A Hero and Some Other Folks | Page 5

more thinking to drop his burden than the mother thought to desert it--Gwynplaine is a hero for whose deed an epic is fitting. Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, found, after long years, holding in his skeleton arms a bit of woman's drapery and a woman's skeleton--Quasimodo, hideous, herculean, hungry-hearted, tender, a hunchback, yet a lover and a man--who denies to Quasimodo a hero's laurels? In "Les Miserables" are heroes not a few. Gavroche, that green leaf blown about Paris streets; Fantine, the mother; Eponine, the lover; Bishop Bienvenu, the Christian; Jean Valjean, the man,--all are heroic folk. Our hearts throb as we look at them. Gavroche, the lad, dances by as though blown past by the gale. Fantine, shorn of her locks of gold; Fantine, with her bloody lips, because her teeth have been sold to purchase medicine for her sick child--her child, yet a child of shame; Fantine, her mother's love omnipotent, lying white, wasted, dying, expectantly looking toward the door, with her heart beating like a wild bird, beating with its wings against cage-bars, anxious for escape; Fantine, 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