Part I, Book 1, Chapter 14
What He Thought
I’m just going to say it: thank goodness this is the last chapter of Book 1. These last few chapters, lovely as they are, have felt a little redundant, almost like Hugo is a high school student frantically padding out a paper, which he doesn’t need to do because this book is so huge I physically have trouble holding it when I’m reading in bed.
In the same way that Hugo really, really, really wants you to know that the bishop is “not political” (and you already know my thoughts about all that), this chapter is meant to explain to you that the bishop really truly isn’t a great thinker. It’s kind of like he’s retconning him into being a bit of a himbo.
Unlike other holy men, the bishop doesn’t extensively theorize or think terribly deeply about the meaning of life or do what people of my generation refer to as staring into the abyss. “Monseigneur Bienvenu was no genius.” He simply is. He’s just Ken.
So what does this man do, if he doesn’t philosophize or pontificate and you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learned about him in the previous 13 chapters? He loves, he prays, and he keenly feels the weight of all suffering.
“He was aware of fever everywhere, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and without seeking to understand the mystery he strove to dress the wound,” Hugo writes. I know at this point I have referenced Doug Forcett of The Good Place a lot and that’s the easy comp to make, but this description of the bishop makes me think of the origin story of the Buddha.
It also makes me think of the book Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar. In Strangers Drowning the author profiles a number of people, in history and the modern day, who feel empathy so strongly that they are unable to move on and live their own lives when they are made aware of any kind of suffering, and thus make life choices—like Doug Forcett (there it is)—that look extreme to others but make perfect sense in their own worldviews. I don’t know if there’s an official term for these hyper-empathetic people, but Bishop Myriel is 1000% one of them.
There is a peaceful simplicity, Hugo tells us, to the bishop’s worldview. He doesn’t question, he doesn’t probe; he has “in his soul a serious respect for the unknown.”
And with that line, we end Book 1.
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