Die Elenden

In the year 1815 the Bishop of Digne was an old man named Charles Myriel. He had come to the town nine years earlier, and the people of the poor mountain district had soon learned what kind of bishop he was. On his first day he walked through the great palace that belonged to his office, and then through the small, crowded hospital next door. He counted the beds in the hospital. He counted the rooms in the palace. The next morning the sick were carried into the palace, and the bishop moved into the little hospital building with his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, and their old servant, Madame Magloire.

He gave away most of his salary. He walked when other bishops rode, and he sat with the dying in villages where no priest had been seen for years. The rich of the town laughed at him a little. The poor called him Monseigneur Welcome, and he liked that name better than any other.