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Les Misérables - M. Madeleine in Mourning

1. M. Myriel

2. M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome

3. A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop

4. Works corresponding to Words

5. Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long

6. Who guarded his House for him

7. Cravatte

8. Philosophy after Drinking

9. The Brother as depicted by the Sister

10. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light

11. A Restriction

12. The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome

13. What he believed

14. What he thought

15. The Evening of a Day of Walking

16. Prudence counselled to Wisdom

17. The Heroism of Passive Obedience

18. Details concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier

19. Tranquillity

20. Jean Valjean

21. The Interior of Despair

22. Billows and Shadows

23. New Troubles

24. The Man aroused

25. What he does

26. The Bishop works

27. Little Gervais

28. The Year 1817

29. A Double Quartette

30. Four and Four

31. Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty

32. At Bombardas

33. A Chapter in which they adore Each Other

34. The Wisdom of Tholomyes

35. The Death of a Horse

36. A Merry End to Mirth

37. One Mother meets Another Mother

38. First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures

39. The Lark

40. The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets

41. Madeleine

42. Sums deposited with Laffitte

43. M. Madeleine in Mourning

44. Vague Flashes on the Horizon

45. Father Fauchelevent

46. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris

47. Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality

48. Madame Victurnien's Success

49. Result of the Success

50. Christus nos Liberavit

51. M. Bamatabois's Inactivity

52. The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police

53. The Beginning of Repose

54. How Jean may become Champ

55. Sister Simplice

56. The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire

57. A Tempest in a Skull

58. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep

59. Hindrances

60. Sister Simplice put to the Proof

61. The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions for Departure

62. An Entrance by Favor

63. A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation

64. The System of Denials

65. Champmathieu more and more Astonished

66. In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair

67. Fantine Happy

68. Javert Satisfied

69. Authority reasserts its Rights

70. A Suitable Tomb

71. What is met with on the Way from Nivelles

72. Hougomont

73. The Eighteenth of June, 1815

74. A

75. The Quid Obscurum of Battles

76. Four o'clock in the Afternoon

77. Napoleon in a Good Humor

78. The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste

79. The Unexpected

80. The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean

81. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow

82. The Guard

83. The Catastrophe

84. The Last Square

85. Cambronne

86. Quot Libras in Duce?

87. Is Waterloo to be considered Good?

88. A Recrudescence of Divine Right

89. The Battle-Field at Night

90. Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430

91. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly

92. The Ankle-Chain must have undergone a Certain Preparatory Manipulation to be thus broken with a Blow from a Hammer

93. The Water Question at Montfermeil

94. Two Complete Portraits

95. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water

96. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll

97. The Little One All Alone

98. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence

99. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark

100. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man

101. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres

102. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse

103. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery

104. Master Gorbeau

105. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler

106. Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune

107. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant

108. A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult

109. The Zigzags of Strategy

110. It Is Lucky That the Pont D'Austerlitz Bears Carriages

111. To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727

112. The Gropings of Flight

113. Which Would be Impossible With Gas Lanterns

114. The Beginning of an Enigma

115. Continuation of the Enigma

116. The Enigma Becomes Doubly Mysterious

117. The Man with the Bell

118. Which Explains How Javert Got on the Scent

119. Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus

120. The Obedience of Martin Verga

121. Austerities

122. Gayeties

123. Distractions

124. The Little Convent

125. Some Silhouettes of this Darkness

126. Post Corda Lapides

127. A Century under a Guimpe

128. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration

129. End of the Petit-Picpus

130. The Convent as an Abstract Idea

131. The Convent as an Historical Fact

132. On What Conditions One can respect the Past

133. The Convent from the Point of View of Principles

134. Prayer

135. The Absolute Goodness of Prayer

136. Precautions to be observed in Blame

137. Faith, Law

138. Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent

139. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty

140. Mother Innocente

141. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read Austin Castillejo

142. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal

143. Between Four Planks

144. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don't lose the Card

145. A Successful Interrogatory

146. Cloistered







At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death
of M. Myriel, Bishop of D----, surnamed "Monseigneur Bienvenu,"
who had died in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.

The Bishop of D---- --to supply here a detail which the papers omitted--
had been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind,
as his sister was beside him.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is,
in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness
upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at
one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is
there because you need her and because she cannot do without you;
to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us;
to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount
of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves,
"Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I
possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu
of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid
the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound
of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing,
and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech;
to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel
one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity;
to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star
around which this angel gravitates,--few felicities equal this.
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one
is loved; loved for one's own sake--let us say rather, loved in
spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses.
To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything?
No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love!
A love wholly constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where
there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it.
And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you;
it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth:
you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything
of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have
that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed,
to touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take
it in one's arms,--God made tangible,--what bliss! The heart,
that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming.
One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness!
The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs,
it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears
like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is there.
One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a
radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares.
Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable
accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying
the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul.
One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise
of shadows.

It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed
to the other.

The announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal
of M. sur M. On the following day, M. Madeleine appeared clad
wholly in black, and with crape on his hat.

This mourning was noticed in the town, and commented on. It seemed
to throw a light on M. Madeleine's origin. It was concluded that some
relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. "He has
gone into mourning for the Bishop of D----" said the drawing-rooms;
this raised M. Madeleine's credit greatly, and procured for him,
instantly and at one blow, a certain consideration in the noble
world of M. sur M. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the
place meditated raising the quarantine against M. Madeleine,
the probable relative of a bishop. M. Madeleine perceived the
advancement which he had obtained, by the more numerous courtesies
of the old women and the more plentiful smiles of the young ones.
One evening, a ruler in that petty great world, who was curious
by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, "M. le Maire is doubtless
a cousin of the late Bishop of D----?"

He said, "No, Madame."

"But," resumed the dowager, "you are wearing mourning for him."

He replied, "It is because I was a servant in his family in my youth."

Another thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he
encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the
country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned,
inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told
each other about it: a great many of them passed that way.




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