A Hero
Jean Valjean
THE hero is not a luxury, but a necessity.
We can no more do without him than we
can do without the sky. Every best man and
woman is at heart a hero-worshiper. Emerson
acutely remarks that all men admire Napoleon
because he was themselves in possibility. They
were in miniature what he was developed. For
a like though nobler reason, all men love heroes.
They are ourselves grown tall, puissant, victorious,
and sprung into nobility, worth, service. The hero
electrifies the world; he is the lightning of the soul,
illuminating our sky, clarifying the air, making it
thereby salubrious and delightful. What any elect
spirit did, inures to the credit of us all. A
fragment
of Lowell's clarion verse may stand for the
biography of heroism:
"When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching
breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west;
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time;''
such being the undeniable result and history of
any heroic service.
But the world's hero has changed. The old
hero was Ulysses, or Achilles, or Æneas. The
hero of Greek literature is Ulysses, as Æneas is
in Latin literature. But to our modern thought
these heroes miss of being heroic. We have
outgrown them as we have outgrown dolls and
marbles. To be frank, we do not admire Æneas nor
Ulysses. Æneas wept too often and too copiously.
He impresses us as a big cry-baby. Of
this trinity of classic heroes—Ulysses, Æneas, and
Achilles—Ulysses is least obnoxious. This
statement is cold and unsatisfactory, and apparently
unappreciative, but it is candid and just. Lodge, in
his "Some Accepted Heroes,'' has done service
in rubbing the gilding from Achilles, and showing
that he was gaudy and cheap. We thought
the image was gold, which was, in fact, thin gilt.
Achilles sulks in his tent, while Greek armies are
thrown back defeated from the Trojan gates. In
nothing is he admirable save that, when his pouting
fit is over and when he rushes into the battle,
he has might, and overbears the force opposing
him as a wave does some petty obstacle. But no
higher quality shines in his conquest. He is vain,
brutal, and impervious to high motive. In
Æneas one can find little attractive save his filial
regard. He bears Anchises on his shoulders from
toppling Troy; but his wanderings constitute an
Odyssey of commonplaces, or chance, or meanness.
No one can doubt Virgil meant to create
a hero of commanding proportions, though we,
looking at him from this far remove, find him
uninteresting, unheroic, and vulgar; and why the
goddess should put herself out to allay tempests
in his behalf, or why hostile deities should be
disturbed to tumble seas into turbulence for such a
voyager, is a query. He merits neither their
wrath nor their courtesy. I confess to liking
heroes of the old Norse mythology better.
They, at least, did not cry nor grow voluble with
words when obstacles obstructed the march.
They possess the merit of tremendous action.
Æneas, in this regard, is the inferior of Achilles.
Excuse us from hero worship, if Æneas be
hero. In this old company of heroes, Ulysses is
easy superior. Yet the catalogue of his virtues
is an easy task. Achilles was a huge body,
associated with little brain, and had no symptom of
sagacity. In this regard, Ulysses outranks him,
and commands our respect. He has diplomacy
and finesse. He is not simply a huge frame,
wrestling men down because his bulk surpasses
theirs. He has a thrifty mind. He is the man
for councils of war, fitted to direct with easy
mastery of superior acumen. His fellow-warriors
called him "crafty,'' because he was brainy. He
was schooled in stratagem, by which he became
author of Ilium's overthrow. Ulysses was shrewd,
brave, balanced—possibly, though not conclusively,
patriotic—a sort of Louis XI, so far as we may form
an estimate, but no more. He was selfish, immoral,
barren of finer instincts, who was loved by his
dog and by Penelope, though for no reason we
can discover. Ten years he fought before Troy,
and ten years he tasted the irony of the seas—in
these episodes displaying bravery and fortitude, but
no homesick love for Penelope, who waited at the
tower of Ithaca for him, a picture of constancy
sweet enough to hang on the palace walls of all
these centuries. We do not think to love Ulysses,
nor can we work ourselves up to the point of
admiration; and he is the best hero classic Rome
and Greece can offer. No! Register, as the
modern sense of the classic hero, we do not like him
He is not admirable, yet is not totally lacking
in power to command attention. What is his
quality of appeal to us? This: He is action; and
action thrills us. The old hero was, in general,
brave and brilliant. He had the tornado's
movement. His onset redeems him. He blustered,
was spectacular, heartless, and did not guess
the meaning of purity; but he was warrior, and
the world enjoys soldiers. And this motley hero
has been attempted in our own days. He was
archaic, but certain have attempted to make him
modern. Byron's Don Juan is the old hero, only
lost to the old hero's courage. He is a villain, with
not sense enough to understand he is unattractive.
He is a libertine at large, who thinks himself a
gentleman. Don Juan is as immoral, impervious
to honor, and as villainous as the Greek gods. The
D'Artagnan romances have attempted the old
hero's resuscitation. The movement of the
"Three Musketeers'' is mechanical rather than
human. D'Artagnan's honor is limited to his
fealty to his king. He has no more sense of delicacy
toward women, or honor for them as women,
than Achilles had. Some of his doings are too
defamatory to be thought of, much less mentioned.
No! Excuse me from D'Artagnan and
the rest of Dumas' heroes. They may be
French, but they are not heroic, About Dumas'
romances there is a gallop which, with the unwary,
passes for action and art. But he has not,
of his own motion, conceived a single woman who
was not seduced or seducible, nor a single man
who was not a libertine; for "The Son of
Porthros'' and his bride are not of Dumas'
creation. He is not open to the charge of having
drawn the picture of one pure man or woman.
Zola is the natural goal of Dumas; and we enjoy
neither the route nor the terminus. Louis XIV,
Charles II, and George IV are modeled after the
old licentious pretense at manhood, but we may
all rejoice that they deceive nobody now. Our
civilization has outgrown them, and will not, even
in second childhood, take to such playthings.
But what was the old hero's chief failure?
The answer is, He lacked conscience. Duty had
no part in his scheme of action, nor in his
vocabulary of word or thought. Our word "virtue''
is the bodily importation of the old Roman word
"virtus,'' but so changed in meaning that the
Romans could no more comprehend it than they
could the Copernican theory of astronomy.
