Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

  CHAPTER VII.

  A DESPERATE MAN'S HEART.

  Society must necessarily look at these things, because they are createdby it. He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was notweak-minded. The natural light was kindled within him, and misfortune,which also has its brightness, increased the little daylight therewas in this mind. Under the stick and the chain in the dungeon, whenat work, beneath the torrid sun of the bagne, or when lying on theconvict's plank, he reflected. He constituted himself a court, andbegan by trying himself. He recognized that he was not an innocentman unjustly punished; he confessed to himself that he had committedan extreme and blamable action; that the loaf would probably not havebeen refused him had he asked for it; that in any case it would havebeen better to wait for it, either from pity or from labor, and thatit was not a thoroughly unanswerable argument to say, "Can a man waitwhen he is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for aman to die literally of hunger; next, that, unhappily or happily, manis so made that he can suffer for a long time and severely, morallyand physically, without dying; that hence he should have been patient;that it would have been better for the poor little children; that itwas an act of madness for him, a wretched weak man, violently to collarsociety and to imagine that a man can escape from wretchedness bytheft; that in any case the door by which a man enters infamy is a badone by which to escape from wretchedness; and, in short, that he hadbeen in the wrong.

  Then he asked himself if he were the only person who had been inthe wrong in his fatal history? whether, in the first place, it wasnot a serious thing that he, a workman, should want for work; thathe, laborious as he was, should want for bread? whether, next, whenthe fault was committed and confessed, the punishment had not beenferocious and excessive, and whether there were not more abuse onthe side of the law in the penalty than there was on the side of theculprit in the crime? whether there had not been an excessive weight inone of the scales, that one in which expiation lies? whether the excessof punishment were not the effacement of the crime, and led to theresult of making a victim of the culprit, a creditor of the debtor, anddefinitively placing the right on the side of the man who had violatedit? whether this penalty, complicated by excessive aggravations forattempted escapes, did not eventually become a sort of attack madeby the stronger on the weaker, a crime of society committed on theindividual, a crime which was renewed every day, and had lasted fornineteen years? He asked himself if human society could have the rightto make its members equally undergo, on one side, its unreasonableimprovidence, on the other its pitiless foresight, and to hold a maneternally between a want and an excess, want of work and excess ofpunishment? whether it were not exorbitant that society should treatthus its members who were worst endowed in that division of propertywhich is made by chance, and consequently the most worthy of indulgence?

  These questions asked and solved, he passed sentence on society andcondemned it--to his hatred. He made it responsible for the fate heunderwent, and said to himself that he would not hesitate to call itto account some day. He declared that there was no equilibrium betweenthe damage he had caused and the damage caused him; and he came to theconclusion that his punishment was not an injustice, but most assuredlyan iniquity. Wrath may be wild and absurd; a man may be wronglyirritated; but he is only indignant when he has some show of reasonsomewhere. Jean Valjean felt indignant. And then, again, human societyhad never done him aught but harm, he had only seen its wrathful face,which is called its justice, and shows itself to those whom it strikes.Men had only laid hands on him to injure him, and any contact with themhad been a blow to him. Never, since his infancy, since his motherand his sister, had he heard a kind word or met a friendly look. Fromsuffering after suffering, he gradually attained the conviction thatlife was war, and that in this war he was the vanquished. As he had noother weapon but his hatred, he resolved to sharpen it in the bagne andtake it with him when he left.

  There was at Toulon a school for the chain-gang, kept by the IgnorantinBrethren, who imparted elementary instruction to those wretches whowere willing to learn. He was one of the number, and went to school atthe age of forty, where he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic;he felt that strengthening his mind was strengthening his hatred. Incertain cases, instruction and education may serve as allies to evil.It is sad to say, that after trying society which had caused hismisfortunes, he tried Providence, who had made society, and condemnedit also. Hence, during these nineteen years of torture and slavery,this soul ascended and descended at the same time; light entered onone side and darkness on the other. As we have seen, Jean Valjean wasnot naturally bad, he was still good when he arrived at the bagne.He condemned society then, and felt that he was growing wicked; hecondemned Providence, and felt that he was growing impious.

