bishop. “By the way, my friend, when you come again, it is unnecessary to go through the garden. You may always come and go through the street door. Day and night it is fastened only with a latch.”

Then, turning to the gendarmes, he added:

“Gentlemen, you may go.”

The gendarmes withdrew. Jean Valjean felt that he was near fainting.

The bishop came up to him and said in a whisper:

“Do not forget, never forget your promise: you gave your word to use this money to become an honest man.”

Jean Valjean, who did not remember any promise, was confused. The bishop had pronounced these words with special emphasis. He continued solemnly:

“Jean Valjean, my brother, henceforth you cease to belong to evil and enter the domain of good. I have bought your soul. I cast out from it the spirit of darkness and give it to God.”

—Victor Hugo

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Translator’s Notes:

• This excerpt comprises the most famous scene from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). Bishop Myriel (based on the real Bishop of Digne, Bienvenu de Miollis) represents Hugo’s vision of Christian charity as transformative grace.
• The exchange where the bishop says “I already knew what to call you… my brother” is central to Hugo’s theology of universal human dignity—and to Tolstoy’s own religious philosophy of the brotherhood of all people.
• Jean Valjean was originally sentenced to five years for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister’s family; the additional fourteen years were added for escape attempts. His “yellow passport” marked him as an ex-convict, making it nearly impossible to find work or lodging.
• The bishop’s statement that “this silver was never really ours” and “belongs to the poor” reflects both Hugo’s and Tolstoy’s views on property. The bishop earlier (in sections not included here) gave away most of his income to the poor and lived simply.
• The final speech—“I have bought your soul… I cast out from it the spirit of darkness”—becomes the moral foundation for Valjean’s transformation. Throughout the novel, he keeps the candlesticks as a reminder of the bishop’s redemptive act.
• Tolstoy’s admiration for Hugo was deep; he considered Les Misérables among the greatest novels and often cited its moral vision. This scene exemplifies the power of non-judgmental love that Tolstoy saw as the essence of Christianity.