With them, "virtus'' meant strength—that
only—
a battle term. The solitary application was to
fortitude in conflict. With us, virtue is shot
through and through with moral quality, as a gem
is shot through with light, and monopolizes the
term as light monopolizes the gem. This change
is radical and astonishing, but discloses a change
which has revolutionized the world. The old hero
was conscienceless—a characteristic apparent in
Greek civilization. What Greek patriot, whether
Themistocles or Demosthenes, applied conscience
to patriotism? They were as devoid of practical
conscience as a Metope of the Parthenon was
devoid of life. Patriotism was a transient sentiment.
Demosthenes could become dumb in the presence
of Philip's gold; and in a fit of pique over
mistreatment at the hands of his brother-citizens,
Themistocles became a traitor, and, expatriated,
dwelt a guest at the Persian court. Strangely
enough—and it is passing strange—the most
heroic personality in Homer's Iliad, the Greek's
"Bible of heroisms,'' was not the Atridæ, whether
Agamemnon or Menelaus; not Ajax nor Achilles,
nor yet Ulysses; but was Hector, the Trojan, who
appears to greater advantage as hero than all the
Grecian host. And Homer was a Greek! This
is strange and unaccountable irony. Say once
more, the old hero's lack was conscience. He,
like his gods and goddesses, who were deified
infamies, was a studied impurity. Jean Valjean is
a hero, but a hero of a new type.
Literature is a sure index of a civilization.
Who cares to settle in his mind whether the world
grows better, may do so by comparing contemporaneous
literature with the reading of other
days. "The Heptameron,'' of Margaret of Navarre,
is a book so filthy as to be nauseating.
That people could read it from inclination is
unthinkable; and to believe that a woman could read
it, much less write it, taxes too sorely our
credulity. In truth, this work did not, in the days of
its origin, shock the people's sensibilities. A
woman wrote it, and she a sister of Francis I of
France, and herself Queen of Navarre, and a pure
woman. And her contemporaries, both men and
women, read it with delight, because they had
parted company with blushes and modesty. Zola
is less voluptuous and filthy than these old tales.
Some things even Zola curtains. Margaret of
Navarre tears the garments from the bodies of men
and women, and looks at their nude sensuality
smilingly. Of Boccaccio's "Decameron,'' the same
general observations hold; save that they are less
filthy, though no less sensual. In the era
producing these tales, witness this fact: The stories
are represented as told by a company of gentlemen
and ladies, the reciter being sometimes a
man, sometimes a woman; the place, a country
villa, whither they had fled to escape a plague then
raging in Florence. The people, so solacing
themselves in retreat from a plague they should have
striven to alleviate by their presence and
ministries, were the gentility of those days, representing
the better order of society, and told stories which
would now be venal if told by vulgar men in some
tavern of ill-repute. That Boccaccio should have
reported these tales as emanating from such a
company is proof positive of the immodesty of
those days, whose story is rehearsed in the
"Decameron.'' Rousseau's "Confessions'' is
another book showing the absence of current
morality in his age. Notwithstanding George Eliot's
panegyric, these memoirs are the production of
unlimited conceit, of a practical absence of any
moral sensitiveness; and while Rousseau could not
be accused of being sensual, nor amorous and
heartless as Goethe, he yet shows so crude a moral
state as to render him unwholesome to any person
of ordinary morals .n the present day. His
"Confessions,'' instead of being naive, strike me
as being distinctly and continuously coarse. A
man and woman who could give their children
deliberately to be farmed out, deserting them as
an animal would not, and this with no sense of
loss or compunction, nor even with a sense of
the inhumanity of such procedure such a man
and woman tell us how free-love can degrade a
natively virtuous mind. Such was Rousseau; and
his "Confessions'' are like himself, unblushing,
because shameless. These books reflect their
respective ages, and are happily obsolete now.
Such memoirs and fictions in our day are
unthinkable as emanating from respectable sources; and
if written would be located in vile haunts in the
purlieus of civilization. Gauged by such a test,
the world is seen to be better, and immensely
better. We have sailed out of sight of the old
continent of coarse thinking, and are sailing a sea
where purity of thought and expression impregnate
the air like odors. The old hero, with his
lewdness and rhodomontade, is excused from the
stage. We have had enough of him. Even Cyrano
de Bergerac is so out of keeping with the new
notion of the heroic, that the translator of the
drama must apologize for his hero's swagger.
We love his worth, though despising his theatrical
air and acts. We are done with the actor, and
want the man. And this new hero is proof of a
new life in the soul, and, therefore, more welcome
than the glad surprise of the first meadow-lark's
song upon the brown meadows of the early spring.
A reader need not be profound, but may
be superficial, and yet discover that Jean Valjean
is fashioned after the likeness of Jesus. Michael
Angelo did not more certainly model the dome of
St. Peter's after Brunelleschi's dome of the
Duomo than Hugo has modeled his Valjean
after Christ. We are not necessarily aware of
ourselves, nor of our era, until something discovers
both to us, as we do not certainly know sea air
when we feel it. I doubt if most men would
recognize the tonic of sea air if they did not know
the sea was neighbor to them. We sight the
ocean, and then know the air is flooded with a
health as ample as the seas from which it blows.
So we can not know our intellectual air is saturated
with Christ, because we can not go back. We
lack contemporaneous material for contrast. We
are, ourselves, a part of the age, as of a moving
ship, and can not see its motion. We can not
realize the world's yesterdays. We know them,
but do not comprehend them, since between
apprehending and comprehending an epoch lie such
wide spaces. "Quo Vadis'' has done good in that
it has popularized a realization of that turpitude
of condition into which Christianity stepped at the
morning of its career; for no lazar-house is so
vile as the Roman civilization when Christianity
began—God's angel—to trouble that cursed pool.
