Page 157 - les-miserables

some show of right on one’s side at bottom. Jean Valjean felt
himself exasperated.
And besides, 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. Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every
contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infan-
cy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever
encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From
suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the con-
viction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the
conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate. He re-
solved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away with him
when he departed.
There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the
Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were
taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for
them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to
school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to
cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify
his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can
serve to eke out evil.
This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society,
which had caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence,
which had made society, and he condemned it also.
Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this
soul mounted and at the same time fell. Light entered it on
one side, and darkness on the other.
Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature.

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