interest
till the book, huge as it is, is almost half way through. Twenty pages
on Bishop Myriel--that rather piebald angel who makes the way impossible
for any successor by his fantastic and indecent "apostolicism" in
living; who tells, _not_ like St. Athanasius, an allowable equivocation
to save his valuable self, but a downright lie to save a worthless
rascal; and who admits defeat in argument by the stale sophisms of a
moribund _conventionnel_--might have been tolerable. We have, in the
compactest edition I know, about a hundred and fifty. The ruin and
desertion of Fantine would have been worth twenty more. We have from
fifty to a hundred to tell us the story of four rather impossibly
beautiful _grisettes_, and as many, alas! too possible, but not
interesting, rascals of students. It is difficult to say how much is
wasted on the wildly improbable transformation of Jean Valjean, convict
and pauper, into "M. Madeleine," _maire_ and (_nummis gallicis_)
millionaire, through making sham jet. All this, by any one who really
knew his craft, would have been sketched rapidly in fluent preliminary,
and subsequent piecemeal retrospect, so as to start with Valjean's
escape from Thenardier and his adoption of Cosette.

The actual matter of this purely preliminary kind extends, as has been
ascertained by rough but sufficient calculation of the sort previously
employed, to at least three-quarters of an average novel of Sir
Walter's: it would probably run to two or three times the length of a
modern "six-shilling." But Hugo is not satisfied with it. A point, an
important point, doubtless, but one that could have been despatched in a
few lines, connects the novel proper with the Battle of Waterloo. To
that battle itself, even the preliminary matter in its earliest part is
some years posterior: the main action, of course, is still more so. But
Victor must give us _his_ account of this great engagement, and he gives
it in about a hundred pages of the most succinct reproduction. For my
part, I should be glad to have it "mixed with much wine," even if the
wine were of that luscious and headachy south-of-France character which
he himself is said to have preferred to Bordeaux or Champagne, Sauterne
or even Burgundy. Nay, without this I like it well enough and quarrel
with nothing in it, though it is in many respects (from the famous
hollow way which nobody else ever heard of downwards) very much of a
dream-battle. Victor does quite as muc