into a reckless and wicked life, to drown his grief. He resolves upon
suicide, but he is rescued from the Tiber and awakens to consciousness
in a convent, where, filled with penitence, he embraces the monastic
life, and becomes a preacher of great power. And now come alternating
chapters, picturing Gerard in the cloister and on his pilgrimages, and
Margaret, with her child, by the hearth at home.
Finally, on a pilgrimage to England, Gerard passes through Rotterdam,
and preaches with great eloquence in the convent church. Margaret is
present. The chapters are of great power which portray the recognition
of the lovers, the discovery of the false letter, and the curse
launched by Gerard upon his two brothers who had planned it. But soon
Gerard disappears, and becomes an anchorite in a cave not far away.
There is a superb description of the struggles of his soul; of the
temptations that beset him; of his “turning to gloomy madness”; of
his dreams, in which the face of Margaret comes to him irradiated
with sunshine, while she blushes and casts on him looks of ineffable
tenderness, murmuring, “Gerard, be whose thou wilt by day, but at
night, be mine!”; of his terrible efforts to subdue the body, and of
his spiritual conquest. But Margaret has discovered the anchorite in
his retreat, where she has identified him by a mark upon the finger
which he stretches forth from the small window of his cave to feed the
birds; and on one occasion, as he returns to his hermitage, which he
leaves only in the night, he finds that Margaret is there. He believes
she is an evil spirit sent to tempt him; he seeks to exorcise her, and
a dreadful scene ensues, as she tries to lead him away from his foul
den. They part in fury, but she has left behind her sleeping boy, who,
when he wakes, by his innocent prattle wins the heart of the monk, who
is quite unconscious that the child is his own. Margaret comes upon
them, and beseeches her husband to take courage now that God has sent
the boy to comfort him for what he has lost in her, and “that is not so
very much, for the better part of love shall never cool.” Eloquent is
the pleading by which at last she wins him to go to Gouda Manse, which
she has already prepared for his coming, and to care for the flock over
which he had been appointed vicar.
The remainder of the story deals with the quiet life of Gerard in the
Manse, and of Margaret,--still separated by the church and by their own
consciences, but united by a living pledge of affection. At last she
is taken down with the plague, and the final scene between the two is
pathetic and beautiful to the last degree. Gerard can not survive her;
he ends his days in a convent near the Manse; and when he confesses to
the stern Father Jerome, he says:
“She was my good angel; she sustained me in my duty and charity;
her face encouraged me in the pulpit; her lips soothed me under
ingratitude. She intertwined herself with all that was good
in my life; and after leaning on her so long, I could not go
on alone. And, dear Jerome, believe me, I am no rebel against
heaven. It is God’s will to release me. When they threw the earth
upon her poor coffin, something snapped within my bosom here
that mended may not be. I heard it and I felt it.... He in whose
hands are the issues of life and death gave me that minute the
great summons; ’twas some cord of life snapped in me. He is very
pitiful. I should have lived unhappy; but He said, ‘No; enough
is done, enough is suffered; poor, feeble, loving servant, thy
shortcomings are forgiven, thy sorrows touch their end; come thou
to thy rest!’”
The child that survived them was known as the great scholar of mediæval
times, Erasmus; for the foundation of the story is laid in historic
fact. The author, to use his own simile, has turned the epitome into a
narrative, and the skeleton into a human figure.
There are many passages in the book that are vivid and beautiful. For
instance, a fine description is given of Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy:
“He could fight as well as any king going; and he could lie as
well as any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter,
and could read and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He
loved jewels like a woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved
maids of honor, and indeed paintings generally, in proof of which
he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had also a rage for giants, dwarfs,
and Turks. These last stood ever planted about him, turbaned, and
blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them from Istamboul
with fair promises; but, the moment he had got them, he baptized
them by brute force in a large tub, and, this done, let them
squat with their faces towards Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much
as they pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in
fancying they were still infidels. He had lions in cages, and
fleet leopards trained by Orientals to run down hares and deer.
In short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum virtues.
