A Hero and Some Other Folks. William A. Quayle
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 unerring, 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 Valjean, 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