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It happened late one evening in the winter of 1790 that, when Monsieur le curé of Brignolles returned from visiting an elderly woman in the town, he found a young boy shivering beneath the finest rosebush in his garden, his face buried in his arms. While the winter had not been particularly cold, the boy's clothing was older even than the curé's own well-worn cassock and threadbare with use, though not quite ragged, and from what the curé could make of him beneath the shadow of branch and stem, he seemed quite small and rather thin.
As the curé opened his gate, the hinges squeaked quietly; at the sound the boy leapt up as if stung, his eyes wide and wild in a rather remarkable face. He was perhaps ten years old, the curé thought, and yet he looked older; his face had a grim, houndlike cast with thick eyebrows and a stubborn chin, all of it set in the expression of one who has long been beaten away from hearths and rooted out of barns and expects nothing more. It was an expression that Monsieur le curé was unfortunately familiar with, though not usually in boys so young.
He closed the gate carefully behind him, then turned back to the boy and smiled. It was an honest smile, as his always were, no less full of compassion and warmth for the boy's wariness or his poverty. "Peace," he said, as the boy looked warily at him and seemed ready enough to back into the thorny arms of the rosebush. "You are welcome here, my son, though perhaps you might prefer to come inside."
"Inside?" the boy said. His voice was high and scratched; it sounded not unlike the shriek of the gate-hinges, but monsieur Myriel - for it was he - kept the concern from his face and held his expression of dignity and respect, sensing that a boy who would shelter beneath a bush rather than knock at the door and risk being rejected held no small amount of pride.
"Yes," M. Myriel said. "I would appreciate your company as I take tea, if you would give it." He proceeded up the path to his own door without setting foot into the garden. There was silence from behind him for a brief moment as he opened the door; then there were quick, even footsteps, and the boy followed him into the the warmth without further protest.
M. Myriel's housekeeper, Madame Magloire, was a redoubtable woman; despite the curacy's tiny budget, she managed the household well: the fire was warm and the teapot set out awaiting Monsieur le curé's return, despite the hour, still steamed with life. As Mme Magloire and their other guest had already taken to their beds, there was only one teacup set; M. Myriel poured it full, then quietly added a lump of sugar and placed the cup at the head of the table.
The boy had lingered behind in the doorway, as if uncertain; his eyes darted about the spartan room with concerned interest before settling on the curé and his teacup. During this short time, M. Myriel took a second look at him in the brighter light cast by the fireplace and the candles. There had been no secrets hidden in the twilight, he saw; the boy was slight and worn but neat and orderly, his clothing mended with a fair hand, his short queue smoothed back with care.
"Please drink," M. Myriel said, touching the chair at the head of the table. "I will find another cup and then we may sit together." Without waiting to see if the boy would follow his direction he turned and went to the kitchen.
When he returned with a second teacup and a small plate of bread - for boys were always hungry, and boys with that look doubly so - the boy was standing at the table beside the chair, holding the cup with extreme caution, as if he was afraid it might shatter at any minute. M. Myriel smiled at him and set the bread down, then sat at the side of his table. "It seemed to me," he said, "that a little bread with our tea on a night like this would not go amiss."
Once he had sat down the boy sat as well, perching at the edge of the chair, his thin hands wrapped about the cup. "Yes, Monsieur le curé," he said, though he did not make a move to take any.
M. Myriel poured his cup full and took a small sip, then took a piece of bread for himself. "Please eat with me, my son," he said, his voice firm yet gentle.
The boy set the cup down in its saucer and took up a slice of bread, though not without another hesitating glance at him. When he did not gainsay his request, the boy ate: not with the ravening hunger of a starving child, as M. Myriel had half-imagined he would, but with slow, disciplined, precise bites, one after another, until he had finished it entirely. He swallowed around the last mouthful, nodded his head in an awkward little half-bow, and said, "Thank you, monsieur le curé," before warming his hands at his teacup again.
M. Myriel took a thoughtful bite of his own slice, more for the boy's sake than his own, and waited a moment longer before speaking. "Have another, if you would like," he said. "I think perhaps I cut too many slices, and I would not like good bread to stale and go to waste for my mistake."
By the time he had finished three slices - each of which he ate with the same slow, grave dignity as the first - he had begun to slump a little bit in his chair, exhaustion clearly creeping up on him now that hunger and cold had been tamed. When his forearms struck the table, he sat straight up with a little gasp, his eyes flying wide open again.
M. Myriel hid his smile in his teacup as he drained it, then composed himself and set it down. Glancing at the clock over the mantle, he sighed. "I see it is getting late," he said - and truly he was beginning to feel tired himself, for he had covered a long road that day and the night before had been a late one, consumed with ministering to the poor man who had taken sanctuary in his guest bedroom. "I fear I have only a cot to offer you, and a shared room, if you do not mind it."
