Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

  CHAPTER VII.

  CARE TO BE EXERCISED IN CONDEMNING.

  History and philosophy have eternal duties which are at the sametime simple duties. To oppose Caiaphas as a high priest, Draco as ajudge, Trimalcion as a law-giver, Tiberius as an emperor,--that is aduty simple, direct, and clear, and gives no room for doubt. But theright to live apart, even with its objections and its abuse, must bedemonstrated and handled carefully; monasticism is a human problem.

  In speaking of convents, these homes of error but of innocence, ofwanderings from the true path but of good intentions, of ignorance butof devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, we must almost always say yesand no.

  A convent is a contradiction: its aim, salvation; its means, sacrifice.The convent is supreme selfishness having as its result supremeabnegation.

  To abdicate in order to reign seems to be the motto of monasticism.

  In the convent, they suffer in order to enjoy. They take out a letterof credit on death. They discount in earthly night the light of heaven.In the convent hell is endured in advance of the heirship to paradise.

  The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide recompensed byeternity.

  Mockery on such a subject does not seem to us to be in place.Everything there is serious, the good as well as the bad.

  The just man frowns, but never sneers at it We can sympathize withindignation, but not with malignity.