“I thought it would rain, and there was no good God to stop the drops, so I came back to town to get the shelter of some doorway” (13).
Speaking to the bishop, Jean Valjean expresses his hardships of finding a place to sleep, for he is turned away because of being a paroled convict with a ‘yellow card.’ As irony would have it, Jean Valjean claims there is ‘no good God’ in his life, yet there he stands at the bishop’s doorway, making this proclamation as if it were a direct challenge to the bishop’s integrity and beliefs. Jean Valjean is misery personified; he has no one to turn to, not even God. However, his life is about to change forever when the bishop invites him in as his guest.
“Madeline arose. He was very pale, though dripping with sweat. His clothes were covered and torn with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good God” (51).
Describing the result of the mayor’s heroic effort to save Father Fachelevent from the cart accident, the narrator shows Madeline’s (the mayor) willingness to sacrifice himself for an old man. The description of the mayor’s soiled clothes implies that he could care less about his wealthy clothing, for he was committed to helping the Father live. Remarkably, the old man calls the mayor ‘the good God,’ which is exactly what Jean Valjean, formerly the convict, exclaimed did not exist. So, the mayor has become the very thing he sought most in his life, a benevolent, caring, good God.
“At that moment when the glance of Madeline encountered that of Javert, Javert without stirring, without moving, without approaching, became terrible. No human feeling can ever be so appalling as joy.
It was the face of demon who had again found his victim.
The certainty that he had caught Jean Valjean at last, brought forth upon his countenance all that was in his soul. The deformity of triumph spread over his narrow forehead. It was the fullest development of horror that a gratified face can show.
Javert at this moment was in heaven” (112-113).
“Jean Valjean wept long. He shed hot tears. He wept bitterly, with no more weakness than that of a woman, with more terror than a child.
While he wept, the light grew brighter and brighter in his mind—an extraordinary light, a light at once transporting and terrible. His past life, his first offense, his long expiation, his brutal exterior, his hardened interior, his release made glad by so many schemes of vengeance, what had happened to him at the bishop’s, his last action, the theft of forty sous from a child, a crime meaner and the more monstrous that it came after the bishop’s pardon, all this returned and appeared to him, clearly, but in a light that he had never seen before. He beheld his life, and it seemed to him horrible; his soul, and it seemed to him frightful. There was, however, a softened light upon that life and upon that soul. It seemed to him that he was looking upon Satan by the light of paradise” (34).
Guiding question: How does the passage show the state of mind of Jean Valjean?