"Les Miserables" thought of the day

In the midst of talking about the Bishop and what a good man he was, Victor Hugo talks about how most priests, whether they admit it to themselves or not, hope to advance to bishop, then archbishop, then cardinal, and perhaps even to the papacy, for the papacy is the only kingship to which an average main can aspire. He says that most priests desire a large, wealthy diocese, with power and prestige. In order to obtain this, "The seekers of the future revolve about the splendid present...Every bishop of influence has his patrol of undergraduates, cherubs who go the rounds and keep order in the episcopal palace, and who mount guard over monseigneur's smile. To please a bishop is a foot in the stirrup for a sub-deacon. One must make his own way..."
He then goes on to say, "Monseigneur Bienvenu, an humble, poor, private person, was not counted among the rich mitres. This was plain from the entire absence of young priests about him...No glorious future dreamed of alighting upon this solitary old man. No young ambition was foolish enough to ripen in his shadow...A saint who is addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to communicate to you by contagion an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society."
It's interesting that none of the priests wanted to study under him. None of them wanted his goodness to rub off on them. None of the men "called by God," wanted to risk being changed. And yet Jean Valjean, the hardened criminal, the violent and wicked convict, the one for whom the world held out no hope, was utterly transformed by his encounter with this godly man. "[Jean Valejean's] conscience weighted in turn these two men thus placed before it, the bishop and Jean Valjean. Anything less than the first would have failed to soften the second. By one of those singular effects which are peculiar to this kind of ecstasy, as his reverie continued, the bishop grew greater and more resplendent in his eyes, Jean Valjean shrank and faded away. At one moment he was but a shadow. Suddenly he disappeared. The bishop alone remained. He filled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance...He beheld his life, and it seemed to him horrible, his soul, and it seemed to him frightful. There was, however, a softened light upon that life and upon that soul. It seemed to him that he was looking upon Satan by the light of Paradise."