The Project Gutenberg EBook of Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Les Misérables
Complete in Five Volumes
Author: Victor Hugo
Translator: Isabel F. Hapgood
Release Date: June 22, 2008 [EBook #135]
Last Updated: January 18, 2016
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES MISÉRABLES ***
Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
LES MISÉRABLES
By Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. No. 13, Astor Place New York
Copyright 1887
Enlarge
Enlarge
Enlarge
Enlarge
Enlarge
Enlarge
Contents
LES MISÉRABLES
VOLUME I.--FANTINE.
PREFACE
BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL
CHAPTER II--M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
CHAPTER III--A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
CHAPTER IV--WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
CHAPTER V--MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
CHAPTER VI--WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
CHAPTER VII--CRAVATTE
CHAPTER VIII--PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
CHAPTER IX--THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER
CHAPTER X--THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
CHAPTER XI--A RESTRICTION
CHAPTER XII--THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
CHAPTER XIII--WHAT HE BELIEVED
CHAPTER XIV--WHAT HE THOUGHT
BOOK SECOND--THE FALL
CHAPTER I--THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING
CHAPTER II--PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.
CHAPTER III--THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
CHAPTER IV--DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.
CHAPTER V--TRANQUILLITY
CHAPTER VI--JEAN VALJEAN
CHAPTER VII--THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER VIII--BILLOWS AND SHADOWS
CHAPTER IX--NEW TROUBLES
CHAPTER X--THE MAN AROUSED
CHAPTER XI--WHAT HE DOES
CHAPTER XII--THE BISHOP WORKS
CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GERVAIS
BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER I--THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER II--A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR
CHAPTER IV--THOLOMYÈS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY
CHAPTER V--AT BOMBARDA'S
CHAPTER VI--A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
CHAPTER VII--THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS
CHAPTER VIII--THE DEATH OF A HORSE
CHAPTER IX--A MERRY END TO MIRTH
BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER
CHAPTER I--ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
CHAPTER II--FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES
CHAPTER III--THE LARK
BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT.
CHAPTER I--THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS
CHAPTER II--MADELEINE
CHAPTER III--SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE
CHAPTER IV--M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING
CHAPTER V--VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
CHAPTER VI--FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
CHAPTER VII--FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS
CHAPTER VIII--MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY
CHAPTER IX--MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS
CHAPTER X--RESULT OF THE SUCCESS
CHAPTER XI--CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT
CHAPTER XII--M. BAMATABOIS'S INACTIVITY
CHAPTER XIII--THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE MUNICIPAL POLICE
BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT
CHAPTER I--THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE
CHAPTER II--HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP
BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
CHAPTER I--SISTER SIMPLICE
CHAPTER II--THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE
CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL
CHAPTER IV--FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP
CHAPTER V--HINDRANCES
CHAPTER VI--SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF
CHAPTER VII--THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR DEPARTURE
CHAPTER VIII--AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR
CHAPTER IX--A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION
CHAPTER X--THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS
CHAPTER XI--CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED
BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW
CHAPTER I--IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR
CHAPTER II--FANTINE HAPPY
CHAPTER III--JAVERT SATISFIED
CHAPTER IV--AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS
CHAPTER V--A SUITABLE TOMB
VOLUME II.--COSETTE
BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO
CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
CHAPTER II--HOUGOMONT
CHAPTER III--THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815
CHAPTER IV--A
CHAPTER V--THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES
CHAPTER VI--FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
CHAPTER VII--NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR
CHAPTER VIII--THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE
CHAPTER IX--THE UNEXPECTED
CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN
CHAPTER XI--A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW
CHAPTER XII--THE GUARD
CHAPTER XIII--THE CATASTROPHE
CHAPTER XIV--THE LAST SQUARE
CHAPTER XV--CAMBRONNE
CHAPTER XVI--QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?
CHAPTER XVII--IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?
CHAPTER XVIII--A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT
CHAPTER XIX--THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
BOOK SECOND.--THE SHIP ORION
CHAPTER I--NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430
CHAPTER II--IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE
DEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
CHAPTER III--THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY
MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
CHAPTER I--THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL
CHAPTER II--TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS
CHAPTER III--MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER
CHAPTER IV--ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL
CHAPTER V--THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE
CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE
CHAPTER VII--COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK
CHAPTER VIII--THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A POOR MAN
WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN
CHAPTER IX--THÉNARDIER AND HIS MANOUVRES
CHAPTER X--HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION WORSE
CHAPTER XI--NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY
BOOK FOURTH.--THE GORBEAU HOVEL
CHAPTER I--MASTER GORBEAU
CHAPTER II--A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER
CHAPTER III--TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE
CHAPTER IV--THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT
CHAPTER V--A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT
BOOK FIFTH.--FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
CHAPTER I--THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY
CHAPTER II--IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D'AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES
CHAPTER III--TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727
CHAPTER IV--THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT
CHAPTER V--WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS
CHAPTER VI--THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA
CHAPTER VII--CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA
CHAPTER VIII--THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS
CHAPTER IX--THE MAN WITH THE BELL
CHAPTER X--WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT
BOOK SIXTH.--LE PETIT-PICPUS
CHAPTER I--NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS
CHAPTER II--THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA
CHAPTER III--AUSTERITIES
CHAPTER IV--GAYETIES
CHAPTER V--DISTRACTIONS
CHAPTER VI--THE LITTLE CONVENT
CHAPTER VII--SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS
CHAPTER VIII--POST CORDA LAPIDES
CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE
CHAPTER X--ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION
CHAPTER XI--END OF THE PETIT-PICPUS
BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS
CHAPTER I--THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA
CHAPTER II--THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT
CHAPTER III--ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST
CHAPTER IV--THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER V--PRAYER
CHAPTER VI--THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER
CHAPTER VII--PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME
CHAPTER VIII--FAITH, LAW
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
CHAPTER I--WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING A CONVENT
CHAPTER II--FAUCHELEVENT IN THE PRESENCE OF A DIFFICULTY
CHAPTER III--MOTHER INNOCENTE
CHAPTER IV--IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ AUSTIN CASTILLEJO
CHAPTER V--IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL
CHAPTER VI--BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS
CHAPTER VII--IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T LOSE THE CARD
CHAPTER VIII--A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY
CHAPTER IX--CLOISTERED
VOLUME III--MARIUS.
BOOK FIRST.--PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
CHAPTER I--PARVULUS
CHAPTER II--SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS
CHAPTER III--HE IS AGREEABLE
CHAPTER IV--HE MAY BE OF USE
CHAPTER V--HIS FRONTIERS
CHAPTER VI--A BIT OF HISTORY
CHAPTER VII--THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA
CHAPTER VIII--IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE LAST KING
CHAPTER IX--THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL
CHAPTER X--ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO
CHAPTER XI--TO SCOFF, TO REIGN
CHAPTER XII--THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GAVROCHE
BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
CHAPTER I--NINETY YEARS AND THIRTY-TWO TEETH
CHAPTER II--LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE
CHAPTER III--LUC-ESPRIT
CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT
CHAPTER V--BASQUE AND NICOLETTE
CHAPTER VI--IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN
CHAPTER VII--RULE: RECEIVE NO ONE EXCEPT IN THE EVENING
CHAPTER VIII--TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR
BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
CHAPTER I--AN ANCIENT SALON
CHAPTER II--ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT EPOCH
CHAPTER III--REQUIESCANT
CHAPTER IV--END OF THE BRIGAND
CHAPTER V--THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONIST
CHAPTER VI--THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN
CHAPTER VII--SOME PETTICOAT
CHAPTER VIII--MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
CHAPTER I--A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC
CHAPTER II--BLONDEAU'S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET
CHAPTER III--MARIUS' ASTONISHMENTS
CHAPTER IV--THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN
CHAPTER V--ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON
CHAPTER VI--RES ANGUSTA
BOOK FIFTH.--THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
CHAPTER I--MARIUS INDIGENT
CHAPTER II--MARIUS POOR
CHAPTER III--MARIUS GROWN UP
CHAPTER IV--M. MABEUF
CHAPTER V--POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY
CHAPTER VI--THE SUBSTITUTE
BOOK SIXTH.--THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
CHAPTER I--THE SOBRIQUET: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY NAMES
CHAPTER II--LUX FACTA EST
CHAPTER III--EFFECT OF THE SPRING
CHAPTER IV--BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY
CHAPTER V--DIVERS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON
CHAPTER VI--TAKEN PRISONER
CHAPTER VII--ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO CONJECTURES
CHAPTER VIII--THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY
CHAPTER IX--ECLIPSE
BOOK SEVENTH.--PATRON MINETTE
CHAPTER I--MINES AND MINERS
CHAPTER II--THE LOWEST DEPTHS
CHAPTER III--BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE
CHAPTER IV--COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE
BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN
CHAPTER I--MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN A CAP
CHAPTER II--TREASURE TROVE
CHAPTER III--QUADRIFRONS
CHAPTER IV--A ROSE IN MISERY
CHAPTER V--A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE
CHAPTER VI--THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR
CHAPTER VII--STRATEGY AND TACTICS
CHAPTER VIII--THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL
CHAPTER IX--JONDRETTE COMES NEAR WEEPING
CHAPTER X--TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR
CHAPTER XI--OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS
CHAPTER XII--THE USE MADE OF M. LEBLANC'S FIVE-FRANC PIECE
CHAPTER XIII--SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABUNTUR ORARE PATER NOSTER
CHAPTER XIV--IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS ON A LAWYER
CHAPTER XV--JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES
CHAPTER XVI--IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN ENGLISH AIR WHICH
WAS IN FASHION IN 1832
CHAPTER XVII--THE USE MADE OF MARIUS' FIVE-FRANC PIECE
CHAPTER XVIII--MARIUS' TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS
CHAPTER XIX--OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS
CHAPTER XX--THE TRAP
CHAPTER XXI--ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS
CHAPTER XXII--THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO
VOLUME IV.--SAINT-DENIS.
BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
CHAPTER I--WELL CUT
CHAPTER II--BADLY SEWED
CHAPTER III--LOUIS PHILIPPE
CHAPTER IV--CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION
CHAPTER V--FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES
CHAPTER VI--ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS
BOOK SECOND.--ÉPONINE
CHAPTER I--THE LARK'S MEADOW
CHAPTER II--EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS
CHAPTER III--APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF
CHAPTER IV--AN APPARITION TO MARIUS
BOOK THIRD.--THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
CHAPTER I--THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET
CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD
CHAPTER III--FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS
CHAPTER IV--CHANGE OF GATE
CHAPTER V--THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR
CHAPTER VI--THE BATTLE BEGUN
CHAPTER VII--TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF
CHAPTER VIII--THE CHAIN-GANG
BOOK FOURTH.--SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
CHAPTER I--A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN
CHAPTER II--MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON
BOOK FIFTH.--THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER I--SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED
CHAPTER II--COSETTE'S APPREHENSIONS
CHAPTER III--ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT
CHAPTER IV--A HEART BENEATH A STONE
CHAPTER V--COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER
CHAPTER VI--OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY
BOOK SIXTH.--LITTLE GAVROCHE
CHAPTER I--THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND
CHAPTER II--IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT
CHAPTER III--THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT
BOOK SEVENTH.--SLANG
CHAPTER I--ORIGIN
CHAPTER II--ROOTS
CHAPTER III--SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS
CHAPTER IV--THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE
BOOK EIGHTH.--ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
CHAPTER I--FULL LIGHT
CHAPTER II--THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS
CHAPTER III--THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW
CHAPTER IV--A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG
CHAPTER V--THINGS OF THE NIGHT
CHAPTER VI--MARIUS BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE EXTENT OF GIVING
COSETTE HIS ADDRESS
CHAPTER VII--THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF EACH OTHER
BOOK NINTH.--WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
CHAPTER I--JEAN VALJEAN
CHAPTER II--MARIUS
CHAPTER III--M. MABEUF
BOOK TENTH.--THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832
CHAPTER I--THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION
CHAPTER II--THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN
CHAPTER IV--THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS
CHAPTER V--ORIGINALITY OF PARIS
BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
CHAPTER I--SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF GAVROCHE'S POETRY.
CHAPTER II--GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH
CHAPTER III--JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIR-DRESSER
CHAPTER IV--THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN
CHAPTER V--THE OLD MAN
CHAPTER VI--RECRUITS
BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE
CHAPTER I--HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION
CHAPTER II--PRELIMINARY GAYETIES
CHAPTER III--NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE
CHAPTER IV--AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP
CHAPTER V--PREPARATIONS
CHAPTER VI--WAITING
CHAPTER VII--THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES
CHAPTER VIII--MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE CABUC
BOOK THIRTEENTH.--MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
CHAPTER I--FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS
CHAPTER II--AN OWL'S VIEW OF PARIS
CHAPTER III--THE EXTREME EDGE
BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER I--THE FLAG: ACT FIRST
CHAPTER II--THE FLAG: ACT SECOND
CHAPTER III--GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS' CARBINE
CHAPTER IV--THE BARREL OF POWDER
CHAPTER V--END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE
CHAPTER VI--THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE
CHAPTER VII--GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES
BOOK FIFTEENTH.--THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ
CHAPTER I--A DRINKER IS A BABBLER
CHAPTER II--THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT
CHAPTER III--WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP
CHAPTER IV--GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL
VOLUME V--JEAN VALJEAN
BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
CHAPTER I--THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA
CHAPTER II--WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE
CHAPTER III--LIGHT AND SHADOW
CHAPTER IV--MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE
CHAPTER V--THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A BARRICADE
CHAPTER VI--MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC
CHAPTER VII--THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED
CHAPTER VIII--THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY
CHAPTER IX--EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT INFALLIBLE
MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONDEMNATION OF 1796
CHAPTER X--DAWN
CHAPTER XI--THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE
CHAPTER XII--DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER
CHAPTER XIII--PASSING GLEAMS
CHAPTER XIV--WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS' MISTRESS
CHAPTER XV--GAVROCHE OUTSIDE
CHAPTER XVI--HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER
CHAPTER XVII--MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT
CHAPTER XVIII--THE VULTURE BECOME PREY
CHAPTER XIX--JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE
CHAPTER XX--THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE WRONG
CHAPTER XXI--THE HEROES
CHAPTER XXII--FOOT TO FOOT
CHAPTER XXIII--ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK
CHAPTER XXIV--PRISONER
BOOK SECOND.--THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN
CHAPTER I--THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA
CHAPTER II--ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER
CHAPTER III--BRUNESEAU
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V--PRESENT PROGRESS
CHAPTER VI--FUTURE PROGRESS
BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL
CHAPTER I--THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES
CHAPTER II--EXPLANATION
CHAPTER III--THE "SPUN" MAN
CHAPTER IV--HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS
CHAPTER V--IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS
WHICH IS TREACHEROUS
CHAPTER VI--THE FONTIS
CHAPTER VII--ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING
CHAPTER VIII--THE TORN COAT-TAIL
CHAPTER IX--MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD
CHAPTER X--RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE
CHAPTER XI--CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE
CHAPTER XII--THE GRANDFATHER
BOOK FOURTH.--JAVERT DERAILED
CHAPTER I
BOOK FIFTH.--GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
CHAPTER I--IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN
CHAPTER II--MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR DOMESTIC WAR
CHAPTER III--MARIUS ATTACKED
CHAPTER IV--MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND ENDS BY NO LONGER THINKING IT A BAD
THING THAT M. FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD HAVE ENTERED WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM
CHAPTER V--DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY
CHAPTER VI--THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN FASHION,
TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY
CHAPTER VII--THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS
CHAPTER VIII--TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND
BOOK SIXTH.--THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT
CHAPTER I--THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833
CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING
CHAPTER III--THE INSEPARABLE
CHAPTER IV--THE IMMORTAL LIVER
BOOK SEVENTH.--THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
CHAPTER I--THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
CHAPTER II--THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN
BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT
CHAPTER I--THE LOWER CHAMBER
CHAPTER II--ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS
CHAPTER III--THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET
CHAPTER IV--ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION
BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
CHAPTER I--PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY
CHAPTER II--LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL
CHAPTER III--A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE FAUCHELEVENT'S CART
CHAPTER IV--A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN WHITENING
CHAPTER V--A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY
CHAPTER VI--THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES
LETTER TO M. DAELLI
FOOTNOTES:
List of Illustrations
Bookshelf
Bookcover
Frontpapers
Frontispiece Volume One
Titlepage Volume One
Titlepage Verso
The Comfortor
The Fall
Awakened
Cossette Sweeping
Candlesticks Into the Fire
Father Champmathieu on Trial
Frontispiece Volume Two
Titlepage Volume Two
The Ship Orion, an Accident
The Gorbeau Hovel
The Black Hunt
Javert on the Hunt
The Resurrection
Royalist Bank-note
Frontispiece Volume Three
Titlepage Volume Three
Little Gavroche
Friends of the A B C
Excellence of Misfortune
Rose in Misery
Red Hot Chisel
Snatched up a Paving Stone
Frontispiece Volume Four
Titlepage Volume Four
A Street Orator
Code Table
Succor from Below
Cosette With Letter
Slang
The Grandeurs of Despair
Frontispiece Volume Five
Titlepage Volume Five
Last Drop from the Cup
The Twilight Decline
Darkness
LES MISÉRABLES
VOLUME I.--FANTINE.
PREFACE
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of
damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the
civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine
destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century--the
degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through
hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--are unsolved;
so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;--in
other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance
and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot
fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.
FANTINE
BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D---- He was
an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see
of D---- since 1806.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance
of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely
for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various
rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very
moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said
of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all
in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a
councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility
of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of
his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty,
in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in
parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said
that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed,
though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the
whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and
to gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the
parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed.
M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the
Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she
had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate
of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall
of his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps,
even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance,
with the magnifying powers of terror,--did these cause the ideas of
renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of
these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly
smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes
overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes
would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one
could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from
Italy he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B---- [Brignolles]. He was already
advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with
his curacy--just what, is not precisely known--took him to Paris.
Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his
parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor
had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the
anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon,
on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man,
turned round and said abruptly:--
"Who is this good man who is staring at me?"
"Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great
man. Each of us can profit by it."
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that
he had been appointed Bishop of D----
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as
to the early portion of M. Myriel's life? No one knew. Very few families
had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the Revolution.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town,
where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because
he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name
was connected were rumors only,--noise, sayings, words; less than
words--_palabres_, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of
residence in D----, all the stories and subjects of conversation which
engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into
profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would
have dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D---- accompanied by an elderly spinster,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle
Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been _the
servant of M. le Curé_, now assumed the double title of maid to
Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she
realized the ideal expressed by the word "respectable"; for it seems
that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She
had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a
succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of
pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired
what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in
her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity
allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her
person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to
provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever
drooping;--a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and
bustling; always out of breath,--in the first place, because of her
activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with
the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop
immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the
first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general
and the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.
CHAPTER II--M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
The episcopal palace of D---- adjoins the hospital.
The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at
the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology
of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D---- in
1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about
it had a grand air,--the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms,
the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks
encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens
planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb
gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the
gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My
Lords Charles Brûlart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine
de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendôme, Grand
Prior of France, Abbé of Saint Honoré de Lérins; François de Berton de
Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; César de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop,
Seignor of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in
ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these
seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable
date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a
table of white marble.
The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a
small garden.
Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit
ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his
house.
"Monsieur the director of the hospital," said he to him, "how many sick
people have you at the present moment?"
"Twenty-six, Monseigneur."
"That was the number which I counted," said the Bishop.
"The beds," pursued the director, "are very much crowded against each
other."
"That is what I observed."
"The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air
can be changed in them."
"So it seems to me."
"And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the
convalescents."
"That was what I said to myself."
"In case of epidemics,--we have had the typhus fever this year; we
had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at
times,--we know not what to do."
"That is the thought which occurred to me."
"What would you have, Monseigneur?" said the director. "One must resign
one's self."
This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the
ground-floor.
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the
director of the hospital.
"Monsieur," said he, "how many beds do you think this hall alone would
hold?"
"Monseigneur's dining-room?" exclaimed the stupefied director.
The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking
measures and calculations with his eyes.
"It would hold full twenty beds," said he, as though speaking to
himself. Then, raising his voice:--
"Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something.
There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five
or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for
sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have
yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here."
On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the
Bishop's palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the
Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred
francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel
received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen
thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the
hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for
all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own
hand:--
NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.
For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 livres
Society of the mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
Seminary for foreign missions in Paris . . . . . . 200 "
Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . 150 "
Religious establishments of the Holy Land . . . . . 100 "
Charitable maternity societies . . . . . . . . . . 300 "
Extra, for that of Arles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 "
Work for the amelioration of prisons . . . . . . . 400 "
Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . . 500 "
To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt 1,000 "
Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the
diocese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000 "
Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes . . . . . . . . 100 "
Congregation of the ladies of D----, of Manosque, and of
Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor
girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 "
For the poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 "
My personal expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 "
------
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000 "
M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period
that he occupied the see of D---- As has been seen, he called it
_regulating his household expenses_.
This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle
Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D---- as at one and
the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the
flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and
venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her
adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It
will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself
only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle
Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen hundred
francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.
And when a village curate came to D----, the Bishop still found means to
entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to
the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.
One day, after he had been in D---- about three months, the Bishop
said:--
"And still I am quite cramped with it all!"
"I should think so!" exclaimed Madame Magloire. "Monseigneur has not
even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the expense
of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was
customary for bishops in former days."
"Hold!" cried the Bishop, "you are quite right, Madame Magloire."
And he made his demand.
Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under
consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs,
under this heading: _Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of
carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits._
This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator
of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred
which favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent
senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D----, wrote to M.
Bigot de Préameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and
confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic
lines:--
"Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than
four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use
of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be
accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one
travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and
Château-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all thus,
greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he
first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a
posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden
days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte,
until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down
with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part,
I am for Cæsar alone." Etc., etc.
On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame
Magloire. "Good," said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; "Monseigneur
began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after
all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand
francs for us! At last!"
That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a
memorandum conceived in the following terms:--
EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.
For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres
For the maternity charitable society of Aix . . . . . . . 250 "
For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan . . . 250 "
For foundlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 "
For orphans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 "
-----
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 "
Such was M. Myriel's budget.
As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,
dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or
chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all
the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.
After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who
lacked knocked at M. Myriel's door,--the latter in search of the alms
which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had
become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those
in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but
nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of
life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.
Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there
is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was
received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he
received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.
The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the
head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the
country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among
the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning for
them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu
[Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus
when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased
him.
"I like that name," said he. "Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur."
We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we
confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.
CHAPTER III--A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his
carriage into alms. The diocese of D---- is a fatiguing one. There are
very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we have
just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred
and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task.
The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the
neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on
a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the
trip was too hard for them, he went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was
mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did not
permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to receive
him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his ass,
with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him.
"Monsieur the Mayor," said the Bishop, "and Messieurs Citizens, I
perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest
to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from
necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity."
In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and
his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example
of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the
poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on
the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown
three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for
them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which
is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single
murderer among them."
In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: "Look at
the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family
has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service in
the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the curé recommends him to
the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the
inhabitants of the village--men, women, and children--go to the poor
man's field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and his
grain to his granary." To families divided by questions of money and
inheritance he said: "Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so
wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years.
Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their
fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find
husbands." To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and where the
farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: "Look at those good
peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand souls of
them. Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff
is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts,
taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides
inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously; and he
is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men." To villages where
he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more the people of Queyras: "Do
you know how they manage?" he said. "Since a little country of a
dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a teacher, they have
schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who make the round
of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in that, and
instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen them there.
They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear in the cord
of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen; those who teach
reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach reading, reckoning,
and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like
the people of Queyras!"
Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he
invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and
many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus
Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.
CHAPTER IV--WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with the
two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed,
it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call him Your
Grace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went
to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper
shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not
reach it. "Madame Magloire," said he, "fetch me a chair. My greatness
[_grandeur_] does not reach as far as that shelf."
One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely allowed
an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she
designated as "the expectations" of her three sons. She had numerous
relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons
were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a
grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the
heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to
succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to
listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On
one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,
while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these
inheritances and all these "expectations." She interrupted herself
impatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?" "I am
thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to be
found, I believe, in St. Augustine,--'Place your hopes in the man from
whom you do not inherit.'"
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a
gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the
dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his
relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!"
he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed
on him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb
into the service of vanity!"
He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always
concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful vicar
came to D----, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably eloquent.
The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to give to the
poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightful
manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he
represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was
a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.
Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.
Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that
sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old
beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to
share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing
this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, "There is M.
Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou."
When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by
a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which
induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room
of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy
and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,
an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has
actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm, _"You
must give me something, M. le Marquis."_ The Marquis turned round and
answered dryly, _"I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur." "Give them
to me,"_ replied the Bishop.
One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:--
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred
and twenty thousand peasants' dwellings in France which have but three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but
two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six
thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this
arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just
put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings,
and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to
men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God.
In the department of the Isère, in the Var, in the two departments
of the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even
wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they have
no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped in
pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hilly
country of Dauphiné. They make bread for six months at one time; they
bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread up with
an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to render it
eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all sides of
you!"
Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of
the south. He said, _"En bé! moussu, sés sagé?"_ as in lower Languedoc;
_"Onté anaras passa?"_ as in the Basses-Alpes; _"Puerte un bouen moutu
embe un bouen fromage grase,"_ as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased the
people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all
spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the
mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most
vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.
Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards
the lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking
circumstances into account. He said, "Examine the road over which the
fault has passed."
Being, as he described himself with a smile, an _ex-sinner_, he had none
of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal
of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a
doctrine which may be summed up as follows:--
"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his
temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it,
check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may
be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is
venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in
prayer.
"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err,
fall, sin if you will, but be upright.
"The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream
of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a
gravitation."
When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very
quickly, "Oh! oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all appearance, this is
a great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisies
which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put
themselves under shelter."
He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of
human society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the
feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands,
the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise."
He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things as
possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction
gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul
is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the
person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the
shadow."
It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging
things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.
One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the
point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being at
the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for
a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was
still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested
in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was
held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could
accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they
insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to
the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of
the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly
presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and
that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she
denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.
The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his
accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing
enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy
into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had
educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in
silence. When they had finished, he inquired,--
"Where are this man and woman to be tried?"
"At the Court of Assizes."
He went on, "And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?"
A tragic event occurred at D---- A man was condemned to death for
murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly
ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the
public. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the
day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the
prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his
last moments. They sent for the curé. It seems that he refused to come,
saying, "That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that
unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides,
it is not my place." This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said,
_"Monsieur le Curé is right: it is not his place; it is mine."_
He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the
"mountebank," called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to
him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,
praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the
condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also
the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to
bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man
was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he
stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He
was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His
condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken
through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery
of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this
world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop
made him see light.
On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the
Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the
eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross upon
his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.
He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The
sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was
radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The
Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall,
he said to him: "God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he whom
his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe,
enter into life: the Father is there." When he descended from the
scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people draw
aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of
admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble
dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as _his palace_, he said to
his sister, _"I have just officiated pontifically."_
Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least
understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on
this conduct of the Bishop, _"It is affectation."_
This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms.
The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and
admired him.
As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine,
and it was a long time before he recovered from it.
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has
something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain
indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon
it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with
one's own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent;
one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire
it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine
is the concretion of the law; it is called _vindicate_; it is not
neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it
shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect
their interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a
vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not
a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of
wood, iron and cords.
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre
initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter's work saw, that
this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood,
this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful
meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears
in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The
scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats
flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated
by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a
horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.
Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day
following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop
appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal
moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him. He,
who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant satisfaction,
seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to himself, and
stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is one which his
sister overheard one evening and preserved: "I did not think that it was
so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a
degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what
right do men touch that unknown thing?"
In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.
Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided
passing the place of execution.
M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and
dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty and
his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to summon
him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down and hold
his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his
love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment for
silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He
sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify
it by hope. He said:--
"Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think
not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living
light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven." He knew that
faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by
pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which
gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a
star.
CHAPTER V--MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts as his
public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D---- lived,
would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could have
viewed it close at hand.
Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.
This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an
hour, then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own
house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk
of his own cows. Then he set to work.
A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary
of the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his
vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant,
a whole ecclesiastical library to examine,--prayer-books, diocesan
catechisms, books of hours, etc.,--charges to write, sermons to
authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an
administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the
Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.
What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business, and
his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous,
the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from the
afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work. Sometimes
he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for
both these kinds of toil; he called them _gardening_. "The mind is a
garden," said he.
Towards mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took a
stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He
was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes cast down,
supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment
of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his coarse
shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden tassels
of large bullion to droop from its three points.
It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said that
his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The children
and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the
sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. They pointed out
his house to any one who was in need of anything.
Enlarge
Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and smiled
upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when
he no longer had any, he visited the rich.
As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to have it
noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak.
This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.
On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.
At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame
Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could
be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop had one of his
curés to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to
serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some
fine game from the mountains. Every curé furnished the pretext for
a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his
ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in water, and oil
soup. Thus it was said in the town, _when the Bishop does not indulge in
the cheer of a curé, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist_.
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine
and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing,
sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some folio. He was
a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him five or six
very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on this verse in
Genesis, _In the beginning, the spirit of God floated upon the waters_.
With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic verse which says,
_The winds of God blew;_ Flavius Josephus who says, _A wind from above
was precipitated upon the earth;_ and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase
of Onkelos, which renders it, _A wind coming from God blew upon the face
of the waters_. In another dissertation, he examines the theological
works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, great-grand-uncle to the writer
of this book, and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be
attributed the divers little works published during the last century,
under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.
Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might
be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall into a profound
meditation, whence he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of
the volume itself. These lines have often no connection whatever with
the book which contains them. We now have under our eyes a note written
by him on the margin of a quarto entitled _Correspondence of Lord
Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the
American station. Versailles, Poinçot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot,
bookseller, Quai des Augustins._
Here is the note:--
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the
Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls
you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you
Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence;
Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man
calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most
beautiful of all your names."
Toward nine o'clock in the evening the two women retired and betook
themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone until
morning on the ground floor.
It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of the
dwelling of the Bishop of D----
CHAPTER VI--WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three
chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a
garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the
first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on the
street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the
third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory, except
by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without passing
through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the oratory, there
was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of hospitality.
The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom business or the
requirements of their parishes brought to D----
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added
to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into
a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a
stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk they
gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in
the hospital.
_"I am paying my tithes,"_ he said.
His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad
weather. As wood is extremely dear at D----, he hit upon the idea of
having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he
passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his
_winter salon_.
In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other
furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated
chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an
antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the
Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D---- had more than once
assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for Monseigneur's
oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had given it to
the poor. "The most beautiful of altars," he said, "is the soul of an
unhappy creature consoled and thanking God."
In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an
arm-chair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received
seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the
staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little
seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the
stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the arm-chair from the
bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for the
visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.
It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop
then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front
of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it was
summer.
There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was
half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service
only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in
her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been
gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been
obliged to hoist this bergère up to the first story through the window,
as the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned
among the possibilities in the way of furniture.
Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to purchase a set
of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose
pattern, and with mahogany in swan's neck style, with a sofa. But this
would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the fact
that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for
this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing
the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?
Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop's
bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the
bed,--a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the
shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,
which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there
were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the
other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was
a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of
wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the
chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two
garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered
with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the
chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed
on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the
gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an inkstand,
loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes; before the
table an arm-chair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu, borrowed
from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of
the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at
the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented,
one the Abbé of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbé
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after
the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left
them. They were priests, and probably donors--two reasons for respecting
them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had
been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his
benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire
having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these
particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper, yellowed
by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbé of
Grand-Champ with four wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which
finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a new one,
Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very middle
of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often called
attention to it: "How delightful that is!" he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground
floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is a
fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the
paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment
of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming
a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the
Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red bricks,
which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all the beds.
Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two women, was
exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole luxury which the
Bishop permitted. He said, _"That takes nothing from the poor."_
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former
possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which
Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened
splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting
the Bishop of D---- as he was in reality, we must add that he had said
more than once, "I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver
dishes."
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive
silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks
held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's chimney-piece.
When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles
and set the candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small
cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and
forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that
the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which
we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating
from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted
the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four
square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some
flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had
once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: "Monseigneur, you who turn
everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would be
better to grow salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," retorted
the Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the
useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop
almost as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,
trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into
which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener
could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to
botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest
effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part
neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu against
Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected learned
men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without ever
failing in these two respects, he watered his flower-beds every summer
evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the
dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral
square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door
of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this door
was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the
latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour, was to give
it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried by this
door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D---- had said to them,
"Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you." They had ended
by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they shared
it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for the
Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated, in
the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, "This is the
shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the
door of the priest should always be open."
On another book, entitled _Philosophy of the Medical Science_, he had
written this other note: "Am not I a physician like them? I also have my
patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates."
Again he wrote: "Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of
you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs
shelter."
It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of
Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask
him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether
Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a
certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the
mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short,
he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little
guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and
said to him, _"Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch
who guard it._
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well as
the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only," he added, "ours must be
tranquil."
CHAPTER VII--CRAVATTE
It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not
omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a
man the Bishop of D---- was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, who had infested the
gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in
the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the
remnant of Gaspard Bès's troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his
way to Piédmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity
of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid
himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l'Aigle, and thence he descended
towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and
Ubayette.
He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night,
and despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the
country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He
always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold
wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was
making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged
him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains
as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it
merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.
"Therefore," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort."
"You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!" exclaimed the mayor.
"I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and
shall set out in an hour."
"Set out?"
"Set out."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Monseigneur, you will not do that!"
"There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny
community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years.
They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own
one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty
woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on
little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now
and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would
they say if I did not go?"
"But the brigands, Monseigneur?"
"Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. You are right. I may
meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God."
"But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!"
"Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves
that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of
Providence?"
"They will rob you, Monseigneur."
