Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly:— "Who is this good man who is staring at me?" "Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it."

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright. "The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."

"The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise." He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow."

He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."

That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear robbers nor murderers.

Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul."

Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness,—places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,—and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished.

Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying."

"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed."

"O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!"

For many years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?" "Your blessing," said the Bishop. And he knelt down.

Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.

There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur's smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one's foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate.

Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary!

paroxysm of abnegation

Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is venerated.

The point on which we are certain is, that the difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into hypocrisy in his case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of his powers.

Puerile

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

somnambulism

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.

lugubrious,

Is there not, dear Madame, something truly evangelical in this delicacy which abstains from sermon, from moralizing, from allusions? and is not the truest pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all?

The cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.

he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.

human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and which it shows to those whom it strikes.

he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate.

"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."

obduracy

expiation,

locution

neologism

turpitude,

eclogue

Matutinal

euphony.

acrimony.

clarions

indolent

Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy.

desiccating

syllogism.

physiognomist.

probity.

Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one's hands, and

to be able to take it in one's arms,—God made tangible,—what bliss!

calumnies;

It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.