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Les Miserables: Marius

Baron Marius, the son of a man whom Thenadier had robbed at Waterloo and had incidentally saved from a terrible death, had been turned out of his house by his royalist grandfather and was earning a poor livelihood by literature. He saw her and they met. Their love went through more than the usual vicissitudes. During the insurrection Jean Valjean carried the youth through the mazes of the Paris sewers and brought him, desperately wounded, to his grandfather's house. The old man relented and consented to the marriage. Jean Valjean gave Cosette a dowry of about six hundred thousand francs. In order to have a conscience perfectly clear he told his life story to Marius, who, not understanding the grandeur of the spirit that had never done anything but good, allowed him to go away with a broken heart. Thenadier, however, came to the baron to blackmail him and unconsciously revealed what a noble life Jean Valjean had led. Marius, taking Cosette, hastened to the old man's death-bed, and gave him one last taste from the cup of happiness. He died in their arms. Victor Hugo calls Les Miserables "a drama in which the hero is the Infinite, the second character is Man." It is in reality a melodrama in which are mingled scenes of history, a host of characters from the highest to the lowest, improbabilities which strain one's credulity, a vast amount of rare and curious information on all sorts of subjects, dissertations on philosophy, science, politics and religion. Its treatment of social injustice had a powerful influence on public opinion, not only in France, but in many other countries. It has been an epoch-making book.

DEFOE DANIEL DEFOE was born in London about 1660. After a life of varied and brilliant activity, he died, a homeless fugitive, in Ropemakers' Alley, Moorfields, on April 26, 1731. His father, a butcher, educated Daniel for the dissenting ministry, but the boy's unremitting energy led him to be a trader, a political intriguer, and an indefatigable journalist. He rose to great intimacy with King William III, and abruptly fell to pillory and prison for his too perfect satire, "The Shortest Way with Dissenters." From Newgate he launched his remarkable "Review," a journal written entirely by himself. He advocated an income tax and higher education for women. He wrote two hundred and fifty distinct pamphlets and books, but his masterpiece, "Robinson Crusoe," was not published until 1719, when the author was nearly sixty years old. This, the first great English novel, has in some respects never been surpassed. Its immediate popularity incited Defoe to write a sequel and many thrilling tales of pirates and adventurers, of courtezans and adventuresses. His vivid story of the plague appeared three years after "Robinson Crusoe." "Defoe was perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived. Yet if we go deep into his rich and strangely mixed nature, we come upon stubborn foundations of conscience." Whatever the ultimate judgment of his honesty, "Robinson Crusoe" lives immortally to attest his genius in invention.