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THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES
In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common
grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres,
far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence
of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner,
beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs
the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a
stone.
That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy
of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of
the birds.
The water turns it green, the air blackens it.
It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking
in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are
immediately wet.
When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither.
All around there is a quivering of weeds.
In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.
This stone is perfectly plain.
In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the
tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long
enough and narrow enough to cover a man.
No name is to be read there.
Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these
four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the
rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:
Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d'elle-meme arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va.[70]
[70] He sleeps.
Although his fate was very strange, he lived.
He died when he had no longer his angel.
The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes
when day is gone.
LETTER TO M. DAELLI
Publisher of the Italian translation of Les Miserables in
Milan.
HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.
You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Miserables is
written for all nations.
I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote
it for all.
It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as
well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics
which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs.
Social problems overstep frontiers.
The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover
the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the
map.
In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every
place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers
for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth
which should warm him, the book of Les Miserables knocks at the
door and says:
"Open to me, I come for you."
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing,
and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he
is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France.
Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it.
Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit
your mountains?
Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents
which I have endeavored to fathom.
In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo,
Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa,
Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and
superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor.
You are covered with marvels and vermin.
Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure
in the sky does not prevent rags on man.
Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms,
blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs.
You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without
a flavor of the past being mingled with it.
You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone.
The social question is the same for you as for us.
There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few
more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours;
shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy;
but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the
bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same
quality.
To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to
understand the Gospel badly.
Is it necessary to emphasize this?
Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified?
Have you not indigent persons?
Glance below.
Have you not parasites?
Glance up.
Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism
and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium,
oscillate before you as it does before us?
Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization
acknowledges?
Where are your free and compulsory schools?
Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of
Michael Angelo?
Have you made public schools of your barracks?
Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a
paltry budget of education?
Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily
converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which
pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi;
that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy?
Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take
it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant
offences, show me the woman and the child.
It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble
creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to
be measured.
Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris?
What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and
what amount of justice springs from your tribunals?
Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the
meaning of those gloomy words:
public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the
executioner, the death penalty?
Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace
is alive.
And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons.
Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality
and politics?
You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes!
Something very similar has been done in France.
Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute
his pile, you are as rich as we.
Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious
condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation
decreed by the judge?
Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation
of France!
Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Miserables.
From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not
see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals
of Eden.
Only, the priests are mistaken.
These holy portals are before and not behind us.
I resume.
This book, Les Miserables, is no less your mirror than ours.
Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,--
I understand that.
Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does
not prevent them from being of use.
As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love
for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more
than by any other nation.
In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and
I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of
radiance of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively
French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European,
I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement
of civilization.
Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition
which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow,
of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.
In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great
delight, with having transgressed the bounds of what they call
"French taste"; I should be glad if this eulogium were
merited.
In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal
suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces
of a man, and I cry to all:
"Help me!"
This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it
for you and for your country.
If I have insisted so strongly, it is because of one phrase
in your letter.
You write:--
"There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say:
`This book, Les Miserables, is a French book.
It does not concern us.
Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.'"--Alas!
I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns
us all.
Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy
has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race;
the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and
for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister
fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.
If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some
minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty to
publish it, sir.
Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished
sentiments.
VICTOR HUGO.
The end
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