"I have nothing."
"They will kill you."
"An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah!
To what purpose?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!"
"I should beg alms of them for my poor."
"Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your
life!"
"Monsieur le maire," said the Bishop, "is that really all? I am not in
the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls."
They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only
by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited
about the country-side, and caused great consternation.
He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the
mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound
at the residence of his "good friends," the shepherds. He remained
there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament, teaching,
exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he resolved to
chant a _Te Deum_ pontifically. He mentioned it to the curé. But what
was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They could only
place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a few ancient
chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.
"Bah!" said the Bishop. "Let us announce our _Te Deum_ from the pulpit,
nevertheless, Monsieur le Curé. Things will arrange themselves."
They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the
magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed
to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.
While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and
deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who
departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of
cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop's cross,
a magnificent crosier,--all the pontifical vestments which had been
stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d'Embrun.
In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written, _"From
Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu."_
"Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?" said the
Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with
the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop."
"Monseigneur," murmured the curé, throwing back his head with a smile.
"God--or the Devil."
The Bishop looked steadily at the curé, and repeated with authority,
"God!"
When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as at
a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest's house in Chastelar he
rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were waiting
for him, and he said to his sister: "Well! was I in the right? The poor
priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns
from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I
have brought back the treasure of a cathedral."
That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear
robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers.
Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the
real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it
what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which
threatens our soul."
Then, turning to his sister: "Sister, never a precaution on the part
of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God
permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger
is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother
may not fall into sin on our account."
However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which
we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the same things at
the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day.
As to what became of "the treasure" of the cathedral of Embrun, we
should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of
very handsome things, very tempting things, and things which were very
well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen
they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed; it
only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it
to take a short trip in the direction of the poor. However, we make no
assertions on this point. Only, a rather obscure note was found among
the Bishop's papers, which may bear some relation to this matter, and
which is couched in these terms, _"The question is, to decide whether
this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital."_
CHAPTER VIII--PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way,
heedless of those things which present obstacles, and which are called
conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his
goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his
interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by
any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his sons,
his sons-in-law, his relations, and even to his friends, having wisely
seized upon, in life, good sides, good opportunities, good windfalls.
Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was intelligent, and just
sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple of Epicurus; while he
was, in reality, only a product of Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed willingly
and pleasantly over infinite and eternal things, and at the "crotchets
of that good old fellow the Bishop." He even sometimes laughed at him
with an amiable authority in the presence of M. Myriel himself, who
listened to him.
On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what,
Count*** [this senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect.
At dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still
perfectly dignified, exclaimed:--
"Egad, Bishop, let's have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a
bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am
going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own."
"And you are right," replied the Bishop. "As one makes one's philosophy,
so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator."
The senator was encouraged, and went on:--
"Let us be good fellows."
"Good devils even," said the Bishop.
"I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,
Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the
philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
"Like yourself, Count," interposed the Bishop.
The senator resumed:--
"I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist,
a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire
made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham's eels prove that
God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies
the _fiat lux_. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger;
you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal
Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing
but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that
great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace!
Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession
to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I
have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches
renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an
avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end?
I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another
wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a
superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if
one sees no further than the end of other people's noses? Let us live
merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high,
below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah!
sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to
everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the
just and the unjust, over the _fas_ and the _nefas_. Why? Because I
shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a
fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch
me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us
tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil
of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is
vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us
go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We
must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then
it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am
square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting
for dead men's shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you
like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels,
with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it
not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star to star?
Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides,
we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these paradises are! God
is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the _Moniteur_, egad!
but I may whisper it among friends. _Inter pocula_. To sacrifice the
world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of
the infinite! I'm not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur
le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist
after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What
am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy.
Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have
suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall
have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I
shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my
wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is
there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End.
_Finis_. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death,
believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything
to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children;
Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there
is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus, you have
been Vincent de Paul--it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then
live your life, above all things. Make use of your _I_ while you have
it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own,
and I have my philosophers. I don't let myself be taken in with
that nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are
down,--for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable
wretches. Legends, chimæras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars,
are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on
their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good God. That is the
least he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur
Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the populace."
The Bishop clapped his hands.
"That's talking!" he exclaimed. "What an excellent and really marvellous
thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it can have it. Ah!
when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does not stupidly
allow one's self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like Stephen, nor
burned alive like Jeanne d'Arc. Those who have succeeded in procuring
this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves
irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without
uneasiness,--places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or
ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory
capitulations of conscience,--and that they shall enter the tomb with
their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that is! I do not say that
with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me
to refrain from congratulating you. You great lords have, so you say, a
philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined,
accessible to the rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons
the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been
extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you are
good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in
the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much
as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor."
CHAPTER IX--THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER
In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the
Bishop of D----, and of the manner in which those two sainted women
subordinated their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts
even, which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the
Bishop, without his even taking the trouble of speaking in order to
explain them, we cannot do better than transcribe in this place a letter
from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the
friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession.
D----, Dec. 16, 18--.
MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking of you. It is our
established custom; but there is another reason besides. Just imagine,
while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madam Magloire has
made some discoveries; now our two chambers hung with antique paper
whitewashed over, would not discredit a château in the style of yours.
Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper. There were things beneath.
My drawing-room, which contains no furniture, and which we use for
spreading out the linen after washing, is fifteen feet in height,
eighteen square, with a ceiling which was formerly painted and gilded,
and with beams, as in yours. This was covered with a cloth while this
was the hospital. And the woodwork was of the era of our grandmothers.
But my room is the one you ought to see. Madam Magloire has discovered,
under at least ten thicknesses of paper pasted on top, some paintings,
which without being good are very tolerable. The subject is Telemachus
being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name of which escapes
me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What
shall I say to you? I have Romans, and Roman ladies [here occurs an
illegible word], and the whole train. Madam Magloire has cleaned it all
off; this summer she is going to have some small injuries repaired, and
the whole revarnished, and my chamber will be a regular museum. She has
also found in a corner of the attic two wooden pier-tables of ancient
fashion. They asked us two crowns of six francs each to regild them, but
it is much better to give the money to the poor; and they are very ugly
besides, and I should much prefer a round table of mahogany.
I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to
the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country is trying in
the winter, and we really must do something for those who are in need.
We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You see that these are
great treats.
My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop
ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened.
Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother's room. He
fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery, he says.
He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He exposes
himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have us even
seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him.
He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He
fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night.
Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would
not take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had
happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well, and
said, "This is the way I have been robbed!" And then he opened a trunk
full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the
thieves had given him.
When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding him
a little, taking care, however, not to speak except when the carriage
was making a noise, so that no one might hear me.
At first I used to say to myself, "There are no dangers which will stop
him; he is terrible." Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a
sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself
as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire, I enter my chamber, I pray
for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything
were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the
good God with my brother and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire
more trouble than it did me to accustom herself to what she terms his
imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we
tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this
house, he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us
to fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is stronger
than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells here.
This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to
me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to
the care of Providence. That is the way one has to do with a man who
possesses grandeur of soul.
I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you
desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows
everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very
good royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the
generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux, a
Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom
was a seigneur de Rochefort. The last was Guy-Étienne-Alexandre, and was
commander of a regiment, and something in the light horse of Bretagne.
His daughter, Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of
the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards,
and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written Faux, Fauq, and
Faoucq.
Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative,
Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in
not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing to me.
She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me.
That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you
reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very
bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper is at an end,
and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.
BAPTISTINE.
P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be
five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who
had on knee-caps, and he said, "What has he got on his knees?" He is a
charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the
room, like a carriage, and saying, "Hu!"
As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to
mould themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine genius
which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself. The Bishop
of D----, in spite of the gentle and candid air which never deserted
him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and magnificent,
without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They trembled, but
they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a remonstrance in
advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They never interfered
with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action once entered upon.
At certain moments, without his having occasion to mention it, when he
was not even conscious of it himself in all probability, so perfect was
his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then
they were nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him
passively; and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared.
They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain
cares may be put under constraint. Thus, even when believing him to be
in peril, they understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature,
to such a degree that they no longer watched over him. They confided him
to God.
Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother's end
would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.
CHAPTER X--THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the
preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be
believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains
infested with bandits.
In the country near D---- a man lived quite alone. This man, we will
state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G----
Member of the Convention, G---- was mentioned with a sort of horror in
the little world of D---- A member of the Convention--can you imagine
such a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other
_thou_, and when they said "citizen." This man was almost a monster.
He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a
quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such
a man had not been brought before a provost's court, on the return of
the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you
please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for
life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all
the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.
Was G---- a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the
element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for the
death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of exile, and
had been able to remain in France.
He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far
from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild
valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort
of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by.
Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had
disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as
though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.
Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time
he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked the
valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, "There is a
soul yonder which is lonely."
And he added, deep in his own mind, "I owe him a visit."
But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush,
appeared to him after a moment's reflection, as strange, impossible, and
almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression, and
the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly
conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on
hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.
Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No.
But what a sheep!
The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction;
then he returned.
Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young
shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had come
in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that paralysis was
gaining on him, and that he would not live over night.--"Thank God!"
some added.
The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too
threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening
breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.
The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop
arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the heart,
he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over a
ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs,
entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of
boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind
lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.
It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed
against the outside.
Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the arm-chair of the peasants,
there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.
Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was offering
the old man a jar of milk.
While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: "Thank you," he
said, "I need nothing." And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the
child.
The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the
old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the
surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.
"This is the first time since I have been here," said he, "that any one
has entered here. Who are you, sir?"
The Bishop answered:--
"My name is Bienvenu Myriel."
"Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the
people call Monseigneur Welcome?"
"I am."
The old man resumed with a half-smile
"In that case, you are my bishop?"
"Something of that sort."
"Enter, sir."
The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the
Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark:--
"I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not
seem to me to be ill."
"Monsieur," replied the old man, "I am going to recover."
He paused, and then said:--
"I shall die three hours hence."
Then he continued:--
"I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws
on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill has ascended to
my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the heart,
I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself wheeled
out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it does not
fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who is on
the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at that
moment. One has one's caprices; I should have liked to last until the
dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night
then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair. One has
no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by starlight."
The old man turned to the shepherd lad:--
"Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired."
The child entered the hut.
The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking to
himself:--
"I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors."
The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He
did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the
whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated
like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at "His
Grace," was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and he
was almost tempted to retort "citizen." He was assailed by a fancy for
peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but which
was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of the
Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the
powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably,
the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.
Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a
modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that
humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to
dust.
The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity,
which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not refrain from
examining the member of the Convention with an attention which, as it
did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his conscience as
a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A member of the
Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside the pale
of the law, even of the law of charity. G----, calm, his body almost
upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those octogenarians who form
the subject of astonishment to the physiologist. The Revolution had
many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was
conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so near to his end, he
preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm
tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something
calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the
sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken
the door. G---- seemed to be dying because he willed it so. There was
freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless. It was there that
the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and dead, but his head
survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light. G----,
at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who
was flesh above and marble below.
There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.
"I congratulate you," said he, in the tone which one uses for a
reprimand. "You did not vote for the death of the king, after all."
The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter
meaning underlying the words "after all." He replied. The smile had
quite disappeared from his face.
"Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the
tyrant."
It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.
"What do you mean to say?" resumed the Bishop.
"I mean to say that man has a tyrant,--ignorance. I voted for the death
of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority
falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man
should be governed only by science."
"And conscience," added the Bishop.
"It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science
which we have within us."
Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language,
which was very new to him.
The member of the Convention resumed:--
"So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said 'no.' I did not think that I
had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil.
I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution
for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child.
In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity,
concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and
errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We
have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of
miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn
of joy."
"Mixed joy," said the Bishop.
"You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the
past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work
was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we
were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not
sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the
wind is still there."
"You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a
demolition complicated with wrath."
"Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of
progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French
Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent
of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the
unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased,
enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the
earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of
humanity."
The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:--
"Yes? '93!"
The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with
an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is
capable of exclamation:--
"Ah, there you go; '93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been
forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen
hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial."
The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within
him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the
matter. He replied:--
"The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name
of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt should
commit no error." And he added, regarding the member of the Convention
steadily the while, "Louis XVII.?"
The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop's arm.
"Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent
child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal
child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche,
an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Grève,
until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother
of Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an
innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime
of having been grandson of Louis XV."
"Monsieur," said the Bishop, "I like not this conjunction of names."
"Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?"
A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come, and
yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.
The conventionary resumed:--
"Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ
loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge,
full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried,
_'Sinite parvulos,'_ he made no distinction between the little children.
It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of
Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is its own
crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august in rags
as in fleurs de lys."
"That is true," said the Bishop in a low voice.
"I persist," continued the conventionary G---- "You have mentioned Louis
XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the
innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted?
I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back
further than '93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will
weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep
with me over the children of the people."
"I weep for all," said the Bishop.
"Equally!" exclaimed conventionary G----; "and if the balance must
incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering
longer."
Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He
raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb
and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and
judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces of
the death agony. It was almost an explosion.
"Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that
is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me
about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these parts
I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside, and
seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me in
a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must admit;
but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of imposing on
that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear the sound of
your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice at the fork
of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You have told me
that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no information as to your
moral personality. In short, I repeat my question. Who are you? You are
a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded
men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,--the
bishopric of D---- fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand
in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,--who have kitchens,
who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who
strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and
who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus
Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,--revenues, palace, horses,
servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like
the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says
either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the
intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable
intention of bringing wisdom to me. To whom do I speak? Who are you?"
The Bishop hung his head and replied, _"Vermis sum_--I am a worm."
"A worm of the earth in a carriage?" growled the conventionary.
It was the conventionary's turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop's to be
humble.
The Bishop resumed mildly:--
"So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces
off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which I
eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my palace
and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that '93 was not
inexorable."
The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep
away a cloud.
"Before replying to you," he said, "I beseech you to pardon me. I have
just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I
owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine
myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are
advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates
that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them
in the future."
"I thank you," said the Bishop.
G---- resumed.
"Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were
we? What were you saying to me? That '93 was inexorable?"
"Inexorable; yes," said the Bishop. "What think you of Marat clapping
his hands at the guillotine?"
"What think you of Bossuet chanting the _Te Deum_ over the dragonnades?"
The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness
of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to
him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet. The best
of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel vaguely
wounded by the want of respect of logic.
The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is
mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a
perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:--
"Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing.
Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human
affirmation, '93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir;
but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name
do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what
is your opinion as to Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is terrible; but
Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchêne senior is ferocious; but what
epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tetê
is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir,
sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am
also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the
Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist,
to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with
milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld
that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a
mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of
her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture
of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the
French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be
absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its
most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I
abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying."
And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his
thoughts in these tranquil words:--
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are
over, this fact is recognized,--that the human race has been treated
harshly, but that it has progressed."
The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the
inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this
intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu's resistance,
came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the
beginning:--
"Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.
He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race."
The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized
with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a
tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down
his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to
himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:--
"O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!"
The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.
After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:--
"The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person
would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it
would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is
God."
The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with
the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken,
his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he
had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to
him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in death.
The supreme moment was approaching.
The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had
come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion;
he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice-cold
hand in his, and bent over the dying man.
"This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be
regrettable if we had met in vain?"
The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom
was imprinted on his countenance.
"Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his
dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, "I have passed my
life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age
when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its
affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies existed,
I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and
confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France was
menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have been one
of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered
with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls,
which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and
silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored
the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the cloth from
the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country. I
have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards
the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity. I have,
when the occasion offered, protected my own adversaries, men of your
profession. And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot
where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of
Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in
1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and all the good
that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted,
blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past,
I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they
have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the
visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred, without
hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am on the point
of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?"
_"Your blessing,"_ said the Bishop.
And he knelt down.
When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had
become august. He had just expired.
The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot
be known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following
morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about
member of the Convention G----; he contented himself with pointing
heavenward.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling
towards all children and sufferers.
Any allusion to "that old wretch of a G----" caused him to fall into a
singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul
before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did
not count for something in his approach to perfection.
This "pastoral visit" naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of
comment in all the little local coteries.
"Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a
bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those
revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be
seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried
off by the devil."
One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself
spiritual, addressed this sally to him, "Monseigneur, people are
inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!"--"Oh! oh!
that's a coarse color," replied the Bishop. "It is lucky that those who
despise it in a cap revere it in a hat."
CHAPTER XI--A RESTRICTION
We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude
from this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophical bishop," or a
"patriotic curé." His meeting, which may almost be designated as his
union, with conventionary G----, left behind it in his mind a sort of
astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.
Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is,
perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the
events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed
of having an attitude.
Let us, then, go back a few years.
Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the
Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other
bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the
night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel
was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy
convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and assembled
for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency
of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who
attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four
private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close
to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported
among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of
the assembly. He very soon returned to D---- He was interrogated as to
this speedy return, and he replied: _"I embarrassed them. The outside
air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an
open door."_
On another occasion he said, _"What would you have? Those gentlemen are
princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop."_
The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is
said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at
the house of one of his most notable colleagues: "What beautiful clocks!
What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great
trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly
in my ears: 'There are people who are hungry! There are people who are
cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!'"
Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an
intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.
Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with
representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have
very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a
contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come
in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these
misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a
little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine
a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is
working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened
nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first
proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.
This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D---- thought.
It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the "ideas
of the century" on certain delicate points. He took very little part
in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on
questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had
been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an
ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and
since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he
was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he
gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He
refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island
of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor
in his diocese during the Hundred Days.
Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a
general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency.
He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command
in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general
had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the
Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous
of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the
ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue
Cassette, remained more affectionate.
Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour
of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment
traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any
political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are
not confounding what is called "political opinions" with the grand
aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic,
humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous
intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly
connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It
would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist,
and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from
that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the
fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of
human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice,
and charity.
While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created
Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest
in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but
perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases
us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who
are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in
any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be
the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in
prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of
success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when
Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to
disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn
legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which
aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the
presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate
which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having
deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing
and spitting on its idol,--it was a duty to turn aside the head. In
1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized
with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly
discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army
and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it,
and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of
the Bishop of D----, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the
august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation
and a great man on the brink of the abyss.
With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only
another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must
be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have just
reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity,
he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking
here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor.
He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the
Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle.
This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the
law then stigmatized as _seditious speeches_. After the imperial profile
disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never dressed himself in his
regimentals, as he said, so that he should not be obliged to wear his
cross. He had himself devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the
cross which Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not
put anything in its place. _"I will die,"_ he said, _"rather than wear
the three frogs upon my heart!"_ He liked to scoff aloud at Louis XVIII.
"The gouty old creature in English gaiters!" he said; _"let him take
himself off to Prussia with that queue of his."_ He was happy to combine
in the same imprecation the two things which he most detested, Prussia
and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was,
turned out of the house, with his wife and children, and without bread.
The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle
in the cathedral.
In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy
deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D----with a sort of
tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been
accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and
weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.
CHAPTER XII--THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little abbés,
just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what
that charming Saint François de Sales calls somewhere "les prêtres
blancs-becs," callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form
a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power
which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its
court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every
metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses the
least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary,
which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace,
and mounts guard over monseigneur's smile. To please a bishop is
equivalent to getting one's foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate.
It is necessary to walk one's path discreetly; the apostleship does not
disdain the canonship.
Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church.
These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich, well
endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no doubt,
but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole
diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links
between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than priests,
prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being
persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the
assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand
the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates,
chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As
they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also;
it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam
of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind
the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the
patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is Rome.
A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who
knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist;
you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and
behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor,
and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence
and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may
dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a
king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a
nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers,
how many youthful abbés bear on their heads Perrette's pot of milk!
Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good
faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among
the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young
priests about him. We have seen that he "did not take" in Paris. Not a
single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man.
Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its
foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men,
rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without
exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this
difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The
impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well
understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the
seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix
or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it,
men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation
is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion,
an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in
advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and
this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur
Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the
lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false
resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost
the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menæchmus of talent, has
one dupe,--history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our
day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its
service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its
antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the
lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is venerated.
Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be
lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think
you great. Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which compose
the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing but
short-sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first
arrival by pure chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an
old Narcissus who adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd.
That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, Æschylus, Dante,
Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by
acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may
consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false
Corneille compose _Tiridate;_ let a eunuch come to possess a harem; let
a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch;
let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the
Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold
as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer
espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of
which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher
become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine
family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister
of finances,--and men call that Genius, just as they call the face
of Mousqueton _Beauty_, and the mien of Claude _Majesty_. With the
constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are
made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.
CHAPTER XIII--WHAT HE BELIEVED
We are not obliged to sound the Bishop of D---- on the score of
orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul we feel ourselves in no mood
but respect. The conscience of the just man should be accepted on his
word. Moreover, certain natures being given, we admit the possible
development of all beauties of human virtue in a belief that differs
from our own.
What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets of
the inner tribunal of the conscience are known only to the tomb, where
souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is, that the
difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into hypocrisy in his
case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of
his powers. _"Credo in Patrem,"_ he often exclaimed. Moreover, he
drew from good works that amount of satisfaction which suffices to the
conscience, and which whispers to a man, "Thou art with God!"
The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and
beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. It
was in that quarter, _quia multum amavit_,--because he loved much--that
he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men," "grave persons" and
"reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism
takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love?
It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already
pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived
without disdain. He was indulgent towards God's creation. Every man,
even the best, has within him a thoughtless harshness which he reserves
for animals. The Bishop of D---- had none of that harshness, which is
peculiar to many priests, nevertheless. He did not go as far as the
Brahmin, but he seemed to have weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: "Who
knoweth whither the soul of the animal goeth?" Hideousness of aspect,
deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did not arouse his
indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them. It seemed as
though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which
is apparent, the cause, the explanation, or the excuse for them. He
seemed at times to be asking God to commute these penalties. He examined
without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is deciphering a
palimpsest, that portion of chaos which still exists in nature. This
revery sometimes caused him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in
his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind
him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the
ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard
him say:--
"Poor beast! It is not its fault!"
Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness?
Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to
Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his
ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived this just
man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing
more venerable possible.
Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth,
and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate,
and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity was less an instinct
of nature than the result of a grand conviction which had filtered into
his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled there slowly,
thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist
apertures made by drops of water. These hollows are uneffaceable; these
formations are indestructible.
In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth
birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall;
he was rather plump; and, in order to combat this tendency, he was fond
of taking long strolls on foot; his step was firm, and his form was
but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to draw any
conclusion. Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty, held himself erect and
smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monseigneur
Welcome had what the people term a "fine head," but so amiable was he
that they forgot that it was fine.
When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his
charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease
with him, and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person. His fresh and
ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had preserved,
and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy air
which cause the remark to be made of a man, "He's a good fellow"; and
of an old man, "He is a fine man." That, it will be recalled, was the
effect which he produced upon Napoleon. On the first encounter, and to
one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing, in fact, but a fine
man. But if one remained near him for a few hours, and beheld him in the
least degree pensive, the fine man became gradually transfigured, and
took on some imposing quality, I know not what; his broad and serious
brow, rendered august by his white locks, became august also by virtue
of meditation; majesty radiated from his goodness, though his goodness
ceased not to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which
one would feel on beholding a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings,
without ceasing to smile. Respect, an unutterable respect, penetrated
you by degrees and mounted to your heart, and one felt that one had
before him one of those strong, thoroughly tried, and indulgent souls
where thought is so grand that it can no longer be anything but gentle.
As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion,
alms-giving, the consolation of the afflicted, the cultivation of a bit
of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, renunciation, confidence,
study, work, filled every day of his life. _Filled_ is exactly the word;
certainly the Bishop's day was quite full to the brim, of good words and
good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather
prevented his passing an hour or two in his garden before going to bed,
and after the two women had retired. It seemed to be a sort of rite with
him, to prepare himself for slumber by meditation in the presence of
the grand spectacles of the nocturnal heavens. Sometimes, if the two old
women were not asleep, they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at
a very advanced hour of the night. He was there alone, communing with
himself, peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the
serenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible splendor
of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his
heart to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. At such moments,
while he offered his heart at the hour when nocturnal flowers offer
their perfume, illuminated like a lamp amid the starry night, as he
poured himself out in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of
creation, he could not have told himself, probably, what was passing in
his spirit; he felt something take its flight from him, and something
descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul with
the abysses of the universe!
He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity,
that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more
strange; of all the infinities, which pierced their way into all
his senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend the
incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled
by him. He considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms, which
communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by verifying them, create
individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the innumerable in the
infinite, and, through light, produce beauty. These conjunctions are
formed and dissolved incessantly; hence life and death.
He seated himself on a wooden bench, with his back against a decrepit
vine; he gazed at the stars, past the puny and stunted silhouettes
of his fruit-trees. This quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, so
encumbered with mean buildings and sheds, was dear to him, and satisfied
his wants.
What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his
life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening in the
daytime and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with
the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable him to adore God in his
most divine works, in turn? Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and
what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to
walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be
cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate
upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.
CHAPTER XIV--WHAT HE THOUGHT
One last word.
Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment,
and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D---- a
certain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and induce the belief, either
to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal
philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring
up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they
usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of
those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself
authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this
man was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes from
there.
No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no,
there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. The
apostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid. He would probably
have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain problems
which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is a
sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openings
stand yawning there, but something tells you, you, a passer-by in life,
that you must not enter. Woe to him who penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure speculation,
situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to
God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adoration
interrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and
responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes
and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by
a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious
world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is
probable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be,
there are on earth men who--are they men?--perceive distinctly at the
verge of the horizons of revery the heights of the absolute, and who
have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome
was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would
have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like
Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these
powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths
one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which
shortens,--the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah's
mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of
events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he
had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This
humble soul loved, and that was all.
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is
probable: but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much;
and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint
Jerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe
appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever,
everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to
solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle
of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only
in finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to
compassionate and relieve. That which exists was for this good and rare
priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction
of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned
everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. _Love each other;_
he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was
the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be
a "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to, said to
the Bishop: "Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against
all; the strongest has the most wit. Your _love each other_ is
nonsense."--_"Well,"_ replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting
the point, _"if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as
the pearl in the oyster."_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he
was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious
questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of
abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics--all those profundities
which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness;
destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience
of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation
in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the
incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent _I_,
the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature,
liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where
lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses,
which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes
flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to
cause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of
mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling
his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave
respect for darkness.
BOOK SECOND--THE FALL
CHAPTER I--THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING
Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a
man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D----The few
inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the
moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness. It was
difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was
a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life.
He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a
drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by
sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of coarse yellow
linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view
of his hairy breast: he had a cravat twisted into a string; trousers of
blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and torn on the
other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the elbows with
a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed soldier
knapsack, well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an enormous,
knotty stick in his hand; iron-shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a
shaved head and a long beard.
The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not
what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His hair was closely cut,
yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a little, and did not seem to
have been cut for some time.
No one knew him. He was evidently only a chance passer-by. Whence came
he? From the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his entrance
into D---- by the same street which, seven months previously, had
witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way from Cannes
to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much
fatigued. Some women of the ancient market town which is situated below
the city had seen him pause beneath the trees of the boulevard Gassendi,
and drink at the fountain which stands at the end of the promenade. He
must have been very thirsty: for the children who followed him saw him
stop again for a drink, two hundred paces further on, at the fountain in
the market-place.
On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left,
and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came out
a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was seated near the door, on the
stone bench which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th of March to read
to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D----the proclamation
of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his cap and humbly saluted the
gendarme.
The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively at him,
followed him for a while with his eyes, and then entered the town-hall.
There then existed at D---- a fine inn at the sign of the _Cross of
Colbas_. This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man
of consideration in the town on account of his relationship to another
Labarre, who kept the inn of the _Three Dauphins_ in Grenoble, and had
served in the Guides. At the time of the Emperor's landing, many rumors
had circulated throughout the country with regard to this inn of the
_Three Dauphins_. It was said that General Bertrand, disguised as a
carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month of January, and
that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls
of gold to the citizens. The truth is, that when the Emperor entered
Grenoble he had refused to install himself at the hotel of the
prefecture; he had thanked the mayor, saying, _"I am going to the house
of a brave man of my acquaintance";_ and he had betaken himself to the
_Three Dauphins_. This glory of the Labarre of the _Three Dauphins_ was
reflected upon the Labarre of the _Cross of Colbas_, at a distance of
five and twenty leagues. It was said of him in the town, _"That is the
cousin of the man of Grenoble."_
The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the
country-side. He entered the kitchen, which opened on a level with the
street. All the stoves were lighted; a huge fire blazed gayly in the
fireplace. The host, who was also the chief cook, was going from one
stew-pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner
designed for the wagoners, whose loud talking, conversation, and
laughter were audible from an adjoining apartment. Any one who has
travelled knows that there is no one who indulges in better cheer than
wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks,
was turning on a long spit before the fire; on the stove, two huge carps
from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz were cooking.
The host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter, said,
without raising his eyes from his stoves:--
"What do you wish, sir?"
"Food and lodging," said the man.
"Nothing easier," replied the host. At that moment he turned his head,
took in the traveller's appearance with a single glance, and added, "By
paying for it."
The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and
answered, "I have money."
"In that case, we are at your service," said the host.
The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from
his back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick in his
hand, and seated himself on a low stool close to the fire. D---- is in
the mountains. The evenings are cold there in October.
But as the host went back and forth, he scrutinized the traveller.
"Will dinner be ready soon?" said the man.
"Immediately," replied the landlord.
While the newcomer was warming himself before the fire, with his back
turned, the worthy host, Jacquin Labarre, drew a pencil from his pocket,
then tore off the corner of an old newspaper which was lying on a small
table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or two,
folded it without sealing, and then intrusted this scrap of paper to
a child who seemed to serve him in the capacity both of scullion and
lackey. The landlord whispered a word in the scullion's ear, and the
child set off on a run in the direction of the town-hall.
The traveller saw nothing of all this.
Once more he inquired, "Will dinner be ready soon?"
"Immediately," responded the host.
The child returned. He brought back the paper. The host unfolded it
eagerly, like a person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to read it
attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a moment.
Then he took a step in the direction of the traveller, who appeared to
be immersed in reflections which were not very serene.
"I cannot receive you, sir," said he.
The man half rose.
"What! Are you afraid that I will not pay you? Do you want me to pay you
in advance? I have money, I tell you."
"It is not that."
"What then?"
"You have money--"
"Yes," said the man.
"And I," said the host, "have no room."
The man resumed tranquilly, "Put me in the stable."
"I cannot."
"Why?"
"The horses take up all the space."
"Very well!" retorted the man; "a corner of the loft then, a truss of
straw. We will see about that after dinner."
"I cannot give you any dinner."
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the stranger
as grave. He rose.
"Ah! bah! But I am dying of hunger. I have been walking since sunrise. I
have travelled twelve leagues. I pay. I wish to eat."
"I have nothing," said the landlord.
The man burst out laughing, and turned towards the fireplace and the
stoves: "Nothing! and all that?"
"All that is engaged."
"By whom?"
"By messieurs the wagoners."
"How many are there of them?"
"Twelve."
"There is enough food there for twenty."
"They have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance."
The man seated himself again, and said, without raising his voice, "I am
at an inn; I am hungry, and I shall remain."
Then the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made him
start, "Go away!"
At that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting some
brands into the fire with the iron-shod tip of his staff; he turned
quickly round, and as he opened his mouth to reply, the host gazed
steadily at him and added, still in a low voice: "Stop! there's enough
of that sort of talk. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name is
Jean Valjean. Now do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw you
come in I suspected something; I sent to the town-hall, and this was the
reply that was sent to me. Can you read?"
So saying, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper which
had just travelled from the inn to the town-hall, and from the town-hall
to the inn. The man cast a glance upon it. The landlord resumed after a
pause.
"I am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away!"
The man dropped his head, picked up the knapsack which he had deposited
on the ground, and took his departure.
He chose the principal street. He walked straight on at a venture,
keeping close to the houses like a sad and humiliated man. He did not
turn round a single time. Had he done so, he would have seen the host of
the _Cross of Colbas_ standing on his threshold, surrounded by all
the guests of his inn, and all the passers-by in the street, talking
vivaciously, and pointing him out with his finger; and, from the glances
of terror and distrust cast by the group, he might have divined that his
arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town.
He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind
them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.
Thus he proceeded for some time, walking on without ceasing, traversing
at random streets of which he knew nothing, forgetful of his fatigue,
as is often the case when a man is sad. All at once he felt the pangs
of hunger sharply. Night was drawing near. He glanced about him, to see
whether he could not discover some shelter.
The fine hostelry was closed to him; he was seeking some very humble
public house, some hovel, however lowly.
Just then a light flashed up at the end of the streets; a pine branch
suspended from a cross-beam of iron was outlined against the white sky
of the twilight. He proceeded thither.
It proved to be, in fact, a public house. The public house which is in
the Rue de Chaffaut.
The wayfarer halted for a moment, and peeped through the window into the
interior of the low-studded room of the public house, illuminated by a
small lamp on a table and by a large fire on the hearth. Some men were
engaged in drinking there. The landlord was warming himself. An iron
pot, suspended from a crane, bubbled over the flame.
The entrance to this public house, which is also a sort of an inn, is by
two doors. One opens on the street, the other upon a small yard filled
with manure. The traveller dare not enter by the street door. He slipped
into the yard, halted again, then raised the latch timidly and opened
the door.
"Who goes there?" said the master.
"Some one who wants supper and bed."
"Good. We furnish supper and bed here."
He entered. All the men who were drinking turned round. The lamp
illuminated him on one side, the firelight on the other. They examined
him for some time while he was taking off his knapsack.
The host said to him, "There is the fire. The supper is cooking in the
pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade."
He approached and seated himself near the hearth. He stretched out his
feet, which were exhausted with fatigue, to the fire; a fine odor was
emitted by the pot. All that could be distinguished of his face, beneath
his cap, which was well pulled down, assumed a vague appearance
of comfort, mingled with that other poignant aspect which habitual
suffering bestows.
It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and melancholy profile. This
physiognomy was strangely composed; it began by seeming humble, and
ended by seeming severe. The eye shone beneath its lashes like a fire
beneath brushwood.
