Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1885 — “LES MISERABLES.” [ARTICLE]

“LES MISERABLES.”

Observation on the Masterpiece of Modern Fiction by the Great French Writer. The deadly weight of civilization to those who are below presses sensibly on our shoulders as we read “Les Miserables.” A sort of mocking indignation grows upon us as we find society rejecting, again and again, the services of the most serviceable; setting Jean Valjean to pick oakum, casting Galileo into prison, even crucifying Christ. There is a haunting and horrible sense of insecurity about the book. The terror we thus feel is a terror for the machinery of law, that we can hear tearing, in the dark, good and bad between its formidable ■wheels with the iron stolidity of all machinery, human or divine. This terror incarnates itself sometimes, and leaps horribly out upon us; as when the crouching mendicant looks up, and Jean Vai jean, in the light of the street lamp, recognizes the face of the detective; as when the lantern of the patrol flashes suddenly through the darkness of the sewer; or as when the fugitive comes forth at last at evening, by the quiet river side, and finds the police there also, waiting stolidly for vice, and stolidly willing to take virtue instead. The whole book is full of oppression and full of prejudice, which is the great cause of oppression. We have the prejudices of M. Gillenormand, the prejudices in revolt that defend the barricade, and the thorned prejudices that carry it by storm. And then we have the admirable but ill-written character of J avert, the man who had made a religion of the police and would not survive the moment when he learned that there was another truth outside of laws; a just creation over which the reader will do well to ponder. With so gloomy a design this great work is still full of life and light and love. The portrait of the good bishop is one of the most agreeable things in modern literature. The whole scene at Montfermeil is full of the charm that Hugo knew so well how to throw about children. Who can forget the passage where Cosette, sent out at night to draw water, stands in admiration before the illumined booth and the huckster behind —“lui faisait un pou I’effet d’etre le Pere eternal?” The pathos of the forlorn sabot laid trustingly by the chimney in expectation of the Santa Claus that was not takes us fairly by the throat; there is nothing in Shakspeare that touches the heart more nearly. The loves of Cosette and Marius are very pure and pleasant, and we cannot refuse our affection to Gavroche, although we may make a mental reservation of our profound disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all, there are few books in the world that can be compared with it. —R. L. Stevenson.