A Hero and Some Other Folks | Page 8

twenty-six; hears his sister's children
crying, "Bread, bread, give bread;" rises in sullen acerbity; smites his
huge fist through a baker's window, and steals a loaf; is arrested,
convicted, sent to the galleys, and herded with galley slaves; attempts
repeated escapes, is retaken, and at the age of forty-six shambles out of
his galley slavery with a yellow passport, certifying this is "a very
dangerous man;" and with a heart on which brooding has written with
its biting stylus the story of what he believes to be his wrongs, Jean
Valjean, bitter as gall against society, has his hands ready, aye, eager,
to strike, no matter whom. Looked at askance, turned from the hostel,
denied courtesy, food, and shelter, the criminal in him rushes to the
ascendant, and he thrusts the door of the bishop's house open. Listen,
he is speaking now, look at him! The bishop deals with him tenderly, as
a Christian ought; sentimentally, but scarcely wisely. He has

sentimentality rather than sentiment in his kindness; he puts a premium
on Jean Valjean becoming a criminal again. To assume everybody to be
good, as some philanthropists do, is folly, being so transparently false.
The good bishop--bless him for his goodness!--who prays God daily
not to lead him into temptation, why does he lead this sullen criminal
into temptation? Reformatory methods should be sane. The bishop's
methods were not sane. He meant well, but did not quite do well. Jean
Valjean, sleeping in a bed of comfort, grows restless, wakens, rises,
steals what is accessible, flees, is arrested, brought back, is exonerated
by the bishop's tenderness, goes out free; steals from the little Savoyard,
cries after the retreating lad to restore him his coin, tails to bring him
back; fights with self, and with God's good help rises in the deep dark
of night from the bishop's steps; walks out into a day of soul, trudges
into the city of M----, to which he finds admission, not by showing the
criminal's yellow passport, but by the passport of heroism, having on
entrance rescued a child from a burning building; becomes a citizen,
invents a process of manufacturing jet, accumulates a fortune, spends it
lavishly in the bettering of the city where his riches were acquired; is
benefactor to employee and city, and is called "Monsieur;" and after
repeated refusals, becomes "Monsieur the Mayor;" gives himself up as
a criminal to save a man unjustly accused, is returned to the galleys for
the theft of the little Savoyard's forty-sous coin; by a heroic leap from
the yardarm, escapes; seeks and finds Cossette, devotes his life to
sheltering and loving her; runs his gauntlet of repeated perils with
Javert, grows steadily in heroism, and sturdy, invigorating manhood;
dies a hero and a saint, and an honor to human kind,--such is Jean
Valjean's biography in meager outline. But the moon, on a summer's
evening, "a silver crescent gleaming 'mid the stars," appears hung on a
silver cord of the full moon's rim; and, as the crescent moon is not the
burnished silver of the complete circle, so no outline can include the
white, bewildering light of this heroic soul. Jean Valjean is the
biography of a redeemed life. The worst life contains the elements of
redemption, as words contain the possibility of poetry. He was a fallen,
vicious, desperate man; and from so low a level, he and God conspired
to lift him to the levels where the angels live, than which a resurrection
from the dead is no more potent and blinding miracle. Instead of giving
this book the caption, "Jean Valjean," it might be termed the "History

of the Redemption of a Soul;" and such a theme is worthy the study of
this wide world of women and of men.
Initial in this redemptive work was the good bishop, whose words,
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good,"
never lost their music or might to Valjean's spirit. Some man or woman
stands on everybody's road to God. And Jean Valjean, with the bishop's
words sounding in his ears--voices that will not silence--goes out with
his candlesticks, goes trembling out, and starts on his anabasis to a new
life; wandered all day in the fields, inhaled the odors of a few late
flowers, his childhood being thus recalled; and when the sun was
throwing mountain shadows behind hillocks and pebbles, as Jean
Valjean sat and pondered in a dumb way, a Savoyard came singing on
his way, tossing his bits of money in his hands; drops a forty-sous piece
near Jean Valjean, who, in a mood of inexplicable evil, places his huge
foot upon it, nor listened to the child's entreaty, "My piece, monsieur;"
and eager and more eager grows a child whose little riches were
invaded,