To make a poem of the human conscience, even in terms of a single man and the least of men, would be to merge all epics in a single epic transcending all. Conscience is the labyrinth of illusion, desire, and pursuit, the furnace of dreams, the repository of thoughts of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophistry, the battlefield of passions. To peer at certain moments into the withdrawn nice of a human being in the act of reflection, to see something of what lies beyond their outward silence, is to discern struggle on a Homeric scale, conflicts of dragons and hydras, aerial hosts as in Milton, towering vistas as in Dante. The infinite space that each man carries within himself, wherein despairingly he contrasts the movements of his spirit with the acts of his life, is an overpowering thing.
Dante Alighieri found himself one day at a fateful doorway which he hesitated to enter. We too are confronted by such a doorway, and we too must hesitate but enter none the less.
There is little to be added to what the reader already knows about Jean Valjean, following his encounter with the boy, Petit-Gervais. Thereafter, as we have seen, he was a changed man, enacting in his life what the bishop had sought to make of him. It was more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.
He contrived to vanish, sold the bishop’s silver, keeping only the candlesticks as a reminder, and worked his way from town to town across France until eventually he came to Montreuil-sur-mer. Here he established himself in the manner we have described, rendered himself both unassailable and inaccessible, and, with a conscience darkened by his past but in the knowledge that the second half of his life was a repudiation of the first, settled down to live peaceably and hopefully with only two objects in mind – to conceal his true identity and sanctify his life, and to escape from men and find his way back to God.
The two considerations were so closely linked as to be inseparable in his mind, both so absorbing and overriding as to govern his every act. As a rule they worked harmoniously in his daily conduct, inclining him towards aloofness, making him benevolent and simple, both guiding him along the same path. But it happened occasionally that there was a clash between them, and on these occasions, as we have seen, the man known to Montreuil-sur-mer as Monsieur Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first consideration to the second – his personal security to his moral principles. Against all prudence he had kept the bishop’s candlesticks and worn mourning for him; he sought out and questioned every vagabond boy who passed through the town; he had had inquiries made among the families in Faverolles, and he had saved the life of old Fauchelevent, regardless of Javert’s penetrating eye. He had, it seems, concluded, after the manner of saints and sages, that his first duty was not to himself.
But no situation like the present had ever before arisen. Never had the two principles governing the life of this unfortunate man been brought so sharply into conflict. He had been made to realize this, still confusedly but profoundly, by the first words spoken by Javert when he entered his room. When the name he had sought to bury under so many layers of concealment was so unexpectedly uttered he had been completely stunned, dazed by the sinister quixotry of his destiny, and in his bewilderment he had known the tremor that precedes any great shock; he had bowed like an oak-tree at the approach of a tempest, or a soldier at the approach of an attack. He had felt the thunder-clouds massing above his head, and his first thought, as he listened to Javert, was to throw in his hand, to give himself up, get the man Champmathieu out of prison and take his place. It was a thought as piercing and agonizing as a knife-thrust in living flesh. But then it passed, and he said to himself, ‘Steady – steady!’ Repressing that first generous impulse, he recoiled from the heroic act.
Certainly it would have been a great thing if, following the bishop’s solemn admonition, after the years of repentance and self-denial and in the full flood of a rehabilitation so well begun, he had not faltered even in the face of this fearful dilemma but had steadily pursued his course towards the abyss in the heart of which lay spiritual salvation; it would have been a great thing, but it did not happen. We must give a true account of what took place in his soul, and of nothing else. The first victor was the instinct of self-preservation. He hastily re-ordered his thoughts, controlled his emotions, took due note of the perilous proximity of Javert, postponed any final decision with a firmness inspired by terror, concentrated upon what had to be done and recovered his calm like a warrior retrieving his shield.
During the rest of the day he remained in that state of inward turmoil and outward serenity, taking only what may be termed ‘safety precautions’. Everything was confusion in his mind, to the extent that he could see nothing clearly and could only have accounted for himself by saying that he had been dealt a stunning blow. He paid his customary visit to Fantine and prolonged it from kindness and with a feeling that he must lay particular injunctions on the sister in case he should be obliged to be absent. He had a vague notion that he should go to Arras, without being at all decided about it, telling himself that since he was exempt from all suspicion it could do no harm for him to go and see what happened; and so he hired the tilbury, in case he should need it.
He dined with a good appetite; but back in his bedroom he began to think.
He reviewed his situation and found it unbelievable, so much so that at one moment, prompted by an almost reasonless impulse, he got up from his chair and bolted the door. He was afraid of what might enter, barricading himself against the impossible.
The lamp worried him and he blew it out, afraid lest someone should see him.
Who?
Alas, what he sought to exclude and to stifle was already present in the room. It was his own conscience.
His conscience: that is to say, God.
But for a time he was able to lull himself into a sense of security. With the door bolted no one could lay hands on him, and with the light extinguished he was invisible. Seated in darkness with his elbows on the table and his head resting on his hands, he reflected.