  Here it is difficult not to meditate for a moment. Is human naturethus utterly transformed? Can man, who is created good by God, be madebad by man? Can the soul be entirely remade by destiny, and becomeevil if the destiny be evil? Can the heart be deformed, and contractincurable ugliness and infirmity under the pressure of disproportionatemisfortune, like the spine beneath too low a vault? Is there not inevery human soul, was there not in that of Jean Valjean especially,a primary spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, andimmortal for the other, which good can develop, illumine, and cause toglisten splendidly, and which evil can never entirely extinguish?

  These are grave and obscure questions, the last of which everyphysiologist would unhesitatingly have answered in the negative,had he seen at Toulon, in those hours of repose which were forJean Valjean hours of reverie, this gloomy, stern, silent, andpensive galley-slave--the pariah of the law which regarded menpassionately--the condemned of civilization, who regarded Heaven withseverity--seated with folded arms on a capstan bar, with the end of hischain thrust into his pocket to prevent it from dragging. We assuredlydo not deny that the physiological observer would have seen there anirremediable misery; he would probably have pitied this patient of thelaw, but he would not have even attempted a cure: he would have turnedaway from the caverns he noticed in this soul, and, like Dante at thegates of the Inferno, he would have effaced from this existence thatword which GOD, however, has written on the brow of every man: _hope!_

  Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, asperfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it to ourreaders? Did Jean Valjean see after their formation, and had he seendistinctly as they were formed, all the elements of which his moralwretchedness was composed? Had this rude and unlettered man clearlycomprehended the succession of ideas by which he had step by stepascended and descended to the gloomy views which had for so many yearsbeen the inner horizon of his mind? Was he really conscious of all thathad taken place in him and all that was stirring in him? This we shouldnot like to assert, and, indeed, we are not inclined to believe it.There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean for a considerable amountof vagueness not to remain, even after so much misfortune; at timeshe did not even know exactly what he experienced. Jean Valjean was indarkness; he suffered in darkness, and he hated in darkness. He livedhabitually in this shadow, groping like a blind man and a dreamer;at times he was attacked, both internally and externally, by a shockof passion, a surcharge of suffering, a pale and rapid flash whichillumined his whole soul, and suddenly made him see all around, bothbefore and behind him, in the glare of a frightful light, the hideousprecipices and gloomy perspective of his destiny. When the flash hadpassed, night encompassed him again, and where was he? He no longerknew.

  The peculiarity of punishments of this nature, in which nought but whatis pitiless, that is to say brutalizing, prevails, is gradually, andby a species of stupid transfiguration, to transform a man into a wildbeast, at times a ferocious beast. Jean Valjean's attempted escapes,successive and obstinate, would be sufficient to prove the strange workcarried on by the law upon a human soul; he would have renewed theseattempts, so utterly useless and mad, as many times as the opportunityoffered itself, without dr
eaming for a moment of the result, or theexperiments already made. He escaped impetuously like the wolf thatfinds its cage open. Instinct said to him, "Run away;" reasoningwould have said to him, "Remain;" but in the presence of so violent atemptation, reason disappeared and instinct alone was left. The brutealone acted, and when he was recaptured the new severities inflicted onhim only served to render him more wild.

  One fact we must not omit mentioning is that he possessed a physicalstrength with which no one in the bagne could compete. In turning acapstan, Jean Valjean was equal to four men; he frequently raised andheld on his back enormous weights, and took the place at times of thatinstrument which is called a jack, and was formerly called _orgueil_,from which, by the way, the Rue Montorgueil derived its name. Hiscomrades surnamed him Jean the Jack. Once when the balcony of the TownHall at Toulon was being repaired, one of those admirable caryatides ofPuget's which support the balcony, became loose and almost fell. JeanValjean, who was on the spot, supported the statue with his shoulder,and thus gave the workmen time to come up.