For anything singularly pretty, or diabolically ugly, this was
your customer. The best of him was, he was open-handed to the
poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in earnest,
whereof he now gave a signal proof.”
Listen to the following description of a Mystery:
“In this representation divine personages, too sacred for me
to name here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk sophistry
with the cardinal Virtues, the nine Muses, and the seven deadly
Sins, all present in human shape, and not unlike one another. To
enliven which weary stuff, in rattled the Prince of the Powers
of the Air, and an imp that kept molesting him and buffeting
him with a bladder, at each thwack of which the crowd were in
ecstasies. When the Vices had uttered good store of obscenity
and the Virtues twaddle, the celestials, including the nine
Muses, went gingerly back to heaven one by one; for there was but
one cloud; and two artisans worked it up with its supernatural
freight, and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of the
audience. These disposed of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed
in the centre of the stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the
Vices in, and the Virtues and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced
merrily round the place of eternal torture to the fife and tabor.”
One of the stories told in this novel seems too good to have been
wholly an invention of the novelist. It is the story of the poor _curé_
who was summoned before his bishop for demanding the burial fees in
advance whenever he baptized a child. His excuse to the bishop was:
“I have been _curé_ of that parish seven years, and fifty
children have I baptized, and buried not five. At first I used
to say, ‘Heaven be praised, the air of this village is main
healthy,’ but on searching the register book I found ’twas always
so, and on probing the matter it came out that of those born at
Domfont, all but here and there one did go and get hanged at Aix.
But this was to defraud not their _curé_ only, but the entire
church of their dues; since pendards pay no funeral fees, being
buried in air.”
LES MISÉRABLES
VICTOR HUGO
I find it hard to understand much that I find in the modern French
novel. The conduct of the characters described in “Don Quixote” or
“The Betrothed” is perfectly intelligible to me. I can thread my way
through mists of German psychology and the extravagances of Russian
fiction, but the Frenchman of my own time is quite beyond me. And
whether he appears in a novel or actual life, his conduct often
seems to me as remote from the possibilities of human character as
if he were an inhabitant of Mars. The older French fiction is not so
incomprehensible; the absurdities of Rabelais and the follies of Gil
Bias and Manon Lescaut are not unnatural, but I confess myself utterly
unable to follow the motives which actuate Javert, Jean Valjean, and
some of the revolutionists in “Les Misérables.”
And yet in this great novel there are episodes of wonderful beauty.
The natural and the impossible, the simple and the incomprehensible
are thrown together in hopeless confusion. Jean Valjean, a convict
discharged from the galleys after nineteen years of penal servitude,
passes through the little town of “D,” where every door is closed
against him. Nowhere, not even in the jail, can he find shelter for
a single night, until the good bishop, as saintly and lovable a
character as ever illustrated the pages of fiction, receives him in
simple confidence. Jean Valjean repays his hospitality by stealing the
bishop’s silver candlesticks. He is arrested, but the good man, to
save him from punishment, tells the gendarmes that the candlesticks
have been taken with his own consent. On his way from the village Jean
Valjean robs the little Gervais, a poor Savoyard. But the generosity
of the bishop now produces a strange tumult in his heart, remorse
overcomes him, the whole current of his life is changed, and he is
at once transformed into a man as heroic and self-sacrificing as
imagination can conceive.
Under the name of M. Madeleine he becomes a successful manufacturer
at “_M. sur M._,” charitable, public-spirited, and beneficent, and he
is elected mayor of the city. Javert, an incorruptible but unamiable
sleuth hound of the police, believes that he recognizes in M. Madeleine
the convict Jean Valjean, and he writes to his superior officer
announcing the discovery, but the proof is insufficient, and when at
last he learns that Jean Valjean has been arrested elsewhere, Javert is
convinced that he has been mistaken. He thereupon appears before the
mayor and tells him what he has done and asks M. Madeleine to remove
him from his position, which he considers himself unqualified to fill.
