Part 13

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.

Romola has drifted to a little village on the coast which the plague had emptied of most of its inhabitants. Here for a while she tends the suffering, and finally, reconciled again with life, she feels that she must return. When she reaches Florence and learns of her husband’s death, she seeks the helpless little Tessa and her children and takes them under her protection.

And now Savonarola, amid the agonies of the torture, has confessed that he was not a prophet, and he is condemned to death. She is present at the solemn scene of execution, awaiting from him some word, free from constraint, which should tell the final truth of his past life. But he is silent upon the scaffold.

It is in the Epilogue that it first clearly appears that “Romola” is a novel with a purpose, for here the heroine, many years afterwards, in an earnest talk with Tessa’s boy, thus tells him the moral of his father’s life:

“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young and clever and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds, such as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”

The account of the gradual degeneration of the character of Tito Melema is, indeed, the strongest feature in the book. Tito was a man of sunny disposition, who never made himself disagreeable, never boasted of his own doings, was generous in small things, gave others the credit to which they were entitled, and claimed little for himself, was frank and engaging in manners, subtle in thought, supple in conduct, and had an innate love of reticence, which often acted as other impulses do, without any conscious motive. This was the character selected by the author for her story of degradation and ruin.

The painter Piero foreshadows the outcome when he desires the face of Tito as a model for his picture of Sinon deceiving old Priam: “A perfect traitor,” says Piero, “should have a face which vice can write no marks on--lips that will lie with a dimpled smile--eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them--cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard.”

The character of Romola herself is a very interesting one. She is full of womanly dignity and genuine nobility of soul, honorable, proud, self-sacrificing, devoted to her duty, but she is too clear-headed to deceive herself as to her husband’s baseness. At first, although her dreams of happiness have not been fulfilled, she makes every excuse; and even afterwards she seeks a return of his confidence. But when that is impossible, her love becomes entirely extinct.

Running side by side with the character of Romola, and in sharp contrast to it, is that of Tessa, the innocent peasant girl, with a baby face. In her presence, Melema finds no reproaches, nothing but artless affection. It was pity more than anything else which first induced Tito to take her under his protection, and his relations with her have been developed so unconsciously that there seems very little guilt in each particular act. No doubt the author’s purpose was to describe the almost imperceptible steps by which men pass from virtue to crime.

“Romola” is a historical novel, and the part of it which deals with Savonarola is history itself, or perhaps more properly biography. George Eliot has not created the character of the Florentine monk; she has merely analyzed and interpreted that character by the light of her own imagination. Whether the man she has thus drawn is the real Savonarola or not, he is a very interesting personage, who, with many inconsistencies and shortcomings, is essentially a great man, as well as a benefactor of mankind. He is often a hero, though he falls short of heroism at the supreme moment; and his last words, written in prison before his execution, the outpouring of self-abasement, fill us with added sympathy for his misfortunes.

“God placed thee,” he says, “in the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others, and thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom, and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.”

The psychological development of each of the chief characters in this remarkable book proceeds by a natural law from the antecedents and surroundings of the individual. We feel as we read that the changes of thought and motive must have occurred just as they are described, yet in that description itself it is evident that George Eliot lacks something of dramatic power. She tells us in great detail what her characters think and why they act as they do. The highest form of art would show us this from their own words and actions without the telling. Her characters are often extremely complex. It might be harder to make them speak for themselves than in the case of simpler personages, such as those described by Dickens or Cervantes. Still the reader will often wish that George Eliot had not told him so much of motives and reasons, but had left these to necessary inference.