A Tempest in a Skull — Les Misérables

The reader has already divined that Madeleine is Jean Valjean. The moment has come to look again into this conscience. After Little Gervais he was a totally different man. What the Bishop had wished, he carried out. He sold the silver, kept the candlesticks, crept from town to town, and lived with two thoughts so close they were one: conceal his name and sanctify his life. When they conflicted he sacrificed security to virtue: the candlesticks, the mourning, the Savoyards, Fauchelevent. Nothing like this had presented itself. At Javert's first words he is struck with stupor. The first thought is to run and denounce himself and put Champmathieu out of prison: as painful as an incision in living flesh. Then it passes. We will see. He recoils before heroism. A whirlwind within, a profound tranquillity without. He visits Fantine, prolongs the hour, recommends her to the sisters, and engages the tilbury without having decided. He dines with appetite. In his room he bolts the door and extinguishes the light. That which he wished to shut out is already inside: his conscience, that is to say God.

Where do I stand? Ideas pass like waves. Then he sees the unprecedented fact. If anyone had told him that the name Jean Valjean would ring in his ears and leave Madeleine more honoured than ever, he would have called the speaker mad. It has just come to pass. A stranger is being thrust into the gulf in his stead. His place is empty in the galleys; the theft from little Gervais still waits; he has a substitute. If he does not prevent men from sealing the stone of infamy over Champmathieu, he is present in the galleys as that man and present in society as Madeleine. He relights the candle. Javert is thrown off the scent. Providence has done it. Why meddle? Then the tide returns. The sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse. To let things take their course is to do everything: a hideous crime. He is robbing another of his place in the sunshine. He is morally murdering a man. To surrender himself is to achieve his resurrection. Men see the mask; the Bishop sees the face. He would enter sanctity in the eyes of God only by returning to infamy in the eyes of men. He says aloud, let us save this man. He burns a bundle of bills, writes to Laffitte, takes his passport. The letters flame: Go. Tell your name. Denounce yourself.

For the first time the two ideas stand apart: my neighbour and myself, a goddess and a giant. The Bishop marked the first crisis; Champmathieu marks the second. Apples are a month, not the galleys; the name dispenses with proofs. Mercy will not come: little Gervais makes it a second offence and life. Then Fantine appears. All this is still I. If he disappears, the factories die, the mother dies, the child becomes what it can. If he stays, a thousand families, and Cosette. Melodrama, he tells himself, to save an apple-thief and sacrifice a town. He is content. Woe to the man who is Jean Valjean. It is a fatal name floating in the night. If it descends on a head, so much the worse for that head.

He looks in the glass: quite another man. In a secret cupboard he finds the blue blouse, the knapsack, the iron-shod cudgel of 1815. He flings them on the fire without a glance. In the ashes a coin sparkles: the forty-sou piece stolen from the little Savoyard. He seizes the candlesticks. A voice shouts his name. Destroy the souvenir, forget the Bishop, remain the mayor, and a man will wear your red blouse and drag your chain. All those benedictions will fall back; only the malediction will ascend. He puts the candlesticks back. He recoils from both resolutions. Should he remain in paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an angel? Romainville returns, a grove of lilacs. He is no further advanced than at the beginning. Eighteen hundred years before, another man also thrust aside a cup dripping with darkness, while the olive-trees quivered.