Fantine, the mistress of one Tholomyès, a student, is abandoned by
her lover and seeks employment, leaving her child Cosette with one
Thenardier, an innkeeper at Montfermeil, by whom the little creature
is maltreated and abused, while ever increasing demands are made on
the poor mother for her support. Fantine obtains employment in the
factory of M. Madeleine, but is discharged without his knowledge, and
gradually sinks to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. When
M. Madeleine knows of her misery and the cause of it, he takes Fantine
under his protection, but it is now too late, for when he learned that
another man under the name of Jean Valjean was about to be sent to the
galleys for robbing the little Gervais, he discloses his own identity
at the trial in order to prevent another from suffering in his stead.
He is arrested by Javert, and Fantine dies committing her little
daughter to his care. Jean Valjean is again sent to the galleys, but
he escapes, finds Cosette, rescues her from the inhuman Thenardier and
his wife, and they live long together in an old house in Paris. Here
he is again detected by Javert and followed, but escapes with Cosette
after superhuman exertions, climbing over a high wall into a convent,
where he is cherished by the old gardener whose life he had saved some
time before, and after a remarkable episode in which he is buried alive
for a short time, he takes service in the garden of the convent where
Cosette becomes a pupil.
The boy Marius now becomes Cosette’s lover, and there are many passages
of natural though rather silly love-making, and the sacrifices made by
Jean Valjean to the happiness of the young couple are extraordinary,
and often indeed unnecessary and unreasonable.
Through the book the French melodramatic instinct and love for
exaggeration everywhere appears. Jean Valjean himself is a man of
more than human powers. His transformation from a criminal to a saint
is very hard to believe. The virtues of the good people and the
wickedness of the villains are excessive and unnatural. There is a
small group of desperate and impossible bandits, and a small coterie
of revolutionists for revolution’s sake, heroic absurdities who could
exist nowhere outside of France or bedlam. There are fights at the
barricades and labyrinthian journeys through the sewers of Paris, a
great deal of slaughtering and many hairbreadth escapes; but in this
strange kaleidoscope figures of marvellous beauty sometimes appear--the
little Gavroche, the _gamin_ who protects and patronizes his small
brothers and lodges them in the entrails of a wooden elephant; the old
bourgeois, M. Gillenormand, charitable, wrong-headed, and gallant, to
whom “the republic was a guillotine in the twilight and the empire
a saber in the night”; and his daughter, Mlle. Gillenormand, “the
incombustible prude.”
When Javert, the detective, is at last overcome by the magnanimity of
Jean Valjean so that he can no longer pursue his prey and discharge his
duty to the state, he finds refuge only in suicide!
There are many wise observations and brilliant passages, also a great
abundance of mere conceits. For instance: “Man is not a circle with
a single center, but an ellipse with two foci--facts are the one,
ideas the other.” There are long descriptions of motives for acts
which explain themselves, and there are other acts, the motives for
which are not only not explained, but quite inexplicable. There are
interminable digressions everywhere. A trifling episode at Waterloo is
the occasion for a very long and graphic account of that battle, which
has, in fact, nothing to do with the novel. The fact that Jean Valjean
happens to take refuge in a convent leads to an elaborate description
of the entire conventual system; a few words of slang introduce a long
treatise on _argot_; Gavroche is the peg upon which is hung a treatise
on the _gamins_ of Paris; and interminable discussions regarding
barricades, sewers, and many other things which appear casually in the
story consume more than half the entire space in the whole work. In
the meantime the action is wholly suspended. Of course there are many
valuable things in these digressions. Hugo is a man of encyclopædic
knowledge, and much philosophy, some good, some bad, appears in the
book; but the feeling is inevitable that this information and this
philosophy ought to be furnished in some other place, and not hung
disjointedly upon the thread of a novel with which it has no natural
connection.
But in spite of these defects, “Les Misérables” has perhaps appealed
more strongly than any novel ever written to the universal sympathy of
mankind for sorrow and suffering.
ROMOLA
GEORGE ELIOT
It is no false judgment which has assigned to George Eliot a very
distinguished place among the masters of fiction. This writer had
a better right than perhaps any other of her sex to assume the
_nom-de-plume_ of a man; for one of the striking characteristics of her
work is its essentially masculine quality.
