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.
