156 Les Miserables
Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggra-
vations for attempts at escape, had not ended in becoming a
sort of outrage perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler,
a crime of society against the individual, a crime which was
being committed afresh every day, a crime which had lasted
nineteen years.
He asked himself whether human society could have
the right to force its members to suffer equally in one case
for its own unreasonable lack of foresight, and in the other
case for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever
between a defect and an excess, a default of work and an ex-
cess of punishment.
Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus
precisely those of its members who were the least well
endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and con-
sequently the most deserving of consideration.
These questions put and answered, he judged society and
condemned it.
He condemned it to his hatred.
He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffer-
ing, and he said to himself that it might be that one day he
should not hesitate to call it to account. He declared to him-
self that there was no equilibrium between the harm which
he had caused and the harm which was being done to him;
he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was
not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniqui-
tous.
Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be ir-
ritated wrongfully; one is exasperated only when there is