‘Where am I? Is this a dream? Did I really see Javert, and did he really say those things? This man Champmathieu, does he really look so like me? Is it conceivable? When I think how untroubled I was yesterday morning, how far from suspecting anything! What was I doing at that time? What does this whole business mean? What am I to do now?’
Such was his state of torment. His brain had lost the power to grasp the thoughts that sped like waves through it while he clutched his forehead in an effort to control them. It was a turmoil swamping his willpower and reason, from which nothing emerged except the sense of his own anguish as he sought in vain for clarity and resolve.
His head was burning. He got up and flung open the window. There were no stars in the sky. He came back and sat down again at the table.
The first hour passed in this fashion.
By degrees the thoughts began to crystallize in his mind and he was able to take a clearer view of his situation, not as a whole but in certain of its details. He perceived that, extraordinary and critical though it was, he was nevertheless entirely master of it.
This merely deepened his perplexity.
Apart from their strict underlying religious intention, his every act until that day had been for the purpose of digging a hole in which his real name might be buried. What he had most feared, in his moments of recollection and his wakeful nights, was to hear that name spoken. He had said to himself that the rebirth of that name would for him mean the end of everything, the destruction of the new life he had built, even – who could tell? – of the new soul he had fashioned. The thought alone, the very possibility, made him shudder. Had anyone told him that a day would come when the name, the hideous words ‘Jean Valjean’, would suddenly resound in his ears like a thunderclap, coming like a blaze of light out of darkness to tear aside the mystery in which he had disguised himself; and had they gone on to tell him that this would be no threat unless he chose to make it so, that the light would serve merely to deepen his disguise and that the worthy Monsieur Madel
eine, being confronted with the ghost of Jean Valjean, might emerge from the encounter even more honoured and secure than before – had anyone said this to him he would have stared in amazement, thinking the words insane. Yet this was precisely what had happened, this heaping-up of impossibilities was a fact; God had allowed the fantasy to become reality.
As his mind cleared he became more precisely aware of his position. It was as though he had awakened out of sleep to find himself sliding down a slope in darkness, upright and shivering, struggling in vain to check his descent on the edge of a precipice. He saw clearly the figure of another man, a stranger, whom Destiny had mistaken for himself and was thrusting into that chasm. Someone had to go into the chasm, he or another, if it was to be sealed up.
He had only to let things take their course.
It came to this: that his place in prison was still vacant, rendered vacant by his robbery of the boy, that it was empty and awaiting him and would continue to claim him until he returned to it, and that this was inexorable. But now it seemed that he had found a substitute, the luckless Champmathieu. He could, if he chose, be in two places at once, a prisoner in the person of Champmathieu, and a member of society under the name of Madeleine, with nothing more to fear provided he allowed the brand of infamy to be set on Champmathieu’s head, the stigma which, like a tombstone, once set in place can never be removed.
All this was so appalling and so strange that it caused in him the sort of upheaval that men experience only twice or thrice in a lifetime, a spiritual convulsion compounded of all the suspect elements in the heart, irony, triumph, desperation – something that may be termed an inward burst of laughter.
He suddenly re-lit his candle.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘what am I afraid of? Why do I have to sit here brooding? I’m safe at last. The one door through which the past might have entered to disrupt my life has now been closed, walled-up for good. The man who so nearly guessed the truth – who did guess it, by God! – Javert, the bloodhound sniffing at my heels, has been thrown completely off the scent. He has got his Jean Valjean and will trouble me no more. Very likely he will choose to leave the town and go elsewhere. And none of this is my doing. I had no part in it. So what is wrong? To look at me one might think that I had been overtaken by disaster. But after all, if another man is in trouble, that is not my fault. Providence has ordained it, and who am I to fly in the face of Providence? What more can I ask? The blessing I have most longed for during these years, the subject of my nightly dreams and prayers to Heaven, has now been granted me – perfect security! God has caused it to happen, and it is not for me to oppose the will of God. And why does God want it? So that I may continue as I have begun, to do good in the world and to set an example to other men, to let it be seen that the way of virtue and repentance is not divorced from happiness. I no longer understand why I was afraid to visit the curé, confess to him and ask his counsel, when clearly that is what he would have said to me – the matter has been settled, leave things as they are, let God have His way.’
Thus he reflected in the depths of his conscience, suspended, as it were, over his personal abyss. He got up and began to pace the room. ‘No need to think about it any more,’ he said. ‘I have made up my mind.’
But he was far from happy.
We can no more prevent a thought returning to the mind than we can prevent the sea from rising on the foreshore. To the sailor it is the tide, to the uneasy conscience it is remorse. God moves the soul as He moves the oceans.
After a little while, despite himself, he resumed that sombre dialogue in which he was both speaker and audience, saying things he did not wish to say, hearing things he did not wish to hear, yielding to that mysterious power which said to him, ‘Reflect’, as two thousand years before it had said to another condemned man, ‘Take up thy Cross!’