Christ has come into this world's affairs
unheralded, as the morning does not come; for who
watches the eastern lattices can see the morning
star, and know the dawn is near. Christ has
slipped upon the world as a tide slips up the
shores, unnoted, in the night; and because we
did not see him come, did not hear his advent, his
presence is not apparent. Nothing is so big with
joy to Christian thought as the absolute omnipresence
of the Christ in the world's life. Stars light
their torches in the sky; and the sky is wider and
higher than the stars. Christ is such a sky to
modern civilization.
Plainly, Jean Valjean is meant for a hero.
Victor Hugo loves heroes, and has skill and
inclination to create them. His books are
biographies of heroism of one type or another. No
book of his is heroless. In this attitude he
differs entirely from Thackeray and Hawthorne,
neither of whom is particularly enamored of
heroes. Hawthorne's romances have not, in the
accepted sense, a single hero. He does not attempt
building a character of central worth. He
is writing a drama, not constructing a hero. In
a less degree, this is true of Thackeray. He truly
loves the heroic, and on occasion depicts it.
Henry Esmond and Colonel Newcome are
mighty men of worth, but are exceptions to
Thackeray's method. He pokes fun at them even.
"Vanity Fair'' he terms a novel without a hero.
He photographs a procession. "The Virginians''
contains no character which can aspire to
centrality, much less might. He, loving heroes,
attempts concealing his passion, and, if accused of
it, denies the accusation. After reading all his
writings, no one could for a moment claim that
Thackeray was the biographer of heroes. He is
a biographer of meanness, and times, and sham
aristocracy and folks, and can, when he cares to
do so, portray heroism lofty as tallest mountains.
With Hugo all is different. He will do nothing
else than dream and depict heroism and heroes.
He loves them with a passion fervent as desert
heats. His pages are ablaze with them. Somebody
lifting up the face, and facing God in some
mood or moment of briefer or longer duration—
this is Hugo's method. In "Toilers of the Sea,''
Galliatt, by almost superhuman effort, and physical
endurance and fortitude and fertility in
resource, defeats octopus and winds and rocks and
seas, and in lonely triumph pilots the wreck home—
and all of this struggle and conquest for love!
He is a somber hero, but a hero still, with
strength like the strength of ten, since his love
is as the love of a legion. The power to do is
his, and the nobility to surrender the woman of
his love; and there his nobility darkens into
stoicism, and he waits for the rising tide, watching
the outgoing ship that bears his heart away
unreservedly—waits, only eager that the tide
ingulf him.
In "Ninety-Three,'' the mother of the children
in the burning tower is heroine. In "By Order
of the King,'' Dea is heroic, and spotless as
"Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat;'' and Ursus, a
vagabond, is fatherhood in its sweet nobleness;
and Gwynplaine, disfigured and deserted—a little
lad set ashore upon a night of hurricane and
snow, who, finding in his wanderings a babe on
her dead mother's breast, rescues this bit of
winter storm-drift, plodding on through untracked
snows, freezing, but no more thinking to
drop his burden than the mother thought to desert
it—Gwynplaine is a hero for whose deed an
epic is fitting. Quasimodo, the hunchback of
Notre Dame, found, after long years, holding in
his skeleton arms a bit of woman's drapery and
a woman's skeleton—Quasimodo, hideous, herculean,
hungry-hearted, tender, a hunchback, yet
a lover and a man—who denies to Quasimodo
a hero's laurels? In "Les Miserables'' are heroes
not a few. Gavroche, that green leaf blown about
Paris streets; Fantine, the mother; Eponine, the
lover; Bishop Bienvenu, the Christian; Jean Valjean,
the man,—all are heroic folk. Our hearts
throb as we look at them. Gavroche, the lad,
dances by as though blown past by the gale.
Fantine, shorn of her locks of gold; Fantine, with
her bloody lips, because her teeth have been sold
to purchase medicine for her sick child—her
child, yet a child of shame; Fantine, her mother's
love omnipotent, lying white, wasted, dying,
expectantly looking toward the door, with her
heart beating like a wild bird, beating with its
wings against cage-bars, anxious for escape:
Fantine, watching for her child Cossette, watching
in vain, but watching; Fantine, dying, glad
because Monsieur Madeleine has promised he will
care for Cossette as if the babe were his; Fantine,
dead, with her face turned toward the door, looking
in death for the coming of her child,—Fantine
affects us like tears and sobbing set to music.
Look at her; for a heroine is dead. And Eponine,
with the gray dawn of death whitening her
cheeks and gasping, "If—when—if when,'' now
silent, for she is choked by the rush of blood
and stayed from speech by fierce stabs of pain,
but continuing, "When I am dead—a favor—a
favor, Monsieur Marius [silence once again to
wrestle with the throes of death]—a favor—a favor
when I am dead [now her speech runs like frightened
feet], if you will kiss me; for indeed, Monsieur
Marius, I think I loved you a little—I—I shall
feel—your kiss—in death.'' Lie quiet in the
darkening night, Eponine! Would you might have a
queen's funeral, since you have shown anew the
moving miracle of woman's love!
Bishop Bienvenu is Hugo's hero as saint; and
we can not deny him beauty such as those "enskied
and sainted'' wear. This is the romancist's
tribute to a minister of God; and sweet the tribute
is. With not a few, the bishop is chief hero,
next to Jean Valjean. He is redemptive, like the
purchase money of a slave. He is quixotic; he is
not balanced always, nor always wise; but he falls
on the side of Christianity and tenderness and
goodness and love—a good way to fall, if one is
to fall at all. We love the bishop, and can not
help it. He was good to the poor, tender to the
erring, illuminative to those who were in the
moral dark, and came over people like a sunrise;
crept into their hearts for good, as a child creeps
up into its father's arms, and nestles there like
a bird. Surely we love the bishop. He is a hero
saint. To be near him was to be neighborly with
heaven. He was ever minding people of God.
Is there any such office in earth or heaven? To
look at this bishop always puts our heart in the
mood of prayer, and what helps us to prayer is
a celestial benefit. The pertinent fact in him is,
that he is not greatness, but goodness. We do
not think of greatness when we see him or hear
him, but we think with our hearts when he is before
our eyes. Goodness is more marketable than
greatness, and more necessary. Goodness, greatness!
Brilliancy is a cheap commodity when put
on the counter beside goodness; and Bishop
Bienvenu is a romancer's apotheosis of goodness, and
we bless him for this deification.
The bishop was merchantman, freighting ships.
His wharves are wide, his fleet is great, his
cargoes are many. Only he is freighting ships for
heaven. No bales of merchandise nor ingots of
iron, but souls for whom Christ died,—these are
his cargoes; and had you asked him, "What
work to-day?'' a smile had flooded sunlight
along his face while he said, "Freighting souls
with God to-day, and lading cargoes for the
skies.'' This is royal merchandise. The Doge
of Venice annually flung a ring into the sea as
sign of Venice's nuptials with the Adriatic; but
Bishop Bienvenu each day wedded himself and
the world to heaven, and he comes
"O'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor.''
Hugo paints with sunset tints and with
lightning's lurid light; his contrasts are fierce, his
backgrounds are often as black as a rain-cloud.
He paints with the mad rush of a Turner. He
is fierce in hates and loves. He does nothing by
moderation. Calmness does not belong to him.
He is tempestuous always; but tempests are
magnificent and purifying to the air. Hugo is
painting, and painting heroes, and his hero of heroes
is Valjean. Jean Valjean is conscience. In
Macbeth, conscience is warring and retributive. In
Richard III, conscience, stifled in waking, speaks
in dreams, and is menace, like a sword swung by
a maniac's hands. In Arthur Dimmesdale, conscience
is lacerative. In Jean Valjeans conscience
is regulative, creative, constructive. Jean
Valjean is conscience, and conscience is king. What
the classic heroes lacked, Jean Valjean possesses.
The setting of this character is entirely
modern. "Les Miserables'' is a story of the city and
of poverty, and can not be dissociated from them
by any wrench of thought, however violent.
Not that urban life or poverty are new elements
in the school of suffering. They are not new,
as pain is not new. This is the difference. In
the old ages, the city and poverty were taken as
matters of course. Comfort was not a classic
consideration. The being alive to conditions,
sensitive to suffering, eager for diminution of the
world's woes, is a modern thought, a Christ
thought. Sociology is an application of Christ's
teaching. He founded this science. Rome was
the monster city of the empire, and possibly the
monster city of ancient geography, and contained
approximately, at its most populous period,
two and one half millions of inhabitants.
Man is gregarious as the flocks; he seems to fear
solitude, and flees what he fears. Certain we are
that in America, one hundred years ago, less than
one-thirtieth of the population was in cities; now,
about one-third is in city communities; and
European cities are outgrowing American cities.
In other words, at the present time, cities are
growing in a ratio totally disproportionate to the
growth of population; and this, not in the New
World simply, but in the Old. London has nearly
as many citizens as England had in the time of
the Puritan Revolution. Men are nucleating in
a fashion foreboding, but certain. A symptom of
the city life is, that he who is city bred knows
no life apart from his city. He belongs to it as
essentially as the Venetian belonged to Venice.
The community is a veritable part of the man's
self. Note this in Jean Valjean. It never occurs
to him to leave Paris. Had he been a tree rooted
in the soil along the Seine, he had not been more
stationary. Men live, suffer, die, and hug their
ugly tenements as parasites of these dilapidations,
and draw their life-saps from such a decayed
trunk. This human instinct for association is
mighty in its impulsion. Not a few, but
multitudes, prefer to be hungry and cold and live
in a city to living with abundance of food
and raiment in the country. Any one can see
this at his alley or in his neighboring street.
It is one of the latent insanities of the soul.
The city is a live wire, and will not let go of
him who grasps it. There is a stream of life pouring
into cities, but no stream flowing into the
country. The tide runs up the shore and back
into the deep seas; not so these human tides.
They pour into the Dead Sea basin of the urban
community. Jean Valjean was a complete modern
in his indissoluble identification with the city.
As a matter of course, his was the criminal
instinct, superadded to the gregarious instinct,
which hides in a city labyrinth rather than the
forests of the Amazon. Yet, taken all in all, he
evidently is a thorough modern in his urban
instinct. The world was big, and he had gold for
passage across seas; and there he had, in reason,
found entire safety, but such a thought never
entered his mind. Paris was the only sea he
knew; here his plans for escape and plans for life
clung tenaciously as a dead man's hand.
The second element of background for Jean
Valjean is poverty. The people of this drama are
named "the miserable ones.'' And poverty is
modern and a modern question. All socialists,
anarchists, and communists talk of poverty; this is
their one theme. Superficial social reformers make
poverty responsible for the total turpitude of men.
Men are poor, hence criminal. Jean Valjean is
poor—miserably poor; sees his sister's children
hungry, and commits crime, is a thief; becomes
a galley slave as punitive result. Ergo, poverty
was the cause of crime, and poverty, and not
Valjean, must be indicted; so runs the argument.
This conclusion we deny. Let us consider.
Poverty is not unwholesome. The bulk of men
are poor, and always have been. Poverty is no
new condition. Man's history is not one of
affluence, but one of indigence. This is a patent
fact. But a state of lack is not unwholesome, but
on the contrary does great good. Poverty has
supplied the world with most of the kings it boasts of.
Palaces have not cradled the kings of thought,
service, and achievement. What greatest poet had
luxury for a father? Name one. Poverty is the
mother of kings. Who censures poverty censures
the home from whose doors have passed the most
illustrious of the sons of men. Christ's was a
poverty so keen and so parsimonious that Occidentals
can not picture it. More, current social
reformers assume that the poor are unhappy;
though if such reformers would cease dreaming,
and learn seeing, they would reverse their creed.
Riches do not command joy; for joy is not a
spring rising from the depths where gold is
found and gems gathered. Most men are poor,
and most men are happy, or, if they are not, they
may trace their sadness to sources other than lack
of wealth. The best riches are the gifts of God,
and can not be shut off by any sluicing; the
choicest riches of the soul, such as knowledge and
usefulness and love and God, are not subject to
the tariff of gold. Poverty, we conclude, is not
in itself grievous. Indeed, there are in poverty
blessings which many of us know, and from
which we would not be separated without keen
regret. But penury is hard. When poverty
pinches like winter's night, when fuel fails, and
hunger is our company, then poverty becomes
harsh and unpalatable, and not to be boasted of;
though even penury has spurred many a sluggish
life to conquering moods. When a man lies with
his face to the wall, paralytic, helpless, useless, a
burden to himself and others, and hears the rub
of his wife washing for a livelihood—and he loves
her so; took her to his home in her fair girlhood,
when her beauty bloomed like a garden of roses,
and promised to keep her, and now she works
for him all day and into the dark night, and loves
to; but he turns his face to the wall, puts his one
movable hand against his face, sobs so that his
tears wash through his fingers and wet his pillow
as with driving rain,—then poverty is pitiful. Or,
when one sees his children hungry, tattered, with
lean faces and eyes staring as with constant fear;
sees them huddling under rags or cowering at a
flicker meant for flame,—then poverty is hard; and
then, "The poor always ye have with you,'' said
our Christ, which remember and be pitiful!
But such penury, even, does not require crime.
Valjean became a criminal from poverty; but himself
felt now, as the days slipped from his life-store,
that crime was not necessary. Theft is bad
economics. The criminals on the dockets are not those
pinched with poverty, as one may assure himself
if he gives heed to criminal dockets. People prefer
crime as a method of livelihood. These are
criminals. The "artful dodger,'' in "Oliver
Twist,'' is a picture of the average criminal.
Honest poverty need not steal. In the writer's
own city, the other day, a man accused of theft
pleaded his children's poverty as palliative of his
crime; but in that city was abundant help for
worthy poverty. That man lacked an absolute
honesty. He and his could have been fed and
clothed, and himself maintained his manly dignity
and uncorrupted honesty. To blame society with
criminality is a current method, but untrue and
unwise; for thus we will multiply, not decimate,
criminals. The honest man may be in penury;
but he will have help, and need not shelter in a
jail. Thus, then, these two items of modernity
paint background for Jean Valjean's portrait; and
in Jean Valjean, To-day has found a voice.
This man is a criminal and a galley slave, with
yellow passport—his name, Jean Valjean. Hear
his story. An orphan; a half-sullen lad, reared
by his sister; sees her husband dead on a bed of
rags, with seven orphans clinging in sobs to the
dead hands. Jean Valjean labors to feed this motley
company; denies himself bread, so that he
may slip food into their hands; has moods of
stalwart heroism; and never having had a
sweetheart—pity him!—toils on, hopeless, under a sky
robbed of blue and stars; leading a life plainly,
wholly exceptional, and out of work in a winter
when he was a trifle past twenty-six; hears his
sister's children crying, "Bread, bread, give bread;''
rises in sullen acerbity; smites his huge fist
through a baker's window, and steals a loaf; is
arrested, convicted, sent to the galleys, and herded
with galley slaves; attempts repeated escapes, is
retaken, and at the age of forty-six shambles out
of his galley slavery with a yellow passport,
certifying this is "a very dangerous man;'' and with
a heart on which brooding has written with its
biting stylus the story of what he believes to be
his wrongs, Jean Valjean, bitter as gall against
society, has his hands ready, aye, eager, to strike,
no matter whom. Looked at askance, turned from
the hostel, denied courtesy, food, and shelter, the
criminal in him rushes to the ascendant, and he
thrusts the door of the bishop's house open. Listen,
he is speaking now, look at him! The bishop
deals with him tenderly, as a Christian ought;
sentimentally, but scarcely wisely. He has sentimentality
rather than sentiment in his kindness; he puts
a premium on Jean Valjean becoming a criminal
again. To assume everybody to be good, as some
philanthropists do, is folly, being so transparently
false. The good bishop—bless him for his goodness!—
who prays God daily not to lead him into
temptation, why does he lead this sullen criminal
into temptation? Reformatory methods should be
sane. The bishop's methods were not sane. He
meant well, but did not quite do well. Jean Valjean,
sleeping in a bed of comfort, grows restless,
wakens, rises, steals what is accessible, flees, is
arrested, brought back, is exonerated by the bishop's
tenderness, goes out free; steals from the little
Savoyard, cries after the retreating lad to restore
him his coin, fails to bring him back; fights with
self, and with God's good help rises in the deep dark
of night from the bishop's steps; walks out into
a day of soul, trudges into the city of M—, to
which he finds admission, not by showing the
criminal's yellow passport, but by the passport of
heroism, having on entrance rescued a child from
a burning building; becomes a citizen, invents a
process of manufacturing jet, accumulates a fortune,
spends it lavishly in the bettering of the city
where his riches were acquired; is benefactor to
employee and city, and is called "Monsieur;'' and
after repeated refusals, becomes "Monsieur the
Mayor;'' gives himself up as a criminal to save
a man unjustly accused, is returned to the galleys
for the theft of the little Savoyard's forty-sous
coin; by a heroic leap from the yardarm, escapes;
seeks and finds Cossette, devotes his life to
sheltering and loving her; runs his gauntlet of
repeated perils with Javert, grows steadily in
heroism, and sturdy, invigorating manhood; dies a
hero and a saint, and an honor to human kind,—
such is Jean Valjean's biography in meager outline.
But the moon, on a summer's evening, "a
silver crescent gleaming 'mid the stars,'' appears
hung on a silver cord of the full moon's rim; and,
as the crescent moon is not the burnished silver
of the complete circle, so no outline can include
the white, bewildering light of this heroic soul.
Jean Valjean is the biography of a redeemed life.
The worst life contains the elements of redemption,
as words contain the possibility of poetry.
He was a fallen, vicious, desperate man; and from
so low a level, he and God conspired to lift him
to the levels where the angels live, than which
a resurrection from the dead is no more potent and
blinding miracle. Instead of giving this book the
caption, "Jean Valjean,'' it might be termed the
"History of the Redemption of a Soul;'' and such a
theme is worthy the study of this wide world of
women and of men.
Initial in this redemptive work was the good
bishop, whose words, "Jean Valjean, my brother,
you belong no longer to evil, but to good,'' never
lost their music or might to Valjean's spirit.
