Rain and Victor Hugo

Rain is falling steadily outside. After thirty-something days without rain, we are getting our fair share this week. Weather.com reports only 0.01 inches yesterday, but we'll get much more than that today, with a forecast of over an inch in the next day and a half.

It is a pleasant-sounding rain, if that makes any sense, with no thunder or wind, just rain. It almost sounds like a creek in the North Carolina mountains, though the intensity does sometimes slightly increase, unlike the unvarying music of a creek. A good rain for taking a nap.

The rain did slow traffic this evening on my way home (along with an accident on MD 450 just outside Bowie), so I made it to the end of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame before I made it home. It is an extremely good novel, though quite sad. The flaws of the characters (including those with power and education) lead to ruin, though there are also figures of innocence and of virtue. Quasimodo is an especially good man, who exemplifies the incredible difference between outer beauty and inner goodness. Especially inspiring is Hugo's description of Quasimodo's care for the innocent outcast Esmerelda, who will not return his love and who is indeed afraid of him and his misshapen body.

Otherwise, the novel is an excellent introduction to fifteenth-century Paris and its inhabitants, in the years just before Columbus discovered America. It covers life from the King of France to the judicial courts to the noble families to vagabonds and thieves.

For more about Hugo and his life, the August/September 2007 issue of First Things included The Sacred Heart of Victor Hugo, an article about Hugo and Les Miserables.