The boy paused again, a hint of something strange in his expression, his lips parted as if to speak; then his eyes flickered from M. Myriel's face to the collar at his throat, his face cleared, and he gave his jerking little nod again. "Thank you, monsieur le curé."
By candlelight M. Myriel led the boy to the spare room, where poor father Brevet was sleeping soundly, his tired snores nearly enough to shake the blankets from the bed; still no doubt it would shelter the boy better than a rosebush. He slid the small trundle cot from beneath the bed and pulled it across the room without waking the older man and settled the boy into it with an extra blanket and a quiet prayer between them, then quietly cleared the table of the remnants of tea and bread and took to his own bed.
The next morning after mass he discovered that Mme Magloire had set only two plates for breakfast; frowning, he moved towards the kitchen, then checked his steps and returned to the guest room. Brevet was still abed, half-buried in the covers with his long tanned arm hanging bare out the side, but the small trundle was empty; the sheets were neatly made and the blanket folded atop it, but the boy had gone.
With a sigh, M. Myriel turned back, tapping at the door lightly to wake Brevet for breakfast, and returned to the table, where Mme Magloire had brought out the rye and milk, and, owing to the guest, a bit of butter.
Some few minutes later, just as they had begun to eat, there was a great, officious pounding at the door. Mme Magloire let out an alarmed little gasp and nearly dropped the carafe of milk; M. Myriel set down his bread and stood. "I will see to it," he told her, and crossed to the door.
Outside there stood two policemen, nightsticks in hand and irons at their waists; he looked at them a moment in confusion before one cleared his throat.
"Monsieur le curé," he said, his tone at once officious and nervous, "We -- we have information that you are - that there is a dangerous escaped convict taking shelter here."
"What--" M. Myriel said, but he got no further before a great crash sounded from behind him - the policeman's voice having carried quite clearly over his shoulder - and he was half-pushed aside as they burst past him and into the house. The table was overturned, the milk and glass shattered across the floor; Mme Magloire was huddled in the corner, hands over her mouth; the door to the garden was standing open; Brevet had fled.
The policemen ran through it; M. Myriel turned instead to Mme Magloire.
"We might have been killed in our beds," she whispered.
"No," he said gently, taking her hand and pressing it to calm her. "No; I do not think so. He was my brother, as every man is my brother; and what cause has my brother to harm me?"
And yet there would be trouble from it, he feared, though he did not say it, whether the old man was recaptured or not - for it was true that he had given him shelter. It was true that he had not known; and it was also true that, had he known, he would have done for him what he could by Christ's law and not the King's.
It happened late one evening in the fall of 1815 that Monseigneur the Bishop of Digne was at dinner when a knock came at his door; his housekeeper opened it and then shut it again in a hurry. When she returned, he set down his glass of claret and raised an eyebrow. "Who is it at this time of night?" he asked.
His fine Parisian accent had not changed in the past nine years and it took her a moment to understand him. "A beggar, Monseigneur Delacroix," she said, once she had; "a dirty old convict."
"I see," said Monseigneur the Bishop, with a frown of distaste. He refilled his glass and thought no more of the issue until the next morning, when he woke to discover that during the night the house had been broken and all his fine jewelry stolen.
The thief was caught; beneath the Bishop's wrath and the weight of his yellow papers he was sentenced to the green cap, though despite his strength he did not wear it for many years longer.
It happened late one evening in the winter of 1823 that a young woman coughed out the last of her life alone on the floor of a prison cell. The letters that reached her residence after that were collected by her neighbor for a month or so, at which point they had grown so many that she bundled them up and spent a sou in her memory to have the public writer make a note and have them all sent back. It was meant as a kindness; it was received as a blow.
Not long after, with no money coming in on her account and the threat of three useless mouths to feed besides, a young girl found herself alone, hungry, and desperate on the streets; her clothes in rags, her hair tangled, her feet bare and her pockets empty. She wandered until she found work; she swept, she sold papers, she sold matches; in a few years she sold herself, and the dreams of castles and dolls she had once held bright became phantoms no brighter or more solid than the dreams of a mother's love.
And it happened, early one morning in the summer of 1832, that the boy - now grown to a man - found himself staring into the face of another priest; he recognized the same holy devotion, though saw it twisted to chaos and rebellion instead of holy law; he saw Satan given form, and he held himself as straight as he could within the confines of the ropes, unafraid as he had ever and always been.
"Your time is up and your friends have thrown away your only ransom," Enjolras said; his voice was steady, though his jacket was stained with blood and his face singed with powder; he lifted his pistol and aimed it. "You have had much longer than a minute's rest; have you any final prayers?"
He did not bother to look at the gun; it would not misfire, that much was obvious. He smiled instead, the same resolute and disdainful smile with which he had confronted Enjolras before, and said: "No."