“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo (post 3): Narrator (still using “we”) thinks everyone hears rational voices who speak to them in quotable dialogues

Years later, Jean Valjean, now with a different name and identity, is a successful businessman and virtuous mayor. Police inspector Javert suspects his true identity. But a man in another city is misidentified as Jean Valjean and will probably go to prison in his place.

Should the real Jean Valjean step forward and save the misidentified man? He would lose everything, but satisfy his conscience.

Of interest here is the way his conscience manifests itself: as a personified, independent-minded voice in his head.

“…he resumed this sober dialogue, in which it was himself who spoke and himself who listened…

“It is certain that we talk with ourselves; there is not a thinking being who has not experienced that…” (1, pp. 196-197).

But only people with multiple personality hear rational voices who converse with them to this extent:

“At that moment, it seemed to him that he heard a voice crying within him: ‘Jean Valjean!’ ‘Jean Valjean!'

“His hair stood on end; he was like a man who hears some terrible thing.

“…‘Applaud yourself! So it is arranged, it is determined, it is done. Behold a man, a graybeard who knows not what he is accused of, who has done nothing, it may be, an innocent man, whose misfortune is caused by your name, upon whom your name weighs like a crime who will be taken instead of you; will be condemned, will end his days in abjection and horror! very well. Be an honored man yourself. Remain, Monsieur Mayor, remain honorable and honored, enrich the city, feed the poor, bring up the orphans, live happy, virtuous, and admired, and all this time while you are here in joy and in the light, there shall be a man wearing your red blouse, bearing your name in ignominy, and dragging your chain in the galleys! Yes! this is a fine arrangement! Oh, wretch!’ ” (1, pp. 203-204).

1. Victor Hugo. Les Misérables [1862]. Trans. Charles E. Wilbour. New York, The Modern Library, 1992.