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Valjean later symbolically transfers his own superabundance of merit to the dying Fantine, assuring her that since her motivation for prostituting herself was her pure wish to provide for her daughter, she remained innocent in the eyes of God. And in the final scene the repentant Marius, kneeling at the dying Valjean’s bedside to ask his blessing, recalls the initial scene between the conventionist and Myriel.
    Hugo broadly signals the presence of supererogatory merit in his characters. He compares the parables of Bishop Myriel to Christ’s (p. 17). He suggests that the origin of Jean Valjean’s name is “Voila Jean”—there’s John (p. 48). That phrase recalls Pontius Pilate’s ecce homo (there is the man), spoken when he shows Christ, wearing the crown of thorns, to the Jewish priests who have accused him; see the Bible, John 19:5). A person condemned according to one law, and destined for suffering, will be vindicated according to a higher law. Years later in the plot, Hugo associates Valjean clearly with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the mayor hesitates over whether to denounce himself in order to exculpate the pruner Champmathieu (pp. 148-149). Hugo reintroduces the image of the bitter chalice in the title of part V, book seven, “The Last Drop in the Chalice.” Marius’s point of view affirms Valjean’s absolute, self-sacrificial goodness and his total transformation unequivocally: “The convict was transfigured into Christ” (p. 821).
    But although Bishop Myriel demonstrates for Jean Valjean the power of absolute trust in God, and active benevolence, this influence cannot be definitive. Through practicing virtue, he risks succumbing to pride. His “accidental” discovery of a refuge in the convent helps save him from pride: he must compare his involuntary suffering from social inequities and vindictiveness to the voluntary, altruistic suffering of the nuns (pp. 334—335). Their example foreshadows his voluntary self-sacrifice at the end. Through Cosette, he has learned of human love; but this love remains selfish (pp. 267—270). Cosette becomes indispensable to him. The illusion that she will grow up ugly, and thus stay with him always, consoles him. The narrator speculates that Jean Valjean might have needed Cosette’s filial love to persevere in the virtue that Myriel first inspired in him. As mayor, he had learned much more than before about social injustice; he had been sent back to prison for doing good; he needed the support of Cosette’s dependency to keep him morally strong (p. 70; see also pp. 523—524). And finally, he must accept his need to let her become independent of him as she matures. His desire to kill his “rival” Marius, or at least to let him die on the insurrectionists’ barricade, is so powerful that Hugo does not describe Jean Valjean’s next-to-last struggle with his conscience. The final struggle, ending in his decision to confess to Marius that he is an escaped convict, finally kills him.
    Hugo does not consider redemption automatic. Some characters deteriorate morally: the criminal anti-father Thénardier becomes indifferent to not only the sufferings of his victims, but even to the survival of his own children. When his two youngest boys disappear, he makes no effort to locate them. And he does not care whether his older daughter Eponine will be killed by other members of their gang for interfering in a burglary. Others such as the police detective Javert, born to a prostitute in prison and lacking any family himself, react toward the accused with merciless moral brutality.
    Gavroche, Eponine, Javert, Jean Valjean—the first two risk their lives and perish to save others, Javert commits suicide so that he will not have to denounce the man who saved him, and Jean Valjean wastes away to consummate his renunciation of Cosette. The motif of self-sacrifice shades into melancholy (anger against others turned back against the self) and even masochism. Virtuous