Sweat of the Damned

By Jean Valjean, from Les Miserables

An explanation to the circumstances surrounding this speech:

Jean Valjean is an ex-convict. He served a total of nineteen years in the galleys: five for stealing bread, the rest because he tried several times to escape from the galleys. During his time in the galleys, he had come to hate mankind in general. After his release, he meets a priest who shows forgiveness and compassion to Valjean. Valjean resolves to change his life. But because of other events that take place shortly after Valjean's leaving the priest's house, he becomes again a wanted man. I could go on for a while, but to explain all the circumstances that take place in the book is not feasible, nor is it my aim. Valjean is an ex-convict. He had come, through several inventions, to aquire a fortune, from which he would give to the poor as he saw a need.

Now to the events directly preceding the speech:

Gavroche, a little kid hiding in the bushes, watching events unfold; M. Mabeuf, an old man; Montparnasse, a bandit; and Valjean.

Gavroche is planning to steal an apple from M. Mabeuf. Gavroche sneaks up, hides in a hedge, and listens to M. Mabeuf talk. M. Mabeuf has no money.

Montparnasse is following Valjean. Gavroche is watching. Gavroche knows who Montparnasse is; he does not know who Valjean is. He thinks Valjean is in trouble, because Valjan looks old. But Valjean is still very strong, despite the fact that he is old. Montparnasse jumps Valjean. Valjean wrestles with Montparnasse and overcomes him. This conversation ensues:

Valjean: "Get up. [pause] How old are you?"

Montparnasse: "Nineteen."

"You are strong and well. Why don't you work?"

"It is fatiguing."

"What is your business?"

"Loafer."

"Speak seriously. Can I do anything for you? What would you like to be?"

"A robber."

[pause]. Then Valjean says:

"My child, you are entering by laziness into the most laborious of existences. Ah! you declare yourself a loafer! prepare to labour. Have you seen a terrible machine called the rolling-mill? Beware of it, it is a cunning and ferocious thing; if it but catch the skirt of your coat, you are drawn in entirely. This machine is idleness. Stop, while there is yet time, and save yourself! otherwise, it is all over; you will soon be between the wheels. Once caught, hope for nothing more. To fatigue, idler! no more rest. The implacable iron hand of labour has seized you. Earn a living, have a task, accomplish a duty, you do not wish it! To be like others is tiresome! Well! you will be different. Labour is the law; he who spurns it as tiresome will have it as punishment. You are unwilling to be a working-man, you will be a slave. Labour releases you on the one hand only to retake you on the other; you are unwilling to be her friend, you will be her negro. Ah! you have refused the honest weariness of men, you shall have the sweat of the damned. While others sing, you will rave. You will see from afar, from below, other men at work; it will seem to you that they are at rest. The labourer, the reaper, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in the light like the blessed in a paradise. What a radiance in the anvil! To drive the plough, to bind the sheaf, is happiness. To bark free before the wind, what a festival! You, idler, dig, draw, roll, march! Drag your halter, you are a beat of burden in the train of hell! Ah! to do nothing, that is your aim. Well! not a week, not a day, not an hour, without crushing exhaustion. You can lift nothing but with anguish. Every minute which elapses will make your muscles crack. What will be a feather for others will be a rock for you. The simplest things will become steep. Life will make itself a monster about you. To go, to come, to breathe, so many terrible labours. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight. To go here rather than there will be a problem to solve. Any other man who wishes to go out, opens his door, it is done, he is out of doors. You, if you wish to go out, must pierce your wall. To go into the street, what does everybody do? Everybody goes down the staircase! but you, you will tear up your bed clothes, you will make a rope of them strip by strip, then you will pass through your window and you will hang on that thread over an abyss, and it will be at night, in the storm, in the rain, the tempest, and if the rope is too short, you will have but one way to descend, to fall. To fall at a venture, into the abyss, from whatever height, upon what? Upon whatever is below, upon the unknown. Or you will climb through the flue of a chimney, at the risk of burning yourself; or you will crawl through a sewer, at the risk of being drowned. I do not speak of the holes which you must conceal, of the stones which you must take out and put back twenty times a day, of the mortar, which you must hide in your mattress. A lock present itself; the bourgeois has in his pocket his key, made by a locksmith. You, if you want to pass out, are condemned to make a frightful masterpiece; you will take a big sou, you will cut it into two slices; with what tools? You will invent them. That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these two slices, preserving the outside carefully, and you will cut all around the edge a screw-thread, so that they will fit closely one upon the other, like a bottom and a cover. The bottom and the top thus screwed together, nobody will suspect anything. To the watchmen, for you will be watched, it will be a big sou; to you, it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A little bit of steel. A watch-spring in which you will cut teeth, and which will be a saw. With this saw, as long as a pin, and hidden in this sou, you will have to cut the bolt of the lock, the slide of the bolt, the clasp of the padlock, and the bar which you will have at your window, and the iron ring which you will have on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this prodigy accomplished, all those miracles of art, of address, of skill, of patience, executed, if it comes to be known that you are the author, what will be your reward? the dungeon. Behold your future. Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a deadly course to take, but sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Woe to him who would be a parasite! he will be vermin. Ah! it is not pleasant to you to work? Ah! you will have but one thought; to eat, and drink, and sleep in luxury. You will drink water, you will eat black bread, you will sleep upon a board, with irons riveted to your limbs, the chill of which you will feel at night upon your flesh! You will break those irons, you will flee. Very well. You will drag yourself on your belly in the bushes, and eat grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be retaken. And then you will spend years in a dungeon, fastened to a wall, groping for a drink from your pitcher, gnawing a frightful loaf of darkness which the dogs would not touch, eating beans which the worms have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse in a cellar. Oh! take pity on yourself, miserable child, young thing, a suckling not twenty years ago, who doubtless have a mother still alive! I conjure you, listen to me. you desire fine black clothes, shining pumps, to curl your hair, to put sweet-scented oil upon your locks, to please your women, to be handsome. You will be close shorn, with a red coat and wooden shoes. You wish a ring on your finger, you will have an iron collar on your neck. And if you look at the woman, a blow of the club. And you will enter young, rosy, fresh, with your eyes bright and all your teeth white, and your beautiful youthful hair; you will come out broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible, with white hair! Oh! my child, you are taking a mistaken road, laziness is giving you bad advice; the dreadful drudgery of being an idler. To become a rascal is not comfortable. It is not so hard to be an honest man. Go, now, and think of what I have said to you. And now, what did you want of me? my purse? here it is."

Valjean gives Montparnasse his purse and leaves. Montparnasse mutters "Blockhead" at Valjean, then stands thinking. Gavroche sneaks up and steals the purse from Montparnasse, and throws it at M. Mabeuf's feet (without M. Mabeuf seeing Gavroche).