which he finds
admission, not by showing the criminal's yellow passport, but by the
passport of heroism, having on entrance rescued a child from a burning
building; becomes a citizen, invents a process of manufacturing jet,
accumulates a fortune, spends it lavishly in the bettering of the city
where his riches were acquired; is benefactor to employee and city, and
is called "Monsieur;" and after repeated refusals, becomes "Monsieur
the Mayor;" gives himself up as a criminal to save a man unjustly
accused, is returned to the galleys for the theft of the little
Savoyard's forty-sous coin; by a heroic leap from the yardarm, escapes;
seeks and finds Cossette, devotes his life to sheltering and loving
her; runs his gauntlet of repeated perils with Javert, grows steadily
in heroism, and sturdy, invigorating manhood; dies a hero and a saint,
and an honor to human kind,--such is Jean Valjean's biography in meager
outline. But the moon, on a summer's evening, "a silver crescent
gleaming 'mid the stars," appears hung on a silver cord of the full
moon's rim; and, as the crescent moon is not the burnished silver of
the complete circle, so no outline can include the white, bewildering
light of this heroic soul. Jean Valjean is the biography of a redeemed
life. The worst life contains the elements of redemption, as words
contain the possibility of poetry. He was a fallen, vicious, desperate
man; and from so low a level, he and God conspired to lift him to the
levels where the angels live, than which a resurrection from the dead
is no more potent and blinding miracle. Instead of giving this book
the caption, "Jean Valjean," it might be termed the "History of the
Redemption of a Soul;" and such a theme is worthy the study of this
wide world of women and of men.

Initial in this redemptive work was the good bishop, whose words, "Jean
Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good," never
lost their music or might to Valjean's spirit. Some man or woman
stands on everybody's road to God. And Jean Valjean, with the bishop's
words sounding in his ears--voices that will not silence--goes out with
his candlesticks, goes trembling out, and starts on his anabasis to a
new life; wandered all day in the fields, inhaled the odors of a few
late flowers, his childhood being thus recalled; and when the sun was
throwing mountain shadows behind hillocks and pebbles, as Jean Valjean
sat and pondered in a dumb way, a Savoyard came