Bishop Myriel — Alfred J. Garrotto

All fans of Les Miserables and Victor Hugo will enjoy BISHOP MYRIEL: IN HIS OWN WORDS. This is the touching story of the man in Hugo's novel whose wisdom and kindness changed parolee Jean Valjean’s life. With these immortal words the Bishop set Valjean on an exemplary course of generous love and compassionate living: “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”Few Les Miz fans know that Bishop Myriel is the first character to appear in the 1862 classic novel. Or, that Hugo devoted the novel’s first 90 pages to this backwater priest. In telling the bishop’s story, Hugo reveals that it was the bishop’s intent to write a book on the topic of Christian duty. He provides a detailed outline of the book, along with the fact that the bishop never not got to write the book.In BISHOP MYRIEL, I have taken the liberty of “channeling” the bishop and writing his book, as he might have . . . in “his own” words.The Bishop “had his own way of looking at things. I think he derived it from the Gospel.”— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables