“
Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul
of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element,
incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which
good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor,
and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every
physiologist would probably have responded no, and that
without hesitation, had he beheld at Toulon, during the
hours of repose, which were for Jean Valjean hours of revery,
this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded arms upon
the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust
into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and
thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man
with wrath, condemned by civilization, and regarding
heaven with severity.
Certainly,—and we make no attempt to dissimulate the
fact,— the observing physiologist would have beheld an ir-
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remediable misery; he would, perchance, have pitied this
sick man, of the law’s making; but he would not have even
essayed any treatment; he would have turned aside his gaze
from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse
within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he
would have effaced from this existence the word which the
finger of God has, nevertheless, inscribed upon the brow of
every man,—hope.
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to
analyze, as perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried
to render it for those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly
perceive, after their formation, and had he seen
distinctly during the process of their formation, all the elements
of which his moral misery was composed? Had this
rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception
of the succession of ideas through which he had, by
degrees, mounted and descended to the lugubrious aspects
which had, for so many years, formed the inner horizon of
his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed within him,
and of all that was working there? That is something which
we do not presume to state; it is something which we do
not even believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean
Valjean, even after his misfortune, to prevent much vagueness
from still lingering there. At times he did not rightly
know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the shadows;
he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows;
one might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He
dwelt habitually in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind
man and a dreamer. Only, at intervals, there suddenly came
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to him, from without and from within, an access of wrath,
a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which illuminated
his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all
around him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful
light, the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective
of his destiny.
The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where
was he? He no longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this
nature, in which that which is pitiless—that is to say, that
which is brutalizing—predominates, is to transform a man,
little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild
beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast.
Jean Valjean’s successive and obstinate attempts at escape
would alone suffice to prove this strange working of the
law upon the human soul. Jean Valjean would have renewed
these attempts, utterly useless and foolish as they were, as
often as the opportunity had presented itself, without reflecting
for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences
which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously,
like the wolf who finds his cage open. Instinct said
to him, ‘Flee!’ Reason would have said, ‘Remain!’ But in the
presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished;
”
”