One of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who,
before entering the public house of the Rue de Chaffaut, had been to
stable his horse at Labarre's. It chanced that he had that very morning
encountered this unprepossessing stranger on the road between Bras
d'Asse and--I have forgotten the name. I think it was Escoublon. Now,
when he met him, the man, who then seemed already extremely weary, had
requested him to take him on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had
made no reply except by redoubling his gait. This fishmonger had been
a member half an hour previously of the group which surrounded Jacquin
Labarre, and had himself related his disagreeable encounter of the
morning to the people at the _Cross of Colbas_. From where he sat he
made an imperceptible sign to the tavern-keeper. The tavern-keeper went
to him. They exchanged a few words in a low tone. The man had again
become absorbed in his reflections.
The tavern-keeper returned to the fireplace, laid his hand abruptly on
the shoulder of the man, and said to him:--
"You are going to get out of here."
The stranger turned round and replied gently, "Ah! You know?--"
"Yes."
"I was sent away from the other inn."
"And you are to be turned out of this one."
"Where would you have me go?"
"Elsewhere."
The man took his stick and his knapsack and departed.
As he went out, some children who had followed him from the _Cross of
Colbas_, and who seemed to be lying in wait for him, threw stones at
him. He retraced his steps in anger, and threatened them with his stick:
the children dispersed like a flock of birds.
He passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to
a bell. He rang.
The wicket opened.
"Turnkey," said he, removing his cap politely, "will you have the
kindness to admit me, and give me a lodging for the night?"
A voice replied:--
"The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will be
admitted."
The wicket closed again.
He entered a little street in which there were many gardens. Some of
them are enclosed only by hedges, which lends a cheerful aspect to the
street. In the midst of these gardens and hedges he caught sight of a
small house of a single story, the window of which was lighted up. He
peered through the pane as he had done at the public house. Within was a
large whitewashed room, with a bed draped in printed cotton stuff, and
a cradle in one corner, a few wooden chairs, and a double-barrelled gun
hanging on the wall. A table was spread in the centre of the room. A
copper lamp illuminated the tablecloth of coarse white linen, the pewter
jug shining like silver, and filled with wine, and the brown, smoking
soup-tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty, with a merry and
open countenance, who was dandling a little child on his knees. Close by
a very young woman was nursing another child. The father was laughing,
the child was laughing, the mother was smiling.
The stranger paused a moment in revery before this tender and calming
spectacle. What was taking place within him? He alone could have
told. It is probable that he thought that this joyous house would be
hospitable, and that, in a place where he beheld so much happiness, he
would find perhaps a little pity.
He tapped on the pane with a very small and feeble knock.
They did not hear him.
He tapped again.
He heard the woman say, "It seems to me, husband, that some one is
knocking."
"No," replied the husband.
He tapped a third time.
The husband rose, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened.
He was a man of lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan. He wore a
huge leather apron, which reached to his left shoulder, and which a
hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, and all sorts of objects
which were upheld by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge out. He
carried his head thrown backwards; his shirt, widely opened and turned
back, displayed his bull neck, white and bare. He had thick eyelashes,
enormous black whiskers, prominent eyes, the lower part of his face
like a snout; and besides all this, that air of being on his own ground,
which is indescribable.
"Pardon me, sir," said the wayfarer, "Could you, in consideration of
payment, give me a plate of soup and a corner of that shed yonder in the
garden, in which to sleep? Tell me; can you? For money?"
"Who are you?" demanded the master of the house.
The man replied: "I have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have walked all
day long. I have travelled twelve leagues. Can you?--if I pay?"
"I would not refuse," said the peasant, "to lodge any respectable man
who would pay me. But why do you not go to the inn?"
"There is no room."
"Bah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day. Have you been
to Labarre?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
The traveller replied with embarrassment: "I do not know. He did not
receive me."
"Have you been to What's-his-name's, in the Rue Chaffaut?"
The stranger's embarrassment increased; he stammered, "He did not
receive me either."
The peasant's countenance assumed an expression of distrust; he surveyed
the newcomer from head to feet, and suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of
shudder:--
"Are you the man?--"
He cast a fresh glance upon the stranger, took three steps backwards,
placed the lamp on the table, and took his gun down from the wall.
Meanwhile, at the words, _Are you the man?_ the woman had risen, had
clasped her two children in her arms, and had taken refuge precipitately
behind her husband, staring in terror at the stranger, with her bosom
uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured in a low tone,
_"Tso-maraude."_1
All this took place in less time than it requires to picture it to
one's self. After having scrutinized the man for several moments, as one
scrutinizes a viper, the master of the house returned to the door and
said:--
"Clear out!"
"For pity's sake, a glass of water," said the man.
"A shot from my gun!" said the peasant.
Then he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot two large
bolts. A moment later, the window-shutter was closed, and the sound of a
bar of iron which was placed against it was audible outside.
Night continued to fall. A cold wind from the Alps was blowing. By the
light of the expiring day the stranger perceived, in one of the gardens
which bordered the street, a sort of hut, which seemed to him to be
built of sods. He climbed over the wooden fence resolutely, and found
himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted of a
very low and narrow aperture, and it resembled those buildings which
road-laborers construct for themselves along the roads. He thought
without doubt, that it was, in fact, the dwelling of a road-laborer; he
was suffering from cold and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter
from the cold. This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night.
He threw himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut. It was warm
there, and he found a tolerably good bed of straw. He lay, for a moment,
stretched out on this bed, without the power to make a movement, so
fatigued was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back was in his way, and
as it furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand, he set about
unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment, a ferocious growl became
audible. He raised his eyes. The head of an enormous dog was outlined in
the darkness at the entrance of the hut.
It was a dog's kennel.
He was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his staff,
made a shield of his knapsack, and made his way out of the kennel in the
best way he could, not without enlarging the rents in his rags.
He left the garden in the same manner, but backwards, being obliged, in
order to keep the dog respectful, to have recourse to that manouvre with
his stick which masters in that sort of fencing designate as _la rose
couverte_.
When he had, not without difficulty, repassed the fence, and found
himself once more in the street, alone, without refuge, without shelter,
without a roof over his head, chased even from that bed of straw and
from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself on a
stone, and it appears that a passer-by heard him exclaim, "I am not even
a dog!"
He soon rose again and resumed his march. He went out of the town,
hoping to find some tree or haystack in the fields which would afford
him shelter.
He walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping. When he felt
himself far from every human habitation, he raised his eyes and gazed
searchingly about him. He was in a field. Before him was one of those
low hills covered with close-cut stubble, which, after the harvest,
resemble shaved heads.
The horizon was perfectly black. This was not alone the obscurity of
night; it was caused by very low-hanging clouds which seemed to rest
upon the hill itself, and which were mounting and filling the whole
sky. Meanwhile, as the moon was about to rise, and as there was still
floating in the zenith a remnant of the brightness of twilight, these
clouds formed at the summit of the sky a sort of whitish arch, whence a
gleam of light fell upon the earth.
The earth was thus better lighted than the sky, which produces a
particularly sinister effect, and the hill, whose contour was poor and
mean, was outlined vague and wan against the gloomy horizon. The whole
effect was hideous, petty, lugubrious, and narrow.
There was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree,
which writhed and shivered a few paces distant from the wayfarer.
This man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits of
intelligence and spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious
aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky,
in that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly
desolate, that after a moment of immobility and revery he turned back
abruptly. There are instants when nature seems hostile.
He retraced his steps; the gates of D---- were closed. D----, which had
sustained sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded
in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers which have been
demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town again.
It might have been eight o'clock in the evening. As he was not
acquainted with the streets, he recommenced his walk at random.
In this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary. As he
passed through the Cathedral Square, he shook his fist at the church.
At the corner of this square there is a printing establishment. It is
there that the proclamations of the Emperor and of the Imperial Guard
to the army, brought from the Island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon
himself, were printed for the first time.
Worn out with fatigue, and no longer entertaining any hope, he lay down
on a stone bench which stands at the doorway of this printing office.
At that moment an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man
stretched out in the shadow. "What are you doing there, my friend?" said
she.
He answered harshly and angrily: "As you see, my good woman, I am
sleeping." The good woman, who was well worthy the name, in fact, was
the Marquise de R----
"On this bench?" she went on.
"I have had a mattress of wood for nineteen years," said the man;
"to-day I have a mattress of stone."
"You have been a soldier?"
"Yes, my good woman, a soldier."
"Why do you not go to the inn?"
"Because I have no money."
"Alas!" said Madame de R----, "I have only four sous in my purse."
"Give it to me all the same."
The man took the four sous. Madame de R---- continued: "You cannot
obtain lodgings in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried? It is
impossible for you to pass the night thus. You are cold and hungry, no
doubt. Some one might have given you a lodging out of charity."
"I have knocked at all doors."
"Well?"
"I have been driven away everywhere."
The "good woman" touched the man's arm, and pointed out to him on the
other side of the street a small, low house, which stood beside the
Bishop's palace.
"You have knocked at all doors?"
"Yes."
"Have you knocked at that one?"
"No."
"Knock there."
CHAPTER II--PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.
That evening, the Bishop of D----, after his promenade through the town,
remained shut up rather late in his room. He was busy over a great work
on _Duties_, which was never completed, unfortunately. He was carefully
compiling everything that the Fathers and the doctors have said on this
important subject. His book was divided into two parts: firstly, the
duties of all; secondly, the duties of each individual, according to the
class to which he belongs. The duties of all are the great duties. There
are four of these. Saint Matthew points them out: duties towards God
(_Matt._ vi.); duties towards one's self (_Matt._ v. 29, 30); duties
towards one's neighbor (_Matt._ vii. 12); duties towards animals
(_Matt._ vi. 20, 25). As for the other duties the Bishop found them
pointed out and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the
Epistle to the Romans; to magistrates, to wives, to mothers, to young
men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children and servants, in
the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Out of these
precepts he was laboriously constructing a harmonious whole, which he
desired to present to souls.
At eight o'clock he was still at work, writing with a good deal of
inconvenience upon little squares of paper, with a big book open on his
knees, when Madame Magloire entered, according to her wont, to get the
silver-ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment later, the Bishop,
knowing that the table was set, and that his sister was probably
waiting for him, shut his book, rose from his table, and entered the
dining-room.
The dining-room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace, which had a
door opening on the street (as we have said), and a window opening on
the garden.
Madame Magloire was, in fact, just putting the last touches to the
table.
As she performed this service, she was conversing with Mademoiselle
Baptistine.
A lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A wood fire
was burning there.
One can easily picture to one's self these two women, both of whom
were over sixty years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious;
Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle, slender, frail, somewhat taller than her
brother, dressed in a gown of puce-colored silk, of the fashion of 1806,
which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had lasted
ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving
utterance in a single word to an idea which a whole page would hardly
suffice to express, Madame Magloire had the air of a _peasant_, and
Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a _lady_. Madame Magloire wore a white
quilted cap, a gold Jeannette cross on a velvet ribbon upon her neck,
the only bit of feminine jewelry that there was in the house, a very
white fichu puffing out from a gown of coarse black woollen stuff, with
large, short sleeves, an apron of cotton cloth in red and green checks,
knotted round the waist with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the
same attached by two pins at the upper corners, coarse shoes on her
feet, and yellow stockings, like the women of Marseilles. Mademoiselle
Baptistine's gown was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a short waist,
a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons.
She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the _baby_ wig.
Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air; the two
corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her upper lip, which was
larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed and imperious
look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she talked to him
resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom; but as soon as
Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she obeyed passively like
her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak. She confined
herself to obeying and pleasing him. She had never been pretty, even
when she was young; she had large, blue, prominent eyes, and a long
arched nose; but her whole visage, her whole person, breathed forth an
ineffable goodness, as we stated in the beginning. She had always been
predestined to gentleness; but faith, charity, hope, those three virtues
which mildly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to
sanctity. Nature had made her a lamb, religion had made her an angel.
Poor sainted virgin! Sweet memory which has vanished!
Mademoiselle Baptistine has so often narrated what passed at the
episcopal residence that evening, that there are many people now living
who still recall the most minute details.
At the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was talking with
considerable vivacity. She was haranguing Mademoiselle Baptistine on
a subject which was familiar to her and to which the Bishop was also
accustomed. The question concerned the lock upon the entrance door.
It appears that while procuring some provisions for supper, Madame
Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a
prowler of evil appearance; a suspicious vagabond had arrived who must
be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it into their
heads to return home late that night might be subjected to unpleasant
encounters. The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there
was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure
each other by making things happen. It behooved wise people to play the
part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and care must be
taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to _fasten the
doors well_.
Madame Magloire emphasized these last words; but the Bishop had just
come from his room, where it was rather cold. He seated himself in front
of the fire, and warmed himself, and then fell to thinking of other
things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design by Madame
Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine, desirous of
satisfying Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother, ventured to
say timidly:--
"Did you hear what Madame Magloire is saying, brother?"
"I have heard something of it in a vague way," replied the Bishop. Then
half-turning in his chair, placing his hands on his knees, and raising
towards the old servant woman his cordial face, which so easily grew
joyous, and which was illuminated from below by the firelight,--"Come,
what is the matter? What is the matter? Are we in any great danger?"
Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a
little without being aware of the fact. It appeared that a Bohemian, a
bare-footed vagabond, a sort of dangerous mendicant, was at that moment
in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin Labarre's to obtain
lodgings, but the latter had not been willing to take him in. He had
been seen to arrive by the way of the boulevard Gassendi and roam about
the streets in the gloaming. A gallows-bird with a terrible face.
"Really!" said the Bishop.
This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed
to her to indicate that the Bishop was on the point of becoming alarmed;
she pursued triumphantly:--
"Yes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some sort of
catastrophe in this town to-night. Every one says so. And withal, the
police is so badly regulated" (a useful repetition). "The idea of living
in a mountainous country, and not even having lights in the streets at
night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed! And I say, Monseigneur, and
Mademoiselle there says with me--"
"I," interrupted his sister, "say nothing. What my brother does is well
done."
Madame Magloire continued as though there had been no protest:--
"We say that this house is not safe at all; that if Monseigneur will
permit, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and
replace the ancient locks on the doors; we have them, and it is only the
work of a moment; for I say that nothing is more terrible than a
door which can be opened from the outside with a latch by the first
passer-by; and I say that we need bolts, Monseigneur, if only for this
night; moreover, Monseigneur has the habit of always saying 'come in';
and besides, even in the middle of the night, O mon Dieu! there is no
need to ask permission."
At that moment there came a tolerably violent knock on the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
CHAPTER III--THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
The door opened.
It opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given it an
energetic and resolute push.
A man entered.
We already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen wandering
about in search of shelter.
He entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open behind
him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a
rough, audacious, weary, and violent expression in his eyes. The fire on
the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition.
Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled,
and stood with her mouth wide open.
Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half
started up in terror; then, turning her head by degrees towards the
fireplace again, she began to observe her brother, and her face became
once more profoundly calm and serene.
The Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.
As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the new-comer what he desired,
the man rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old man
and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he said,
in a loud voice:--
"See here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict from the galleys.
I have passed nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four days
ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have
been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have travelled a dozen
leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these parts, I
went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport,
which I had shown at the town-hall. I had to do it. I went to an inn.
They said to me, 'Be off,' at both places. No one would take me. I
went to the prison; the jailer would not admit me. I went into a dog's
kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man.
One would have said that he knew who I was. I went into the fields,
intending to sleep in the open air, beneath the stars. There were no
stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re-entered the town, to
seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant to sleep
on a stone bench. A good woman pointed out your house to me, and said
to me, 'Knock there!' I have knocked. What is this place? Do you keep
an inn? I have money--savings. One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous,
which I earned in the galleys by my labor, in the course of nineteen
years. I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary;
twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I should
remain?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will set another place."
The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on
the table. "Stop," he resumed, as though he had not quite understood;
"that's not it. Did you hear? I am a galley-slave; a convict. I come
from the galleys." He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow
paper, which he unfolded. "Here's my passport. Yellow, as you see. This
serves to expel me from every place where I go. Will you read it? I know
how to read. I learned in the galleys. There is a school there for those
who choose to learn. Hold, this is what they put on this passport: 'Jean
Valjean, discharged convict, native of'--that is nothing to you--'has
been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for house-breaking
and burglary; fourteen years for having attempted to escape on four
occasions. He is a very dangerous man.' There! Every one has cast me
out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me
something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put white sheets on the
bed in the alcove." We have already explained the character of the two
women's obedience.
Madame Magloire retired to execute these orders.
The Bishop turned to the man.
"Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments,
and your bed will be prepared while you are supping."
At this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression of his face,
up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of stupefaction,
of doubt, of joy, and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a
crazy man:--
"Really? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth? A convict!
You call me _sir!_ You do not address me as _thou?_ 'Get out of here,
you dog!' is what people always say to me. I felt sure that you would
expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good woman that
was who directed me hither! I am going to sup! A bed with a mattress and
sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed! It is nineteen years since
I have slept in a bed! You actually do not want me to go! You are good
people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well. Pardon me, monsieur the
inn-keeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you ask. You are
a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?"
"I am," replied the Bishop, "a priest who lives here."
"A priest!" said the man. "Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are not
going to demand any money of me? You are the curé, are you not? the curé
of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly! I had not perceived your
skull-cap."
As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner,
replaced his passport in his pocket, and seated himself. Mademoiselle
Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He continued:
"You are humane, Monsieur le Curé; you have not scorned me. A good
priest is a very good thing. Then you do not require me to pay?"
"No," said the Bishop; "keep your money. How much have you? Did you not
tell me one hundred and nine francs?"
"And fifteen sous," added the man.
"One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it take you
to earn that?"
"Nineteen years."
"Nineteen years!"
The Bishop sighed deeply.
The man continued: "I have still the whole of my money. In four days I
have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some
wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abbé, I will tell you that we had a
chaplain in the galleys. And one day I saw a bishop there. Monseigneur
is what they call him. He was the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is
the curé who rules over the other curés, you understand. Pardon me,
I say that very badly; but it is such a far-off thing to me! You
understand what we are! He said mass in the middle of the galleys, on an
altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered
in the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three
sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see
very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not hear. That
is what a bishop is like."
While he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door, which had
remained wide open.
Madame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon, which she
placed on the table.
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "place those things as near the fire
as possible." And turning to his guest: "The night wind is harsh on the
Alps. You must be cold, sir."
Each time that he uttered the word _sir_, in his voice which was so
gently grave and polished, the man's face lighted up. _Monsieur_ to
a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the
_Medusa_. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.
"This lamp gives a very bad light," said the Bishop.
Madame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver
candlesticks from the chimney-piece in Monseigneur's bed-chamber, and
placed them, lighted, on the table.
"Monsieur le Curé," said the man, "you are good; you do not despise me.
You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I
have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate
man."
The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You
could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is
the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters
whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are
hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say
that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man
who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much
more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need
have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which
I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother."
"Stop, Monsieur le Curé," exclaimed the man. "I was very hungry when
I entered here; but you are so good, that I no longer know what has
happened to me."
The Bishop looked at him, and said,--
"You have suffered much?"
"Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat,
cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing,
the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs, dogs
are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. Now there is the yellow
passport. That is what it is like."
"Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place.
Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a
repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you
emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against
mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of
good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us."
In the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with
water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a
fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own accord,
added to the Bishop's ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves wine.
The Bishop's face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is
peculiar to hospitable natures. "To table!" he cried vivaciously. As was
his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the man sit on his
right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable and natural, took
her seat at his left.
The Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to
his custom. The man began to eat with avidity.
All at once the Bishop said: "It strikes me there is something missing
on this table."
Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and
spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the
house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole
six sets of silver on the table-cloth--an innocent ostentation. This
graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child's play, which was full
of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into
dignity.
Madame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word,
and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded by
the Bishop were glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged before
the three persons seated at the table.
CHAPTER IV--DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.
Now, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table, we cannot
do better than to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle
Baptistine's letters to Madame Boischevron, wherein the conversation
between the convict and the Bishop is described with ingenious
minuteness.
". . . This man paid no attention to any one. He ate with the voracity
of a starving man. However, after supper he said:
"'Monsieur le Curé of the good God, all this is far too good for me; but
I must say that the carters who would not allow me to eat with them keep
a better table than you do.'
"Between ourselves, the remark rather shocked me. My brother replied:--
"'They are more fatigued than I.'
"'No,' returned the man, 'they have more money. You are poor; I see that
plainly. You cannot be even a curate. Are you really a curé? Ah, if the
good God were but just, you certainly ought to be a curé!'
"'The good God is more than just,' said my brother.
"A moment later he added:--
"'Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?'
"'With my road marked out for me.'
"I think that is what the man said. Then he went on:--
"'I must be on my way by daybreak to-morrow. Travelling is hard. If the
nights are cold, the days are hot.'
"'You are going to a good country,' said my brother. 'During the
Revolution my family was ruined. I took refuge in Franche-Comté at
first, and there I lived for some time by the toil of my hands. My will
was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose. There are
paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories, watch factories
on a large scale, steel mills, copper works, twenty iron foundries at
least, four of which, situated at Lods, at Châtillon, at Audincourt, and
at Beure, are tolerably large.'
"I think I am not mistaken in saying that those are the names which my
brother mentioned. Then he interrupted himself and addressed me:--
"'Have we not some relatives in those parts, my dear sister?'
"I replied,--
"'We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the
gates at Pontarlier under the old régime.'
"'Yes,' resumed my brother; 'but in '93, one had no longer any
relatives, one had only one's arms. I worked. They have, in the
country of Pontarlier, whither you are going, Monsieur Valjean, a
truly patriarchal and truly charming industry, my sister. It is their
cheese-dairies, which they call _fruitières_.'
"Then my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him, with
great minuteness, what these _fruitières_ of Pontarlier were; that they
were divided into two classes: the _big barns_ which belong to the rich,
and where there are forty or fifty cows which produce from seven to
eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the _associated fruitières_,
which belong to the poor; these are the peasants of mid-mountain, who
hold their cows in common, and share the proceeds. 'They engage the
services of a cheese-maker, whom they call the _grurin_; the _grurin_
receives the milk of the associates three times a day, and marks the
quantity on a double tally. It is towards the end of April that the work
of the cheese-dairies begins; it is towards the middle of June that the
cheese-makers drive their cows to the mountains.'
"The man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him drink
that good Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself, because he says
that wine is expensive. My brother imparted all these details with that
easy gayety of his with which you are acquainted, interspersing his
words with graceful attentions to me. He recurred frequently to
that comfortable trade of _grurin_, as though he wished the man to
understand, without advising him directly and harshly, that this would
afford him a refuge. One thing struck me. This man was what I have told
you. Well, neither during supper, nor during the entire evening, did
my brother utter a single word, with the exception of a few words about
Jesus when he entered, which could remind the man of what he was, nor
of what my brother was. To all appearances, it was an occasion for
preaching him a little sermon, and of impressing the Bishop on the
convict, so that a mark of the passage might remain behind. This might
have appeared to any one else who had this, unfortunate man in his
hands to afford a chance to nourish his soul as well as his body, and to
bestow upon him some reproach, seasoned with moralizing and advice, or
a little commiseration, with an exhortation to conduct himself better in
the future. My brother did not even ask him from what country he came,
nor what was his history. For in his history there is a fault, and my
brother seemed to avoid everything which could remind him of it. To such
a point did he carry it, that at one time, when my brother was speaking
of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, _who exercise a gentle labor near
heaven, and who_, he added, _are happy because they are innocent_, he
stopped short, fearing lest in this remark there might have escaped him
something which might wound the man. By dint of reflection, I think
I have comprehended what was passing in my brother's heart. He was
thinking, no doubt, that this man, whose name is Jean Valjean, had his
misfortune only too vividly present in his mind; that the best thing
was to divert him from it, and to make him believe, if only momentarily,
that he was a person like any other, by treating him just in his
ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to understand charity well? Is there
not, dear Madame, something truly evangelical in this delicacy which
abstains from sermon, from moralizing, from allusions? and is not the
truest pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It has
seemed to me that this might have been my brother's private thought. In
any case, what I can say is that, if he entertained all these ideas, he
gave no sign of them; from beginning to end, even to me he was the same
as he is every evening, and he supped with this Jean Valjean with the
same air and in the same manner in which he would have supped with M.
Gédéon le Prévost, or with the curate of the parish.
"Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at
the door. It was Mother Gerbaud, with her little one in her arms. My
brother kissed the child on the brow, and borrowed fifteen sous which I
had about me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was not paying much
heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he seemed very much
fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had taken her departure, my brother
said grace; then he turned to the man and said to him, 'You must be
in great need of your bed.' Madame Magloire cleared the table very
promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this
traveller to go to sleep, and we both went upstairs. Nevertheless, I
sent Madame Magloire down a moment later, to carry to the man's bed a
goat skin from the Black Forest, which was in my room. The nights are
frigid, and that keeps one warm. It is a pity that this skin is old; all
the hair is falling out. My brother bought it while he was in Germany,
at Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the little
ivory-handled knife which I use at table.
"Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the
drawing-room, where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired to
our own chambers, without saying a word to each other."
CHAPTER V--TRANQUILLITY
After bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu took one of
the two silver candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his
guest, and said to him,--
"Monsieur, I will conduct you to your room."
The man followed him.
As might have been observed from what has been said above, the house was
so arranged that in order to pass into the oratory where the alcove was
situated, or to get out of it, it was necessary to traverse the Bishop's
bedroom.
At the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Madame Magloire was
putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed.
This was her last care every evening before she went to bed.
The Bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh white bed had been
prepared there. The man set the candle down on a small table.
"Well," said the Bishop, "may you pass a good night. To-morrow morning,
before you set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our cows."
"Thanks, Monsieur l' Abbé," said the man.
Hardly had he pronounced these words full of peace, when all of a
sudden, and without transition, he made a strange movement, which would
have frozen the two sainted women with horror, had they witnessed it.
Even at this day it is difficult for us to explain what inspired him at
that moment. Did he intend to convey a warning or to throw out a menace?
Was he simply obeying a sort of instinctive impulse which was obscure
even to himself? He turned abruptly to the old man, folded his arms, and
bending upon his host a savage gaze, he exclaimed in a hoarse voice:--
"Ah! really! You lodge me in your house, close to yourself like this?"
He broke off, and added with a laugh in which there lurked something
monstrous:--
"Have you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not been an
assassin?"
The Bishop replied:--
"That is the concern of the good God."
Then gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking
to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed his
benediction on the man, who did not bow, and without turning his head or
looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.
When the alcove was in use, a large serge curtain drawn from wall to
wall concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt before this curtain as he
passed and said a brief prayer. A moment later he was in his garden,
walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed
in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the
eyes which remain open.
As for the man, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit
by the nice white sheets. Snuffing out his candle with his nostrils
after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all dressed as he was, upon
the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep.
Midnight struck as the Bishop returned from his garden to his apartment.
A few minutes later all were asleep in the little house.
CHAPTER VI--JEAN VALJEAN
Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke.
Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned
to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a
tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his
father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a
contraction of _voilà_ Jean, "here's Jean."
Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which
constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole,
however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about
Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother
at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not
been properly attended to. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had
been killed by a fall from a tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean
was a sister older than himself,--a widow with seven children, boys and
girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had a
husband she lodged and fed her young brother.
The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old.
The youngest, one.
Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty-fifth year. He took the
father's place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought
him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly
on the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and
ill-paid toil. He had never known a "kind woman friend" in his native
parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.
He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word.
His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from
his bowl while he was eating,--a bit of meat, a slice of bacon, the
heart of the cabbage,--to give to one of her children. As he went on
eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his
long hair falling about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air
of perceiving nothing and allowing it. There was at Faverolles, not
far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of the lane,
a farmer's wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually
famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in
their mother's name, which they drank behind a hedge or in some alley
corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little
girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. If their mother
had known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents
severely. Jean Valjean gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for
the pint of milk behind their mother's back, and the children were not
punished.
In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as
a hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did
whatever he could. His sister worked also but what could she do with
seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery, which was
being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came. Jean had no work.
The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at
Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on
the grated front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed
through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the grating and the
glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran
out in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran
after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the loaf, but his
arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals
of the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited house at
night. He had a gun which he used better than any one else in the world,
he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There exists a
legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler,
smacks too strongly of the brigand. Nevertheless, we will remark
cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races of men and the
hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher lives in the forest, the
smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. The cities make ferocious
men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest,
make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without
destroying the humane side.
Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code were explicit.
There occur formidable hours in our civilization; there are moments when
the penal laws decree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in
which society draws back and consummates the irreparable abandonment
of a sentient being! Jean Valjean was condemned to five years in the
galleys.
On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the
general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory
to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floréal, year IV., calls Buona-Parte,
was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of galley-slaves
was put in chains at Bicêtre. Jean Valjean formed a part of that gang.
An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty years old, still
recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was chained to the end of
the fourth line, in the north angle of the courtyard. He was seated on
the ground like the others. He did not seem to comprehend his position,
except that it was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was
disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor man, ignorant of
everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar was
being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept,
his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only managed to
say from time to time, "I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles." Then still
sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times,
as though he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights,
and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done,
whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing
seven little children.
He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven
days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in
the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name,
was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.
What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who
troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves from
the young tree which is sawed off at the root?
It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures
of God, henceforth without support, without guide, without refuge,
wandered away at random,--who even knows?--each in his own direction
perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which
engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in
succession so many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of the human race.
They quitted the country. The clock-tower of what had been their village
forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field forgot them;
after a few years' residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot
them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar.
That is all. Only once, during all the time which he spent at Toulon,
did he hear his sister mentioned. This happened, I think, towards
the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not through what
channels the news reached him. Some one who had known them in their
own country had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a poor
street near Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du Gindre. She had with her only
one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the other six? Perhaps
she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing office,
No. 3 Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher. She was obliged
to be there at six o'clock in the morning--long before daylight in
winter. In the same building with the printing office there was a
school, and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven years
old. But as she entered the printing office at six, and the school only
opened at seven, the child had to wait in the courtyard, for the school
to open, for an hour--one hour of a winter night in the open air! They
would not allow the child to come into the printing office, because he
was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed in the morning, they
beheld this poor little being seated on the pavement, overcome with
drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the shadow, crouched down and
doubled up over his basket. When it rained, an old woman, the portress,
took pity on him; she took him into her den, where there was a pallet, a
spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the little one slumbered in a
corner, pressing himself close to the cat that he might suffer less from
cold. At seven o'clock the school opened, and he entered. That is what
was told to Jean Valjean.
They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash,
as though a window had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those
things whom he had loved; then all closed again. He heard nothing more
forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again; he never beheld
them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful
history they will not be met with any more.
Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean's turn to escape
arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place.
He escaped. He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being
at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at
the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,--of a smoking roof,
of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking
clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot
see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. On the evening
of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for
thirty-six hours. The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime,
to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years.
In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself
of it, but could not accomplish his flight fully. He was missing at
roll-call. The cannon were fired, and at night the patrol found him
hidden under the keel of a vessel in process of construction; he
resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion. This
case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition of
five years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years. In the
tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it; he
succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt. Sixteen years.
Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last
attempt, and only succeeded in getting retaken at the end of four
hours of absence. Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In
October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796, for having
broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread.
Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his
studies on the penal question and damnation by law, that the author of
this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of
departure for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gaux had stolen a loaf;
Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf. English statistics prove the fact that
four thefts out of five in London have hunger for their immediate cause.
Jean Valjean had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering; he emerged
impassive. He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.
What had taken place in that soul?
CHAPTER VII--THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR
Let us try to say it.
It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is
itself which creates them.
He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The
light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a
clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight
which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in
the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the
plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and
meditated.
He constituted himself the tribunal.
He began by putting himself on trial.
He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly
punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy
act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to
him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to
wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that
it is not an unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one is
hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die of
hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man
is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and
physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have
patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little
children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable,
unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar,
and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that
is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through
which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong.
Then he asked himself--
Whether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history. Whether
it was not a serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work, that he, an
industrious man, should have lacked bread. And whether, the fault once
committed and confessed, the chastisement had not been ferocious and
disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse on the part of
the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part
of the culprit in respect to his fault. Whether there had not been an
excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one which contains
expiation. Whether the over-weight of the penalty was not equivalent
to the annihilation of the crime, and did not result in reversing the
situation, of replacing the fault of the delinquent by the fault of the
repression, of converting the guilty man into the victim, and the debtor
into the creditor, and of ranging the law definitely on the side of the
man who had violated it.
Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations 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 excess 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 consequently 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 suffering, and he said
to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call
it to account. He declared to himself 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 iniquitous.
Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully;
one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one's side
at bottom. Jean Valjean felt himself exasperated.
And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never
seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and
which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched him to
bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since
his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever
encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to
suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a
war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon
than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away
with him when he departed.
There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the Ignorantin
friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the
unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had
a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read,
to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to
fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can
serve to eke out evil.
This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had
caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society,
and he condemned it also.
Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and
at the same time fell. Light entered it on one side, and darkness on the
other.
Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still good
when he arrived at the galleys. He there condemned society, and felt
that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and was
conscious that he was becoming impious.
It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.
Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the
man created good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be
completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can
the heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and
infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness,
as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every
human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a
first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in
the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with
splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist
would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation, had
he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Jean
Valjean hours of revery, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded
arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust into
his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and thoughtful,
a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath, condemned by
civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.
Certainly,--and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,--the
observing physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery; he
would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law's making; but
he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have turned aside
his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse within
this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have effaced
from this existence the word which the finger of God has, nevertheless,
inscribed upon the brow of every man,--hope.
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as
perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it for
those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly perceive, after their
formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their
formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had
this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of
the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and
descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for so many years, formed
the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed
within him, and of all that was working there? That is something
which we do not presume to state; it is something which we do not even
believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean, even after his
misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering there. At
times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in
the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one
might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually
in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at
intervals, there suddenly came to him, from without and from within, an
access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which
illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all around
him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful light, the hideous
precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny.
The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no
longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which
that which is pitiless--that is to say, that which is
brutalizing--predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by
a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a
ferocious beast.
Jean Valjean's successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone
suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon the human soul.
Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts, utterly useless and
foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had presented itself,
without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences
which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the wolf
who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, "Flee!" Reason would have
said, "Remain!" But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason
vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted. When
he was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served to
render him still more wild.
One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical
strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of the
galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan, Jean
Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained enormous
weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced
that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was formerly called
_orgueil_ [pride], whence, we may remark in passing, is derived the
name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket] in Paris. His
comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once, when they were
repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those admirable
caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony, became loosened, and was
on the point of falling. Jean Valjean, who was present, supported the
caryatid with his shoulder, and gave the workmen time to arrive.
His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts who were
forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable science of force
and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. An entire system of
mysterious statics is daily practised by prisoners, men who are forever
envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical surface, and to find
points of support where hardly a projection was visible, was play to
Jean Valjean. An angle of the wall being given, with the tension of his
back and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted into the unevenness
of the stone, he raised himself as if by magic to the third story. He
sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of the galley prison.
He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was
required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh
of the convict, which is like the echo of the laugh of a demon. To all
appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant contemplation of
something terrible.
He was absorbed, in fact.
Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed
intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was
resting on him. In that obscure and wan shadow within which he crawled,
each time that he turned his neck and essayed to raise his glance,
he perceived with terror, mingled with rage, a sort of frightful
accumulation of things, collecting and mounting above him, beyond the
range of his vision,--laws, prejudices, men, and deeds,--whose outlines
escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else than
that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished,
here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him, now
afar off and on inaccessible table-lands, some group, some detail,
vividly illuminated; here the galley-sergeant and his cudgel; there the
gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop; away at the top,
like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It seemed to him
that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered
it more funereal and more black. All this--laws, prejudices, deeds, men,
things--went and came above him, over his head, in accordance with the
complicated and mysterious movement which God imparts to civilization,
walking over him and crushing him with I know not what peacefulness
in its cruelty and inexorability in its indifference. Souls which have
fallen to the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the
lowest of those limbos at which no one any longer looks, the reproved of
the law, feel the whole weight of this human society, so formidable for
him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath, resting upon
their heads.
In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature
of his meditation?
If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would,
doubtless, think that same thing which Jean Valjean thought.
All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full of
realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state which
is almost indescribable.
At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His
reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled than of yore,
rose in revolt. Everything which had happened to him seemed to him
absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said
to himself, "It is a dream." He gazed at the galley-sergeant standing a
few paces from him; the galley-sergeant seemed a phantom to him. All of
a sudden the phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.
Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say
that there existed for Jean Valjean neither sun, nor fine summer days,
nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns. I know not what vent-hole
daylight habitually illumined his soul.
To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated
into positive results in all that we have just pointed out, we will
confine ourselves to the statement that, in the course of nineteen
years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree-pruner of Faverolles, the
formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner
in which the galleys had moulded him, of two sorts of evil action:
firstly, of evil action which was rapid, unpremeditated, dashing,
entirely instinctive, in the nature of reprisals for the evil which
he had undergone; secondly, of evil action which was serious, grave,
consciously argued out and premeditated, with the false ideas which
such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate deeds passed through
three successive phases, which natures of a certain stamp can alone
traverse,--reasoning, will, perseverance. He had for moving causes his
habitual wrath, bitterness of soul, a profound sense of indignities
suffered, the reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the
just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point
of arrival, for all his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred
which, if it be not arrested in its development by some providential
incident, becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then
the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which
manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to
some living being, no matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not
without reason that Jean Valjean's passport described him as _a very
dangerous man_.
From year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal
sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from
the galleys it had been nineteen years since he had shed a tear.
CHAPTER VIII--BILLOWS AND SHADOWS
A man overboard!
What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre
ship has a path which it is forced to pursue. It passes on.
The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to the
surface; he calls, he stretches out his arms; he is not heard. The
vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own
workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning man;
his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves. He
gives vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre is
that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically. It retreats,
it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there but just now, he was
one of the crew, he went and came along the deck with the rest, he had
his part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has
taken place? He has slipped, he has fallen; all is at an end.
He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees
and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him
hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of
water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused
openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses
of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize
him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is
becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him
from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean
attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony.
It seems as though all that water were hate.
Nevertheless, he struggles.
He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes
an effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly,
combats the inexhaustible.
Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale shadows of
the horizon.
The wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his eyes
and beholds only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, amid his
death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this
madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from beyond
the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region
beyond.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human
distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float,
and he, he rattles in the death agony.
He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky,
at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.
Night descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength is
exhausted; that ship, that distant thing in which there were men, has
vanished; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf; he sinks, he
stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the monstrous
billows of the invisible; he shouts.
There are no more men. Where is God?
He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.
He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are
deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the
infinite.
Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult,
the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue.
Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy
adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold
paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp
nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is
to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the
alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons
his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths
of engulfment.
Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of
souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip!
Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling
their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.
The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall
resuscitate it?
CHAPTER IX--NEW TROUBLES
When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when
Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, _Thou art free!_ the
moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light, a ray
of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him. But it
was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by
the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily
perceived what sort of liberty it is to which a yellow passport is
provided.
And this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated that
his earnings, during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount to
a hundred and seventy-one francs. It is but just to add that he had
forgotten to include in his calculations the forced repose of Sundays
and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution
of about eighty francs. At all events, his hoard had been reduced by
various local levies to the sum of one hundred and nine francs fifteen
sous, which had been counted out to him on his departure. He had
understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged. Let us say
the word--robbed.
On the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front of
an orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He
offered his services. Business was pressing; they were accepted. He set
to work. He was intelligent, robust, adroit; he did his best; the master
seemed pleased. While he was at work, a gendarme passed, observed
him, and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him the yellow
passport. That done, Jean Valjean resumed his labor. A little while
before he had questioned one of the workmen as to the amount which they
earned each day at this occupation; he had been told _thirty sous_. When
evening arrived, as he was forced to set out again on the following day,
he presented himself to the owner of the distillery and requested to be
paid. The owner did not utter a word, but handed him fifteen sous. He
objected. He was told, _"That is enough for thee."_ He persisted. The
master looked him straight between the eyes, and said to him _"Beware of
the prison."_
There, again, he considered that he had been robbed.
Society, the State, by diminishing his hoard, had robbed him wholesale.
Now it was the individual who was robbing him at retail.
Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not
from the sentence.
That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner he
was received at D----
CHAPTER X--THE MAN AROUSED
As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.
What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years
since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the
sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.
He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was
accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.
He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then
he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.
When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters
preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time.
Sleep comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Jean
Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell to thinking.
He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one's
mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His
memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated there
pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms, becoming
disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and
perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which
kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all
others. We will mention this thought at once: he had observed the six
sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which Madame Magloire had
placed on the table.
Those six sets of silver haunted him.--They were there.--A few paces
distant.--Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the
one in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the act
of placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.--He had
taken careful note of this cupboard.--On the right, as you entered from
the dining-room.--They were solid.--And old silver.--From the ladle one
could get at least two hundred francs.--Double what he had earned in
nineteen years.--It is true that he would have earned more if "the
_administration_ had not _robbed him_."
His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was
certainly mingled some struggle. Three o'clock struck. He opened his
eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched
out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a
corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed,
and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost without
knowing it, seated on his bed.
He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have
been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him
thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were
sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed
them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful
attitude, and became motionless once more.
Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above
indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew,
re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also,
without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of revery, of
a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose
trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The
checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.
He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely,
even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one--the half or quarter
hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, "Come on!"
He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all
was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short steps,
to the window, of which he caught a glimpse. The night was not very
dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds driven by
the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams of light,
eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a sort of
twilight. This twilight, sufficient to enable a person to see his way,
intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled the sort of livid light
which falls through an air-hole in a cellar, before which the passers-by
come and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean examined it. It had
no grating; it opened in the garden and was fastened, according to the
fashion of the country, only by a small pin. He opened it; but as a
rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the room abruptly, he closed
it again immediately. He scrutinized the garden with that attentive gaze
which studies rather than looks. The garden was enclosed by a tolerably
low white wall, easy to climb. Far away, at the extremity, he perceived
tops of trees, spaced at regular intervals, which indicated that the
wall separated the garden from an avenue or lane planted with trees.
Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who
has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack, opened
it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed on the
bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole thing up
again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the
visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in the
angle of the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely seized the
object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short bar of
iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been difficult to
distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit of iron could
have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it was a club.
In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing
more than a miner's candlestick. Convicts were, at that period,
sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which environ
Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners' tools at their
command. These miners' candlesticks are of massive iron, terminated at
the lower extremity by a point, by means of which they are stuck into
the rock.
He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and trying
to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the door of
the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we already know.
On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed
it.
CHAPTER XI--WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the
furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent
movement, which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.
It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough to
allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table, which
formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost,
to enlarge the aperture still further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push, more
energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge suddenly
emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with
something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day
of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined
that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a
terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one,
and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering,
bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels. He
heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and
it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roar
of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the
horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed the
entire household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by
him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise at
once; the two old women would shriek out; people would come to their
assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in an
uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himself
lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daring
to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wide
open. He ventured to peep into the next room. Nothing had stirred there.
He lent an ear. Nothing was moving in the house. The noise made by the
rusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumult
within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought
himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish
as soon as possible. He took a step and entered the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague and
confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers
scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool, an
arm-chair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour
were only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced with
precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture. He could
hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing of
the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived there
sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions
with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she desired to
make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had covered the
heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of the bed,
this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing
the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop's pale face. He was
sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely dressed, on
account of the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool,
which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the
pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the
pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many
holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole face
was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of
felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon
his brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible.
The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was
within him. That heaven was his conscience.
Enlarge
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak,
upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It
remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That
moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,
that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added
some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this man,
and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white
hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was
confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august,
without being himself aware of it.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron
candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never had
he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. The
moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and
uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action,
contemplating the slumber of the just.
That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself, had
about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiously
conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself. In
order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of the
most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle. Even on
his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish anything with
certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and
that was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to
divine it. What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded. But
what was the nature of this emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly
to be inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange
indecision. One would have said that he was hesitating between the two
abysses,--the one in which one loses one's self and that in which one
saves one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that
hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards
his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the same
deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more, his cap in
his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all over
his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying
gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over the
chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms to both of them,
with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly
past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the cupboard,
which he saw near the head; he raised his iron candlestick as though to
force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing which
presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it,
traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions
and without troubling himself about the noise, gained the door,
re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode
the window-sill of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack,
threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a
tiger, and fled.
CHAPTER XII--THE BISHOP WORKS
The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his
garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your Grace know where
the basket of silver is?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop.
"Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know what had
become of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He presented
it to Madame Magloire.
"Here it is."
"Well!" said she. "Nothing in it! And the silver?"
"Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you? I
don't know where it is."
"Great, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here last night has
stolen it."
In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame
Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned
to the Bishop. The Bishop had just bent down, and was sighing as he
examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had broken
as it fell across the bed. He rose up at Madame Magloire's cry.
"Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!"
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the
garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible. The
coping of the wall had been torn away.
"Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane.
Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our silver!"
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes,
and said gently to Madame Magloire:--
"And, in the first place, was that silver ours?"
Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop
went on:--
"Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver
wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man,
evidently."
"Alas! Jesus!" returned Madame Magloire. "It is not for my sake, nor for
Mademoiselle's. It makes no difference to us. But it is for the sake of
Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur to eat with now?"
The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.
"Ah, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.
"Pewter has an odor."
"Iron forks and spoons, then."
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.
"Iron has a taste."
"Very well," said the Bishop; "wooden ones then."
A few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table at which
Jean Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast,
Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to his sister, who said nothing, and
to Madame Magloire, who was grumbling under her breath, that one really
does not need either fork or spoon, even of wood, in order to dip a bit
of bread in a cup of milk.
"A pretty idea, truly," said Madame Magloire to herself, as she went and
came, "to take in a man like that! and to lodge him close to one's self!
And how fortunate that he did nothing but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it makes
one shudder to think of it!"
As the brother and sister were about to rise from the table, there came
a knock at the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance on the
threshold. Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar. The three
men were gendarmes; the other was Jean Valjean.
A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group, was
standing near the door. He entered and advanced to the Bishop, making a
military salute.
"Monseigneur--" said he.
At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed,
raised his head with an air of stupefaction.
"Monseigneur!" he murmured. "So he is not the curé?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly as his
great age permitted.
"Ah! here you are!" he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to
see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which
are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two
hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and
spoons?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop
with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.
"Monseigneur," said the brigadier of gendarmes, "so what this man said
is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is
running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this
silver--"
"And he told you," interposed the Bishop with a smile, "that it had been
given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed
the night? I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him back
here? It is a mistake."
"In that case," replied the brigadier, "we can let him go?"
"Certainly," replied the Bishop.
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who recoiled.
"Is it true that I am to be released?" he said, in an almost
inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep.
"Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?" said one of the
gendarmes.
"My friend," resumed the Bishop, "before you go, here are your
candlesticks. Take them."
He stepped to the chimney-piece, took the two silver candlesticks, and
brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women looked on without uttering
a word, without a gesture, without a look which could disconcert the
Bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks
mechanically, and with a bewildered air.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the way, when you return, my
friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always
enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with
anything but a latch, either by day or by night."
Then, turning to the gendarmes:--
"You may retire, gentlemen."
The gendarmes retired.
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:--
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money
in becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything,
remained speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he uttered
them. He resumed with solemnity:--
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It
is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and
the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GERVAIS
Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set out
at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths
presented themselves to him, without perceiving that he was incessantly
retracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole morning, without having
eaten anything and without feeling hungry. He was the prey of a throng
of novel sensations. He was conscious of a sort of rage; he did not
know against whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he was
touched or humiliated. There came over him at moments a strange emotion
which he resisted and to which he opposed the hardness acquired during
the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him.
He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the
injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within
him. He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would have
actually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that things
should not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less.
Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a few
late flowers in the hedge-rows here and there, whose odor as he passed
through them in his march recalled to him memories of his childhood.
These memories were almost intolerable to him, it was so long since they
had recurred to him.
Unutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.
As the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the
soil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large
ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the
horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean
Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D---- A path which
intersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.
In the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed not
a little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might have
encountered him, a joyous sound became audible.
He turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years of age,
coming up the path and singing, his hurdy-gurdy on his hip, and his
marmot-box on his back.
One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affording
a view of their knees through the holes in their trousers.
Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time to
time, and played at knuckle-bones with some coins which he had in his
hand--his whole fortune, probably.
Among this money there was one forty-sou piece.
The child halted beside the bush, without perceiving Jean Valjean, and
tossed up his handful of sous, which, up to that time, he had caught
with a good deal of adroitness on the back of his hand.
This time the forty-sou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards the
brushwood until it reached Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean set his foot upon it.
In the meantime, the child had looked after his coin and had caught
sight of him.
He showed no astonishment, but walked straight up to the man.
The spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see there was
not a person on the plain or on the path. The only sound was the tiny,
feeble cries of a flock of birds of passage, which was traversing the
heavens at an immense height. The child was standing with his back to
the sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with its
blood-red gleam the savage face of Jean Valjean.
"Sir," said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is
composed of ignorance and innocence, "my money."
"What is your name?" said Jean Valjean.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Go away," said Jean Valjean.
"Sir," resumed the child, "give me back my money."
Jean Valjean dropped his head, and made no reply.
The child began again, "My money, sir."
Jean Valjean's eyes remained fixed on the earth.
"My piece of money!" cried the child, "my white piece! my silver!"
It seemed as though Jean Valjean did not hear him. The child grasped him
by the collar of his blouse and shook him. At the same time he made an
effort to displace the big iron-shod shoe which rested on his treasure.
"I want my piece of money! my piece of forty sous!"
The child wept. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still remained seated.
His eyes were troubled. He gazed at the child, in a sort of amazement,
then he stretched out his hand towards his cudgel and cried in a
terrible voice, "Who's there?"
"I, sir," replied the child. "Little Gervais! I! Give me back my forty
sous, if you please! Take your foot away, sir, if you please!"
Then irritated, though he was so small, and becoming almost menacing:--
"Come now, will you take your foot away? Take your foot away, or we'll
see!"
"Ah! It's still you!" said Jean Valjean, and rising abruptly to his
feet, his foot still resting on the silver piece, he added:--
"Will you take yourself off!"
The frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from head to
foot, and after a few moments of stupor he set out, running at the top
of his speed, without daring to turn his neck or to utter a cry.
Nevertheless, lack of breath forced him to halt after a certain
distance, and Jean Valjean heard him sobbing, in the midst of his own
revery.
At the end of a few moments the child had disappeared.
The sun had set.
The shadows were descending around Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothing
all day; it is probable that he was feverish.
He had remained standing and had not changed his attitude after the
child's flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregular
intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in front of him, seemed
to be scrutinizing with profound attention the shape of an ancient
fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. All at once
he shivered; he had just begun to feel the chill of evening.
He settled his cap more firmly on his brow, sought mechanically to
cross and button his blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick up his
cudgel.
At that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou piece, which his foot
had half ground into the earth, and which was shining among the pebbles.
It was as though he had received a galvanic shock. "What is this?"
he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled three paces, then halted,
without being able to detach his gaze from the spot which his foot had
trodden but an instant before, as though the thing which lay glittering
there in the gloom had been an open eye riveted upon him.
At the expiration of a few moments he darted convulsively towards the
silver coin, seized it, and straightened himself up again and began to
gaze afar off over the plain, at the same time casting his eyes towards
all points of the horizon, as he stood there erect and shivering, like a
terrified wild animal which is seeking refuge.
He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague, great
banks of violet haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight.
He said, "Ah!" and set out rapidly in the direction in which the child
had disappeared. After about thirty paces he paused, looked about him
and saw nothing.
Then he shouted with all his might:--
"Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
He paused and waited.
There was no reply.
The landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space.
There was nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze was
lost, and a silence which engulfed his voice.
An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him a
sort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little arms with
incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and
pursuing some one.
He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time to
time he halted and shouted into that solitude, with a voice which was
the most formidable and the most disconsolate that it was possible to
hear, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed and
would have taken good care not to show himself. But the child was no
doubt already far away.
He encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said:--
"Monsieur le Curé, have you seen a child pass?"
"No," said the priest.
"One named Little Gervais?"
"I have seen no one."
He drew two five-franc pieces from his money-bag and handed them to the
priest.
"Monsieur le Curé, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Curé, he
was a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and a
hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?"
"I have not seen him."
"Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?"
"If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger. Such
persons pass through these parts. We know nothing of them."
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each with violence,
and gave them to the priest.
"For your poor," he said.
Then he added, wildly:--
"Monsieur l'Abbé, have me arrested. I am a thief."
The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed.
Jean Valjean set out on a run, in the direction which he had first
taken.
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing, calling,
shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times he ran across the plain
towards something which conveyed to him the effect of a human being
reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but brushwood
or rocks nearly on a level with the earth. At length, at a spot where
three paths intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. He
sent his gaze into the distance and shouted for the last time, "Little
Gervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais!" His shout died away in the
mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "Little
Gervais!" but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his last
effort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible
power had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evil
conscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in
his hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
Then his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that he
had wept in nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean left the Bishop's house, he was, as we have seen,
quite thrown out of everything that had been his thought hitherto. He
could not yield to the evidence of what was going on within him. He
hardened himself against the angelic action and the gentle words of the
old man. "You have promised me to become an honest man. I buy your soul.
I take it away from the spirit of perversity; I give it to the good
God."
This recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindness
he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us. He was
indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest
assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his
obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he
yielded, he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the
actions of other men had filled his soul through so many years, and
which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be
conquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been
begun between his viciousness and the goodness of that man.
In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who is
intoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes, did he have a distinct
perception of what might result to him from his adventure at D----? Did
he understand all those mysterious murmurs which warn or importune the
spirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that
he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer
remained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth the
best of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to
speak, to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict;
that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he
wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?
Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put
to ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in his
thought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said, does
form the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is doubtful
whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that we have
here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpses
of, rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into
an unutterable and almost painful state of emotion. On emerging from
that black and deformed thing which is called the galleys, the Bishop
had hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on
emerging from the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered
itself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors
and anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl, who
should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and
blinded, as it were, by virtue.
That which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he was no
longer the same man, that everything about him was changed, that it was
no longer in his power to make it as though the Bishop had not spoken to
him and had not touched him.
In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed
him of his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it;
was this the last effect and the supreme effort, as it were, of the
evil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys,--a remnant of
impulse, a result of what is called in statics, _acquired force?_ It
was that, and it was also, perhaps, even less than that. Let us say it
simply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast,
who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money,
while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto
unheard-of thoughts besetting it.
When intelligence re-awakened and beheld that action of the brute, Jean
Valjean recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.
Enlarge
It was because,--strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only
in the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money from
that child, he had done a thing of which he was no longer capable.
However that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect on
him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind, and
dispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on the other
the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was, as
certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating
one element and clarifying the other.
First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all
bewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he tried to find the
child in order to return his money to him; then, when he recognized the
fact that this was impossible, he halted in despair. At the moment when
he exclaimed "I am a wretch!" he had just perceived what he was, and he
was already separated from himself to such a degree, that he seemed to
himself to be no longer anything more than a phantom, and as if he had,
there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, Jean
Valjean, cudgel in hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filled
with stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage,
with his thoughts filled with abominable projects.
Excess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made him in some sort
a visionary. This, then, was in the nature of a vision. He actually saw
that Jean Valjean, that sinister face, before him. He had almost reached
the point of asking himself who that man was, and he was horrified by
him.
His brain was going through one of those violent and yet perfectly calm
moments in which revery is so profound that it absorbs reality. One no
longer beholds the object which one has before one, and one sees, as
though apart from one's self, the figures which one has in one's own
mind.
Thus he contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same
time, athwart this hallucination, he perceived in a mysterious depth a
sort of light which he at first took for a torch. On scrutinizing
this light which appeared to his conscience with more attention, he
recognized the fact that it possessed a human form and that this torch
was the Bishop.
His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,--the
Bishop and Jean Valjean. Nothing less than the first was required to
soften the second. By one of those singular effects, which are peculiar
to this sort of ecstasies, in proportion as his revery continued, as the
Bishop grew great and resplendent in his eyes, so did Jean Valjean grow
less and vanish. After a certain time he was no longer anything more
than a shade. All at once he disappeared. The Bishop alone remained; he
filled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed with
more weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child.
As he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul; an
extraordinary light; a light at once ravishing and terrible. His past
life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external brutishness, his
internal hardness, his dismissal to liberty, rejoicing in manifold plans
of vengeance, what had happened to him at the Bishop's, the last thing
that he had done, that theft of forty sous from a child, a crime all the
more cowardly, and all the more monstrous since it had come after the
Bishop's pardon,--all this recurred to his mind and appeared clearly
to him, but with a clearness which he had never hitherto witnessed.
He examined his life, and it seemed horrible to him; his soul, and it
seemed frightful to him. In the meantime a gentle light rested over this
life and this soul. It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the light
of Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after he had wept?
Whither did he go! No one ever knew. The only thing which seems to be
authenticated is that that same night the carrier who served Grenoble at
that epoch, and who arrived at D---- about three o'clock in the morning,
saw, as he traversed the street in which the Bishop's residence was
situated, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement in
the shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome.
BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER I--THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angoulême. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after the mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, appointed minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was falling. These were the columns which two years before had upheld the Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held in the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box _à la Charter_. The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account
of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, _The Medusa_, which was
destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Géricault with glory.
Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace of
Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the
platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shed
of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the naval
astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse de Duras
read to three or four friends her unpublished _Ourika_, in her boudoir
furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N's were scratched off the
Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the
bridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, which
disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at one
stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with the
corner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors, and makers
of wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two anxieties,--Napoleon
and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given for its prize
subject, _The Happiness procured through Study_. M. Bellart was
officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating that
future advocate-general of Broë, dedicated to the sarcasms of Paul-Louis
Courier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the
interim, until there should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt.
_Claire d'Albe_ and _Malek-Adel_ were masterpieces; Madame Cottin
was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute had the
academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its list of members.
A royal ordinance erected Angoulême into a naval school; for the Duc
d'Angoulême, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city of
Angoulême had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise the monarchical
principle would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministers
the question was agitated whether vignettes representing slack-rope
performances, which adorned Franconi's advertising posters, and which
attracted throngs of street urchins, should be tolerated. M. Paër, the
author of _Agnese_, a good sort of fellow, with a square face and a wart
on his cheek, directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de
Sasenaye in the Rue Ville l'Évêque. All the young girls were singing
the _Hermit of Saint-Avelle_, with words by Edmond Géraud. _The Yellow
Dwarf_ was transferred into _Mirror_. The Café Lemblin stood up for the
Emperor, against the Café Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de
Berri, already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married
to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Staël had died a year previously. The
body-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were all
very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The
_Constitutionnel_ was constitutional. _La Minerve_ called Chateaubriand
_Chateaubriant_. That _t_ made the good middle-class people laugh
heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which sold
themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815. David
had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no
longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no
longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to
an exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it their
religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes
complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian
publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had
been written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; and
they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated
two men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to say
the _voters_; to say the _enemies_, or to say the _allies_; to say
_Napoleon_, or to say _Buonaparte_. All sensible people were agreed
that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII.,
surnamed "The Immortal Author of the Charter." On the platform of the
Pont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that awaited
the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was making
the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy.
The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, "We must write to
Bacot." MM. Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the
sketch, to some extent with Monsieur's approval, of what was to become
later on "The Conspiracy of the Bord de l'Eau"--of the waterside.
L'Épingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter. Delaverderie
was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree,
reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue
Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers, with a madras
kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed on a mirror,
a complete set of dentist's instruments spread out before him, cleaning
his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated _The Monarchy
according to the Charter_ to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism,
assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Féletez
signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote
_Thérèse Aubert_. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves
colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden
fleur-de-lys, fought each other _apropos_ of the King of Rome. The
counter-police of the château had denounced to her Royal Highness
Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orléans, who
made a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general of
hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general of
dragoons--a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the
dome of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked
themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an occasion;
M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M. Clausel de
Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian Picard, who
belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Molière had not been able
to do, had _The Two Philiberts_ played at the Odéon, upon whose pediment
the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to
be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot.
Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal, Pélicier,
published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: _Works of
Voltaire_, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," said
the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson
would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him--a
sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:--
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,
administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of Dappes
was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from Captain,
afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting his
sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science,
whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier,
whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make his mark;
a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms:
_a certain Lord Baron_. David d'Angers was trying to work in marble. The
Abbé Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of
seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest,
named Félicité-Robert, who, at a latter date, became Lamennais. A thing
which smoked and clattered on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog
went and came beneath the windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont Royal
to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism which was not
good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle dream of a dream-ridden
inventor; an utopia--a steamboat. The Parisians stared indifferently at
this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute by
a coup d'état, the distinguished author of numerous academicians,
ordinances, and batches of members, after having created them, could
not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the
pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on
account of his piety. Dupuytren and Récamier entered into a quarrel in
the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other
with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier,
with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigoted
reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodons
flatter Moses.
M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory
of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have _pomme de terre_ [potato]
pronounced _parmentière_, and succeeded therein not at all. The Abbé
Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the
royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Grégoire." The locution of
which we have made use--_passed to the state of_--has been condemned
as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont
de Jéna, the new stone with which, the two years previously, the mining
aperture made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, was
still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to its
bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, had said
aloud: _"Sapristi! I regret the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talma
enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm."_ A seditious utterance. Six months
in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone over
to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense,
and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of riches
and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness
of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchy
in the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is
now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot
do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these
details, which are wrongly called trivial,--there are no trivial facts
in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,--are useful. It is of
the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is
composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged "a fine
farce."
CHAPTER II--A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third
from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students; and
when one says student, one says Parisian: to study in Paris is to be
born in Paris.
These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces; four
specimens of humanity taken at random; neither good nor bad, neither
wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools; handsome, with that
charming April which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars; for,
at that epoch, Arthurs did not yet exist. _Burn for him the perfumes of
Araby!_ exclaimed romance. _Oscar advances. Oscar, I shall behold him!_
People had just emerged from Ossian; elegance was Scandinavian and
Caledonian; the pure English style was only to prevail later, and
the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the battle of
Waterloo.
These Oscars bore the names, one of Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; the
second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last,
Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress.
Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England;
Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a
flower; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, an abridgment of Joséphine; Tholomyès
had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women,
perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women, and not yet
entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed by intrigues,
but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity of toil,
and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the first fall
in woman. One of the four was called the young, because she was
the youngest of them, and one was called the old; the old one was
twenty-three. Not to conceal anything, the three first were more
experienced, more heedless, and more emancipated into the tumult of life
than Fantine the Blonde, who was still in her first illusions.
Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said as much.
There had already been more than one episode in their romance, though
hardly begun; and the lover who had borne the name of Adolph in the
first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse in the second, and Gustave
in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one scolds
and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters of the people have
both of them whispering in their ear, each on its own side. These badly
guarded souls listen. Hence the falls which they accomplish, and the
stones which are thrown at them. They are overwhelmed with splendor of
all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau were
hungry?
Favourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and Zéphine. She
had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was
an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man and a braggart,
who went out to give lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when
he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's gown catch on
a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this accident. The
result had been Favourite. She met her father from time to time, and he
bowed to her. One morning an old woman with the air of a devotee,
had entered her apartments, and had said to her, "You do not know me,
Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the
sideboard, and ate and drank, had a mattress which she owned brought in,
and installed herself. This cross and pious old mother never spoke to
Favourite, remained hours without uttering a word, breakfasted, dined,
and supped for four, and went down to the porter's quarters for company,
where she spoke ill of her daughter.
It was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn Dahlia to
Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness. How could she make such nails
work? She who wishes to remain virtuous must not have pity on her hands.
As for Zéphine, she had conquered Fameuil by her roguish and caressing
little way of saying "Yes, sir."
The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends. Such loves
are always accompanied by such friendships.
Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof of this
is that, after making all due allowances for these little irregular
households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophical young
women, while Fantine was a good girl.
Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyès? Solomon would reply that
love forms a part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves to saying that
the love of Fantine was a first love, a sole love, a faithful love.
She alone, of all the four, was not called "thou" by a single one of
them.
Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from the dregs
of the people. Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable depths
of social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the
unknown. She was born at M. sur M. Of what parents? Who can say? She had
never known father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She
had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory
still existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal
name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased
the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small
child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she
received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained. She was
called little Fantine. No one knew more than that. This human creature
had entered life in just this way. At the age of ten, Fantine quitted
the town and went to service with some farmers in the neighborhood. At
fifteen she came to Paris "to seek her fortune." Fantine was beautiful,
and remained pure as long as she could. She was a lovely blonde, with
fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on
her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.
She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living,--for
the heart, also, has its hunger,--she loved.
She loved Tholomyès.
An amour for him; passion for her. The streets of the Latin quarter,
filled with throngs of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of
their dream. Fantine had long evaded Tholomyès in the mazes of the hill
of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and untwine, but in
such a way as constantly to encounter him again. There is a way of
avoiding which resembles seeking. In short, the eclogue took place.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which
Tholomyès was the head. It was he who possessed the wit.
Tholomyès was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of
four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal on
Mount Sainte-Geneviève. Tholomyès was a fast man of thirty, and badly
preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a
bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, _the skull at thirty,
the knee at forty_. His digestion was mediocre, and he had been attacked
by a watering in one eye. But in proportion as his youth disappeared,
gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair
with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly.
He was dilapidated but still in flower. His youth, which was packing
up for departure long before its time, beat a retreat in good order,
bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything but fire. He had had a
piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few verses now and then. In
addition to this he doubted everything to the last degree, which is a
vast force in the eyes of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he
was the leader. _Iron_ is an English word. Is it possible that irony is
derived from it?
One day Tholomyès took the three others aside, with the gesture of an
oracle, and said to them:--
"Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite have been teasing us for nearly
a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly that we
would. They are forever talking about it to us, to me in particular,
just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius, '_Faccia
gialluta, fa o miracolo_, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,' so our
beauties say to me incessantly, 'Tholomyès, when will you bring forth
your surprise?' At the same time our parents keep writing to us.
Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me; let us
discuss the question."
Thereupon, Tholomyès lowered his voice and articulated something so
mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four
mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, "That is an idea."
A smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder of
their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.
The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took
place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four
young girls.
CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR
It is hard nowadays to picture to one's self what a pleasure-trip of
students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago.
The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what
may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the last
half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car;
where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak
of Fécamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Paris
of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.
The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country
follies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was a
warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one
who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in the
name of the four: "It is a good hour to emerge from happiness." That
is why they rose at five o'clock in the morning. Then they went to
Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, "This
must be very beautiful when there is water!" They breakfasted at the
_Tête-Noir_, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselves
to a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grand
fountain; they ascended Diogenes' lantern, they gambled for macaroons
at the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sèvres, picked bouquets at
Pateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and
were perfectly happy.
The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from their
cage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed little
taps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life! adorable years!
the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you may be, do you not
remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside the
branches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind you?
Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a beloved
woman holding your hand, and crying, "Ah, my new boots! what a state
they are in!"
Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking in
the case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said as they
set out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, _"The slugs are crawling
in the paths,--a sign of rain, children."_
All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a good
fellow who had an Éléonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolled
that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass about
ten o'clock in the morning, and exclaimed, "There is one too many of
them," as he thought of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle's friend, the
one aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front under the great
green boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and
presided over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun.
Zéphine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way that
they set each off when they were together, and completed each other,
never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry than from
friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed English poses; the
first _keepsakes_ had just made their appearance, melancholy was dawning
for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men; and the hair of the
tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zéphine and Dahlia had their hair
dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussing
their professors, explained to Fantine the difference that existed
between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.
Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite's
single-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux's manufacture, on his
arm on Sundays.
Tholomyès followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt
the force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality;
his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern of
nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout rattan
worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself to
everything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing was
sacred to him; he smoked.
"That Tholomyès is astounding!" said the others, with veneration. "What
trousers! What energy!"