Some man or woman stands on everybody's road
to God. And Jean Valjean, with the bishop's
words sounding in his ears—voices that will not
silence—goes out with his candlesticks, goes
trembling out, and starts on his anabasis to a new
life; wandered all day in the fields, inhaled the
odors of a few late flowers, his childhood being
thus recalled; and when the sun was throwing
mountain shadows behind hillocks and pebbles, as
Jean Valjean sat and pondered in a dumb way,
a Savoyard came singing on his way, tossing his
bits of money in his hands; drops a forty-sous
piece near Jean Valjean, who, in a mood of
inexplicable evil, places his huge foot upon it, nor
listened to the child's entreaty, "My piece,
monsieur;'' and eager and more eager grows a child
whose little riches were invaded, "My piece, my
white piece, my silver;'' and in his voice are tears—
and what can be more touching than a child's
voice touched with tears? "My silver;'' and the
lad shook the giant by the collar of his blouse—
"I want my silver, my forty-sous piece''—and began
to cry. A little lad a-sobbing! Jean Valjean,
you who for so many years "have talked but little
and never laughed;'' Jean Valjean, pity the child;
give him his coin. You were bought of the bishop
for good. But in terrible voice he shouts: "Who
is there? You here yet? You had better take
care of yourself;'' and the little lad runs, breathless
and sobbing. Jean Valjean hears his sobbing,
but made no move for restitution until the little
Savoyard has passed from sight and hearing,
when, waking as from some stupor, he rises,
cries wildly through the night, "Petit Gervais!
Petit Gervais!'' and listened, and—no answer.
Then he ran, ran toward restitution. Too late! too
late! "Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais! Petit
Gervais!'' and, to a priest passing, "Monsieur,
have you seen a child go by—a little fellow—Petit
Gervais is his name?'' And he calls him again
through the empty night; and the lad hears him
not. There is no response, and for the first time
since he passed to the galleys, Jean Valjean's
heart swells, and he bursts into tears; for he was
horrified at himself. His hardness had mastered
him, even when the bishop's tenderness had
thawed his winter heart. Jean Valjean was now
afraid of himself, which is where moral strength
has genesis. He goes back—back where? No
matter, wait. He sees in his thought—in his
thought he sees the bishop, and wept, shed hot
tears, wept bitterly, with more weakness than a
woman, with more terror than a child, and his
life seemed horrible; and he walks—whither?
No matter. But, past midnight, the stage-driver
saw, as he passed, a man in the attitude of prayer,
kneeling upon the pavement in the shadow before
the bishop's door; and should you have spoken,
"Jean Valjean!'' he would not have answered you.
He would not have heard. He is starting on a
pilgrimage of manhood toward God. He saw the
bishop; now he sees God, and here is hope; for
so is God the secret of all good and worth, a
thing to be set down as the axiom of religion and
life. A conscience long dormant is now become
regnant. Jean Valjean is a man again!
Goodness begets goodness. He climbed; and
the mountain air and azure and fountains of clear
waters, spouting from cliffs of snow and the far
altitudes, fed his spirit. God and he kept
company, and, as is meet, goodness seemed native
to him as lily blooms to lily stems. God was his
secret, as God is the secret of us all. To scan
his process of recovery is worth while. The
bishop reminded him of God. Goodness and love
in man are wings to help us soar to where we
see that service, love, and goodness are in God—
see that God is good and God is love. Seeing
God, Jean Valjean does good. Philanthropy is
native to him; gentleness seems his birthright;
his voice is low and sweet; his face—the helpless
look to it for help; his eyes are dreamy, like a
poet's; he loves books; he looks not manufacturer
so much as he looks poet; he passes good
on as if it were coin to be handled; he suffers nor
complains; his silence is wide, like that of the still
night; he frequently walks alone and in the
country; he becomes a god to Fantine, for she
had spit upon him, and he had not resented; he
adopts means for the rescue of Cossette. In him,
goodness moves finger from the lips, breaks
silence, and becomes articulate. Jean Valjean is
brave, magnanimous, of sensitive conscience,
hungry-hearted, is possessed of the instincts of
motherhood, bears being misjudged without complaint,
is totally forgetful of himself, and is absolute
in his loyalty to God—qualities which lift him into
the elect life of manhood.
Jean Valjean was brave. He and fear
never met. The solitary fear he knew was fear
of himself, and lest he might not live for good
as the bishop had bidden him; but fear from
without had never crossed his path. His was the
bravery of conscience. His strength was
prodigious, and he scrupled not to use it. Self-sparing was no trait of his character. Like
another hero we have read of, he would "gladly
spend and be spent'' for others, and bankrupt
himself, if thereby he might make others rich.
There is a physical courage, brilliant as a shock
of armies, which feels the conflict and leaps to
it as the storm-waves leap upon the sword edges
of the cliffs—a courage which counts no odds.
There is another courage, moral rather than
physical. Valjean possessed both, with moral
courage in ascendency. He has the agility and
strength sometimes found in criminals. He is
now in the galleys for life. One day, while
engaged in furling sail, a sailor has toppled from
the yard; but in falling caught a rope, but hangs,
swinging violently, like some mad pendulum.
The height is dizzying. Death seems certain,
when a convict, clad in red, and with a green cap,
runs up for rescue, lets himself down alongside
of the swaying sailor, now in the last extremity
of weakness, and ready to drop like a winter leaf.
Valjean (for it is he) oscillates violently to and
fro, while the throng below watch breathlessly.
His peril is incredible, but his is a bravery which
does not falter, and a skill which equals bravery.
Valjean is swayed in the wind as the swaying
sailor, until he catches him in his arm, makes
him fast to the rope, clambers up, reaches the
yard, hauls up the sailor, and carries him to a
place of safety. And the throng below, breathless
till now, applauded and cried, "This man
must be pardoned.'' Then it is that he, free once
more, leaps down—falls from the dizzying
height, the multitude thinks—leaps down into
the seas, and wins liberty. Jean Valjean is
heroic. His moral courage, which is courage at
its noon, is discovered best in his rescue of
Fauchelevent, old, and enemy—an enmity
engendered by Madeleine's prosperity—to Monsieur
Madeleine. The old man has fallen under his
cart, and is being surely crushed to death. The
mayor joins the crowd gathered about the unfortunate
car-man; offers a rising price for one who
will go under the cart and rescue the old man.
