The Ordeal

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Dramatized from Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." This film deals with the second chapter in the reformed life of Victor Hugo's hero, Jean Valjean, whom we first met in "The Price of a Soul." It deals with the arrival of the convict, Valjean, at the factory which in later years he comes to own. After the prologue where this is shown the action proceeds after an interval of twenty years, showing the unfortunate Fantine and her child, Cosette, their arrival at the inn of the Thenardiers and her leaving Cosette in their keeping. Next comes her application for work in the factory which is now owned by the Mayor, the man whom we know as Jean Valjean, the convict. Of course his past record is unknown in the town where he has risen from the humble position of a workman to that of chief magistrate. We see Fantine discharged later from the mill for some petty offense and, receiving a letter from the custodians of her child demanding money for a doctor for the little one, driven by desperation into the street. We see her attacking a citizen, who mistreats her, and then, in the Police Station, brought face to face with the Mayor. Believing that he is responsible for her discharge from the mill and her subsequent downfall, she thinks that he jests when he bids the officers release her, and, flying into a rage, she insults him. But his great heart is proof against such treatment and he makes her understand that she has misjudged him, and that henceforth she will be cared for. Here another interesting figure enters the story, that of Javert, the inexorable Inspector of Police. He has a suspicion that the Mayor much resembles a certain convict, Jean Valjean, whom he saw in former years. Inquiry confirming the belief, he sends a letter of denunciation to the State authorities; but the arrest of a peasant for stealing apples and the testimony of three galley-slaves to the fact that he is Jean Valjean, lead Javert to apologize to the Mayor and acknowledge that the real Jean Valjean has been found. Then follows the terrible struggle which Jean Valjean has with himself. Shall he let an innocent man suffer for his old convict record or shall he announce his own identity and thus sacrifice all his years of happiness and all of his present power and position? His promise to Fantine to bring her child to her makes his decision all the harder, but, remembering the good bishop who had taught him the better way and had bought his soul for good, he makes the sacrifice. In a powerfully dramatic scene he appears in the court room just as sentence is about to be pronounced on the other man, announces his own identity, and later, at the bedside of Fantine, submits to arrest at the hands of the relentless Javert.