As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had
evidently received an office from God,--laughter. She preferred to carry
her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her hand
rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined to
wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten
up incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the
willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouth
voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an
air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped
discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to
call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking
about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barège, little reddish
brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked
stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention,
whose name, _canezou_, a corruption of the words _quinze août_,
pronounced after the fashion of the Canebière, signifies fine weather,
heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have already
said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath
flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side
of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine's _canezou_, with its
transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and
displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of
decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse
de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the
prize for coquetry to this _canezou_, in the contest for the prize of
modesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.
Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavy
lids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a white
skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the veins to
be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust throat of the
Juno of Ægina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelled
as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible
through the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and
exquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and
these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.
Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare
dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront
everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little
working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the
ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred.
She was beautiful in the two ways--style and rhythm. Style is the form
of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.
To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from
her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her
love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She
remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade
of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long,
white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the
sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing
to Tholomyès, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her
face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost
austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there
was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so
suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without
any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated
gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her
chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct
from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance
results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base
of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming
fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in
love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.
Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over
fault.
CHAPTER IV--THOLOMYÈS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY
That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature
seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of
Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the
leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged the
jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the yarrow,
the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the King of
France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.
The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers,
the trees, were resplendent.
And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing,
chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open-work
stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all received,
to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine,
who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of
dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. "You always have a queer
look about you," said Favourite to her.
Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound
appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light spring forth from
everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and forests
expressly for those in love,--in that eternal hedge-school of lovers,
which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as there
are hedges and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers.
The patrician and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer, the limb
of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say in olden
times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt, and there
is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis--what a transfiguration
effected by love! Notaries' clerks are gods. And the little cries,
the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on the fly, those
jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst forth in the
manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from one mouth by
another,--all this blazes forth and takes its place among the celestial
glories. Beautiful women waste themselves sweetly. They think that this
will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets, painters, observe these
ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so greatly are they dazzled
by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter
of plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois, who have flitted away into the
azure sky; Diderot stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and
d'Urfé mingles druids with them.
After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King's
Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name escapes our
memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was attracting all
Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub with a long stem,
whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as fine as threads,
were covered with a million tiny white rosettes; this gave the shrub the
air of a head of hair studded with flowers. There was always an admiring
crowd about it.
After viewing the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, "I offer you asses!" and
having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned
by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. The truly
national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened
to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite in
his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous cabinet
of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr become a millionaire or of
Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had stoutly shaken the swing
attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis.
As he swung these beauties, one after the other, producing folds in the
fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found to his taste, amid peals
of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyès, who was somewhat of a Spaniard,
Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholy chant, the
old ballad _gallega_, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing in
full flight upon a rope between two trees:--
"Soy de Badajoz, "Badajoz is my home,
Amor me llama, And Love is my name;
Toda mi alma, To my eyes in flame,
Es en mi ojos, All my soul doth come;
Porque enseñas, For instruction meet
A tuas piernas. I receive at thy feet"
Fantine alone refused to swing.
"I don't like to have people put on airs like that," muttered Favourite,
with a good deal of acrimony.
After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the
Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the
barrier of l'Étoile. They had been up since five o'clock that morning,
as the reader will remember; but _bah! there is no such thing as fatigue
on Sunday_, said Favourite; _on Sunday fatigue does not work_.
About three o'clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness,
were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then
occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible
above the trees of the Champs-Élysées.
From time to time Favourite exclaimed:--
"And the surprise? I claim the surprise."
"Patience," replied Tholomyès.
CHAPTER V--AT BOMBARDA'S
The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about
dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became
stranded in Bombarda's public house, a branch establishment which had
been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper,
Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near
Delorme Alley.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had
been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday
crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay
and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the panes;
two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets, mingled
with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated
round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs
of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table,
some disorder beneath it;
"They made beneath the table
A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,"
says Molière.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o'clock in
the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun was
setting; their appetites were satisfied.
The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing
but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The
horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud
of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent
body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the
Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting
sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,
which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy
promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the
white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from
button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls
threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and
applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike
the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:--
"Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre père."
"Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father."
Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even
decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the
large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and revolving
on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some journeyman
printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Everything
was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist
security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief
of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris,
terminated with these lines:--
"Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be
feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.
The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are
very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one
of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the
populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of
this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and
the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the
Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble."
Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform
itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the
miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised
by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their
eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to
the Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in
Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the
Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too "rose-colored" a light;
it is not so much of "an amiable rabble" as it is thought. The Parisian
is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps
more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than
he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be
trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when
there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every
sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give
him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon's stay and Danton's
resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of
liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath,
is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take
care! he will make of the first Rue Grenétat which comes to hand Caudine
Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in
stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and
his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that
slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is,
thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with
arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song
to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing
but _la Carmagnole_, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the
_Marseillaise_, and he will free the world.
This note jotted down on the margin of Anglès' report, we will return to
our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.
CHAPTER VI--A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one as
the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.
Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyès was drinking. Zéphine was
laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he
had purchased at Saint-Cloud.
Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:--
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This called forth a question from Blachevelle:--
"What would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love you?"
"I!" cried Favourite. "Ah! Do not say that even in jest! If you were
to cease to love me, I would spring after you, I would scratch you,
I should rend you, I would throw you into the water, I would have you
arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man who is
tickled in his self-love. Favourite resumed:--
"Yes, I would scream to the police! Ah! I should not restrain myself,
not at all! Rabble!"
Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy, and closed
both eyes proudly.
Dahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid the uproar:--
"So you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of yours?"
"I? I detest him," replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing her fork
again. "He is avaricious. I love the little fellow opposite me in my
house. He is very nice, that young man; do you know him? One can see
that he is an actor by profession. I love actors. As soon as he comes
in, his mother says to him: 'Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone.
There he goes with his shouting. But, my dear, you are splitting my
head!' So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets, to black holes, as high as
he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming, how do I know
what? so that he can be heard down stairs! He earns twenty sous a day at
an attorney's by penning quibbles. He is the son of a former precentor
of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so,
that one day when he saw me making batter for some pancakes, he said to
me: _'Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.'_
It is only artists who can say such things as that. Ah! he is very nice.
I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow. Never
mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him--how I lie! Hey! How I do
lie!"
Favourite paused, and then went on:--
"I am sad, you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer; the
wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very stingy;
there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not know what to
eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and then
you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it,
and that disgusts me with life."
CHAPTER VII--THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS
In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously
all at once; it was no longer anything but noise. Tholomyès intervened.
"Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed. "Let us reflect,
if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in
a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. Let us
mingle majesty with the feast. Let us eat with meditation; let us make
haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the springtime; if it makes
haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal
ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and
the mirth of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen! Grimod de la Reynière
agrees with Talleyrand."
A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.
"Leave us in peace, Tholomyès," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier.
"Sunday exists," resumed Fameuil.
"We are sober," added Listolier.
"Tholomyès," remarked Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness [_mon
calme_]."
"You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyès.
This mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a stone in a pool.
The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist. All the
frogs held their peace.
"Friends," cried Tholomyès, with the accent of a man who had recovered
his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the
skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls
in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun
is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where;
and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure
depths. A whitish speck flattened against the rock does not prevent the
condor from soaring aloft. Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor
it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the
most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of
humanity, have made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St. Peter, Moses
on Isaac, Æschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that
Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it not been
for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne, a Greek name
which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I return to my exhortation.
I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no hubbub, no excess; even in
witticisms, gayety, jollities, or plays on words. Listen to me. I have
the prudence of Amphiaraüs and the baldness of Cæsar. There must be a
limit, even to rebuses. _Est modus in rebus_.
"There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple
turnovers, ladies; do not indulge in them to excess. Even in the matter
of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite. Gluttony chastises the
glutton, _Gula punit Gulax_. Indigestion is charged by the good God
with preaching morality to stomachs. And remember this: each one of our
passions, even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In
all things the word _finis_ must be written in good season; self-control
must be exercised when the matter becomes urgent; the bolt must be drawn
on appetite; one must set one's own fantasy to the violin, and carry
one's self to the post. The sage is the man who knows how, at a given
moment, to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I
have succeeded to some extent in my study of the law, according to
the verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference between the
question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis in
Latin upon the manner in which torture was administered at Rome at the
epoch when Munatius Demens was quæstor of the Parricide; because I
am going to be a doctor, apparently it does not follow that it is
absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend you to
moderation in your desires. It is true that my name is Félix Tholomyès;
I speak well. Happy is he who, when the hour strikes, takes a heroic
resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or Origenes."
Favourite listened with profound attention.
"Félix," said she, "what a pretty word! I love that name. It is Latin;
it means prosper."
Tholomyès went on:--
"Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish never to feel
the prick, to do without the nuptial bed, and to brave love? Nothing
more simple. Here is the receipt: lemonade, excessive exercise, hard
labor; work yourself to death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil,
gorge yourself with nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphæas; drink
emulsions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict diet,
starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths, girdles of herbs, the
application of a plate of lead, lotions made with the subacetate of
lead, and fomentations of oxycrat."
"I prefer a woman," said Listolier.
"Woman," resumed Tholomyès; "distrust her. Woe to him who yields himself
to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous.
She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the
shop over the way."
"Tholomyès!" cried Blachevelle, "you are drunk!"
"Pardieu," said Tholomyès.
"Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle.
"I agree to that," responded Tholomyès.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! _Nunc te, Bacche, canam!_ Pardon me ladies; that is
Spanish. And the proof of it, señoras, is this: like people, like cask.
The arrobe of Castille contains sixteen litres; the cantaro of Alicante,
twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five; the cuartin of the
Balearic Isles, twenty-six; the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long
live that Tzar who was great, and long live his boot, which was still
greater! Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your
neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love
affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English
serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not
made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error
is human; I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zéphine, O
Joséphine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you not
all askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one has
sat down by mistake. As for Favourite, O nymphs and muses! one day
when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the Rue Guérin-Boisseau,
he espied a beautiful girl with white stockings well drawn up, which
displayed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle fell
in love. The one he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian
lips. There was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the
painter of the lips. That Greek alone would have been worthy to paint
thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of the
name. Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like
Eve; beauty begins with thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is thou
who hast created her. Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful
woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as 'thou,' because I pass
from poetry to prose. You were speaking of my name a little while ago.
That touched me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names. They may
delude us. I am called Félix, and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let
us not blindly accept the indications which they afford us. It would
be a mistake to write to Liège 2 for corks, and to Pau for gloves. Miss
Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A flower should
smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing of Fantine; she
is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom
possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has
strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions,
and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without very well
knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed
on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are more birds than are in
existence. O Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyès, I am an illusion; but
she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest,
everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light.
O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a
woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice: do
not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk.
But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable
on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not
prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming
of husbands studded with diamonds. Well, so be it; but, my beauties,
remember this, you eat too much sugar. You have but one fault, O woman,
and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling sex, your pretty little white
teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are
withering. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the
liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then
the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence
death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption. Then, do not crunch
sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest,
rob each other of your well-beloved without remorse. Chassez across.
In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman
hostility is open. No quarter, war to the death! a pretty woman is a
_casus belli_; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the invasions
of history have been determined by petticoats. Woman is man's right.
Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women;
Cæsar carried off the Roman women. The man who is not loved soars like
a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all
those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation
of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: "Soldiers, you are in need of
everything; the enemy has it."
Tholomyès paused.
"Take breath, Tholomyès," said Blachevelle.
At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil,
struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed of
the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as
destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind,
which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and
take their flight with them. This is the couplet by which the group
replied to Tholomyès' harangue:--
"The father turkey-cocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good Clermont-Tonnerre
Might be made pope on Saint Johns' day fair.
But this good Clermont could not be
Made pope, because no priest was he;
And then their agent, whose wrath burned,
With all their money back returned."
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyès' improvisation; he emptied his
glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:--
"Down with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us be neither prudes
nor prudent men nor prudhommes. I propose a toast to mirth; be merry.
Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating! Indigestion and
the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female! Joy in
the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I am happy.
The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere! The nightingale
is a gratuitous Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee! O Luxembourg! O
Georgics of the Rue Madame, and of the Allée de l'Observatoire! O
pensive infantry soldiers! O all those charming nurses who, while they
guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please
me if I had not the arcades of the Odéon. My soul flits away into the
virgin forests and to the savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in
the sun. The sun has sneezed out the humming bird. Embrace me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and embraced Favourite.
CHAPTER VIII--THE DEATH OF A HORSE
"The dinners are better at Édon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed
Zéphine.
"I prefer Bombarda to Édon," declared Blachevelle. "There is more
luxury. It is more Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs; there are
mirrors [_glaces_] on the walls."
"I prefer them [_glaces_, ices] on my plate," said Favourite.
Blachevelle persisted:--
"Look at the knives. The handles are of silver at Bombarda's and of bone
at Édon's. Now, silver is more valuable than bone."
"Except for those who have a silver chin," observed Tholomyès.
He was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible from
Bombarda's windows.
A pause ensued.
"Tholomyès," exclaimed Fameuil, "Listolier and I were having a
discussion just now."
"A discussion is a good thing," replied Tholomyès; "a quarrel is
better."
"We were disputing about philosophy."
"Well?"
"Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"
"Désaugiers," said Tholomyès.
This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:--
"I consent to live. All is not at an end on earth since we can still
talk nonsense. For that I return thanks to the immortal gods. We lie.
One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one doubts. The unexpected
bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human
beings here below who know how to open and close the surprise box of the
paradox merrily. This, ladies, which you are drinking with so tranquil
an air is Madeira wine, you must know, from the vineyard of Coural das
Freiras, which is three hundred and seventeen fathoms above the level of
the sea. Attention while you drink! three hundred and seventeen fathoms!
and Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent eating-house keeper, gives you
those three hundred and seventeen fathoms for four francs and fifty
centimes."
Again Fameuil interrupted him:--
"Tholomyès, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?"
"Ber--"
"Quin?"
"No; Choux."
And Tholomyès continued:--
"Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could
but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Chæronea if he could
bring me a Greek courtesan; for, oh, ladies! there were Bombardas in
Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them. Alas! always the same,
and nothing new; nothing more unpublished by the creator in creation!
_Nil sub sole novum_, says Solomon; _amor omnibus idem_, says Virgil;
and Carabine mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint-Cloud, as
Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the fleet at Samos. One last word.
Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at an epoch
when women had, as yet, no soul, she was a soul; a soul of a rosy and
purple hue, more ardent hued than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia
was a creature in whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was the
goddess prostitute; Socrates plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in
case a mistress should be needed for Prometheus."
Tholomyès, once started, would have found some difficulty in stopping,
had not a horse fallen down upon the quay just at that moment. The
shock caused the cart and the orator to come to a dead halt. It was a
Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker, which was
dragging a very heavy cart. On arriving in front of Bombarda's, the
worn-out, exhausted beast had refused to proceed any further. This
incident attracted a crowd. Hardly had the cursing and indignant carter
had time to utter with proper energy the sacramental word, _Mâtin_ (the
jade), backed up with a pitiless cut of the whip, when the jade fell,
never to rise again. On hearing the hubbub made by the passers-by,
Tholomyès' merry auditors turned their heads, and Tholomyès took
advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a close with
this melancholy strophe:--
"Elle était de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses
Ont le même destin;
Et, rosse, elle a vécu ce que vivant les rosses,
L'espace d'un mâtin!" 3
"Poor horse!" sighed Fantine.
And Dahlia exclaimed:--
"There is Fantine on the point of crying over horses. How can one be
such a pitiful fool as that!"
At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back,
looked resolutely at Tholomyès and said:--
"Come, now! the surprise?"
"Exactly. The moment has arrived," replied Tholomyès. "Gentlemen,
the hour for giving these ladies a surprise has struck. Wait for us a
moment, ladies."
"It begins with a kiss," said Blachevelle.
"On the brow," added Tholomyès.
Each gravely bestowed a kiss on his mistress's brow; then all four filed
out through the door, with their fingers on their lips.
Favourite clapped her hands on their departure.
"It is beginning to be amusing already," said she.
"Don't be too long," murmured Fantine; "we are waiting for you."
CHAPTER IX--A MERRY END TO MIRTH
When the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on the
window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads, and talking from one
window to the other.
They saw the young men emerge from the Café Bombarda arm in arm. The
latter turned round, made signs to them, smiled, and disappeared in
that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the
Champs-Élysées.
"Don't be long!" cried Fantine.
"What are they going to bring us?" said Zéphine.
"It will certainly be something pretty," said Dahlia.
"For my part," said Favourite, "I want it to be of gold."
Their attention was soon distracted by the movements on the shore of the
lake, which they could see through the branches of the large trees, and
which diverted them greatly.
It was the hour for the departure of the mail-coaches and diligences.
Nearly all the stage-coaches for the south and west passed through the
Champs-Élysées. The majority followed the quay and went through the
Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge vehicle, painted yellow
and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed, rendered shapeless
by trunks, tarpaulins, and valises, full of heads which immediately
disappeared, rushed through the crowd with all the sparks of a forge,
with dust for smoke, and an air of fury, grinding the pavements,
changing all the paving-stones into steels. This uproar delighted the
young girls. Favourite exclaimed:--
"What a row! One would say that it was a pile of chains flying away."
It chanced that one of these vehicles, which they could only see with
difficulty through the thick elms, halted for a moment, then set out
again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine.
"That's odd!" said she. "I thought the diligence never stopped."
Favourite shrugged her shoulders.
"This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of
curiosity. She is dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case: I am
a traveller; I say to the diligence, 'I will go on in advance; you shall
pick me up on the quay as you pass.' The diligence passes, sees me,
halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not know life, my
dear."
In this manner a certain time elapsed. All at once Favourite made a
movement, like a person who is just waking up.
"Well," said she, "and the surprise?"
"Yes, by the way," joined in Dahlia, "the famous surprise?"
"They are a very long time about it!" said Fantine.
As Fantine concluded this sigh, the waiter who had served them at dinner
entered. He held in his hand something which resembled a letter.
"What is that?" demanded Favourite.
The waiter replied:--
"It is a paper that those gentlemen left for these ladies."
"Why did you not bring it at once?"
"Because," said the waiter, "the gentlemen ordered me not to deliver it
to the ladies for an hour."
Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter's hand. It was, in fact, a
letter.
"Stop!" said she; "there is no address; but this is what is written on
it--"
"THIS IS THE SURPRISE."
She tore the letter open hastily, opened it, and read [she knew how to
read]:--
"OUR BELOVED:--
"You must know that we have parents. Parents--you do not know much about
such things. They are called fathers and mothers by the civil code,
which is puerile and honest. Now, these parents groan, these old folks
implore us, these good men and these good women call us prodigal sons;
they desire our return, and offer to kill calves for us. Being virtuous,
we obey them. At the hour when you read this, five fiery horses will
be bearing us to our papas and mammas. We are pulling up our stakes, as
Bossuet says. We are going; we are gone. We flee in the arms of Lafitte
and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence tears us from
the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our little beauties! We return to
society, to duty, to respectability, at full trot, at the rate of three
leagues an hour. It is necessary for the good of the country that we
should be, like the rest of the world, prefects, fathers of families,
rural police, and councillors of state. Venerate us. We are sacrificing
ourselves. Mourn for us in haste, and replace us with speed. If this
letter lacerates you, do the same by it. Adieu.
"For the space of nearly two years we have made you happy. We bear you
no grudge for that. "Signed: BLACHEVELLE.
FAMUEIL.
LISTOLIER.
FÉLIX THOLOMYÈS.
"_Postscriptum_. The dinner is paid for."
The four young women looked at each other.
Favourite was the first to break the silence.
"Well!" she exclaimed, "it's a very pretty farce, all the same."
"It is very droll," said Zéphine.
"That must have been Blachevelle's idea," resumed Favourite. "It makes
me in love with him. No sooner is he gone than he is loved. This is an
adventure, indeed."
"No," said Dahlia; "it was one of Tholomyès' ideas. That is evident.
"In that case," retorted Favourite, "death to Blachevelle, and long live
Tholomyès!"
"Long live Tholomyès!" exclaimed Dahlia and Zéphine.
And they burst out laughing.
Fantine laughed with the rest.
An hour later, when she had returned to her room, she wept. It was
her first love affair, as we have said; she had given herself to this
Tholomyès as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.
BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER
CHAPTER I--ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this
century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was
kept by some people named Thénardier, husband and wife. It was situated
in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against
the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a
man carrying another man on his back, the latter wearing the big gilt
epaulettes of a general, with large silver stars; red spots represented
blood; the rest of the picture consisted of smoke, and probably
represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF
SERGEANT OF WATERLOO (_Au Sargent de Waterloo_).
Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry.
Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the fragment of
a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the cook-shop of
the _Sergeant of Waterloo_, one evening in the spring of 1818, would
certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who
had passed that way.
It was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used in wooded
tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the
trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron
axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft, and
which was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact,
overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun-carriage of an
enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the
fellies, the hub, the axle, and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous
yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond
of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud, and the
iron beneath rust. Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain,
worthy of some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the
beams, which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and
mammoths which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the
galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have
been detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with
it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.
Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In
the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might
finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the
old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks
about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the
above.
The centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and in
the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated and grouped, on
that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement, two little girls;
one about two years and a half old, the other, eighteen months; the
younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about
them, prevented their falling out. A mother had caught sight of that
frightful chain, and had said, "Come! there's a plaything for my
children."
The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance, were
radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two roses amid
old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks were full of
laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown. Their innocent faces
were two delighted surprises; a blossoming shrub which grew near wafted
to the passers-by perfumes which seemed to emanate from them; the child
of eighteen months displayed her pretty little bare stomach with the
chaste indecency of childhood. Above and around these two delicate
heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light, the gigantic
fore-carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all entangled in curves
and wild angles, rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few
paces apart, crouching down upon the threshold of the hostelry, the
mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching
at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord,
watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and
celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward
and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which
resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting
sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this
caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing of
cherubim.
As she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant voice a
romance then celebrated:--
"It must be, said a warrior."
Her song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her hearing
and seeing what was going on in the street.
In the meantime, some one had approached her, as she was beginning the
first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very
near her ear:--
"You have two beautiful children there, Madame."
"To the fair and tender Imogene--"
replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.
A woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also had a
child, which she carried in her arms.
She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed very
heavy.
This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is
possible to behold. It was a girl, two or three years of age. She could
have entered into competition with the two other little ones, so far as
the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine linen,
ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of
her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm, and
dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy. The little beauty
inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks. Of her
eyes nothing could be known, except that they must be very large, and
that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep.
She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her
age. The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep
profoundly.
As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She
was dressed like a working-woman who is inclined to turn into a peasant
again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps; but in that attire it
was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which had escaped, seemed
very thick, but was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close,
nun-like cap, tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth when
one has them; but she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have been
dry for a very long time. She was pale; she had a very weary and rather
sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her arms with
the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue
handkerchief, such as the Invalides use, was folded into a fichu, and
concealed her figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted
with freckles, her forefinger was hardened and lacerated with the
needle; she wore a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a linen gown,
and coarse shoes. It was Fantine.
It was Fantine, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on
scrutinizing her attentively, it was evident that she still retained
her beauty. A melancholy fold, which resembled the beginning of irony,
wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of
muslin and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music,
full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished like that beautiful
and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken for diamonds in the sunlight;
it melts and leaves the branch quite black.
Ten months had elapsed since the "pretty farce."
What had taken place during those ten months? It can be divined.
After abandonment, straightened circumstances. Fantine had immediately
lost sight of Favourite, Zéphine and Dahlia; the bond once broken on the
side of the men, it was loosed between the women; they would have been
greatly astonished had any one told them a fortnight later, that they
had been friends; there no longer existed any reason for such a thing.
Fantine had remained alone. The father of her child gone,--alas! such
ruptures are irrevocable,--she found herself absolutely isolated, minus
the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her
_liaison_ with Tholomyès to disdain the pretty trade which she knew, she
had neglected to keep her market open; it was now closed to her. She had
no resource. Fantine barely knew how to read, and did not know how to
write; in her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name;
she had a public letter-writer indite an epistle to Tholomyès, then a
second, then a third. Tholomyès replied to none of them. Fantine heard
the gossips say, as they looked at her child: "Who takes those children
seriously! One only shrugs one's shoulders over such children!" Then she
thought of Tholomyès, who had shrugged his shoulders over his child,
and who did not take that innocent being seriously; and her heart grew
gloomy toward that man. But what was she to do? She no longer knew to
whom to apply. She had committed a fault, but the foundation of her
nature, as will be remembered, was modesty and virtue. She was vaguely
conscious that she was on the verge of falling into distress, and of
gliding into a worse state. Courage was necessary; she possessed it, and
held herself firm. The idea of returning to her native town of M. sur
M. occurred to her. There, some one might possibly know her and give her
work; yes, but it would be necessary to conceal her fault. In a confused
way she perceived the necessity of a separation which would be more
painful than the first one. Her heart contracted, but she took her
resolution. Fantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life.
She had already valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in
linen, and had put all her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons,
and all her laces on her daughter, the only vanity which was left to
her, and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced
for her two hundred francs; her little debts paid, she had only about
eighty francs left. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful spring
morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her back. Any one who
had seen these two pass would have had pity on them. This woman had,
in all the world, nothing but her child, and the child had, in all the
world, no one but this woman. Fantine had nursed her child, and this had
tired her chest, and she coughed a little.
We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès. Let us
confine ourselves to saying, that, twenty years later, under King Louis
Philippe, he was a great provincial lawyer, wealthy and influential, a
wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a man of pleasure.
Towards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time, for the
sake of resting herself, travelled, for three or four sous a league, in
what was then known as the _Petites Voitures des Environs de Paris_, the
"little suburban coach service," Fantine found herself at Montfermeil,
in the alley Boulanger.
As she passed the Thénardier hostelry, the two little girls, blissful
in the monster swing, had dazzled her in a manner, and she had halted in
front of that vision of joy.
Charms exist. These two little girls were a charm to this mother.
She gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is an
announcement of Paradise. She thought that, above this inn, she beheld
the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little creatures were
evidently happy. She gazed at them, she admired them, in such emotion
that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath between
two couplets of her song, she could not refrain from addressing to her
the remark which we have just read:--
"You have two pretty children, Madame."
The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their
young.
The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer
sit down on the bench at the door, she herself being seated on the
threshold. The two women began to chat.
"My name is Madame Thénardier," said the mother of the two little girls.
"We keep this inn."
Then, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming between
her teeth:--
"It must be so; I am a knight,
And I am off to Palestine."
This Madame Thénardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and
angular--the type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness; and
what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal
of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature. Old romances
produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop
woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching
woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her frame of a
perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have frightened the
traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what
caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead
of standing erect--destinies hang upon such a thing as that.
The traveller told her story, with slight modifications.
That she was a working-woman; that her husband was dead; that her
work in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it
elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she had left Paris that morning
on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, and felt fatigued, she had
got into the Villemomble coach when she met it; that from Villemomble
she had come to Montfermeil on foot; that the little one had walked a
little, but not much, because she was so young, and that she had been
obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen asleep.
At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke
her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother's, and
looked at--what? Nothing; with that serious and sometimes severe air of
little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in
the presence of our twilight of virtue. One would say that they feel
themselves to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the child
began to laugh; and although the mother held fast to her, she slipped to
the ground with the unconquerable energy of a little being which wished
to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing,
stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration.
Mother Thénardier released her daughters, made them descend from the
swing, and said:--
"Now amuse yourselves, all three of you."
Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration
of a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the new-comer at
making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.
The new-comer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written in the
gayety of the child; she had seized a scrap of wood which served her
for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The
grave-digger's business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by
a child.
The two women pursued their chat.
"What is your little one's name?"
"Cosette."
For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child's name was Euphrasie. But out
of Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette by that sweet and graceful
instinct of mothers and of the populace which changes Josepha into
Pepita, and Françoise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative which
disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologists. We have
known a grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Gnon.
"How old is she?"
"She is going on three."
"That is the age of my eldest."
In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of
profound anxiety and blissfulness; an event had happened; a big worm
had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid; and they were in
ecstasies over it.
Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there
were three heads in one aureole.
"How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother
Thénardier; "one would swear that they were three sisters!"
This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been
waiting for. She seized the Thénardier's hand, looked at her fixedly,
and said:--
"Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thénardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify
neither assent nor refusal.
Cosette's mother continued:--
"You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not
permit it. With a child one can find no situation. People are ridiculous
in the country. It was the good God who caused me to pass your inn. When
I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean, and so happy,
it overwhelmed me. I said: 'Here is a good mother. That is just the
thing; that will make three sisters.' And then, it will not be long
before I return. Will you keep my child for me?"
"I must see about it," replied the Thénardier.
"I will give you six francs a month."
Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cook-shop:--
"Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven makes forty-two," said the Thénardier.
"I will give it," said the mother.
"And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses," added the
man's voice.
"Total, fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thénardier. And she hummed
vaguely, with these figures:--
"It must be, said a warrior."
"I will pay it," said the mother. "I have eighty francs. I shall have
enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot. I shall
earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return for my
darling."
The man's voice resumed:--
"The little one has an outfit?"
"That is my husband," said the Thénardier.
"Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure.--I understood perfectly
that it was your husband.--And a beautiful outfit, too! a senseless
outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns like a lady. It is here,
in my carpet-bag."
"You must hand it over," struck in the man's voice again.
"Of course I shall give it to you," said the mother. "It would be very
queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!"
The master's face appeared.
"That's good," said he.
The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave
up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now
reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit, and light henceforth
and set out on the following morning, intending to return soon. People
arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!
A neighbor of the Thénardiers met this mother as she was setting out,
and came back with the remark:--
"I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to
rend your heart."
When Cosette's mother had taken her departure, the man said to the
woman:--
"That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which
falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should
have had a bailiff and a protest after me? You played the mouse-trap
nicely with your young ones."
"Without suspecting it," said the woman.
CHAPTER II--FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES
The mouse which had been caught was a pitiful specimen; but the cat
rejoices even over a lean mouse.
Who were these Thénardiers?
Let us say a word or two of them now. We will complete the sketch later
on.
These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people
who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended
in the scale, which is between the class called "middle" and the class
denominated as "inferior," and which combines some of the defects of the
second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing
the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the
bourgeois.
They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm
them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum
of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were
susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress
which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like
souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness,
retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to
augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more
and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and
woman possessed such souls.
Thénardier, in particular, was troublesome for a physiognomist. One can
only look at some men to distrust them; for one feels that they are
dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening
in front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more
answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow
which they bear in their glance denounces them. From merely hearing them
utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of
sombre secrets in their past and of sombre mysteries in their future.
This Thénardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier--a
sergeant, he said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1815,
and had even conducted himself with tolerable valor, it would seem. We
shall see later on how much truth there was in this. The sign of his
hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it
himself; for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly.
It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after
having been _Clélie_, was no longer anything but _Lodoïska_, still
noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle
de Scudéri to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to
Madame Barthélemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses
of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame
Thénardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She
lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had
given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive
attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a certain depth, a ruffian
lettered to the extent of the grammar, coarse and fine at one and the
same time, but, so far as sentimentalism was concerned, given to the
perusal of Pigault-Lebrun, and "in what concerns the sex," as he said
in his jargon--a downright, unmitigated lout. His wife was twelve or
fifteen years younger than he was. Later on, when her hair, arranged
in a romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Magæra
began to be developed from the Pamela, the female Thénardier was nothing
but a coarse, vicious woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances. Now,
one cannot read nonsense with impunity. The result was that her eldest
daughter was named Éponine; as for the younger, the poor little thing
came near being called Gulnare; I know not to what diversion, effected
by a romance of Ducray-Dumenil, she owed the fact that she merely bore
the name of Azelma.
However, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and
superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which
may be designated as the anarchy of baptismal names. By the side of
this romantic element which we have just indicated there is the social
symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name
of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte--if there are
still any vicomtes--to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This
displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the
rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality.
The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as
everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a
profound thing,--the French Revolution.
CHAPTER III--THE LARK
It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The
cook-shop was in a bad way.
Thanks to the traveller's fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able
to avoid a protest and to honor his signature. On the following month
they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette's outfit to
Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs. As soon
as that sum was spent, the Thénardiers grew accustomed to look on the
little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity;
and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes, they
dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thénardier
brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest
had left--a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat.
Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions;
Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar to
theirs.
The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M.
sur M., wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter every
month, that she might have news of her child. The Thénardiers replied
invariably, "Cosette is doing wonderfully well."
At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs
for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable
regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when
Thénardier said: "A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does she
expect us to do with her seven francs?" and he wrote to demand twelve
francs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her
child was happy, "and was coming on well," submitted, and forwarded the
twelve francs.
Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other.
Mother Thénardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her
to hate the stranger.
It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous
aspects. Little as was the space occupied by Cosette, it seemed to
her as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child
diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many
women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and
injuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain
that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received the whole
of it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the blows to
herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette could not
make a motion which did not draw down upon her head a heavy shower of
violent blows and unmerited chastisement. The sweet, feeble being, who
should not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantly
punished, scolded, ill-used, beaten, and seeing beside her two little
creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!
Madame Thénardier was vicious with Cosette. Éponine and Azelma were
vicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size
is smaller; that is all.
A year passed; then another.
People in the village said:--
"Those Thénardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are
bringing up a poor child who was abandoned on their hands!"
They thought that Cosette's mother had forgotten her.
In the meanwhile, Thénardier, having learned, it is impossible to say by
what obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that the
mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month, saying
that "the creature" was growing and "eating," and threatening to send
her away. "Let her not bother me," he exclaimed, "or I'll fire her brat
right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase." The
mother paid the fifteen francs.
From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.
As long as Cosette was little, she was the scape-goat of the two other
children; as soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say,
before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the
household.
Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is
true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the
trial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan turned bandit, who, from the
age of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the world,
"worked for his living and stole"?
Cosette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard,
the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thénardiers
considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner,
since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had become irregular in
her payments. Some months she was in arrears.
If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three
years, she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and
rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an
indescribably uneasy look. "The sly creature," said the Thénardiers.
Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing
remained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because,
large as they were, it seemed as though one beheld in them a still
larger amount of sadness.
It was a heart-breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years
old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes,
sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tiny
red hands, and a tear in her great eyes.
