ion, M. Myriel
was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy
convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and assembled
for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency
of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who
attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four
private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close
to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported
among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of
the assembly. He very soon returned to D---- He was interrogated as to
this speedy return, and he replied: "I embarrassed them. The outside air
penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open
door."

On another occasion he said, "What would you have? Those gentlemen are
princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop."

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is
said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at
the house of one of his most notable colleagues: "What beautiful clocks!
What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great
trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly
in my ears: 'There are people who are hungry! There are people who are
cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!'"

Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an
intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.
Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with
representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have
very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a
contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come
in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these
misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a
little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine
a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is
working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened
nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first
proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.

This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D---- thought.

It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the "ideas
of the century" on cer