  His suppleness even exceeded his vigor. Some convicts, who perpetuallydream of escaping, eventually make a real science of combined skilland strength; it is the science of the muscles. A full course ofmysterious statics is daily practised by the prisoners, those eternalenviers of flies and birds. Swarming up a perpendicular, and findinga resting-place where a projection is scarcely visible, was child'splay for Jean Valjean. Given a corner of a wall, with the tension ofhis back and hams, with his elbows and heels clinging to the roughstone, he would hoist himself as if by magic to a third story, and attimes would ascend to the very roof of the bagne. He spoke little andnever laughed; it needed some extreme emotion to draw from him, onceor twice a year, that mournful convict laugh, which is, as it were,the echo of fiendish laughter. To look at him, he seemed engaged incontinually gazing at something terrible. He was, in fact, absorbed.Through the sickly perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushedintellect, he saw confusedly that a monstrous thing was hanging overhim. In this obscure and dull gloom through which he crawled, whereverhe turned his head and essayed to raise his eye, he saw, with a terrorblended with rage, built up above him, with frightfully scarped sides,a species of terrific pile of things, laws, prejudices, men, and facts,whose outline escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which wasnothing else but that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization.He distinguished here and there in this heaving and shapelessconglomeration--at one moment close to him, at another on distant andinaccessible plateaux--some highly illumined group;--here the jailerand his stick, there the gendarme and his sabre, down below the mitredarchbishop, and on the summit, in a species of sun, the crowned anddazzling Emperor. It seemed to him as if this distant splendor, farfrom dissipating his night, only rendered it more gloomy and black. Allthese laws, prejudices, facts, men, and things, came and went abovehim, in accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement whichGod imprints on civilization, marching over him, and crushing him withsomething painful in its cruelty and inexorable in its indiff?rence.Souls which have fallen into the abyss of possible misfortune, haplessmen lost in the depths of those limbos into which people no longerlook, and the reprobates of the law, feel on their heads the wholeweight of the human society which is so formidable for those outsideit, so terrific for those beneath it.

  In this situation, Jean Valjean thought, and what could be the natureof his reverie? If the grain of corn had its thoughts, when ground bythe mill-stone, it would doubtless think as did Jean Valjean. All thesethings, realities full of spectres, phantasmagorias full of reality,ended by creating for him a sort of internal condition which is almostinexpressible. At times, in the midst of his galley-slave toil, hestopped and began thinking; his reason, at once riper and more troubledthan of yore, revolted. All that had happened appeared to him absurd;all that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said to himselfthat it was a dream; he looked at the overseer standing a few yardsfrom him, and he appeared to him a phantom, until the phantom suddenlydealt him a blow with a stick. Visible nature scarce existed for him;we might almost say with truth, that for Jean Valjean there was nosun, no glorious summer-day, no brilliant sky, no fresh April dawn; wecannot describe the gloomy light which illumined his soul.

  In conclusion, to sum up all that can be summed up in what we haveindicated, we will confine ourselves to establishing the fact thatin nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive wood-cutter ofFaverolles, and the formidable galley-slave of Toulon, had become,thanks to the manner in which the bagne had fashioned him, capableof two sorts of bad actions: first, a rapid, unreflecting bad deed,entirely instinctive, and a species of reprisal for the evil he hadsuffered; and, secondly, of a grave, serious evil deed, discussedconscientiously and meditated with the false ideas which such amisfortune can produce. His premeditations passed through the threesuccessive phases which natures of a certain temperament can aloneundergo,--reasoning, will, and obstinacy. He had for his motiveshabitual indignation, bitterness of soul, the profound feeling ofiniquities endured, and reaction even against the good, the innocent,and the just, if such exist. The starting-point, like the goal, of allhis thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred, which, if it benot arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomeswithin a given time a hatred of society, then a hatred of the humanrace, next a hatred of creation, and which is expressed by a vague,incessant, and brutal desire to injure some one, no matter whom. As wesee, it was not unfairly that the passport described Jean Valjean as ahighly dangerous man. Year by year this soul had become more and morewithered, slowly but fatally. A dry soul must have a dry eye, and onleaving the bagne, nineteen years had elapsed since he had shed a tear.