Enlarge
She was called the _Lark_ in the neighborhood. The populace, who are
fond of these figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this name
on this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no bigger
than a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in the
house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before
daybreak.
Only the little lark never sang.
BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT.
CHAPTER I--THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS
And in the meantime, what had become of that mother who according to
the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where was
she? What was she doing?
After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she had continued
her journey, and had reached M. sur M.
This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.
Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had changed
its aspect. While Fantine had been slowly descending from wretchedness
to wretchedness, her native town had prospered.
About two years previously one of those industrial facts which are the
grand events of small districts had taken place.
This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at
length; we should almost say, to underline it.
From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the
imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This
industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw
material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine
returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place
in the production of "black goods." Towards the close of 1815 a man,
a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired
with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin,
and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid
together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.
This very small change had effected a revolution.
This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of
the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to
raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second
place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the
third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which
was a benefit to the manufacturer.
Thus three results ensued from one idea.
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich,
which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better.
He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known;
of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had
come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.
It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an
ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his
own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.
On his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance,
and the language of a workingman.
It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into
the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening,
knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out
in the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the
risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the
gendarmerie; this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport.
Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father Madeleine.
CHAPTER II--MADELEINE
He was a man about fifty years of age, who had a preoccupied air, and
who was good. That was all that could be said about him.
Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably
re-constructed, M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade.
Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases
there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin in this
branch of commerce. Father Madeleine's profits were such, that at the
end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which
there were two vast workrooms, one for the men, and the other for women.
Any one who was hungry could present himself there, and was sure of
finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good
will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had separated
the work-rooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that the women and
girls might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the
only thing in which he was in a manner intolerant. He was all the more
firmly set on this severity, since M. sur M., being a garrison town,
opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had been a
boon, and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine's arrival,
everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with
a healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and
penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown.
There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no
dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.
Father Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one thing:
Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.
As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause
and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing
in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his
chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of
himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty
thousand francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before reserving
these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent more than a
million for the town and its poor.
The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is
divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he
lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin:
he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allotted a
salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as
large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one
who expressed surprise, "The two prime functionaries of the state are
the nurse and the schoolmaster." He created at his own expense an infant
school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old
and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which
there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he
established there a free dispensary.
At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, "He's
a jolly fellow who means to get rich." When they saw him enriching
the country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, "He is
an ambitious man." This seemed all the more probable since the man was
religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing
which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to
low mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry
everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy
had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the
religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name
of Fouché, Duc d'Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He
indulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors. But when he beheld
the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o'clock,
he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he
took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition
was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the
steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well as the good God, for
the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which made
twelve.
Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town
to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in
consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father
Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who
had pronounced this new-comer to be "an ambitious fellow," seized with
delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, "There!
what did we say!" All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well
founded. Several days later the appointment appeared in the _Moniteur_.
On the following day Father Madeleine refused.
In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by
Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their
report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of
Honor. A fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the cross
that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.
Decidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their
predicament by saying, "After all, he is some sort of an adventurer."
We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him
everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been
obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored
him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity.
When he was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and
he received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur
Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father
Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In
proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him.
"Society" claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing-rooms on
M. sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan,
opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They made
a thousand advances to him. He refused.
This time the good gossips had no trouble. "He is an ignorant man, of
no education. No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to
behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how
to read."
When they saw him making money, they said, "He is a man of business."
When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, "He is an
ambitious man." When he was seen to decline honors, they said, "He is
an adventurer." When they saw him repulse society, they said, "He is a
brute."
In 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services which
he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of
the whole country round about was so unanimous, that the King again
appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect
resisted his refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to implore
him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous
that he ended by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed
chiefly to bring him to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe
addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from
her threshold, in an angry way: _"A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he
drawing back before the good which he can do?"_
This was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine had become
Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.
CHAPTER III--SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE
On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had
gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the
thoughtful visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a
wide brim, and a long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He
fulfilled his duties as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in
solitude. He spoke to but few people. He avoided polite attentions;
he escaped quickly; he smiled to relieve himself of the necessity of
talking; he gave, in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling. The
women said of him, "What a good-natured bear!" His pleasure consisted in
strolling in the fields.
He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he
read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books
are cold but safe friends. In proportion as leisure came to him with
fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It had
been observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M., his language
had grown more polished, more choice, and more gentle with every passing
year. He liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls, but he rarely
made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting was something
so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an inoffensive
animal. He never shot at a little bird.
Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still
prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to any one who was in
need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or
stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full
of money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he
passed through a village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and
surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.
It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life,
since he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he taught to the
peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling it
and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a solution
of common salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up orviot in
bloom everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the grass and in
the houses.
He had "recipes" for exterminating from a field, blight, tares, foxtail,
and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended a rabbit
warren against rats, simply by the odor of a guinea-pig which he placed
in it.
One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles;
he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said:
"They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to
make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent
vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and
flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are
good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of
the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals; the
root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring-matter.
Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is
required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the
seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to collect it. That
is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made
useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How
many men resemble the nettle!" He added, after a pause: "Remember this,
my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are
only bad cultivators."
The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little
trifles of straw and cocoanuts.
When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought
out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of
others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with
the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with
the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his
thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of
the other world. With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a
sort of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad
voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death.
He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them
as a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses
privately, at night; he ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch
on returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened,
sometimes even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor
over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first
thing he beheld was a piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of
furniture. The "malefactor" who had been there was Father Madeleine.
He was affable and sad. The people said: "There is a rich man who has
not a haughty air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air."
Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no
one ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite's cell,
furnished with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and
skulls of dead men! This was much talked of, so that one of the elegant
and malicious young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked:
"Monsieur le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a
grotto." He smiled, and introduced them instantly into this "grotto."
They were well punished for their curiosity. The room was very simply
furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly, like all furniture of
that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see nothing
remarkable about it, except two candlesticks of antique pattern which
stood on the chimney-piece and appeared to be silver, "for they were
hall-marked," an observation full of the type of wit of petty towns.
Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the
room, and that it was a hermit's cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a
tomb.
It was also whispered about that he had "immense" sums deposited with
Laffitte, with this peculiar feature, that they were always at his
immediate disposal, so that, it was added, M. Madeleine could make his
appearance at Laffitte's any morning, sign a receipt, and carry off his
two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, "these two or three
millions" were reducible, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or
forty thousand francs.
CHAPTER IV--M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING
At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death of M.
Myriel, Bishop of D----, surnamed "Monseigneur Bienvenu," who had died
in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.
The Bishop of D---- to supply here a detail which the papers
omitted--had been blind for many years before his death, and content to
be blind, as his sister was beside him.
Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact,
one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth,
where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a
daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her
and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable
to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure
one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us,
and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time
to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her
thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one
being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown
as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return,
sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this
speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel
one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become
in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which
this angel gravitates,--few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness
of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for
one's own sake--let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self; this
conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be
caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when
one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted of virtue! There
is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly,
and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand
sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her
mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything
of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that
sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to
touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in
one's arms,--God made tangible,--what bliss! The heart, that obscure,
celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not
exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there,
uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she
vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth
approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity, with
gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are
a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The
most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and
supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul.
One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of
shadows.
It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the
other.
The announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal of M.
sur M. On the following day, M. Madeleine appeared clad wholly in black,
and with crape on his hat.
This mourning was noticed in the town, and commented on. It seemed
to throw a light on M. Madeleine's origin. It was concluded that some
relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. _"He has gone
into mourning for the Bishop of D----"_ said the drawing-rooms; this
raised M. Madeleine's credit greatly, and procured for him, instantly
and at one blow, a certain consideration in the noble world of M. sur
M. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place meditated raising
the quarantine against M. Madeleine, the probable relative of a bishop.
M. Madeleine perceived the advancement which he had obtained, by the
more numerous courtesies of the old women and the more plentiful smiles
of the young ones. One evening, a ruler in that petty great world, who
was curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, "M. le Maire is
doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D----?"
He said, "No, Madame."
"But," resumed the dowager, "you are wearing mourning for him."
He replied, "It is because I was a servant in his family in my youth."
Another thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he
encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the
country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned,
inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told each
other about it: a great many of them passed that way.
CHAPTER V--VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition
subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine,
in virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to,
blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than
ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely
disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards
1821 the moment arrived when the word "Monsieur le Maire" was pronounced
at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as "Monseigneur the Bishop"
had been pronounced in D---- in 1815. People came from a distance of ten
leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to differences,
he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one took him for the
judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he had for a soul the
book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of veneration, which in
the course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole
district.
One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped
this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his
opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct
kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there
existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and
upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies,
which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not
hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace,
and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible,
imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence
and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner
destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of
the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.
It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a
street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of
lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy
cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and
followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and
a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with
his lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be
translated by: "What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him
somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe."
This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one
of those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the
spectator's attention.
His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.
At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an
inspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginnings. Javert owed the post
which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of
the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris.
When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer
was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.
Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is
complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority.
Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.
It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should
be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual
of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal
creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived
by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the
tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man.
Sometimes even several of them at a time.
Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,
straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows
them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mere
shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full sense
of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realities
and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on
them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social
education, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of whatever sort
it may be, the utility which it contains.
This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the
terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound
question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which are
not man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny the
latent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.
Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man
there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us
to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.
The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves
there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as
he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.
Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be
Javert.
Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was
in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale
of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that
society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,--those who attack
it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these
two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable
foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an
inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He
entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an
inspector.
During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of
the South.
Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the
words, "human face," which we have just applied to Javert.
The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep
nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One
felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns
for the first time. When Javert laughed,--and his laugh was rare and
terrible,--his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth,
but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage
fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog;
when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little
skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and
fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent, central
frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed
up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.
This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments,
comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating
them,--respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes,
murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped
in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the state,
from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with scorn,
aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal threshold
of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand,
he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never
the wrong." On the other hand, he said, "These men are irremediably
lost. Nothing good can come from them." He fully shared the opinion of
those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know not what power
of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of authenticating, demons,
and who place a Styx at the base of society. He was stoical, serious,
austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His
glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung on
these two words: watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a
straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world;
he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his
functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man
who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if
the latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced his
mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that
sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal,
a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never
a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the
Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious
honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq.
Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who
withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de
Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things
which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare
that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappeared
beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under
his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his
cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves:
and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the
occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all
this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a
baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous
cudgel.
In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although
he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could
be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.
As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself,
he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with
humanity.
The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the
terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry
of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert
routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at
sight.
Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of
suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact;
but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a
question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that
embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.
He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the
world.
It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had
secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,
and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior
traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to
know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned
certain information in a certain district about a family which had
disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, "I
think I have him!" Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered
not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had
broken.
Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too
absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing
really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct
is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.
Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be
found to be provided with a better light than man.
Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness
and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.
One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an
impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.
CHAPTER VI--FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur
M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He approached.
An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen beneath his cart,
his horse having tumbled down.
This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at
that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent, an
ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which
was beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelevent had seen this simple
workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had filled
him with jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every occasion,
to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old man had
nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he
had turned carter.
The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was caught
in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole weight of the
vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily laden. Father
Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat in the most lamentable manner.
They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An unmethodical effort,
aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill him. It was impossible to
disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him.
Javert, who had come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a
jack-screw.
M. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.
"Help!" cried old Fauchelevent. "Who will be good and save the old man?"
M. Madeleine turned towards those present:--
"Is there a jack-screw to be had?"
"One has been sent for," answered the peasant.
"How long will it take to get it?"
"They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot's place, where there is a
farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an
hour."
"A quarter of an hour!" exclaimed Madeleine.
It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.
The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing
the old carter's breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs
would be broken in five minutes more.
"It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour," said Madeleine to
the peasants, who were staring at him.
"We must!"
"But it will be too late then! Don't you see that the cart is sinking?"
"Well!"
"Listen," resumed Madeleine; "there is still room enough under the cart
to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only half
a minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there any one here who
has stout loins and heart? There are five louis d'or to be earned!"
Not a man in the group stirred.
"Ten louis," said Madeleine.
The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: "A man
would need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting
crushed!"
"Come," began Madeleine again, "twenty louis."
The same silence.
"It is not the will which is lacking," said a voice.
M. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Javert. He had not noticed him
on his arrival.
Javert went on:--
"It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing
as lift a cart like that on his back."
Then, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every word
that he uttered:--
"Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing
what you ask."
Madeleine shuddered.
Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his eyes
from Madeleine:--
"He was a convict."
"Ah!" said Madeleine.
"In the galleys at Toulon."
Madeleine turned pale.
Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent
rattled in the throat, and shrieked:--
"I am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!"
Madeleine glanced about him.
"Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save the
life of this poor old man?"
No one stirred. Javert resumed:--
"I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw, and
he was that convict."
"Ah! It is crushing me!" cried the old man.
Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed upon
him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without
saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had
time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.
A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.
They beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible
weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows
together. They shouted to him, "Father Madeleine, come out!" Old
Fauchelevent himself said to him, "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! You see
that I am fated to die! Leave me! You will get yourself crushed also!"
Madeleine made no reply.
All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink, and
it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from under
the vehicle.
Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly, the
wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice crying,
"Make haste! Help!" It was Madeleine, who had just made a final effort.
They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and
courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent was
saved.
Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His
clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed
his knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon
his countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial
suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still
staring at him.
CHAPTER VII--FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS
Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneepan in his fall. Father Madeleine
had him conveyed to an infirmary which he had established for his
workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two
sisters of charity. On the following morning the old man found a
thousand-franc bank-note on his night-stand, with these words in Father
Madeleine's writing: _"I purchase your horse and cart."_ The cart was
broken, and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent recovered, but his knee
remained stiff. M. Madeleine, on the recommendation of the sisters of
charity and of his priest, got the good man a place as gardener in a
female convent in the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.
Some time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time
that Javert beheld M. Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave him
authority over the town, he felt the sort of shudder which a watch-dog
might experience on smelling a wolf in his master's clothes. From
that time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the
requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could
not do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound
respect.
This prosperity created at M. sur M. by Father Madeleine had, besides
the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was
none the less significant for not being visible. This never deceives.
When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no
commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and
oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in
the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when
the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the
state nothing. It may be said, that there is one infallible thermometer
of the public misery and riches,--the cost of collecting the taxes.
In the course of seven years the expense of collecting the taxes had
diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M., and this
led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by
M. de Villèle, then Minister of Finance.
Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither. No
one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine's factory was
like the face of a friend. She presented herself there, and was admitted
to the women's workroom. The trade was entirely new to Fantine; she
could not be very skilful at it, and she therefore earned but little by
her day's work; but it was sufficient; the problem was solved; she was
earning her living.
CHAPTER VIII--MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY
When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a
moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy from heaven! The
taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass,
took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine
teeth; she forgot many things; she thought only of Cosette and of the
possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little room and
furnished on credit on the strength of her future work--a lingering
trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was
married she took good care, as we have seen, not to mention her little
girl.
At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thénardiers promptly. As
she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write through a
public letter-writer.
She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in an
undertone, in the women's workroom, that Fantine "wrote letters" and
that "she had ways about her."
There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are
not concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except at
nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-So never hang his key on its nail on
Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame
always descend from her hackney-coach before reaching her house? Why
does she send out to purchase six sheets of note paper, when she has a
"whole stationer's shop full of it?" etc. There exist beings who, for
the sake of obtaining the key to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of
no consequence whatever to them, spend more money, waste more time,
take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and
that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other
payment for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such and
such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty for hours
at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way doors at night,
in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters, they will make the
drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid, suborn
a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing,
and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And often
these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas
illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels,
failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy
of those who have "found out everything," without any interest in the
matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing.
Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking.
Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of the
anteroom, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they need
a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by
their neighbors.
So Fantine was watched.
In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her white
teeth.
It was remarked that in the workroom she often turned aside, in the
midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she
was thinking of her child; perhaps, also, of the man whom she had loved.
Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.
It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she
paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address:
_Monsieur, Monsieur Thénardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil_. The public
writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach with red wine
without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the
wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a child. "She
must be a pretty sort of a woman." An old gossip was found, who made the
trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thénardiers, and said on her return:
"For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have seen the
child."
The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the
guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue. Madame Victurnien was
fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age.
A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been
young--astonishing fact! In her youth, in '93, she had married a
monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from
the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp,
captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow
she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his
will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible.
At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy
that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property,
which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community.
She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame
Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, "I have
seen the child."
All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for more than a
year, when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed her
fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed
in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor's name, to leave the
neighborhood.
This was the very month when the Thénardiers, after having demanded
twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead of
twelve.
Fantine was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood; she was
in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient
to cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The
superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides,
Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even
more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room.
So her fault was now known to every one.
She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to
see the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs
because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She
bowed before the decision.
CHAPTER IX--MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS
So the monk's widow was good for something.
But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just
such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost
never entering the women's workroom.
At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom
the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this
superintendent,--a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright,
full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same
degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving.
M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often obliged
to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and the
conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had
instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.
As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M.
Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving
assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.
Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood;
she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not
leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her
furniture--and what furniture!--said to her, "If you leave, I will have
you arrested as a thief." The householder, whom she owed for her rent,
said to her, "You are young and pretty; you can pay." She divided the
fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to
the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found
herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and
still about fifty francs in debt.
She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned
twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that
she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly.
However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned
at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on
little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the
first is dark, the second is black.
Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to
give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of millet every
two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat, and a petticoat of
one's coverlet; how to save one's candle, by taking one's meals by
the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble
creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of
a sou. It ends by being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent,
and regained a little courage.
At this epoch she said to a neighbor, "Bah! I say to myself, by only
sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing,
I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is
sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one
hand, trouble on the other,--all this will support me."
It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her in
this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make her
share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Thénardiers!
How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?
The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life
of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious
with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even
towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself
Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.
There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they
will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.
At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.
When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind
her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted her;
the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh
and soul like a north wind.
It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the
sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no
one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have
liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!
She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed
herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the
expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to
go about as though there were nothing the matter. "It is all the same to
me," she said.
She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and
was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.
Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed
the distress of "that creature" who, "thanks to her," had been "put back
in her proper place," and congratulated herself. The happiness of the
evil-minded is black.
Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which troubled
her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, "Just
feel how hot my hands are!"
Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with
an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she
experienced a moment of happy coquetry.
CHAPTER X--RESULT OF THE SUCCESS
She had been dismissed towards the end of the winter; the summer passed,
but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth,
no light, no noonday, the evening joining on to the morning, fogs,
twilight; the window is gray; it is impossible to see clearly at it. The
sky is but a vent-hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has the air
of a beggar. A frightful season! Winter changes the water of heaven and
the heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harrassed her.
Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thénardiers, who
were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents
drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wrote
to her that her little Cosette was entirely naked in that cold weather,
that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least
ten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed it in her
hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber's shop at the
corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair
fell to her knees.
"What splendid hair!" exclaimed the barber.
"How much will you give me for it?" said she.
"Ten francs."
"Cut it off."
She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thénardiers. This
petticoat made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that they
wanted. They gave the petticoat to Éponine. The poor Lark continued to
shiver.
Fantine thought: "My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with my
hair." She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head, and
in which she was still pretty.
Dark thoughts held possession of Fantine's heart.
When she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate
every one about her. She had long shared the universal veneration for
Father Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself that it was he
who had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, she
came to hate him also, and most of all. When she passed the factory in
working hours, when the workpeople were at the door, she affected to
laugh and sing.
An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion
said, "There's a girl who will come to a bad end."
She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love,
out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp,
a sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and who
abandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust.
She adored her child.
The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the more
radiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said,
"When I get rich, I will have my Cosette with me;" and she laughed. Her
cough did not leave her, and she had sweats on her back.
One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter couched in the
following terms: "Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the rounds
of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are
required. This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them. If you
do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will
be dead."
She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: "Ah! they are
good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two napoleons! Where do they
think I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly."
Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the
letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running and
leaping and still laughing.
Some one met her and said to her, "What makes you so gay?"
She replied: "A fine piece of stupidity that some country people have
written to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you, you
peasants!"
As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected around
a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressed
in red, who was holding forth. He was a quack dentist on his rounds,
who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders and
elixirs.
Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest at
the harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for
respectable people. The tooth-puller espied the lovely, laughing girl,
and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who
are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you a
gold napoleon apiece for them."
"What are my palettes?" asked Fantine.
"The palettes," replied the dental professor, "are the front teeth, the
two upper ones."
"How horrible!" exclaimed Fantine.
"Two napoleons!" grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. "Here's
a lucky girl!"
Fantine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse
voice of the man shouting to her: "Reflect, my beauty! two napoleons;
they may prove of service. If your heart bids you, come this evening to
the inn of the _Tillac d'Argent_; you will find me there."
Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to
her good neighbor Marguerite: "Can you understand such a thing? Is he
not an abominable man? How can they allow such people to go about the
country! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My hair
will grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man! I should
prefer to throw myself head first on the pavement from the fifth story!
He told me that he should be at the _Tillac d'Argent_ this evening."
"And what did he offer?" asked Marguerite.
"Two napoleons."
"That makes forty francs."
"Yes," said Fantine; "that makes forty francs."
She remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration of a
quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the Thénardiers'
letter once more on the staircase.
On her return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:--
"What is a miliary fever? Do you know?"
"Yes," answered the old spinster; "it is a disease."
"Does it require many drugs?"
"Oh! terrible drugs."
"How does one get it?"
"It is a malady that one gets without knowing how."
"Then it attacks children?"
"Children in particular."
"Do people die of it?"
"They may," said Marguerite.
Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on the
staircase.
That evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in the
direction of the Rue de Paris, where the inns are situated.
The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine's room before
daylight,--for they always worked together, and in this manner used only
one candle for the two,--she found Fantine seated on her bed, pale and
frozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her knees.
Her candle had burned all night, and was almost entirely consumed.
Marguerite halted on the threshold, petrified at this tremendous
wastefulness, and exclaimed:--
"Lord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened."
Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft of its
hair.
Fantine had grown ten years older since the preceding night.
"Jesus!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you, Fantine?"
"Nothing," replied Fantine. "Quite the contrary. My child will not die
of that frightful malady, for lack of succor. I am content."
So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which were
glittering on the table.
"Ah! Jesus God!" cried Marguerite. "Why, it is a fortune! Where did you
get those louis d'or?"
"I got them," replied Fantine.
At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It
was a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips, and
she had a black hole in her mouth.
The two teeth had been extracted.
She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.
After all it was a ruse of the Thénardiers to obtain money. Cosette was
not ill.
Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quitted
her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten
it, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms an angle
with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The poor
occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his
destiny, only by bending over more and more.
She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress
on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebush
which she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner. In the other
corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in winter, and in
which the various levels of the water remained long marked by these
circles of ice. She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry. A final
sign. She went out, with dirty caps. Whether from lack of time or from
indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels wore out,
she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from the
perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn
out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement. The
people to whom she was indebted made "scenes" and gave her no peace.
She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She
passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright,
and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the
left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated Father
Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a day; but
a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a
discount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earnings
of working-women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous a
day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer,
who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said to her incessantly,
"When will you pay me, you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God!
She felt that she was being hunted, and something of the wild beast
developed in her. About the same time, Thénardier wrote to her that he
had waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a
hundred francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Cosette out of
doors, convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold and
the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself, and die
if she chose. "A hundred francs," thought Fantine. "But in what trade
can one earn a hundred sous a day?"
"Come!" said she, "let us sell what is left."
The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.
CHAPTER XI--CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT
What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave.
From whom? From misery.
From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain. A soul
for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.
The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does
not, as yet, permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from
European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs
only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution.
It weighs upon the woman, that is to say, upon grace, weakness, beauty,
maternity. This is not one of the least of man's disgraces.
At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing
is left to Fantine of that which she had formerly been.
She has become marble in becoming mire. Whoever touches her feels cold.
She passes; she endures you; she ignores you; she is the severe and
dishonored figure. Life and the social order have said their last word
for her. All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has
felt everything, borne everything, experienced everything, suffered
everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with
that resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles sleep.
She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all
the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to her? She is a sponge that
is soaked.
At least, she believes it to be so; but it is an error to imagine that
fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything
whatever.
Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they
going? Why are they thus?
He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow.
He is alone. His name is God.
CHAPTER XII--M. BAMATABOIS'S INACTIVITY
There is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular,
a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred
francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred
thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter
species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers, who have a little land, a
little folly, a little wit; who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and
who think themselves gentlemen in the dram-shop; who say, "My fields,
my peasants, my woods"; who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that
they are persons of taste; quarrel with the officers of the garrison
to prove that they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of
tobacco, play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the
diligence, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the
bones under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table;
who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy, despise
women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris, and Paris
through the medium of Pont-à-Mousson, grow old as dullards, never work,
serve no use, and do no great harm.
M. Félix Tholomyès, had he remained in his own province and never beheld
Paris, would have been one of these men.
If they were richer, one would say, "They are dandies;" if they were
poorer, one would say, "They are idlers." They are simply men without
employment. Among these unemployed there are bores, the bored, dreamers,
and some knaves.
At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat, a
watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one on top of
the other--the red and blue inside; of a short-waisted olive coat, with
a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons set close to each other
and running up to the shoulder; and a pair of trousers of a lighter
shade of olive, ornamented on the two seams with an indefinite, but
always uneven, number of lines, varying from one to eleven--a limit
which was never exceeded. Add to this, high shoes with little irons
on the heels, a tall hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an
enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all,
spurs and a mustache. At that epoch mustaches indicated the bourgeois,
and spurs the pedestrian.
The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of
mustaches.
It was the period of the conflict of the republics of South America with
the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats
were royalist, and were called _morillos_; liberals wore hats with wide
brims, which were called _bolivars_.
Eight or ten months, then, after that which is related in the preceding
pages, towards the first of January, 1823, on a snowy evening, one of
these dandies, one of these unemployed, a "right thinker," for he wore
a morillo, and was, moreover, warmly enveloped in one of those large
cloaks which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather, was
amusing himself by tormenting a creature who was prowling about in a
ball-dress, with neck uncovered and flowers in her hair, in front of
the officers' café. This dandy was smoking, for he was decidedly
fashionable.
Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her,
together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he considered
witty and mirthful, such as, "How ugly you are!--Will you get out of my
sight?--You have no teeth!" etc., etc. This gentleman was known as M.
Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy, decorated spectre which went and
came through the snow, made him no reply, did not even glance at him,
and nevertheless continued her promenade in silence, and with a sombre
regularity, which brought her every five minutes within reach of this
sarcasm, like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. The
small effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking
advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up behind her
with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down, picked up a
handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly into her back,
between her bare shoulders. The woman uttered a roar, whirled round,
gave a leap like a panther, and hurled herself upon the man, burying her
nails in his face, with the most frightful words which could fall from
the guard-room into the gutter. These insults, poured forth in a voice
roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in hideous wise from a mouth
which lacked its two front teeth. It was Fantine.
At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from the
café, passers-by collected, and a large and merry circle, hooting and
applauding, was formed around this whirlwind composed of two beings,
whom there was some difficulty in recognizing as a man and a woman: the
man struggling, his hat on the ground; the woman striking out with feet
and fists, bareheaded, howling, minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath,
horrible.
Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd,
seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud, and
said to her, "Follow me!"
The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. Her
eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she trembled
with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert.
The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.
CHAPTER XIII--THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE
MUNICIPAL POLICE
Javert thrust aside the spectators, broke the circle, and set out
with long strides towards the police station, which is situated at the
extremity of the square, dragging the wretched woman after him. She
yielded mechanically. Neither he nor she uttered a word. The cloud of
spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight. Supreme misery
an occasion for obscenity.
On arriving at the police station, which was a low room, warmed by a
stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded
by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut
the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who
raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front of the
thick glass of the station-house, in their effort to see. Curiosity is a
sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.
On entering, Fantine fell down in a corner, motionless and mute,
crouching down like a terrified dog.
The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table. Javert
seated himself, drew a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began
to write.
This class of women is consigned by our laws entirely to the discretion
of the police. The latter do what they please, punish them, as seems
good to them, and confiscate at their will those two sorry things which
they entitle their industry and their liberty. Javert was impassive; his
grave face betrayed no emotion whatever. Nevertheless, he was seriously
and deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments when he was
exercising without control, but subject to all the scruples of a severe
conscience, his redoubtable discretionary power. At that moment he was
conscious that his police agent's stool was a tribunal. He was entering
judgment. He judged and condemned. He summoned all the ideas which could
possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he was doing.
The more he examined the deed of this woman, the more shocked he felt.
It was evident that he had just witnessed the commission of a crime.
He had just beheld, yonder, in the street, society, in the person of a
freeholder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was
outside all pales. A prostitute had made an attempt on the life of a
citizen. He had seen that, he, Javert. He wrote in silence.
When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the
sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, "Take three men and
conduct this creature to jail."
Then, turning to Fantine, "You are to have six months of it." The
unhappy woman shuddered.
"Six months! six months of prison!" she exclaimed. "Six months in which
to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter!
my daughter! But I still owe the Thénardiers over a hundred francs; do
you know that, Monsieur Inspector?"
She dragged herself across the damp floor, among the muddy boots of all
those men, without rising, with clasped hands, and taking great strides
on her knees.
"Monsieur Javert," said she, "I beseech your mercy. I assure you that
I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have
seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was not to blame! That
gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know, put snow in my back. Has
any one the right to put snow down our backs when we are walking along
peaceably, and doing no harm to any one? I am rather ill, as you see.
And then, he had been saying impertinent things to me for a long time:
'You are ugly! you have no teeth!' I know well that I have no longer
those teeth. I did nothing; I said to myself, 'The gentleman is amusing
himself.' I was honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at that
moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur
Inspector! is there not some person here who saw it and can tell you
that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry. You know that
one is not master of one's self at the first moment. One gives way to
vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down your
back just when you are not expecting it! I did wrong to spoil that
gentleman's hat. Why did he go away? I would ask his pardon. Oh, my God!
It makes no difference to me whether I ask his pardon. Do me the favor
to-day, for this once, Monsieur Javert. Hold! you do not know that in
prison one can earn only seven sous a day; it is not the government's
fault, but seven sous is one's earnings; and just fancy, I must pay
one hundred francs, or my little girl will be sent to me. Oh, my God!
I cannot have her with me. What I do is so vile! Oh, my Cosette! Oh, my
little angel of the Holy Virgin! what will become of her, poor creature?
I will tell you: it is the Thénardiers, inn-keepers, peasants; and such
people are unreasonable. They want money. Don't put me in prison! You
see, there is a little girl who will be turned out into the street to
get along as best she may, in the very heart of the winter; and you must
have pity on such a being, my good Monsieur Javert. If she were older,
she might earn her living; but it cannot be done at that age. I am not a
bad woman at bottom. It is not cowardliness and gluttony that have made
me what I am. If I have drunk brandy, it was out of misery. I do not
love it; but it benumbs the senses. When I was happy, it was only
necessary to glance into my closets, and it would have been evident that
I was not a coquettish and untidy woman. I had linen, a great deal of
linen. Have pity on me, Monsieur Javert!"
She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears,
her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short cough,
stammering softly with a voice of agony. Great sorrow is a divine and
terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy. At that moment Fantine had
become beautiful once more. From time to time she paused, and tenderly
kissed the police agent's coat. She would have softened a heart of
granite; but a heart of wood cannot be softened.
"Come!" said Javert, "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished?
You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could
do nothing more."
At these solemn words, _"the Eternal Father in person could do nothing
more,"_ she understood that her fate was sealed. She sank down,
murmuring, "Mercy!"
Javert turned his back.
The soldiers seized her by the arms.
A few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid any heed
to him. He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and listened to
Fantine's despairing supplications.
At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the unfortunate
woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:--
"One moment, if you please."
Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his hat,
and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:--
"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor--"
The words "Mr. Mayor" produced a curious effect upon Fantine. She rose
to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from the earth,
thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to M.
Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him,
with a bewildered air, she cried:--
"Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!"
Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.
M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:--
"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."
Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad. He experienced at
that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most violent
emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life. To see a woman of
the town spit in the mayor's face was a thing so monstrous that, in his
most daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sacrilege
to believe it possible. On the other hand, at the very bottom of his
thought, he made a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as
to what this mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse
of I know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack. But
when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and
say, _"Set this woman at liberty,"_ he underwent a sort of intoxication
of amazement; thought and word failed him equally; the sum total of
possible astonishment had been exceeded in his case. He remained mute.
The words had produced no less strange an effect on Fantine. She raised
her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove, like a person who
is reeling. Nevertheless, she glanced about her, and began to speak in a
low voice, as though talking to herself:--
"At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison for six
months! Who said that? It is not possible that any one could have said
that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that monster of a
mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert, who said that I was to be
set free? Oh, see here! I will tell you about it, and you will let me
go. That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard of a mayor, is the
cause of all. Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he turned me out! all
because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If that
is not a horror, what is? To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her
work honestly! Then I could no longer earn enough, and all this misery
followed. In the first place, there is one improvement which these
gentlemen of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison
contractors from wronging poor people. I will explain it to you, you
see: you are earning twelve sous at shirt-making, the price falls to
nine sous; and it is not enough to live on. Then one has to become
whatever one can. As for me, I had my little Cosette, and I was actually
forced to become a bad woman. Now you understand how it is that that
blackguard of a mayor caused all the mischief. After that I stamped on
that gentleman's hat in front of the officers' café; but he had spoiled
my whole dress with snow. We women have but one silk dress for evening
wear. You see that I did not do wrong deliberately--truly, Monsieur
Javert; and everywhere I behold women who are far more wicked than I,
and who are much happier. O Monsieur Javert! it was you who gave orders
that I am to be set free, was it not? Make inquiries, speak to my
landlord; I am paying my rent now; they will tell you that I am
perfectly honest. Ah! my God! I beg your pardon; I have unintentionally
touched the damper of the stove, and it has made it smoke."
M. Madeleine listened to her with profound attention. While she was
speaking, he fumbled in his waistcoat, drew out his purse and opened
it. It was empty. He put it back in his pocket. He said to Fantine, "How
much did you say that you owed?"