At that point, and in order that we may be fully understood, we must interpolate an observation.
It is certain that we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking person who has not done so. It may indeed be said that the word is never a more splendid mystery than when it travels in a man’s mind from thought to conscience and back again to thought. The expressions frequently used in this chapter, such as ‘He said’, ‘He exclaimed’, are to be interpreted in this sense. We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult wherein everything speaks except our mouth. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.
He asked himself where he stood, and he questioned the ‘decision’ he had arrived at. He confessed to himself that what he had resolved upon – to let things take their course, to let God have his way – was quite simply outrageous. To acquiesce in this blunder on the part of destiny and men, to make no effort to prevent it, to endorse it by his silence, in short, to do nothing, was in fact to do everything: it was to descend to the most abject depths of criminal hypocrisy and cowardice.
For the first time in eight years the unhappy man had tasted the bitter flavour of an evil thought and an evil deed.
He spat it out in disgust.
He pursued his self-questioning, sternly demanding what he had meant when he said, ‘My object is achieved.’ Certainly his life had a purpose, but was it simply to hide himself, to outwit the police? Had everything he had done been for no better reason than this? Had he not had a greater purpose, the saving not of his life but of his soul, the resolve to become a good and honourable and upright man as the bishop required of him – had not that been his true and deepest intention? Now he talked of closing the door on the past when, God help him, he would be reopening the door by committing an infamous act, not merely that of a thief but of the most odious of thieves. He would be robbing a man of his life, his peace, his place in the sun, morally murdering him by condemning him to the living death that is called a convict prison. But if, on the other hand, he saved the man by repairing the blunder, by proclaiming himself Jean Valjean the felon, this would be to achieve his own true resurrection and firmly close the door on the hell from which he sought to escape. To return to it in appearance would be to escape from it in reality. This was what he must do, and without it he would have accomplished nothing, his life would be wasted, his repentance meaningless, and there would be nothing left for him to say except, ‘Who cares?’ He felt the presence of the bishop, more urgent than in life; he felt the old priest’s eyes upon him and knew that henceforth Monsieur Madeleine the mayor, with all his virtues, would seem to him abominable, whereas Jean Valjean the felon would be admirable and pure. Other men would see the mask, but the bishop would see the face; others would see the life, but he would see the soul. So there was nothing for it but to go to Arras and rescue the false Jean Valjean by proclaiming the true one. The most heartrending of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the ultimate, irretrievable step – but it had to be done. It was his most melancholy destiny that he could achieve sanctity in the eyes of God only by returning to degradation in the eyes of men.
‘Well then,’ he said, ‘let us decide upon it. Let us do our duty and save this man.’
Without knowing it he spoke the words aloud.
He turned to his account-books, checked them and saw that they were in order. He threw a sheaf of papers on the fire, the promissory notes of small tradesmen whom he knew to be in difficulties. He wrote and sealed a letter addressed to Monsieur Lafitte, banker, Rue d’Artois, Paris. Opening his desk he got out a wallet containing banknotes and the identity-card he had used in the year when he went to vote in the election.
Anyone watching him while he did these things would have discerned nothing of the heavy thoughts moving in his mind except that now and then his lips moved and now and then he stood fixedly regarding some object in the room as though it contained the answer to a question.
Having written the letter to M. Lafitte he put it in his pocket with the wallet and began to pace up and down again.
The tenor of his thoughts had not changed. Whichever
way he looked, the course of duty glared at him as though the words were written in letters of fire – ‘Stand up and say your name!’
And at the same time, as though they had assumed a tangible form, he saw the principles that had constituted the twofold rule of his life – to keep his name hidden, and to purify his soul. For the first time he saw them as wholly separate, and he saw the difference between them. He saw that whereas one must be good the other might turn to evil, that one spoke of dedication and the other of self-interest, that one proceeded from the light and the other from the dark.
He saw the conflict between them, and as the picture grew in his mind they took on huge proportions, so that he seemed to be witnessing within himself, amid the lights and shadows of that infinity of which we have spoken, a struggle between a goddess and a giantess. He was filled with terror, but it seemed to him that the good had gained the upper hand.
He perceived that this was the second turning-point in his spiritual life and in his destiny: the bishop had been the first, and the man Champmathieu marked the second. This was the uttermost crisis, the final trial of his fortitude.
His fevered state, which for a time had abated, was now rising again. A thousand thoughts crossed his mind, but still they reaffirmed his resolution.
He said to himself at one moment that perhaps he was taking the whole matter too seriously, that the man Champmathieu was perhaps not so important after all, and in any case he was a thief. But to this he replied that if the man had stolen a few apples it would entail no more than a month’s prison sentence – a far step from the galleys. And who was to say for certain that he had stolen anything? The name of Jean Valjean seemed to render further proof unnecessary. Was not this how the king’s prosecutors reasoned? A man is believed to be a thief because he is known to be a felon.
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