h justice as any one could expect
him to do--and, thank heaven, there are still some Englishmen who are
perfectly indifferent whether justice is done to them or not in these
matters, leaving it to poorer persons in such ways who may be glad of
it--to English fighting; while if he represents Wellington as a mere
calculator and Napoleon as a hero, we can murmur politely (like a Roman
Catholic bishop, more real in many ways than His Greatness of Digue),
"Perhaps so, my dear sir, perhaps so." But what has it all got to do
here? Even when Montalais and her lover sat on the wall and talked for
half a volume or so in the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_; even when His
Majesty Louis XIV. and his (one regrets to use the good old English
word) pimp, M. le Duc de Saint-Aignan, exhausted the resources of
carpentry and the stores of printer's ink to gain access to the
apartment of Mlle. de la Valliere, the superabundance, though trivial,
was relevant: this is not. When Thenardier tried to rob and was no doubt
quite ready to murder, but did, as a matter of fact, help to
resuscitate, the gallant French Republican soldier, who was so glad to
receive the title of baron from an emperor who had by abdication
resigned any right to give it that he ever possessed, it might have been
Malplaquet or Leipsic, Fontenoy or Vittoria, for any relevance the
details of the battle possessed to the course of the story.

Now relevance (to make a short paragraph of the kind Hugo himself loved)
is a mighty goddess in novelry.

And so it continues, though, to be absolutely just, the later parts are
not exposed to quite the same objections as the earlier. These
objections transform themselves, however, into other varieties, and are
reinforced by fresh faults. The most inexcusable digressions, on
subjects as remote from each other as convents and sewers, insist on
poking themselves in. The central, or what ought to be the central,
interest itself turns on the ridiculous _emeute_ of Saint-Merry, a thing
"without a purpose or an aim," a mere caricature of a revolution. The
_gamin_ Gavroche puts in a strong plea for mercy, and his sister
Eponine, if Hugo had chosen to take more trouble with her, might have
been a great, and is actually the most interesting, character. But
Cosette--the cosseted Cosette--Hugo did not know our word or he would
have seen the danger--is merely a pretty and rather selfish little doll,
and her precious lover Marius is almost ineffable.

Nove