Fantine, who was looking at Javert only, turned towards him:--
"Was I speaking to you?"
Then, addressing the soldiers:--
"Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old
wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I'm not afraid of
you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert. I am afraid of my good Monsieur
Javert!"
So saying, she turned to the inspector again:--
"And yet, you see, Mr. Inspector, it is necessary to be just. I
understand that you are just, Mr. Inspector; in fact, it is perfectly
simple: a man amuses himself by putting snow down a woman's back, and
that makes the officers laugh; one must divert themselves in some way;
and we--well, we are here for them to amuse themselves with, of course!
And then, you, you come; you are certainly obliged to preserve order,
you lead off the woman who is in the wrong; but on reflection, since you
are a good man, you say that I am to be set at liberty; it is for
the sake of the little one, for six months in prison would prevent my
supporting my child. 'Only, don't do it again, you hussy!' Oh! I won't
do it again, Monsieur Javert! They may do whatever they please to me
now; I will not stir. But to-day, you see, I cried because it hurt me.
I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then as I
told you, I am not well; I have a cough; I seem to have a burning ball
in my stomach, and the doctor tells me, 'Take care of yourself.' Here,
feel, give me your hand; don't be afraid--it is here."
She no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed Javert's coarse
hand on her delicate, white throat and looked smilingly at him.
All at once she rapidly adjusted her disordered garments, dropped the
folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as she dragged herself
along, almost to the height of her knee, and stepped towards the door,
saying to the soldiers in a low voice, and with a friendly nod:--
"Children, Monsieur l'Inspecteur has said that I am to be released, and
I am going."
She laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more and she would
be in the street.
Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes
fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced statue,
which is waiting to be put away somewhere.
The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression
of sovereign authority, an expression all the more alarming in
proportion as the authority rests on a low level, ferocious in the wild
beast, atrocious in the man of no estate.
"Sergeant!" he cried, "don't you see that that jade is walking off! Who
bade you let her go?"
"I," said Madeleine.
Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert's voice, and let go of the latch
as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the sound
of Madeleine's voice she turned around, and from that moment forth she
uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely, but her glance
strayed from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert to Madeleine in turn,
according to which was speaking.
It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond measure
before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant as he
had done, after the mayor's suggestion that Fantine should be set at
liberty. Had he reached the point of forgetting the mayor's presence?
Had he finally declared to himself that it was impossible that any
"authority" should have given such an order, and that the mayor must
certainly have said one thing by mistake for another, without intending
it? Or, in view of the enormities of which he had been a witness for the
past two hours, did he say to himself, that it was necessary to recur to
supreme resolutions, that it was indispensable that the small should
be made great, that the police spy should transform himself into a
magistrate, that the policeman should become a dispenser of justice, and
that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government,
society in its entirety, was personified in him, Javert?
However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, _I_, as we
have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward the
mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair, his whole body
agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented occurrence, and
say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:--
"Mr. Mayor, that cannot be."
"Why not?" said M. Madeleine.
"This miserable woman has insulted a citizen."
"Inspector Javert," replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone,
"listen. You are an honest man, and I feel no hesitation in explaining
matters to you. Here is the true state of the case: I was passing
through the square just as you were leading this woman away; there were
still groups of people standing about, and I made inquiries and learned
everything; it was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should have
been arrested by properly conducted police."
Javert retorted:--
"This wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire."
"That concerns me," said M. Madeleine. "My own insult belongs to me, I
think. I can do what I please about it."
"I beg Monsieur le Maire's pardon. The insult is not to him but to the
law."
"Inspector Javert," replied M. Madeleine, "the highest law is
conscience. I have heard this woman; I know what I am doing."
"And I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see."
"Then content yourself with obeying."
"I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve six
months in prison."
M. Madeleine replied gently:--
"Heed this well; she will not serve a single day."
At this decisive word, Javert ventured to fix a searching look on the
mayor and to say, but in a tone of voice that was still profoundly
respectful:--
"I am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time in my
life, but he will permit me to remark that I am within the bounds of my
authority. I confine myself, since Monsieur le Maire desires it, to the
question of the gentleman. I was present. This woman flung herself
on Monsieur Bamatabnois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that
handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade,
three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are
in the world! In any case, Monsieur le Maire, this is a question of
police regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain
this woman Fantine."
Then M. Madeleine folded his arms, and said in a severe voice which no
one in the town had heard hitherto:--
"The matter to which you refer is one connected with the municipal
police. According to the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and
sixty-six of the code of criminal examination, I am the judge. I order
that this woman shall be set at liberty."
Javert ventured to make a final effort.
"But, Mr. Mayor--"
"I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December,
1799, in regard to arbitrary detention."
"Monsieur le Maire, permit me--"
"Not another word."
"But--"
"Leave the room," said M. Madeleine.
Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast, like
a Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor and left
the room.
Fantine stood aside from the door and stared at him in amazement as he
passed.
Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had just
seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She had
seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul,
her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was drawing
her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards the light.
In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of terror, these two
men had appeared to her like two giants; the one spoke like her demon,
the other like her good angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and,
strange to say, that which made her shudder from head to foot was
the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom she
abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as the author of all
her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had insulted
him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been
mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she
trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and
at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of
hatred crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable,
indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her
heart.
When Javert had taken his departure, M. Madeleine turned to her and said
to her in a deliberate voice, like a serious man who does not wish to
weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:--
"I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I
believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even ignorant
of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply to me? But
here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child, or you shall go
to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where you please. I undertake
the care of your child and yourself. You shall not work any longer if
you do not like. I will give all the money you require. You shall be
honest and happy once more. And listen! I declare to you that if all
is as you say,--and I do not doubt it,--you have never ceased to be
virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman."
This was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave this
life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Cosette; to
see all these realities of paradise blossom of a sudden in the midst of
her misery. She stared stupidly at this man who was talking to her, and
could only give vent to two or three sobs, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Her limbs gave way beneath her, she knelt in front of M. Madeleine, and
before he could prevent her he felt her grasp his hand and press her
lips to it.
Then she fainted.
BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT
CHAPTER I--THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE
M. Madeleine had Fantine removed to that infirmary which he had
established in his own house. He confided her to the sisters, who put
her to bed. A burning fever had come on. She passed a part of the night
in delirium and raving. At length, however, she fell asleep.
On the morrow, towards midday, Fantine awoke. She heard some one
breathing close to her bed; she drew aside the curtain and saw M.
Madeleine standing there and looking at something over her head. His
gaze was full of pity, anguish, and supplication. She followed its
direction, and saw that it was fixed on a crucifix which was nailed to
the wall.
Thenceforth, M. Madeleine was transfigured in Fantine's eyes. He seemed
to her to be clothed in light. He was absorbed in a sort of prayer. She
gazed at him for a long time without daring to interrupt him. At last
she said timidly:--
"What are you doing?"
M. Madeleine had been there for an hour. He had been waiting for Fantine
to awake. He took her hand, felt of her pulse, and replied:--
"How do you feel?"
"Well, I have slept," she replied; "I think that I am better. It is
nothing."
He answered, responding to the first question which she had put to him
as though he had just heard it:--
"I was praying to the martyr there on high."
And he added in his own mind, "For the martyr here below."
M. Madeleine had passed the night and the morning in making inquiries.
He knew all now. He knew Fantine's history in all its heart-rending
details. He went on:--
"You have suffered much, poor mother. Oh! do not complain; you now have
the dowry of the elect. It is thus that men are transformed into angels.
It is not their fault they do not know how to go to work otherwise.
You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the first form of
heaven. It was necessary to begin there."
He sighed deeply. But she smiled on him with that sublime smile in which
two teeth were lacking.
That same night, Javert wrote a letter. The next morning be posted it
himself at the office of M. sur M. It was addressed to Paris, and the
superscription ran: _To Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary of Monsieur le
Préfet of Police_. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited
about, the post-mistress and some other persons who saw the letter
before it was sent off, and who recognized Javert's handwriting on the
cover, thought that he was sending in his resignation.
M. Madeleine made haste to write to the Thénardiers. Fantine owed
them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs,
telling them to pay themselves from that sum, and to fetch the child
instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence.
This dazzled Thénardier. "The devil!" said the man to his wife; "don't
let's allow the child to go. This lark is going to turn into a milch
cow. I see through it. Some ninny has taken a fancy to the mother."
He replied with a very well drawn-up bill for five hundred and some odd
francs. In this memorandum two indisputable items figured up over three
hundred francs,--one for the doctor, the other for the apothecary
who had attended and physicked Éponine and Azelma through two long
illnesses. Cosette, as we have already said, had not been ill. It was
only a question of a trifling substitution of names. At the foot of
the memorandum Thénardier wrote, _Received on account, three hundred
francs_.
M. Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote,
"Make haste to bring Cosette."
"Christi!" said Thénardier, "let's not give up the child."
In the meantime, Fantine did not recover. She still remained in the
infirmary.
The sisters had at first only received and nursed "that woman" with
repugnance. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs of Rheims will recall
the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins as they survey the
foolish virgins. The ancient scorn of the vestals for the ambubajæ is
one of the most profound instincts of feminine dignity; the sisters
felt it with the double force contributed by religion. But in a few days
Fantine disarmed them. She said all kinds of humble and gentle things,
and the mother in her provoked tenderness. One day the sisters heard
her say amid her fever: "I have been a sinner; but when I have my child
beside me, it will be a sign that God has pardoned me. While I was
leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my Cosette with me;
I could not have borne her sad, astonished eyes. It was for her sake
that I did evil, and that is why God pardons me. I shall feel the
benediction of the good God when Cosette is here. I shall gaze at her;
it will do me good to see that innocent creature. She knows nothing at
all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters. At that age the wings have
not fallen off."
M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and each time she asked him:--
"Shall I see my Cosette soon?"
He answered:--
"To-morrow, perhaps. She may arrive at any moment. I am expecting her."
And the mother's pale face grew radiant.
"Oh!" she said, "how happy I am going to be!"
We have just said that she did not recover her health. On the contrary,
her condition seemed to become more grave from week to week. That
handful of snow applied to her bare skin between her shoulder-blades had
brought about a sudden suppression of perspiration, as a consequence of
which the malady which had been smouldering within her for many years
was violently developed at last. At that time people were beginning to
follow the fine Laënnec's fine suggestions in the study and treatment of
chest maladies. The doctor sounded Fantine's chest and shook his head.
M. Madeleine said to the doctor:--
"Well?"
"Has she not a child which she desires to see?" said the doctor.
"Yes."
"Well! Make haste and get it here!"
M. Madeleine shuddered.
Fantine inquired:--
"What did the doctor say?"
M. Madeleine forced himself to smile.
"He said that your child was to be brought speedily. That that would
restore your health."
"Oh!" she rejoined, "he is right! But what do those Thénardiers mean
by keeping my Cosette from me! Oh! she is coming. At last I behold
happiness close beside me!"
In the meantime Thénardier did not "let go of the child," and gave a
hundred insufficient reasons for it. Cosette was not quite well enough
to take a journey in the winter. And then, there still remained some
petty but pressing debts in the neighborhood, and they were collecting
the bills for them, etc., etc.
"I shall send some one to fetch Cosette!" said Father Madeleine. "If
necessary, I will go myself."
He wrote the following letter to Fantine's dictation, and made her sign
it:--
"MONSIEUR THÉNARDIER:-- You will deliver Cosette to this person.
You will be paid for all the little things.
I have the honor to salute you with respect.
"FANTINE."
In the meantime a serious incident occurred. Carve as we will the
mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny
constantly reappears in it.
CHAPTER II--HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP
One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, occupied in arranging in
advance some pressing matters connected with the mayor's office, in case
he should decide to take the trip to Montfermeil, when he was informed
that Police Inspector Javert was desirous of speaking with him.
Madeleine could not refrain from a disagreeable impression on hearing
this name. Javert had avoided him more than ever since the affair of the
police-station, and M. Madeleine had not seen him.
"Admit him," he said.
Javert entered.
M. Madeleine had retained his seat near the fire, pen in hand, his eyes
fixed on the docket which he was turning over and annotating, and which
contained the trials of the commission on highways for the infraction of
police regulations. He did not disturb himself on Javert's account. He
could not help thinking of poor Fantine, and it suited him to be glacial
in his manner.
Javert bestowed a respectful salute on the mayor, whose back was turned
to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went on annotating this
docket.
Javert advanced two or three paces into the study, and halted, without
breaking the silence.
If any physiognomist who had been familiar with Javert, and who had
made a lengthy study of this savage in the service of civilization,
this singular composite of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk, and the
corporal, this spy who was incapable of a lie, this unspotted police
agent--if any physiognomist had known his secret and long-cherished
aversion for M. Madeleine, his conflict with the mayor on the subject of
Fantine, and had examined Javert at that moment, he would have said to
himself, "What has taken place?" It was evident to any one acquainted
with that clear, upright, sincere, honest, austere, and ferocious
conscience, that Javert had but just gone through some great interior
struggle. Javert had nothing in his soul which he had not also in his
countenance. Like violent people in general, he was subject to abrupt
changes of opinion. His physiognomy had never been more peculiar and
startling. On entering he bowed to M. Madeleine with a look in which
there was neither rancor, anger, nor distrust; he halted a few paces in
the rear of the mayor's arm-chair, and there he stood, perfectly erect,
in an attitude almost of discipline, with the cold, ingenuous roughness
of a man who has never been gentle and who has always been patient; he
waited without uttering a word, without making a movement, in genuine
humility and tranquil resignation, calm, serious, hat in hand, with
eyes cast down, and an expression which was half-way between that of a
soldier in the presence of his officer and a criminal in the presence
of his judge, until it should please the mayor to turn round. All the
sentiments as well as all the memories which one might have attributed
to him had disappeared. That face, as impenetrable and simple as
granite, no longer bore any trace of anything but a melancholy
depression. His whole person breathed lowliness and firmness and an
indescribable courageous despondency.
At last the mayor laid down his pen and turned half round.
"Well! What is it? What is the matter, Javert?"
Javert remained silent for an instant as though collecting his ideas,
then raised his voice with a sort of sad solemnity, which did not,
however, preclude simplicity.
"This is the matter, Mr. Mayor; a culpable act has been committed."
"What act?"
"An inferior agent of the authorities has failed in respect, and in the
gravest manner, towards a magistrate. I have come to bring the fact to
your knowledge, as it is my duty to do."
"Who is the agent?" asked M. Madeleine.
"I," said Javert.
"You?"
"I."
"And who is the magistrate who has reason to complain of the agent?"
"You, Mr. Mayor."
M. Madeleine sat erect in his arm-chair. Javert went on, with a severe
air and his eyes still cast down.
"Mr. Mayor, I have come to request you to instigate the authorities to
dismiss me."
M. Madeleine opened his mouth in amazement. Javert interrupted him:--
"You will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that does
not suffice. Handing in one's resignation is honorable. I have failed in
my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out."
And after a pause he added:--
"Mr. Mayor, you were severe with me the other day, and unjustly. Be so
to-day, with justice."
"Come, now! Why?" exclaimed M. Madeleine. "What nonsense is this?
What is the meaning of this? What culpable act have you been guilty of
towards me? What have you done to me? What are your wrongs with regard
to me? You accuse yourself; you wish to be superseded--"
"Turned out," said Javert.
"Turned out; so it be, then. That is well. I do not understand."
"You shall understand, Mr. Mayor."
Javert sighed from the very bottom of his chest, and resumed, still
coldly and sadly:--
"Mr. Mayor, six weeks ago, in consequence of the scene over that woman,
I was furious, and I informed against you."
"Informed against me!"
"At the Prefecture of Police in Paris."
M. Madeleine, who was not in the habit of laughing much oftener than
Javert himself, burst out laughing now:--
"As a mayor who had encroached on the province of the police?"
"As an ex-convict."
The mayor turned livid.
Javert, who had not raised his eyes, went on:--
"I thought it was so. I had had an idea for a long time; a resemblance;
inquiries which you had caused to be made at Faverolles; the strength
of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in
marksmanship; your leg, which you drag a little;--I hardly know what
all,--absurdities! But, at all events, I took you for a certain Jean
Valjean."
"A certain--What did you say the name was?"
"Jean Valjean. He was a convict whom I was in the habit of seeing twenty
years ago, when I was adjutant-guard of convicts at Toulon. On leaving
the galleys, this Jean Valjean, as it appears, robbed a bishop; then he
committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public highway
on the person of a little Savoyard. He disappeared eight years ago, no
one knows how, and he has been sought, I fancied. In short, I did this
thing! Wrath impelled me; I denounced you at the Prefecture!"
M. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments before
this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:--
"And what reply did you receive?"
"That I was mad."
"Well?"
"Well, they were right."
"It is lucky that you recognize the fact."
"I am forced to do so, since the real Jean Valjean has been found."
The sheet of paper which M. Madeleine was holding dropped from his
hand; he raised his head, gazed fixedly at Javert, and said with his
indescribable accent:--
"Ah!"
Javert continued:--
"This is the way it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in the
neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called
Father Champmathieu. He was a very wretched creature. No one paid any
attention to him. No one knows what such people subsist on. Lately, last
autumn, Father Champmathieu was arrested for the theft of some cider
apples from--Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled,
branches of trees broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had
the branch of apple-tree in his hand. The scamp is locked up. Up to
this point it was merely an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where
Providence intervened.
"The jail being in a bad condition, the examining magistrate finds it
convenient to transfer Champmathieu to Arras, where the departmental
prison is situated. In this prison at Arras there is an ex-convict named
Brevet, who is detained for I know not what, and who has been appointed
turnkey of the house, because of good behavior. Mr. Mayor, no sooner had
Champmathieu arrived than Brevet exclaims: 'Eh! Why, I know that man!
He is a _fagot!_4 Take a good look at me, my good man! You are Jean
Valjean!' 'Jean Valjean! who's Jean Valjean?' Champmathieu feigns
astonishment. 'Don't play the innocent dodge,' says Brevet. 'You are
Jean Valjean! You have been in the galleys of Toulon; it was twenty
years ago; we were there together.' Champmathieu denies it. Parbleu! You
understand. The case is investigated. The thing was well ventilated for
me. This is what they discovered: This Champmathieu had been, thirty
years ago, a pruner of trees in various localities, notably at
Faverolles. There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he
was seen again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been
a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress; but that
has not been proved. Now, before going to the galleys for theft, what
was Jean Valjean? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles. Another fact.
This Valjean's Christian name was Jean, and his mother's surname was
Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the
galleys, he should have taken his mother's name for the purpose of
concealing himself, and have called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to
Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns _Jean_ into _Chan_--he is called
Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no opposition, and behold him transformed
into Champmathieu. You follow me, do you not? Inquiries were made at
Faverolles. The family of Jean Valjean is no longer there. It is not
known where they have gone. You know that among those classes a family
often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such
people are not mud, they are dust. And then, as the beginning of the
story dates thirty years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles
who knew Jean Valjean. Inquiries were made at Toulon. Besides Brevet,
there are only two convicts in existence who have seen Jean Valjean;
they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life.
They are taken from the galleys and confronted with the pretended
Champmathieu. They do not hesitate; he is Jean Valjean for them as well
as for Brevet. The same age,--he is fifty-four,--the same height, the
same air, the same man; in short, it is he. It was precisely at this
moment that I forwarded my denunciation to the Prefecture in Paris. I
was told that I had lost my reason, and that Jean Valjean is at Arras,
in the power of the authorities. You can imagine whether this surprised
me, when I thought that I had that same Jean Valjean here. I write to
the examining judge; he sends for me; Champmathieu is conducted to me--"
"Well?" interposed M. Madeleine.
Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:--
"Mr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man is Jean
Valjean. I recognized him also."
M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:--
"You are sure?"
Javert began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from
profound conviction.
"O! Sure!"
He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of
powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the
table, and he added:--
"And even now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I do not see how I
could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor."
Javert, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man,
who six weeks before had humiliated him in the presence of the whole
station-house, and bade him "leave the room,"--Javert, that haughty man,
was unconsciously full of simplicity and dignity,--M. Madeleine made no
other reply to his prayer than the abrupt question:--
"And what does this man say?"
"Ah! Indeed, Mr. Mayor, it's a bad business. If he is Jean Valjean, he
has his previous conviction against him. To climb a wall, to break a
branch, to purloin apples, is a mischievous trick in a child; for a
man it is a misdemeanor; for a convict it is a crime. Robbing
and housebreaking--it is all there. It is no longer a question of
correctional police; it is a matter for the Court of Assizes. It is no
longer a matter of a few days in prison; it is the galleys for life. And
then, there is the affair with the little Savoyard, who will return, I
hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute in the matter, is there not?
Yes, for any one but Jean Valjean. But Jean Valjean is a sly dog. That
is the way I recognized him. Any other man would have felt that things
were getting hot for him; he would struggle, he would cry out--the
kettle sings before the fire; he would not be Jean Valjean, _et
cetera_. But he has not the appearance of understanding; he says, 'I am
Champmathieu, and I won't depart from that!' He has an astonished air,
he pretends to be stupid; it is far better. Oh! the rogue is clever! But
it makes no difference. The proofs are there. He has been recognized by
four persons; the old scamp will be condemned. The case has been taken
to the Assizes at Arras. I shall go there to give my testimony. I have
been summoned."
M. Madeleine had turned to his desk again, and taken up his docket, and
was turning over the leaves tranquilly, reading and writing by turns,
like a busy man. He turned to Javert:--
"That will do, Javert. In truth, all these details interest me but
little. We are wasting our time, and we have pressing business on hand.
Javert, you will betake yourself at once to the house of the woman
Buseaupied, who sells herbs at the corner of the Rue Saint-Saulve. You
will tell her that she must enter her complaint against carter Pierre
Chesnelong. The man is a brute, who came near crushing this woman and
her child. He must be punished. You will then go to M. Charcellay,
Rue Montre-de-Champigny. He complained that there is a gutter on the
adjoining house which discharges rain-water on his premises, and is
undermining the foundations of his house. After that, you will verify
the infractions of police regulations which have been reported to me in
the Rue Guibourg, at Widow Doris's, and Rue du Garraud-Blanc, at Madame
Renée le Bossé's, and you will prepare documents. But I am giving you a
great deal of work. Are you not to be absent? Did you not tell me that
you were going to Arras on that matter in a week or ten days?"
"Sooner than that, Mr. Mayor."
"On what day, then?"
"Why, I thought that I had said to Monsieur le Maire that the case was
to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night."
M. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement.
"And how long will the case last?"
"One day, at the most. The judgment will be pronounced to-morrow evening
at latest. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is certain; I
shall return here as soon as my deposition has been taken."
"That is well," said M. Madeleine.
And he dismissed Javert with a wave of the hand.
Javert did not withdraw.
"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," said he.
"What is it now?" demanded M. Madeleine.
"Mr. Mayor, there is still something of which I must remind you."
"What is it?"
"That I must be dismissed."
M. Madeleine rose.
"Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you. You exaggerate your
fault. Moreover, this is an offence which concerns me. Javert, you
deserve promotion instead of degradation. I wish you to retain your
post."
Javert gazed at M. Madeleine with his candid eyes, in whose depths his
not very enlightened but pure and rigid conscience seemed visible, and
said in a tranquil voice:--
"Mr. Mayor, I cannot grant you that."
"I repeat," replied M. Madeleine, "that the matter concerns me."
But Javert, heeding his own thought only, continued:--
"So far as exaggeration is concerned, I am not exaggerating. This is the
way I reason: I have suspected you unjustly. That is nothing. It is our
right to cherish suspicion, although suspicion directed above ourselves
is an abuse. But without proofs, in a fit of rage, with the object
of wreaking my vengeance, I have denounced you as a convict, you, a
respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! That is serious, very serious. I
have insulted authority in your person, I, an agent of the authorities!
If one of my subordinates had done what I have done, I should have
declared him unworthy of the service, and have expelled him. Well? Stop,
Mr. Mayor; one word more. I have often been severe in the course of my
life towards others. That is just. I have done well. Now, if I were not
severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become
injustice. Ought I to spare myself more than others? No! What! I should
be good for nothing but to chastise others, and not myself! Why, I
should be a blackguard! Those who say, 'That blackguard of a Javert!'
would be in the right. Mr. Mayor, I do not desire that you should treat
me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me when it was
directed to others. I want none of it for myself. The kindness which
consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police
agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is
up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of
kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be
kind; the difficulty lies in being just. Come! if you had been what I
thought you, I should not have been kind to you, not I! You would have
seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would treat any other man.
When I have subdued malefactors, when I have proceeded with vigor
against rascals, I have often said to myself, 'If you flinch, if I ever
catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!' I have flinched, I
have caught myself in a fault. So much the worse! Come, discharged,
cashiered, expelled! That is well. I have arms. I will till the soil; it
makes no difference to me. Mr. Mayor, the good of the service demands an
example. I simply require the discharge of Inspector Javert."
All this was uttered in a proud, humble, despairing, yet convinced tone,
which lent indescribable grandeur to this singular, honest man.
"We shall see," said M. Madeleine.
And he offered him his hand.
Javert recoiled, and said in a wild voice:--
"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but this must not be. A mayor does not offer his
hand to a police spy."
He added between his teeth:--
"A police spy, yes; from the moment when I have misused the police. I am
no more than a police spy."
Then he bowed profoundly, and directed his steps towards the door.
There he wheeled round, and with eyes still downcast:--
"Mr. Mayor," he said, "I shall continue to serve until I am superseded."
He withdrew. M. Madeleine remained thoughtfully listening to the firm,
sure step, which died away on the pavement of the corridor.
BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
CHAPTER I--SISTER SIMPLICE
The incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known at M. sur
M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a memory
in that town that a serious gap would exist in this book if we did
not narrate them in their most minute details. Among these details the
reader will encounter two or three improbable circumstances, which we
preserve out of respect for the truth.
On the afternoon following the visit of Javert, M. Madeleine went to see
Fantine according to his wont.
Before entering Fantine's room, he had Sister Simplice summoned.
The two nuns who performed the services of nurse in the infirmary,
Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of Sister
Perpétue and Sister Simplice.
Sister Perpétue was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a
coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any other
service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not
so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant
earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin or an Ursuline.
These rustics are utilized for the rough work of devotion. The
transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in the least violent;
the one turns into the other without much effort; the fund of ignorance
common to the village and the cloister is a preparation ready at hand,
and places the boor at once on the same footing as the monk: a little
more amplitude in the smock, and it becomes a frock. Sister Perpétue
was a robust nun from Marines near Pontoise, who chattered her patois,
droned, grumbled, sugared the potion according to the bigotry or the
hypocrisy of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was
crabbed with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their
death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and ruddy.
Sister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perpétue,
she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely traced
the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words, in which
he mingles as much freedom as servitude: "They shall have for their
convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room; for
chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of the
town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for
gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty." This ideal was
realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never been
young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old. No one could
have told Sister Simplice's age. She was a person--we dare not say a
woman--who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never lied.
She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than
granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were charmingly pure
and fine. There was, so to speak, silence in her speech; she said just
what was necessary, and she possessed a tone of voice which would
have equally edified a confessional or enchanted a drawing-room. This
delicacy accommodated itself to the serge gown, finding in this harsh
contact a continual reminder of heaven and of God. Let us emphasize
one detail. Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest
whatever, even in indifference, any single thing which was not the
truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice's distinctive trait; it was
the accent of her virtue. She was almost renowned in the congregation
for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbé Sicard speaks of Sister
Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However pure and sincere
we may be, we all bear upon our candor the crack of the little, innocent
lie. She did not. Little lie, innocent lie--does such a thing exist? To
lie is the absolute form of evil. To lie a little is not possible: he
who lies, lies the whole lie. To lie is the very face of the demon.
Satan has two names; he is called Satan and Lying. That is what she
thought; and as she thought, so she did. The result was the whiteness
which we have mentioned--a whiteness which covered even her lips and her
eyes with radiance. Her smile was white, her glance was white. There was
not a single spider's web, not a grain of dust, on the glass window of
that conscience. On entering the order of Saint Vincent de Paul, she had
taken the name of Simplice by special choice. Simplice of Sicily, as we
know, is the saint who preferred to allow both her breasts to be torn
off rather than to say that she had been born at Segesta when she had
been born at Syracuse--a lie which would have saved her. This patron
saint suited this soul.
Sister Simplice, on her entrance into the order, had had two faults
which she had gradually corrected: she had a taste for dainties, and she
liked to receive letters. She never read anything but a book of prayers
printed in Latin, in coarse type. She did not understand Latin, but she
understood the book.
This pious woman had conceived an affection for Fantine, probably
feeling a latent virtue there, and she had devoted herself almost
exclusively to her care.
M. Madeleine took Sister Simplice apart and recommended Fantine to her
in a singular tone, which the sister recalled later on.
On leaving the sister, he approached Fantine.
Fantine awaited M. Madeleine's appearance every day as one awaits a ray
of warmth and joy. She said to the sisters, "I only live when Monsieur
le Maire is here."
She had a great deal of fever that day. As soon as she saw M. Madeleine
she asked him:--
"And Cosette?"
He replied with a smile:--
"Soon."
M. Madeleine was the same as usual with Fantine. Only he remained an
hour instead of half an hour, to Fantine's great delight. He urged every
one repeatedly not to allow the invalid to want for anything. It was
noticed that there was a moment when his countenance became very sombre.
But this was explained when it became known that the doctor had bent
down to his ear and said to him, "She is losing ground fast."
Then he returned to the town-hall, and the clerk observed him
attentively examining a road map of France which hung in his study. He
wrote a few figures on a bit of paper with a pencil.
CHAPTER II--THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE
From the town-hall he betook himself to the extremity of the town, to a
Fleming named Master Scaufflaer, French Scaufflaire, who let out "horses
and cabriolets as desired."
In order to reach this Scaufflaire, the shortest way was to take the
little-frequented street in which was situated the parsonage of the
parish in which M. Madeleine resided. The curé was, it was said, a
worthy, respectable, and sensible man. At the moment when M. Madeleine
arrived in front of the parsonage there was but one passer-by in the
street, and this person noticed this: After the mayor had passed the
priest's house he halted, stood motionless, then turned about, and
retraced his steps to the door of the parsonage, which had an iron
knocker. He laid his hand quickly on the knocker and lifted it; then
he paused again and stopped short, as though in thought, and after
the lapse of a few seconds, instead of allowing the knocker to fall
abruptly, he placed it gently, and resumed his way with a sort of haste
which had not been apparent previously.
M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home, engaged in stitching a
harness over.
"Master Scaufflaire," he inquired, "have you a good horse?"
"Mr. Mayor," said the Fleming, "all my horses are good. What do you mean
by a good horse?"
"I mean a horse which can travel twenty leagues in a day."
"The deuce!" said the Fleming. "Twenty leagues!"
"Yes."
"Hitched to a cabriolet?"
"Yes."
"And how long can he rest at the end of his journey?"
"He must be able to set out again on the next day if necessary."
"To traverse the same road?"
"Yes."
"The deuce! the deuce! And it is twenty leagues?"
M. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled
some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 5, 6, 8½.
"You see," he said, "total, nineteen and a half; as well say twenty
leagues."
"Mr. Mayor," returned the Fleming, "I have just what you want. My little
white horse--you may have seen him pass occasionally; he is a small
beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire. They wanted to make
a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared, he kicked, he laid
everybody flat on the ground. He was thought to be vicious, and no one
knew what to do with him. I bought him. I harnessed him to a carriage.
That is what he wanted, sir; he is as gentle as a girl; he goes like the
wind. Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to
be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. 'Draw? Yes. Carry? No.'
We must suppose that is what he said to himself."
"And he will accomplish the trip?"
"Your twenty leagues all at a full trot, and in less than eight hours.
But here are the conditions."
"State them."
"In the first place, you will give him half an hour's breathing spell
midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while he is
eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing his oats; for
I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable
men than eaten by the horses."
"Some one will be by."
"In the second place--is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?"
"Yes."
"Does Monsieur le Maire know how to drive?"
"Yes."
"Well, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage, in order
not to overload the horse?"
"Agreed."
"But as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged
to take the trouble himself of seeing that the oats are not stolen."
"That is understood."
"I am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid for
also--not a farthing less; and the beast's food to be at Monsieur le
Maire's expense."
M. Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the
table.
"Here is the pay for two days in advance."
"Fourthly, for such a journey a cabriolet would be too heavy, and would
fatigue the horse. Monsieur le Maire must consent to travel in a little
tilbury that I own."
"I consent to that."
"It is light, but it has no cover."
"That makes no difference to me."
"Has Monsieur le Maire reflected that we are in the middle of winter?"
M. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:--
"That it is very cold?"
M. Madeleine preserved silence.
Master Scaufflaire continued:--
"That it may rain?"
M. Madeleine raised his head and said:--
"The tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow morning
at half-past four o'clock."
"Of course, Monsieur le Maire," replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a
speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail, he resumed with that
careless air which the Flemings understand so well how to mingle with
their shrewdness:--
"But this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has not told
me where he is going. Where is Monsieur le Maire going?"
He had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the
conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared to put the
question.
"Are your horse's forelegs good?" said M. Madeleine.
"Yes, Monsieur le Maire. You must hold him in a little when going down
hill. Are there many descends between here and the place whither you are
going?"
"Do not forget to be at my door at precisely half-past four o'clock
to-morrow morning," replied M. Madeleine; and he took his departure.
The Fleming remained "utterly stupid," as he himself said some time
afterwards.
The mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened again;
it was the mayor once more.
He still wore the same impassive and preoccupied air.
"Monsieur Scaufflaire," said he, "at what sum do you estimate the value
of the horse and tilbury which you are to let to me,--the one bearing
the other?"
"The one dragging the other, Monsieur le Maire," said the Fleming, with
a broad smile.
"So be it. Well?"
"Does Monsieur le Maire wish to purchase them or me?"
"No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back
the sum at my return. At what value do you estimate your horse and
cabriolet?"
"Five hundred francs, Monsieur le Maire."
"Here it is."
M. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room; and this
time he did not return.
Master Scaufflaire experienced a frightful regret that he had not said a
thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together were worth but a
hundred crowns.
The Fleming called his wife, and related the affair to her. "Where the
devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?" They held counsel together.
"He is going to Paris," said the wife. "I don't believe it," said the
husband.
