Page 278 - les-miserables

tionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.’
He created at his own expense an infant school, a thing then
almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old and
infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quar-
ter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose
rapidly around him; he established there a free dispensary.
At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls
said, ‘He’s a jolly fellow who means to get rich.’ When they
saw him enriching the country before he enriched himself,
the good souls said, ‘He is an ambitious man.’ This seemed
all the more probable since the man was religious, and even
practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing which was
very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to
low mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out
all rivalry everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this
religion. This deputy had been a member of the legislative
body of the Empire, and shared the religious ideas of a fa-
ther of the Oratoire, known under the name of Fouche, Duc
d’Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He in-
dulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors. But when
he beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low
mass at seven o’clock, he perceived in him a possible candi-
date, and resolved to outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor,
and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition was at that
time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the
steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well as the good
God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the
hospital, which made twelve.
Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated

278 Les Miserables