It is often the case that the opening lines of a book set the keynote for the whole. Here, it is the Bishop of Digne who sets the spiritual keynote for Les Misérables.
A truly good man or woman is one of the most difficult characters for a writer to portray convincingly. Notice that in describing the bishop, Hugo does not simply tell us "This man is a saint." Instead, he introduces him to us gradually and lets us form our own conclusions. We learn first what people say about his past. Then we see him in action, giving away his palace and his income; and we hear him speak—simply and wisely to his parishioners, gaily to his sister, wittily to the great. In Chapters 5-9, we penetrate further into his private life and learn that he lives as unpretentiously in his bedroom as he does in public, and that his sister and servant love and revere him even more than his parishioners. To add more conviction still to this straightforward account, Hugo lets us read at firsthand the bishop's personal budget and his sister's letter to an old friend, and subjects him to two difficult tests: a test of courage with Cravatte, the thief, a test of charity with G., the conventionist. And when, finally, we are given a glimpse of his inner thoughts, we are not surprised at the radiance we find there.
Most of all, however, it is the touch of humor—even of the sardonic—which Hugo gives M. Myriel that makes him believable. The bishop is not above a bit of larceny in a good cause, nor is he free from personal and class prejudice. But he is constantly being changed by what he believes; his inner light changes his own personality as well as that of those around him.
The bishop is also important to Hugo as a social symbol. A man of the Old Regime, he has accepted his loss of privilege without bitterness, and though a student of the divine, he is not blind to the flaws in human law. In his sympathetic treatment of both the bishop and the conventionist G., and in showing that a reconciliation between them is possible, Hugo is indirectly urging his readers to put progress above party and to unite to lift from the poor the terrible burden that, more than eighty years after the Revolution, they are still suffering.
