Part I, Book 1, Chapter 3
For a Good Bishop, a Demanding Bishopric
This was a short chapter—not even two full pages—and it’s a bit of a thematic character study more than it is plot-advancing exposition.
It will come as no surprise to the reader, after Chapter 2, that even though the bishop gave away 100% of his transportation stipend, he still makes pastoral visits. Since he essentially has a 0 franc budget for making fairly arduous journeys, he goes on foot, by cart, or by donkey, rather than taking the carriage that the district has technically paid him for.
I was trying to think of what the modern equivalent of this would be, and I guess it would be like if your job as a public figure paid for you to be ferried around in a black car by a private driver, and you donated that stipend and just went around on a little kick scooter.
There’s a lil story about how he makes the journey to one village riding a donkey and the townspeople start laughing when he arrives. First of all, how dare you laugh at this wonderful man! Second, donkeys are adorable!
Our dear bishop pretends to misunderstand the reaction and goes, “Oh yes, you all think I’m being an arrogant weirdo for using the same mode of transport as a guy named Jesus Christ, huh?”
You show them, Mr. Welcome! I bet the villagers all felt like assholes afterward.
(If it were anyone else this might have the vibe of “[sits on a chair backwards] You know who else came into town riding a donkey?” but I think we can all agree our sweet bishop is both good-hearted and sassy enough to have pulled it off.)
Also, as an aside, the bishop begins his statement with “Monsieur le maire,” and it was absolutely impossible for my brain to not immediately follow that up with “YOU WEAR A DIFFERENT CHAAAAIN” in Javert’s voice.
Anyway, the bishop attends to all the different ills of different villages, and instead of lecturing each village about what they’re doing wrong, he tells them what other villages are doing right and uses them as examples. Ahhh, it’s the ol’ “pointing to the model student and going ‘Why aren’t you more like them’” move. As a lifelong model student and teacher’s pet I am very familiar with that teaching method and it totally didn’t make the other kids resentful of me, thus spurring me to be even more unimpeachably perfect, at all.
This little chapter left me with the conclusion that our bishop is kind of a passive-aggressive king.
Introducing the Cat Name Catalog
Before I sign off for the day, I wanted to alert you to a new page I just set up on this blog, The Cat Name Catalog. In having Serious Literary Discussions with Kyra Davies, we repeatedly landed on the fact that a lot of names in this book would make great names for cats. So I’m now keeping a running list of Les Mis cat names, because I am a very scholarly person.
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