Les Miserables - Part III, Fade from Bishop to Valjean

One of the best things about reading is that a book will sometimes articulate something that you've always felt but couldn't express. The end of Chapter XIII, What He Believed, I think does this for me. (I will need to read it a few more times.) It talks about the bishop's need to walk in his garden, under the stars, every night, or, as Hugo much more elegantly puts it, "to prepare himself for sleep by meditating in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament" (p. 54). When I was younger, I used to want to live in a lighthouse. More recently, my ideal has been to live in a little place in the country where I, like the bishop, can go outside every night to look at the stars. Because "[w]hat more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At [your] feet something to cultivate and gather; above [your] head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven" (p. 55).

I like this description of the bishop: "His humble soul loved, and that was enough" (p. 57).

I felt sad for Valjean as he struggled to find food and shelter. But I also wondered how I would have reacted if I had been someone whose door he knocked on. Or, more relevantly, what if a stranger came up to me today and asked for help? Or not a stranger?

The chapters describing Valjean's history and his weighing and judgment of society seem to be setting up major themes of the book - society's role in shaping the character of an individual, the flaws of that society and the reforms that need to be made. I guess I'll find out.