Jean Valjean, the reformed criminal,
discovers her, is made aware that her debasement is the result of the
act of his foreman, and takes her, half dead with misery and sickness,
to his own house. Meanwhile he learns that an innocent person, by
being confounded with himself, is in danger of being punished for his
former deeds. He flies from the bedside of Fantine, appears before the
court, announces himself as the criminal, is arrested, but in the end
escapes from the officers who have him in charge. Fantine dies. Her
child is to be the heroine of Novel Number Two of "Les Miserables," and
will doubtless have as miserable an end as her mother. From this bare
abstract, the story does not seem to promise much pleasure to
novel-readers, yet it is all alive with the fiery genius of Victor
Hugo, and the whole representation is so intense and vivid that it is
impossible to escape from the fascination it exerts over the mind. Few
who take the book up will leave it until they have read it through. It
is morbid to a degree that no eminent English author, not even Lord
Byron, ever approached; but its morbid elements are so combined with
sentiments abstractly Christian that it is calculated to wield a more
pernicious influence than Byron ever exerted.
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