Part I, Book 1, Chapter 9
The Brother as Described by His Sister
Whoo, an epistolary chapter! Here Mademoiselle Baptistine, the bishop’s sister, has written a letter to her countess friend telling her about the bishop and their lives. It’s titled “The Brother as Described by His Sister” but I’d argue this chapter tells us more about Mademoiselle Baptistine herself, because there isn’t a lot of new information for the reader who has already made it through eight chapters about the bishop and how he lives.
The letter reveals Baptistine as a woman who adores her brother and has found contentment in their voluntary poverty. She describes how Madame Magloire has peeled away the years of whitewashed wallpaper in their rooms in the former hospital and discovered wall paintings underneath—they “would not now discredit a château like yours,” she says to her friend the aristocrat.
I briefly went back and forth on the emotional subtext of this line: is it sincere satisfaction, or is there some embarrassed defensiveness there from a woman who will never achieve her dream of having matching furniture? I landed on the former, based on her devotion to the bishop and her embracing of their lifestyle.
She goes on to describe the bishop as someone who does not fear danger—she mentions, as we learned in Chapter 6, how he does not lock any of the doors—and describes her relationship to her brother, which I realized is remarkably similar to my relationship with my cat.
Both Baptistine and I see our place in life as one of serving someone we love (for her: the bishop; for me: my cat), whose actions and motivations we may not fully understand, but which we support because we respect them and trust that they are serving a great purpose (for the bishop: God; for my cat: being a cat).
There is a dark aside that worries me a bit. In the middle of the letter Baptistine says, “if anything were to happen to him that would be the end of me. I would be on my way to the good Lord with my brother and my bishop.”
Hugo closes the chapter on a somewhat ominous note by reminding us of that line. “Baptistine used to say the death of her brother would be the death of her. Madame Magloire did not say so, but she knew it.”
I am very concerned!!! Mademoiselle Baptistine, are you going to be okay???
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