3.V.6.4. THE IMMORTAL LIVER
THE old and formidable struggle, of which we have already
witnessed so many phases, began once more.
Jacob struggled with the angel but one night. Alas! how
many times have we beheld Jean Valjean seized bodily by
his conscience, in the darkness, and struggling desperately
against it!
Unheard-of conflict! At certain moments the foot slips;
at other moments the ground crumbles away underfoot. How
many times had that conscience, mad for the good, clasped
and overthrown him! How many times had the truth set
her knee inexorably upon his breast! How many times,
hurled to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! How
many times had that implacable spark, lighted within him,
and upon him by the Bishop, dazzled him by force when he
had wished to be blind! How many times had he risen to his
feet in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against
sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of
his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times,
after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning
of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in
his ear: "A trip! you wretch!" How many times had his
refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under
the evidence of duty! Resistance to God. Funereal sweats.
What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed! What excoriations
in his lamentable existence! How many times he had
risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in his
heart, serenity in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself
the conqueror. And, after having dislocated, broken, and
rent his conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him, as
it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil: "Now,
go in peace!"
But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a
lugubrious peace, alas!
Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean felt that he was
passing
through his final combat.
A heart-rending question presented itself.
Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out
in
a straight avenue before the predestined man; they have blind
courts, impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing cross-roads
offering the choice of many ways. Jean Valjean had
halted at that moment at the most perilous of these cross-roads.
He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He
had that gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion
once more, as had happened to him already in other sad
vicissitudes, two roads opened out before him, the one tempting,
the other alarming.
Which was he to take?
He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that
mysterious index finger which we all perceive whenever we
fix our eyes on the darkness.
Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the
terrible
port and the smiling ambush.
Is it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate.
Frightful
thing! an incurable destiny!
This is the problem which presented itself to him:
In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to
the happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had
willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about;
he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at that moment,
when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of
satisfaction
which an armorer would experience on recognizing his
factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from
his own breast.
Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had
everything, even riches. And this was his doing.
But what was he, Jean Valjean, to do with this happiness,
now that it existed, now that it was there? Should he force
himself on this happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to
him? No doubt, Cosette did belong to another; but should
he, Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette all that he could retain?
Should he remain the sort of father, half seen but respected,
which he had hitherto been? Should he, without saying a
word, bring his past to that future? Should he present himself
there, as though he had a right, and should he seat himself,
veiled, at that luminous fireside? Should he take those
innocent hands into his tragic hands, with a smile? Should
he place upon the peaceful fender of the Gillenormand drawing-room
those feet of his, which dragged behind them the disgraceful
shadow of the law? Should he enter into participation
in the fair fortunes of Cosette and Marius? Should he render
the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs still more
dense? Should he place his catastrophe as a third associate
in their felicity? Should he continue to hold his peace? In
a word, should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these
two happy beings?
We must have become habituated to fatality and to
encounters
with it, in order to have the daring to raise our eyes when
certain questions appear to us in all their horrible nakedness.
Good or evil stands behind this severe interrogation point.
What are you going to do? demands the sphinx.
This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed. He gazed
intently
at the sphinx.
He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.
Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this
shipwreck.
What was he to do? To cling fast to it, or to let go
his hold?
If he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he
should
ascend again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water
drip from his garments and his hair, he was saved, he should
live.
And if he let go his hold?
Then the abyss.
Thus he took sad council with his thoughts. Or, to speak
more correctly, he fought; he kicked furiously internally, now
against his will, now against his conviction.
Happily for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep.
That relieved him, possibly. But the beginning was savage.
A tempest, more furious than the one which had formerly
driven him to Arras, broke loose within him. The past surged
up before him facing the present; he compared them and
sobbed. The silence of tears once opened, the despairing man
writhed.
He felt that he had been stopped short.
Alas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and
our duty, when we thus retreat step by step before our immutable
ideal, bewildered, furious, exasperated at having to
yield, disputing the ground, hoping for a possible flight,
seeking
an escape, what an abrupt and sinister resistance does the
foot of the wall offer in our rear!
To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!
The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!
Then, one is never done with conscience. Make your
choice,
Brutus; make your choice, Cato. It is fathomless, since it is
God. One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life,
one flings in one's fortune, one flings in one's riches, one
flings in one's success, one flings in one's liberty or
fatherland,
one flings in one's well-being, one flings in one's repose,
one flings in one's joy! More! more! more! Empty the
vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one's
heart.
Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun
like that.
Is not one pardonable, if one at last refuses! Can the
inexhaustible have any right? Are not chains which are
endless above human strength? Who would blame Sisyphus
and Jean Valjean for saying: "It is enough!"
The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there
no
limit to the obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is
impossible, can perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?
The first step is nothing, it is the last which is
difficult.
What was the Champmathieu affair in comparison with Cosette's
marriage and of that which it entailed? What is a
re-entrance into the galleys, compared to entrance into the
void?
Oh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art
thou!
Oh, second step, how black art thou!
How could he refrain from turning aside his head this
time?
Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a
torture which consecrates. One can consent to it for the first
hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one
places on one's head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the
globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot iron,
but the mantle of flame still remains to be donned, and comes
there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and when
one abdicates from suffering?
At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of
exhaustion.
He weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives,
the
mysterious balance of light and darkness.
Should he impose his galleys on those two dazzling
children,
or should he consummate his irremediable engulfment
by himself? On one side lay the sacrifice of Cosette, on the
other that of himself.
At what solution should he arrive? What decision did he
come to?
What resolution did he take? What was his own inward
definitive response to the unbribable interrogatory of fatality?
What door did he decide to open? Which side of his life did
he resolve upon closing and condemning? Among all the
unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, which was his
choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of the
gulfs did he nod his head?
His dizzy revery lasted all night long.
He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude,
bent
double over that bed, prostrate beneath the enormity of fate,
crushed, perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms
outspread
at right angles, like a man crucified who has been un-nailed,
and flung face down on the earth. There he remained
for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long
winter's night, ice-cold, without once raising his head, and
without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse,
while his thoughts wallowed on the earth and soared, now like
the hydra, now like the eagle. Any one to behold him thus
motionless would have pronounced him dead; all at once he
shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Cosette's
garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he was
alive.
Who could see? Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there
was no one there.
The One who is in the shadows.