At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death of M. Myriel, Bishop of D——, surnamed 'Monseigneur Bienvenu,' who had died in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.
The Bishop of D—— to supply here a detail which the papers omitted—had been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind, as his sister was beside him.
Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete.
To have continually at one’s side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one’s affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, 'Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart'; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one’s personal attraction; to feel one’s self all the more powerful because of one’s infirmity; to become in one’s obscurity, and through one’s obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this.
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one’s