“Romola” is a somber tale. There is very little merriment in it, hardly
the faintest suspicion of humor, but there is a great deal of deep
feeling, and perhaps even more thought than feeling. Every chapter is
pervaded with reflections which are often striking, sometimes subtle,
and nearly always convincing.
Many phrases can be taken from different parts of the book, which,
while perfectly appropriate to the places where they are found, would
also be adapted to a general collection of maxims or epigrams. For
instance:
“Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes
whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.”
“There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we
seem to stand by and wonder.”
“Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the
life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race, and to
have acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble.”
“It is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of
the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday’s faith,
hoping it will come back to-morrow.”
Moralizing of this kind is apt to become tiresome in an ordinary
writer, but George Eliot’s mind, like that of Shakespeare, has the rare
and masterful power of appropriately blending fiction and philosophy
into a single substance.
The story opens in 1492, at the time of the death of Lorenzo dei
Medici, when Tito Melema, a young Greek scholar, who has been recently
shipwrecked, makes his appearance in Florence, where the barber Nello
(a gossipy fellow, as barbers are wont to be, and with a smattering
of learning) offers to get him introduced to Bartolomeo Scala, the
Secretary of the Republic, who will perhaps employ him, and purchase
some valuable gems which he has in his possession. For this purpose
Nello brings him to the house of Bardo dei Bardi, a blind old scholar,
who has collected a valuable library which he intends to bequeath to
Florence to be kept as a memorial of himself. In this library Tito
meets Romola, the daughter of Bardo and the companion and associate
of her father in his classical researches. Through Bardo, Melema is
introduced to Scala, who buys some of his gems, and moreover finds the
young Greek very useful to him in a war of epigrams he is waging with
Politian, another celebrated scholar of the time.
The gems which Tito sells are not, however, his own. They belong to
Baldasarre, a man now stricken in years, who had rescued Melema in
childhood, had adopted him, had loved him, and had educated him. The
galley in which Baldasarre was travelling had been taken by a Turkish
vessel, and it was not certain whether he had perished or was held as
a slave. Tito says to himself, “If it were certain my father is alive,
I would search for him throughout the world to ransom him.” But as he
does not know, he keeps the money, stays in Florence, and consoles
himself with the thought, “I believe he is dead.”
And Tito flourishes. He assists Bardo in his studies and soon becomes
enamored of Romola. And when later, a monk who has come from the East
gives him a bit of parchment from his father saying: “I am sold for a
slave. I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone
will serve to ransom me,” he reasons that he is not bound to seek his
father and give up his prosperous life. But he is filled with fear lest
his baseness may be discovered, when he learns that the monk who gave
him the parchment is Dino, the brother of Romola.
Melema’s love is returned, and old Bardo regards him as the son who
has taken the place of the one who forsook him to become a monk. But
Dino is about to die. He sends for his sister and tells her a vague
vision which has appeared to him, warning her not to marry. Romola,
however, shares her father’s skepticism of monkish prophecies, and the
betrothal is not long postponed.
The second book opens after a lapse of eighteen months, when Charles
VIII, the French king, is about to enter Florence. Before he comes,
three prisoners are brought in bound by three French soldiers and
ordered to beg money for their ransom. One of these, the oldest,
escapes, and as he flees to the cathedral he encounters Tito upon the
steps and clutches him by the arm. Melema turns and sees the face of
Baldasarre close to his own. And when one of Tito’s companions asks
“Who is he?” Tito answers, “Some madman surely.”
The old man, transformed into a fiend by this shameless ingratitude,
now devotes his failing faculties and clouded mind to the one purpose
of revenge, and Tito, filled with inexpressible terror, purchases
a suit of chain armor, which Romola discovers and is filled with
suspicion, not only at this, but also at a picture of “Fear” which she
accidentally sees, painted by Piero di Cosimo, who saw the incident on
the steps of the cathedral and used her husband as his model.