Javert is there—keen of eye and nostril as a
vulture—and Jean Valjean is his prey. He
believes the mayor to be Jean Valjean, and, as
the mayor urges some one to rescue the perishing
man, says, with speech cold as breath from a
glacier, "I have known but one man who was
equal to this task, and he was a convict and in
the galleys.'' The old man moans, "How it
crushes me!'' and, hearing that cry, under the
cart the mayor crawls; and while those beside
hold their breath, he, lying flat under the weight,
lifts twice, ineffectually, and, with one herculean
effort, lifts again, and the cart slowly rises, and
many willing hands helping from without, the old
man is saved; and Monsieur Madeleine arises,
pale, dripping with sweat, garments muddy and
torn, while the old man whom he has rescued
kisses his knees and calls him the good God.
And the mayor looks at Javert with tranquil eye,
though knowing full well that this act of generous
courage in the rescue of an enemy has doomed
himself. This is moral courage of celestial order.
His magnanimity is certainly apparent,—in
the rescue of his enemy, Fauchelevent; in his
release of his arch-enemy, Javert; in his presence
within the barricade to protect Marius, who had,
as a lover, robbed him of the one blossom that
had bloomed in the garden of his heart, save only
the passing bishop and the abiding God. No pettiness
is in him. He loves and serves after a fashion
learned of Christ. If compelled to admire his
courage, we are no less compelled to pay homage
to his magnanimity.
His was a hungry heart. Love he had never
known; he had never had a sweetheart. And now
all pent-up love of a long life empties its precious
ointment on the head of Cossette. He was all
the mother she ever knew or needed to know.
Heaven made her rich in such maternity as his.
Mother instinct is in all good lives, and belongs
to man. Maternity and paternity are met in the
best manhood. The tenderness of motherhood
must soften a man's touch to daintiness, like an
evening wind's caress, before fatherhood is
perfect. All his youthhood, which knew not any
woman's lips to kiss; all his manhood, which had
never shared a hearth with wife or child,—all this
unused tenderness now administers to the wants
of this orphan, Cossette. His rescue of her from
the Thenardiers is poetry itself. He had the
instincts of a gentleman. The doll he brought her
for her first Christmas gift was forerunner of a
thousand gifts of courtesy and love. See, too, the
mourning garments he brought and laid beside her bed
the first morning he brought her to his garret,
and watched her slumber as if he had been
appointed by God to be her guardian angel. To
him life henceforth meant Cossette. He was her
servant always. For her he fought for his life as
if it had been an unutterable good. He lost himself,
which is the very crown of motherhood's devotion.
He was himself supplanted in her affections
by her lover, Marius, and his heart was
stabbed as if by poisoned daggers; for was not
Cossette wife, daughter, sister, brother, mother,
father, friend—all? But if his heart was breaking,
she never guessed it. He hid his hurt, though
dying of heartbreak.
Then, too, Jean Valjean is misjudged, and by
those who should have trusted him as they
trusted God. We find it hard to be patient with
Marius, and are not patient with Cossette. Her
selfishness is not to be condoned. Her contrition
and her tears come too late. Though Valjean
forgives her, we do not forgive her. She
deserves no forgiveness. Marius's honor was of the
amateur order, lacking depth and breadth. He
was superficial, judging by hearing rather than by
eyes and heart. We have not patience to linger
with his wife and him, but push past them to the
hero spirit, whom they have not eyes to see nor
hearts to understand. Jean Valjean misjudged,
and by Marius and Cossette! Impossible! Javert
may do that; Fantine, not knowing him, may do
that, but once knowing him she had as lief
distrusted day to bring the light as to have
distrusted him. Misjudged, and by those he loved
most, suffered for, more than died for! Poor
Valjean! This wakes our pity and our tears.
Before, we have watched him, and have felt the
tug of battle on him; now the mists fall, and we
put our hands before our eyes and weep. This
saint of God misjudged by those for whom he
lives! Yet this is no solitary pathos. Were all
hearts' history known, we should know how many
died misjudged. All Jean Valjean does has been
misinterpreted. We distrust more and more
circumstantial evidence. It is hideous. No jury
ought to convict a man on evidence of circumstances.
Too many tragedies have been enacted
because of such. Marius thought he was discerning
and of a sensitive honor. He thought it evident
that Jean Valjean had slain Javert, and had
slain Monsieur Madeleine, whose fortune he has
offered as Cossette's marriage portion. Poor
Jean Valjean! You a murderer, a marauder—
you! Marius acts with frigid honor. Valjean
will not live with Marius and Cossette, being too
sensitive therefor, perceiving himself distrusted
by Marius, but comes to warm his hands and
heart at the hearth of Cossette's presence; and he
is stung when he sees no fire in the reception-room.
The omission he can not misinterpret. He goes
again, and the chairs are removed. Marius may
have honor, but his honor is cruel, like an
inquisitor with rack and thumbscrew; and then Jean
Valjean goes no more, but day by day suns his
heart by going far enough to look at the house
where Cossette is—no more; then his eyes are
feverish to catch sight of her habitation as
parched lips drink at desert springs. Misjudged!
O, that is harder to bear than all his hurts!
Then we will not say of Valjean, "He has
conscience,'' but rather, we will say, "He is
conscience.'' Valjean's struggle with conscience is
one of the majestic chapters of the world's literature,
presenting, as it does, the worthiest and profoundest
study of Christian conscience given by
any dramatist since Christ opened a new chapter
for conscience in the soul. Monsieur Madeleine,
the mayor, is rich, respected, honored, is a savior
of society, sought out by the king for political
preferment. One shadow tracks him like a nightmare.
