The french masters, p.488
The French Masters, page 488
Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, in despair, suffocating with tears, each beneath one of Jean Valjean’s hands. Those august hands no longer moved.
He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.
His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to cover his hands with kisses.
He was dead.
The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.
CHAPTER VI — THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES
In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.
This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.
No name is to be read there.
Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:
Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d’elle-même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va.
LETTER TO M. DAELLI
Publisher of the Italian translation of Les Misérables in Milan.
HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.
You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: “Open to me, I come for you.”
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable’s name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it. Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent rags on man.
Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly.
Is it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization acknowledges?
Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables.
From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.
I resume. This book, Les Misérables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book, — I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.
As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.
Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow, of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.
In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight, with having transgressed the bounds of what they call “French taste”; I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.
In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!”
This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and for your country. If I have insisted so strongly, it is because of one phrase in your letter. You write: —
“There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say: ‘This book, Les Misérables, is a French book. It does not concern us. Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.’” — Alas! I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.
If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty to publish it, sir. Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished sentiments.
VICTOR HUGO.
LES MISÉRABLES
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I. — FANTINE.
PREFACE
BOOK FIRST — A JUST MAN
CHAPTER I — M. MYRIEL
CHAPTER II — M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
CHAPTER III — A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
CHAPTER IV — WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
CHAPTER V — MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
CHAPTER VI — WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
CHAPTER VII — CRAVATTE
CHAPTER VIII — PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
CHAPTER IX — THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER
CHAPTER X — THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
CHAPTER XI — A RESTRICTION
CHAPTER XII — THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
CHAPTER XIII — WHAT HE BELIEVED
CHAPTER XIV — WHAT HE THOUGHT
BOOK SECOND — THE FALL
CHAPTER I — THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING
CHAPTER II — PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.
CHAPTER III — THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
CHAPTER IV — DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.
CHAPTER V — TRANQUILLITY
CHAPTER VI — JEAN VALJEAN
CHAPTER VII — THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER VIII — BILLOWS AND SHADOWS
CHAPTER IX — NEW TROUBLES
CHAPTER X — THE MAN AROUSED
CHAPTER XI — WHAT HE DOES
CHAPTER XII — THE BISHOP WORKS
CHAPTER XIII — LITTLE GERVAIS
BOOK THIRD. — IN THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER I — THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER II — A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
CHAPTER III — FOUR AND FOUR
CHAPTER IV — THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY
CHAPTER V — AT BOMBARDA’S
CHAPTER VI — A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
CHAPTER VII — THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES
CHAPTER VIII — THE DEATH OF A HORSE
CHAPTER IX — A MERRY END TO MIRTH
BOOK FOURTH. — TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON’S POWER
CHAPTER I — ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
CHAPTER II — FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES
CHAPTER III — THE LARK
BOOK FIFTH. — THE DESCENT.
CHAPTER I — THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS
CHAPTER II — MADELEINE
CHAPTER III — SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE
CHAPTER IV — M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING
CHAPTER V — VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
CHAPTER VI — FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
CHAPTER VII — FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS
CHAPTER VIII — MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY
CHAPTER IX — MADAME VICTURNIEN’S SUCCESS
CHAPTER X — RESULT OF THE SUCCESS
CHAPTER XI — CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT
CHAPTER XII — M. BAMATABOIS’S INACTIVITY
CHAPTER XIII — THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE
BOOK SIXTH. — JAVERT
CHAPTER I — THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE
CHAPTER II — HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP
BOOK SEVENTH. — THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
CHAPTER I — SISTER SIMPLICE
CHAPTER II — THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE
CHAPTER III — A TEMPEST IN A SKULL
CHAPTER IV — FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP
CHAPTER V — HINDRANCES
CHAPTER VI — SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF
CHAPTER VII — THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR
CHAPTER VIII — AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR
CHAPTER IX — A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION
CHAPTER X — THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS
CHAPTER XI — CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED
BOOK EIGHTH. — A COUNTER-BLOW
CHAPTER I — IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR
CHAPTER II — FANTINE HAPPY
CHAPTER III — JAVERT SATISFIED
CHAPTER IV — AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS
CHAPTER V — A SUITABLE TOMB
VOLUME II. — COSETTE
BOOK FIRST. — WATERLOO
CHAPTER I — WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
CHAPTER II — HOUGOMONT
CHAPTER III — THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815
CHAPTER IV — A
CHAPTER V — THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES
CHAPTER VI — FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
CHAPTER VII — NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR
CHAPTER VIII — THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE
CHAPTER IX — THE UNEXPECTED
CHAPTER X — THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN
CHAPTER XI — A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW
CHAPTER XII — THE GUARD
CHAPTER XIII — THE CATASTROPHE
CHAPTER XIV — THE LAST SQUARE
CHAPTER XV — CAMBRONNE
CHAPTER XVI — QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?
CHAPTER XVII — IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?
CHAPTER XVIII — A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT
CHAPTER XIX — THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
BOOK SECOND. — THE SHIP ORION
CHAPTER I — NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430
CHAPTER II — IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE DEVIL’S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
CHAPTER III — THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