In the meantime Bardo has died, and Tito, in violation of his plighted
word, determines to dispose of the library of the blind scholar,
appropriate the proceeds, and depart from Florence. The library is
sold before he discloses this purpose to his wife. When her husband’s
treachery is thus made clear to her, she asks him in bitter scorn,
“Have you robbed somebody else who is not dead? Is that the reason you
wear armor?”
Tito is about to depart from Rome on an errand of importance. Before he
leaves he goes to a banquet in the Rucellai gardens, and old Baldasarre
suddenly appears before the guests and denounces him. Melema coolly
declares that his accuser is an old servant, who had been dismissed
for misdemeanors, and had become insane. Rucellai, the host, proceeds
to test the old man’s scholarship in proof of his credibility, but
his memory is a blank. Tito is exonerated and Baldasarre is cast into
prison.
Romola, unwilling to live longer with a husband whom she has come
to despise, departs from the city. On her way Savonarola meets her,
declares to her her name and purpose, and commands her to return and
resume her duties, not only as wife, but as a citizen of Florence.
Overcome by his commanding presence and persuasive words, she obeys and
returns to her dreary home, throwing all the energy of her will into a
life of renunciation.
At the opening of the third book, two years more have elapsed.
Romola learns of Tito’s participation in a plot for decoying
Savonarola without the walls of the city. The monk is now the support
and inspiration of her life. She determines to save him, and threatens
to denounce her husband. The plot is thwarted, but the abyss between
Romola and Melema constantly widens. Baldasarre, released from prison,
tells her the story of her husband’s perfidy, and also of Melema’s
relations to another wife, an innocent, harmless little peasant girl,
named Tessa, who thinks she has been married to Tito by a sham ceremony
performed by a mountebank, and by whom he has two children. And now
Bernardo del Nero, Romola’s godfather, to whom she is deeply devoted,
has been arrested, together with a number of the companions and
intimates of Tito, for conspiring to restore the Medici, and her heart
is filled with loathing for her husband when she learns from him that
he is safe, for she realizes that this must be by reason of some new
treachery of his own. And so indeed it was. He has been playing fast
and loose with each of the three factions in Florence, and betraying
each by turns to secure his own safety or promotion.
Bernardo and his associates are condemned to death, and the question
is whether an appeal shall be allowed to the Grand Council according
to the law. Romola seeks an interview with Savonarola and implores him
to intercede, reminding him that it was through his agency that the
law was passed, and that he has already spoken on behalf of another
and more guilty conspirator. But she fails to secure his help, and
departs with deep indignation against the man who had so long been
the controlling influence of her life. She consoles Bernardo in his
last moments, and is present even at the execution. Then, filled with
bitterness, she flees again, and on the shore of the Mediterranean
enters a small skiff and sets sail alone, drifting across the sea,
hoping for death.
In the meantime Savonarola has fallen into the toils of his enemies.
He has attacked the evil life of Pope Alexander, he has been
excommunicated and has defied the excommunication. And now a challenge
comes to him to submit to an ordeal. A Franciscan monk offers to
walk through the fire with him. He declines, but his associate, Fra
Domenico, accepts the challenge. The ordeal is to prove whether the
tenets and prophecies of Savonarola be true or false. On the appointed
day the multitude assemble to see the spectacle. Fra Domenico is ready,
but there are long disputes regarding details--what garb he shall wear,
whether he shall bear the crucifix or the host into the flames, until a
shower of rain renders the trial impossible. But there are loud murmurs
among the multitude against Savonarola. If he were a prophet, why did
he not himself accept the ordeal? That night there was a wild riot, and
Savonarola was arrested and hurried to prison.
In the meantime Dolpho Spini, the leader of the Compagnacci, who
have instigated the riot, learns that Tito has also been false to
that faction, and orders him to be seized. He escapes, leaps into the
Arno and swims down the river in the darkness, but when, exhausted
and fainting, he reaches the shore, there is waiting for him among
the rushes the old man Baldasarre, who has found the opportunity for
vengeance, and under whose hand he falls at last.