Javert is on his track, instinct serving him
for reason. At last, Javert himself thinks Jean
Valjean has been found; for a man has been
arrested, is to be tried, will doubtless be convicted,
seeing evidence is damning. Now, Monsieur
Madeleine, mayor of M—, your fear is all but
ended. An anodyne will be administered to your
pain. Jean Valjean has known many a struggle.
He thought his fiercest battles fought; but all his
yesterdays of conflict are as play contests and
sham battles matched with this. Honor, usefulness,
long years of service, love, guardianship of
Cossette, and fealty to a promise given a dying
mother—all beckon to him. He is theirs; and
has he not suffered enough? More than enough.
Let this man alone, that is all. Let him alone!
He sees it. Joy shouts in his heart, "Javert will
leave me in quiet.'' "Let us not interfere with
God;'' and his resolution is formed. But conscience
looks into his face. Ha! the bishop, too,
is beside him. Conscience speaks, and is saying,
"Let the real Valjean go and declare himself.''
This is duty. Conscience speaks, and his words
are terrible, "Go, declare thyself.'' Jean Valjean's
sin is following him. That evening he had
robbed Petit Gervais; therefore he is imperiled.
Sin finds man out. But the fight thickens, and
Valjean thinks to destroy the mementos of his
past, and looks fearfully toward the door, bolted
as it is, and gathers from a secret closet his old
blue blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old
haversack, and a great thorn stick, and incontinently
flings them into the flames. Then, noticing
the silver candlesticks, the bishop's gifts, "These,
too, must be destroyed,'' he says, and takes them
in his hands, and stirs the fire with one of the
candlesticks, when he hears a voice clamoring,
"Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!''
Conscience and a battle, but the battle was not
lost; for you see him in the prisoners' dock,
declaring, "I am Jean Valjean;'' and those of the
court dissenting, he persisted, declared his recognition
of some galley prisoners, urging still, "I
am Jean Valjean; you see clearly that I am Jean
Valjean;'' and those who saw and heard him were
dazed; and he said: "All who are here think me
worthy of pity, do you not? Do you not? Great
God! When I think of what I was on the point
of doing, I think myself worthy of envy;'' and
he was gone. And next, Javert is seizing him
fiercely, brutally, imperiously, as a criminal for
whom there is no regard. With this struggle
of conscience and its consequent victory, "The
Charge of the Light Brigade'' becomes tawdry
and garish. The sight moves us as the majestic
minstrelsy of seas in tempest. No wonder that
they who looked at Valjean, as he stood declaring
himself to be the real Valjean, were blinded
with a great light.
And his heart is so hungry, and his loyalty to
God so urgent and so conquering. Jean Valjean
has suffered much. Ulysses, buffeted by wars
and stormy seas, has had a life of calm as compared
with this new hero. Ulysses' battles were
from without; Valjean's battles were from within.
But if he has suffered greatly, he has also been
greatly blessed. Struggle for goodness against sin
is its own reward. We do not give all and get
nothing. There are compensations. Recompense
of reward pursues goodness as foam a vessel's
track. If Jean Valjean loved Cossette with
a passion such as the angels know; if she was his
sun, and made the spring, there was a sense in
which Cossette helped Valjean. There was
response, not so much in the return of love as in
that he loved her; and his love for her helped him
in his dark hours, helped him when he needed
help the most, helped him on with God. He needs
her to love, as our eyes need the fair flowers and
the blue sky. His life was not empty, and God
had not left himself without witness in Jean
Valjean's life; for he had had his love for Cossette.
But he is bereft. Old age springs on him
suddenly, as Javert had done in other days. He has,
apparently without provocation, passed from
strength to decrepitude. Since he sees Cossette
no more, he has grown gray, stooped, decrepit.
There is no morning now, since he does not see
Cossette. You have seen him walking to the
corner to catch sight of her house. How feeble
he is! Another day, walking her way, but not
so far; and the next, and the next, walking; but
the last day he goes scarce beyond his own
threshold. And now he can not go down the
stairs; now he is in his own lonely room, alone.
He sees death camping in his silent chamber, but
feels no fright. No, no! rather,
"Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field
Approaching, called.
For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck
See, through the gray skirts of a lifting squall,
The boat that bears the hope of life approach
To save the life despaired of, than he saw
Death dawning on him, and the close of all.''
But Cossette, Cossette! To see her once, just
once, only once! To touch her hand—O that were
heaven! But he says to his heart, "I shall not
touch her hand, and I shall not see her face—
no more, no more!'' And the little garments he
brought her when he took her from her slavery
with the Thenardiers, there they are upon his bed,
where he can touch them, as if they were black
tresses of the woman he had loved and lost. The
bishop's candlesticks are lit. He is about to die,
and writes in his poor, sprawling fashion to
Cossette—writes to her. He fronts her always, as
the hills front the dawn. He ceases, and sobs
like a breaking heart. O! "She is a smile that
has passed over me. I shall never see her again!''
And the door dashes open; Marius and Cossette
are come. Joy, joy to the old heart! Jean Valjean
thinks it is heaven's morning. Marius has
discovered that Jean Valjean is not his murderer,
but his savior; that he has, at imminent peril of
his life, through the long, oozy quagmire of the
sewer, with his giant strength, borne him across
the city, saved him; and now, too late, Marius
began to see in Jean Valjean "a strangely lofty
and saddened form,'' and has come to take this
great heart home. But God will do that himself.
Jean Valjean is dying. He looks at Cossette as
if he would take a look which would endure
through eternity, kisses a fold of her garment, and
half articulates, "It—is—nothing to die;'' then
suddenly rises, walks to the wall, brings back a
crucifix, lays it near his hand. "The Great
Martyr,'' he says; fondles Marius and Cossette;
sobs to Cossette, "Not to see you broke my
heart;'' croons to himself, "You love me;'' puts
his hands upon their heads in a caress, saying,
"I do not see clearly now.'' Later he half
whispered, "I see a light!'' And a man and woman
are raining kisses on a dead man's hands. And
on that blank stone, over a nameless grave in the
cemetery of Pere la Chaise, let some angel sculptor
chisel, "Here lies Jean Valjean, Hero.''
THE END