Page 158 - les-miserables

He was still good when he arrived at the galleys. He there
condemned society, and felt that he was becoming wicked;
he there condemned Providence, and was conscious that he
was becoming impious.
It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.
Does human nature thus change utterly and from top
to bottom? Can the man created good by God be rendered
wicked by man? Can the soul be completely made over by
fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can the heart be-
come misshapen and contract incurable deformities and
infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate un-
happiness, as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault?
Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul
of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element,
incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which
good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splen-
dor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every
physiologist would probably have responded no, and that
without hesitation, had he beheld at Toulon, during the
hours of repose, which were for Jean Valjean hours of rev-
ery, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded arms upon
the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust
into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and
thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man
with wrath, condemned by civilization, and regarding
heaven with severity.
Certainly,—and we make no attempt to dissimulate the
fact,— the observing physiologist would have beheld an ir-

158 Les Miserables