M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay
on the chimney-piece. The Fleming picked it up and studied it. "Five,
six, eight and a half? That must designate the posting relays." He
turned to his wife:--
"I have found out."
"What?"
"It is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol,
eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras."
Meanwhile, M. Madeleine had returned home. He had taken the longest way
to return from Master Scaufflaire's, as though the parsonage door had
been a temptation for him, and he had wished to avoid it. He ascended
to his room, and there he shut himself up, which was a very simple act,
since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of the
factory, who was, at the same time, M. Madeleine's only servant, noticed
that the latter's light was extinguished at half-past eight, and she
mentioned it to the cashier when he came home, adding:--
"Is Monsieur le Maire ill? I thought he had a rather singular air."
This cashier occupied a room situated directly under M. Madeleine's
chamber. He paid no heed to the portress's words, but went to bed and
to sleep. Towards midnight he woke up with a start; in his sleep he had
heard a noise above his head. He listened; it was a footstep pacing back
and forth, as though some one were walking in the room above him. He
listened more attentively, and recognized M. Madeleine's step. This
struck him as strange; usually, there was no noise in M. Madeleine's
chamber until he rose in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard
a noise which resembled that of a cupboard being opened, and then shut
again; then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued;
then the step began again. The cashier sat up in bed, quite awake now,
and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish gleam of a
lighted window reflected on the opposite wall; from the direction of the
rays, it could only come from the window of M. Madeleine's chamber. The
reflection wavered, as though it came rather from a fire which had
been lighted than from a candle. The shadow of the window-frame was not
shown, which indicated that the window was wide open. The fact that this
window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell
asleep again. An hour or two later he waked again. The same step was
still passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead.
The reflection was still visible on the wall, but now it was pale and
peaceful, like the reflection of a lamp or of a candle. The window was
still open.
This is what had taken place in M. Madeleine's room.
CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL
The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other
than Jean Valjean.
We have already gazed into the depths of this conscience; the moment has
now come when we must take another look into it. We do so not without
emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrible in existence
than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the spirit can nowhere find
more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself
on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more
mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the
sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is
the inmost recesses of the soul.
To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to
a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would
be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience
is the chaos of chimæras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of
dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium
of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at
certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged
in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that
obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants,
like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and
hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in
Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within
him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his
brain and the actions of his life!
Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which he
hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate. Let
us enter, nevertheless.
We have but little to add to what the reader already knows of what had
happened to Jean Valjean after the adventure with Little Gervais. From
that moment forth he was, as we have seen, a totally different man. What
the Bishop had wished to make of him, that he carried out. It was more
than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.
He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop's silver, reserving only
the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from town to town, traversed
France, came to M. sur M., conceived the idea which we have mentioned,
accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe
from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at M. sur
M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by the past and the first
half of his existence belied by the last, he lived in peace, reassured
and hopeful, having henceforth only two thoughts,--to conceal his name
and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God.
These two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that
they formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing and
imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they conspired
to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom;
they rendered him kindly and simple; they counselled him to the same
things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted. In that case, as the reader
will remember, the man whom all the country of M. sur M. called M.
Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second--his
security to his virtue. Thus, in spite of all his reserve and all his
prudence, he had preserved the Bishop's candlesticks, worn mourning for
him, summoned and interrogated all the little Savoyards who passed that
way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles, and
saved old Fauchelevent's life, despite the disquieting insinuations of
Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked, as though he thought,
following the example of all those who have been wise, holy, and just,
that his first duty was not towards himself.
At the same time, it must be confessed, nothing just like this had yet
presented itself.
Never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings
we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle. He understood this
confusedly but profoundly at the very first words pronounced by Javert,
when the latter entered his study. At the moment when that name, which
he had buried beneath so many layers, was so strangely articulated,
he was struck with stupor, and as though intoxicated with the sinister
eccentricity of his destiny; and through this stupor he felt that
shudder which precedes great shocks. He bent like an oak at the approach
of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt
shadows filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his head.
As he listened to Javert, the first thought which occurred to him was to
go, to run and denounce himself, to take that Champmathieu out of prison
and place himself there; this was as painful and as poignant as an
incision in the living flesh. Then it passed away, and he said to
himself, "We will see! We will see!" He repressed this first, generous
instinct, and recoiled before heroism.
It would be beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop's holy words, after
so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst of a penitence
admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for an instant, even in
the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk with
the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of which
lay heaven; that would have been beautiful; but it was not thus. We must
render an account of the things which went on in this soul, and we can
only tell what there was there. He was carried away, at first, by
the instinct of self-preservation; he rallied all his ideas in haste,
stifled his emotions, took into consideration Javert's presence, that
great danger, postponed all decision with the firmness of terror, shook
off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a
warrior picks up his buckler.
He remained in this state during the rest of the day, a whirlwind
within, a profound tranquillity without. He took no "preservative
measures," as they may be called. Everything was still confused, and
jostling together in his brain. His trouble was so great that he could
not perceive the form of a single idea distinctly, and he could have
told nothing about himself, except that he had received a great blow.
He repaired to Fantine's bed of suffering, as usual, and prolonged his
visit, through a kindly instinct, telling himself that he must behave
thus, and recommend her well to the sisters, in case he should be
obliged to be absent himself. He had a vague feeling that he might be
obliged to go to Arras; and without having the least in the world made
up his mind to this trip, he said to himself that being, as he was,
beyond the shadow of any suspicion, there could be nothing out of the
way in being a witness to what was to take place, and he engaged the
tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared in any event.
He dined with a good deal of appetite.
On returning to his room, he communed with himself.
He examined the situation, and found it unprecedented; so unprecedented
that in the midst of his revery he rose from his chair, moved by some
inexplicable impulse of anxiety, and bolted his door. He feared
lest something more should enter. He was barricading himself against
possibilities.
A moment later he extinguished his light; it embarrassed him.
It seemed to him as though he might be seen.
By whom?
Alas! That on which he desired to close the door had already entered;
that which he desired to blind was staring him in the face,--his
conscience.
His conscience; that is to say, God.
Nevertheless, he deluded himself at first; he had a feeling of security
and of solitude; the bolt once drawn, he thought himself impregnable;
the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible. Then he took
possession of himself: he set his elbows on the table, leaned his head
on his hand, and began to meditate in the dark.
"Where do I stand? Am not I dreaming? What have I heard? Is it really
true that I have seen that Javert, and that he spoke to me in that
manner? Who can that Champmathieu be? So he resembles me! Is it
possible? When I reflect that yesterday I was so tranquil, and so far
from suspecting anything! What was I doing yesterday at this hour? What
is there in this incident? What will the end be? What is to be done?"
This was the torment in which he found himself. His brain had lost its
power of retaining ideas; they passed like waves, and he clutched his
brow in both hands to arrest them.
Nothing but anguish extricated itself from this tumult which overwhelmed
his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw proof and
resolution.
His head was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open.
There were no stars in the sky. He returned and seated himself at the
table.
The first hour passed in this manner.
Gradually, however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix
themselves in his meditation, and he was able to catch a glimpse with
precision of the reality,--not the whole situation, but some of
the details. He began by recognizing the fact that, critical and
extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely master of it.
This only caused an increase of his stupor.
Independently of the severe and religious aim which he had assigned to
his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a
hole in which to bury his name. That which he had always feared most of
all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to
ever hear that name pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would
be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made
its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about
him, and--who knows?--perhaps even his new soul within him, also. He
shuddered at the very thought that this was possible. Assuredly, if any
one had said to him at such moments that the hour would come when that
name would ring in his ears, when the hideous words, Jean Valjean, would
suddenly emerge from the darkness and rise in front of him, when that
formidable light, capable of dissipating the mystery in which he had
enveloped himself, would suddenly blaze forth above his head, and that
that name would not menace him, that that light would but produce
an obscurity more dense, that this rent veil would but increase the
mystery, that this earthquake would solidify his edifice, that this
prodigious incident would have no other result, so far as he was
concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that of rendering his
existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, out of his
confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and worthy
citizen Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honored, more peaceful, and
more respected than ever--if any one had told him that, he would have
tossed his head and regarded the words as those of a madman. Well, all
this was precisely what had just come to pass; all that accumulation of
impossibilities was a fact, and God had permitted these wild fancies to
become real things!
His revery continued to grow clearer. He came more and more to an
understanding of his position.
It seemed to him that he had but just waked up from some inexplicable
dream, and that he found himself slipping down a declivity in the middle
of the night, erect, shivering, holding back all in vain, on the very
brink of the abyss. He distinctly perceived in the darkness a stranger,
a man unknown to him, whom destiny had mistaken for him, and whom she
was thrusting into the gulf in his stead; in order that the gulf might
close once more, it was necessary that some one, himself or that other
man, should fall into it: he had only let things take their course.
The light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself: That
his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would, it was still
awaiting him; that the theft from little Gervais had led him back to it;
that this vacant place would await him, and draw him on until he filled
it; that this was inevitable and fatal; and then he said to himself,
"that, at this moment, he had a substitute; that it appeared that a
certain Champmathieu had that ill luck, and that, as regards himself,
being present in the galleys in the person of that Champmathieu, present
in society under the name of M. Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear,
provided that he did not prevent men from sealing over the head of
that Champmathieu this stone of infamy which, like the stone of the
sepulchre, falls once, never to rise again."
All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place
in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two
or three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the
conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart, which
is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be called an
outburst of inward laughter.
He hastily relighted his candle.
"Well, what then?" he said to himself; "what am I afraid of? What is
there in all that for me to think about? I am safe; all is over. I had
but one partly open door through which my past might invade my life,
and behold that door is walled up forever! That Javert, who has been
annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined
me, which had divined me--good God! and which followed me everywhere;
that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown
off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail:
henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean
Valjean. Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to leave town!
And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I count
for nothing in it! Ah! but where is the misfortune in this? Upon my
honor, people would think, to see me, that some catastrophe had happened
to me! After all, if it does bring harm to some one, that is not my
fault in the least: it is Providence which has done it all; it is
because it wishes it so to be, evidently. Have I the right to disarrange
what it has arranged? What do I ask now? Why should I meddle? It does
not concern me; what! I am not satisfied: but what more do I want? The
goal to which I have aspired for so many years, the dream of my nights,
the object of my prayers to Heaven,--security,--I have now attained; it
is God who wills it; I can do nothing against the will of God, and why
does God will it? In order that I may continue what I have begun, that I
may do good, that I may one day be a grand and encouraging example, that
it may be said at last, that a little happiness has been attached to
the penance which I have undergone, and to that virtue to which I have
returned. Really, I do not understand why I was afraid, a little while
ago, to enter the house of that good curé, and to ask his advice; this
is evidently what he would have said to me: It is settled; let things
take their course; let the good God do as he likes!"
Thus did he address himself in the depths of his own conscience, bending
over what may be called his own abyss; he rose from his chair, and began
to pace the room: "Come," said he, "let us think no more about it; my
resolve is taken!" but he felt no joy.
Quite the reverse.
One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can
the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the
guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.
After the expiration of a few moments, do what he would, he resumed the
gloomy dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he who listened, saying
that which he would have preferred to ignore, and listened to that which
he would have preferred not to hear, yielding to that mysterious power
which said to him: "Think!" as it said to another condemned man, two
thousand years ago, "March on!"
Before proceeding further, and in order to make ourselves fully
understood, let us insist upon one necessary observation.
It is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living
being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is never
a more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought to conscience
within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; it is in
this sense only that the words so often employed in this chapter, _he
said, he exclaimed_, must be understood; one speaks to one's self, talks
to one's self, exclaims to one's self without breaking the external
silence; there is a great tumult; everything about us talks except the
mouth. The realities of the soul are none the less realities because
they are not visible and palpable.
So he asked himself where he stood. He interrogated himself upon that
"settled resolve." He confessed to himself that all that he had just
arranged in his mind was monstrous, that "to let things take their
course, to let the good God do as he liked," was simply horrible; to
allow this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder it,
to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short,
was to do everything! that this was hypocritical baseness in the last
degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, hideous crime!
For the first time in eight years, the wretched man had just tasted the
bitter savor of an evil thought and of an evil action.
He spit it out with disgust.
He continued to question himself. He asked himself severely what he had
meant by this, "My object is attained!" He declared to himself that
his life really had an object; but what object? To conceal his name?
To deceive the police? Was it for so petty a thing that he had done all
that he had done? Had he not another and a grand object, which was the
true one--to save, not his person, but his soul; to become honest and
good once more; to be a just man? Was it not that above all, that alone,
which he had always desired, which the Bishop had enjoined upon him--to
shut the door on his past? But he was not shutting it! great God! he was
re-opening it by committing an infamous action! He was becoming a thief
once more, and the most odious of thieves! He was robbing another of
his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sunshine. He was
becoming an assassin. He was murdering, morally murdering, a wretched
man. He was inflicting on him that frightful living death, that death
beneath the open sky, which is called the galleys. On the other hand,
to surrender himself to save that man, struck down with so melancholy
an error, to resume his own name, to become once more, out of duty, the
convict Jean Valjean, that was, in truth, to achieve his resurrection,
and to close forever that hell whence he had just emerged; to fall back
there in appearance was to escape from it in reality. This must be
done! He had done nothing if he did not do all this; his whole life was
useless; all his penitence was wasted. There was no longer any need of
saying, "What is the use?" He felt that the Bishop was there, that the
Bishop was present all the more because he was dead, that the Bishop
was gazing fixedly at him, that henceforth Mayor Madeleine, with all his
virtues, would be abominable to him, and that the convict Jean Valjean
would be pure and admirable in his sight; that men beheld his mask, but
that the Bishop saw his face; that men saw his life, but that the Bishop
beheld his conscience. So he must go to Arras, deliver the false Jean
Valjean, and denounce the real one. Alas! that was the greatest of
sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the last step to take; but
it must be done. Sad fate! he would enter into sanctity only in the eyes
of God when he returned to infamy in the eyes of men.
"Well," said he, "let us decide upon this; let us do our duty; let us
save this man." He uttered these words aloud, without perceiving that he
was speaking aloud.
He took his books, verified them, and put them in order. He flung in
the fire a bundle of bills which he had against petty and embarrassed
tradesmen. He wrote and sealed a letter, and on the envelope it might
have been read, had there been any one in his chamber at the moment,
_To Monsieur Laffitte, Banker, Rue d'Artois, Paris_. He drew from his
secretary a pocket-book which contained several bank-notes and the
passport of which he had made use that same year when he went to the
elections.
Any one who had seen him during the execution of these various acts,
into which there entered such grave thought, would have had no suspicion
of what was going on within him. Only occasionally did his lips move; at
other times he raised his head and fixed his gaze upon some point of the
wall, as though there existed at that point something which he wished to
elucidate or interrogate.
When he had finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it into his
pocket, together with the pocket-book, and began his walk once more.
His revery had not swerved from its course. He continued to see his duty
clearly, written in luminous letters, which flamed before his eyes and
changed its place as he altered the direction of his glance:--
_"Go! Tell your name! Denounce yourself!"_
In the same way he beheld, as though they had passed before him in
visible forms, the two ideas which had, up to that time, formed
the double rule of his soul,--the concealment of his name, the
sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as
absolutely distinct, and he perceived the distance which separated them.
He recognized the fact that one of these ideas was, necessarily, good,
while the other might become bad; that the first was self-devotion, and
that the other was personality; that the one said, _my neighbour_, and
that the other said, _myself_; that one emanated from the light, and the
other from darkness.
They were antagonistic. He saw them in conflict. In proportion as
he meditated, they grew before the eyes of his spirit. They had now
attained colossal statures, and it seemed to him that he beheld within
himself, in that infinity of which we were recently speaking, in the
midst of the darkness and the lights, a goddess and a giant contending.
He was filled with terror; but it seemed to him that the good thought
was getting the upper hand.
He felt that he was on the brink of the second decisive crisis of his
conscience and of his destiny; that the Bishop had marked the first
phase of his new life, and that Champmathieu marked the second. After
the grand crisis, the grand test.
But the fever, allayed for an instant, gradually resumed possession
of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued to
fortify him in his resolution.
One moment he said to himself that he was, perhaps, taking the matter
too keenly; that, after all, this Champmathieu was not interesting, and
that he had actually been guilty of theft.
He answered himself: "If this man has, indeed, stolen a few apples, that
means a month in prison. It is a long way from that to the galleys. And
who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proved? The name of Jean Valjean
overwhelms him, and seems to dispense with proofs. Do not the attorneys
for the Crown always proceed in this manner? He is supposed to be a
thief because he is known to be a convict."
In another instant the thought had occurred to him that, when he
denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might, perhaps, be taken into
consideration, and his honest life for the last seven years, and what he
had done for the district, and that they would have mercy on him.
But this supposition vanished very quickly, and he smiled bitterly as he
remembered that the theft of the forty sous from little Gervais put him
in the position of a man guilty of a second offence after conviction,
that this affair would certainly come up, and, according to the precise
terms of the law, would render him liable to penal servitude for life.
He turned aside from all illusions, detached himself more and more from
earth, and sought strength and consolation elsewhere. He told himself
that he must do his duty; that perhaps he should not be more unhappy
after doing his duty than after having avoided it; that if he _allowed
things to take their own course_, if he remained at M. sur M., his
consideration, his good name, his good works, the deference and
veneration paid to him, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his
virtue, would be seasoned with a crime. And what would be the taste of
all these holy things when bound up with this hideous thing? while, if
he accomplished his sacrifice, a celestial idea would be mingled with
the galleys, the post, the iron necklet, the green cap, unceasing toil,
and pitiless shame.
At length he told himself that it must be so, that his destiny was thus
allotted, that he had not authority to alter the arrangements made on
high, that, in any case, he must make his choice: virtue without and
abomination within, or holiness within and infamy without.
The stirring up of these lugubrious ideas did not cause his courage to
fail, but his brain grow weary. He began to think of other things, of
indifferent matters, in spite of himself.
The veins in his temples throbbed violently; he still paced to and fro;
midnight sounded first from the parish church, then from the town-hall;
he counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks, and compared the sounds
of the two bells; he recalled in this connection the fact that, a few
days previously, he had seen in an ironmonger's shop an ancient
clock for sale, upon which was written the name, _Antoine-Albin de
Romainville_.
He was cold; he lighted a small fire; it did not occur to him to close
the window.
In the meantime he had relapsed into his stupor; he was obliged to make
a tolerably vigorous effort to recall what had been the subject of his
thoughts before midnight had struck; he finally succeeded in doing this.
"Ah! yes," he said to himself, "I had resolved to inform against
myself."
And then, all of a sudden, he thought of Fantine.
"Hold!" said he, "and what about that poor woman?"
Here a fresh crisis declared itself.
Fantine, by appearing thus abruptly in his revery, produced the effect
of an unexpected ray of light; it seemed to him as though everything
about him were undergoing a change of aspect: he exclaimed:--
"Ah! but I have hitherto considered no one but myself; it is proper for
me to hold my tongue or to denounce myself, to conceal my person or
to save my soul, to be a despicable and respected magistrate, or an
infamous and venerable convict; it is I, it is always I and nothing
but I: but, good God! all this is egotism; these are diverse forms
of egotism, but it is egotism all the same. What if I were to think a
little about others? The highest holiness is to think of others; come,
let us examine the matter. The _I_ excepted, the _I_ effaced, the _I_
forgotten, what would be the result of all this? What if I denounce
myself? I am arrested; this Champmathieu is released; I am put back in
the galleys; that is well--and what then? What is going on here? Ah!
here is a country, a town, here are factories, an industry, workers,
both men and women, aged grandsires, children, poor people! All this I
have created; all these I provide with their living; everywhere where
there is a smoking chimney, it is I who have placed the brand on the
hearth and meat in the pot; I have created ease, circulation, credit;
before me there was nothing; I have elevated, vivified, informed with
life, fecundated, stimulated, enriched the whole country-side; lacking
me, the soul is lacking; I take myself off, everything dies: and this
woman, who has suffered so much, who possesses so many merits in spite
of her fall; the cause of all whose misery I have unwittingly been! And
that child whom I meant to go in search of, whom I have promised to her
mother; do I not also owe something to this woman, in reparation for
the evil which I have done her? If I disappear, what happens? The mother
dies; the child becomes what it can; that is what will take place, if
I denounce myself. If I do not denounce myself? come, let us see how it
will be if I do not denounce myself."
After putting this question to himself, he paused; he seemed to undergo
a momentary hesitation and trepidation; but it did not last long, and he
answered himself calmly:--
"Well, this man is going to the galleys; it is true, but what the deuce!
he has stolen! There is no use in my saying that he has not been guilty
of theft, for he has! I remain here; I go on: in ten years I shall have
made ten millions; I scatter them over the country; I have nothing of
my own; what is that to me? It is not for myself that I am doing it;
the prosperity of all goes on augmenting; industries are aroused and
animated; factories and shops are multiplied; families, a hundred
families, a thousand families, are happy; the district becomes
populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before;
farms rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears, and
with wretchedness debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder; all vices
disappear, all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child; and behold
a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool! I was absurd!
what was that I was saying about denouncing myself? I really must pay
attention and not be precipitate about anything. What! because it would
have pleased me to play the grand and generous; this is melodrama, after
all; because I should have thought of no one but myself, the idea! for
the sake of saving from a punishment, a trifle exaggerated, perhaps,
but just at bottom, no one knows whom, a thief, a good-for-nothing,
evidently, a whole country-side must perish! a poor woman must die in
the hospital! a poor little girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah,
this is abominable! And without the mother even having seen her child
once more, almost without the child's having known her mother; and
all that for the sake of an old wretch of an apple-thief who, most
assuredly, has deserved the galleys for something else, if not for
that; fine scruples, indeed, which save a guilty man and sacrifice the
innocent, which save an old vagabond who has only a few years to live at
most, and who will not be more unhappy in the galleys than in his hovel,
and which sacrifice a whole population, mothers, wives, children. This
poor little Cosette who has no one in the world but me, and who is, no
doubt, blue with cold at this moment in the den of those Thénardiers;
those peoples are rascals; and I was going to neglect my duty towards
all these poor creatures; and I was going off to denounce myself; and I
was about to commit that unspeakable folly! Let us put it at the worst:
suppose that there is a wrong action on my part in this, and that my
conscience will reproach me for it some day, to accept, for the good of
others, these reproaches which weigh only on myself; this evil action
which compromises my soul alone; in that lies self-sacrifice; in that
alone there is virtue."
He rose and resumed his march; this time, he seemed to be content.
Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are
found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him, that, after
having descended into these depths, after having long groped among the
darkest of these shadows, he had at last found one of these diamonds,
one of these truths, and that he now held it in his hand, and he was
dazzled as he gazed upon it.
"Yes," he thought, "this is right; I am on the right road; I have the
solution; I must end by holding fast to something; my resolve is taken;
let things take their course; let us no longer vacillate; let us no
longer hang back; this is for the interest of all, not for my own; I am
Madeleine, and Madeleine I remain. Woe to the man who is Jean Valjean!
I am no longer he; I do not know that man; I no longer know anything; it
turns out that some one is Jean Valjean at the present moment; let him
look out for himself; that does not concern me; it is a fatal name which
was floating abroad in the night; if it halts and descends on a head, so
much the worse for that head."
He looked into the little mirror which hung above his chimney-piece, and
said:--
"Hold! it has relieved me to come to a decision; I am quite another man
now."
He proceeded a few paces further, then he stopped short.
"Come!" he said, "I must not flinch before any of the consequences of
the resolution which I have once adopted; there are still threads which
attach me to that Jean Valjean; they must be broken; in this very room
there are objects which would betray me, dumb things which would bear
witness against me; it is settled; all these things must disappear."
He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took out a
small key; he inserted the key in a lock whose aperture could hardly
be seen, so hidden was it in the most sombre tones of the design which
covered the wall-paper; a secret receptacle opened, a sort of
false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the
chimney-piece; in this hiding-place there were some rags--a blue linen
blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn
cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean at
the epoch when he passed through D----in October, 1815, could easily
have recognized all the pieces of this miserable outfit.
He had preserved them as he had preserved the silver candlesticks, in
order to remind himself continually of his starting-point, but he
had concealed all that came from the galleys, and he had allowed the
candlesticks which came from the Bishop to be seen.
He cast a furtive glance towards the door, as though he feared that it
would open in spite of the bolt which fastened it; then, with a quick
and abrupt movement, he took the whole in his arms at once, without
bestowing so much as a glance on the things which he had so religiously
and so perilously preserved for so many years, and flung them all, rags,
cudgel, knapsack, into the fire.
Enlarge
He closed the false cupboard again, and with redoubled precautions,
henceforth unnecessary, since it was now empty, he concealed the door
behind a heavy piece of furniture, which he pushed in front of it.
After the lapse of a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall were
lighted up with a fierce, red, tremulous glow. Everything was on fire;
the thorn cudgel snapped and threw out sparks to the middle of the
chamber.
As the knapsack was consumed, together with the hideous rags which it
contained, it revealed something which sparkled in the ashes. By bending
over, one could have readily recognized a coin,--no doubt the forty-sou
piece stolen from the little Savoyard.
He did not look at the fire, but paced back and forth with the same
step.
All at once his eye fell on the two silver candlesticks, which shone
vaguely on the chimney-piece, through the glow.
"Hold!" he thought; "the whole of Jean Valjean is still in them. They
must be destroyed also."
He seized the two candlesticks.
There was still fire enough to allow of their being put out of shape,
and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal.
He bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt a sense
of real comfort. "How good warmth is!" said he.
He stirred the live coals with one of the candlesticks.
A minute more, and they were both in the fire.
At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within him
shouting: "Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!"
His hair rose upright: he became like a man who is listening to some
terrible thing.
"Yes, that's it! finish!" said the voice. "Complete what you are about!
Destroy these candlesticks! Annihilate this souvenir! Forget the Bishop!
Forget everything! Destroy this Champmathieu, do! That is right! Applaud
yourself! So it is settled, resolved, fixed, agreed: here is an old man
who does not know what is wanted of him, who has, perhaps, done nothing,
an innocent man, whose whole misfortune lies in your name, upon whom
your name weighs like a crime, who is about to be taken for you, who
will be condemned, who will finish his days in abjectness and horror.
That is good! Be an honest man yourself; remain Monsieur le Maire;
remain honorable and honored; enrich the town; nourish the indigent;
rear the orphan; live happy, virtuous, and admired; and, during this
time, while you are here in the midst of joy and light, there will be a
man who will wear your red blouse, who will bear your name in ignominy,
and who will drag your chain in the galleys. Yes, it is well arranged
thus. Ah, wretch!"
The perspiration streamed from his brow. He fixed a haggard eye on the
candlesticks. But that within him which had spoken had not finished. The
voice continued:--
"Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make a
great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and
only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark.
Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back before
they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God."
This voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most
obscure depths of his conscience, had gradually become startling and
formidable, and he now heard it in his very ear. It seemed to him that
it had detached itself from him, and that it was now speaking outside
of him. He thought that he heard the last words so distinctly, that he
glanced around the room in a sort of terror.
"Is there any one here?" he demanded aloud, in utter bewilderment.
Then he resumed, with a laugh which resembled that of an idiot:--
"How stupid I am! There can be no one!"
There was some one; but the person who was there was of those whom the
human eye cannot see.
He placed the candlesticks on the chimney-piece.
Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the
dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.
This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him.
It sometimes seems, on supreme occasions, as though people moved about
for the purpose of asking advice of everything that they may encounter
by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he no longer knew
his position.
He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he
had arrived in turn. The two ideas which counselled him appeared to him
equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that Champmathieu
should have been taken for him; to be overwhelmed by precisely the means
which Providence seemed to have employed, at first, to strengthen his
position!
There was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself,
great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all that
he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up
once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence which was so
good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all, to honor, to liberty.
He should never more stroll in the fields; he should never more hear the
birds sing in the month of May; he should never more bestow alms on the
little children; he should never more experience the sweetness of having
glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he should quit that house
which he had built, that little chamber! Everything seemed charming to
him at that moment. Never again should he read those books; never more
should he write on that little table of white wood; his old portress,
the only servant whom he kept, would never more bring him his coffee
in the morning. Great God! instead of that, the convict gang, the iron
necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain on his ankle, fatigue, the cell,
the camp bed all those horrors which he knew so well! At his age,
after having been what he was! If he were only young again! but to
be addressed in his old age as "thou" by any one who pleased; to
be searched by the convict-guard; to receive the galley-sergeant's
cudgellings; to wear iron-bound shoes on his bare feet; to have to
stretch out his leg night and morning to the hammer of the roundsman who
visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of strangers, who would be
told: "That man yonder is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of
M. sur M."; and at night, dripping with perspiration, overwhelmed with
lassitude, their green caps drawn over their eyes, to remount, two by
two, the ladder staircase of the galleys beneath the sergeant's whip.
Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as malicious as an intelligent
being, and become as monstrous as the human heart?
And do what he would, he always fell back upon the heartrending dilemma
which lay at the foundation of his revery: "Should he remain in paradise
and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an angel?"
What was to be done? Great God! what was to be done?
The torment from which he had escaped with so much difficulty was
unchained afresh within him. His ideas began to grow confused once
more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is
peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his
mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past.
He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young
lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.
He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked like a little child
who is permitted to toddle alone.
At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort to recover
the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to himself, for the last time,
and definitely, the problem over which he had, in a manner, fallen
prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to denounce himself? Ought he to hold
his peace? He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The vague
aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched out by
his meditations quivered and vanished, one after the other, into smoke.
He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his mind,
something in him must die, and that of necessity, and without his being
able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the
right hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death
agony,--the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.
Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him. He was no
further advanced than at the beginning.
Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred
years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are
summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had also
long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in
the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him
dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all
studded with stars.
CHAPTER IV--FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP
Three o'clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking
thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed
himself to drop into his chair.
There he fell asleep and had a dream.
This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the
situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it
made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that he
wrote it down later on. It is one of the papers in his own handwriting
which he has bequeathed to us. We think that we have here reproduced the
thing in strict accordance with the text.
Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would
be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an
ailing soul.
Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, "The Dream I
had that Night."
"I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It
did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.
"I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years,
the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly
remember.
"We were conversing and we met some passers-by. We were talking of a
neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window
open from the time when she came to live on the street. As we talked we
felt cold because of that open window.
"There were no trees in the plain. We saw a man passing close to us. He
was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which was
earth color. The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the veins
on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a vine-shoot
and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed and said nothing to us.
"My brother said to me, 'Let us take to the hollow road.'
"There existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub nor
a spear of moss. Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky. After
proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke: I perceived
that my brother was no longer with me.
"I entered a village which I espied. I reflected that it must be
Romainville. (Why Romainville?)5
"The first street that I entered was deserted. I entered a second
street. Behind the angle formed by the two streets, a man was standing
erect against the wall. I said to this man:--
"'What country is this? Where am I?' The man made no reply. I saw the
door of a house open, and I entered.
"The first chamber was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the door
of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall. I inquired of
this man, 'Whose house is this? Where am I?' The man replied not.
"The house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden.
The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree I found a man standing
upright. I said to this man, 'What garden is this? Where am I?' The man
did not answer.
"I strolled into the village, and perceived that it was a town. All
the streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single living
being was passing in the streets, walking through the chambers or
strolling in the gardens. But behind each angle of the walls, behind
each door, behind each tree, stood a silent man. Only one was to be seen
at a time. These men watched me pass.
"I left the town and began to ramble about the fields.
"After the lapse of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd coming
up behind me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in that town.
They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet they
walked faster than I did. They made no noise as they walked. In an
instant this crowd had overtaken and surrounded me. The faces of these
men were earthen in hue.
"Then the first one whom I had seen and questioned on entering the town
said to me:--
"'Whither are you going! Do you not know that you have been dead this
long time?'
"I opened my mouth to reply, and I perceived that there was no one near
me."
He woke. He was icy cold. A wind which was chill like the breeze of dawn
was rattling the leaves of the window, which had been left open on their
hinges. The fire was out. The candle was nearing its end. It was still
black night.
He rose, he went to the window. There were no stars in the sky even yet.
From his window the yard of the house and the street were visible. A
sharp, harsh noise, which made him drop his eyes, resounded from the
earth.
Below him he perceived two red stars, whose rays lengthened and
shortened in a singular manner through the darkness.
As his thoughts were still half immersed in the mists of sleep, "Hold!"
said he, "there are no stars in the sky. They are on earth now."
But this confusion vanished; a second sound similar to the first roused
him thoroughly; he looked and recognized the fact that these two stars
were the lanterns of a carriage. By the light which they cast he was
able to distinguish the form of this vehicle. It was a tilbury harnessed
to a small white horse. The noise which he had heard was the trampling
of the horse's hoofs on the pavement.
"What vehicle is this?" he said to himself. "Who is coming here so early
in the morning?"
At that moment there came a light tap on the door of his chamber.
He shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice:--
"Who is there?"
Some one said:--
"I, Monsieur le Maire."
He recognized the voice of the old woman who was his portress.
"Well!" he replied, "what is it?"
"Monsieur le Maire, it is just five o'clock in the morning."
"What is that to me?"
"The cabriolet is here, Monsieur le Maire."
"What cabriolet?"
"The tilbury."
"What tilbury?"
"Did not Monsieur le Maire order a tilbury?"
"No," said he.
"The coachman says that he has come for Monsieur le Maire."
"What coachman?"
"M. Scaufflaire's coachman."
"M. Scaufflaire?"
That name sent a shudder over him, as though a flash of lightning had
passed in front of his face.
"Ah! yes," he resumed; "M. Scaufflaire!"
If the old woman could have seen him at that moment, she would have been
frightened.
A tolerably long silence ensued. He examined the flame of the candle
with a stupid air, and from around the wick he took some of the burning
wax, which he rolled between his fingers. The old woman waited for him.
She even ventured to uplift her voice once more:--
"What am I to say, Monsieur le Maire?"
"Say that it is well, and that I am coming down."
CHAPTER V--HINDRANCES
The posting service from Arras to M. sur M. was still operated at this
period by small mail-wagons of the time of the Empire. These mail-wagons
were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered inside with fawn-colored
leather, hung on springs, and having but two seats, one for the postboy,
the other for the traveller. The wheels were armed with those long,
offensive axles which keep other vehicles at a distance, and which
may still be seen on the road in Germany. The despatch box, an immense
oblong coffer, was placed behind the vehicle and formed a part of it.
This coffer was painted black, and the cabriolet yellow.
These vehicles, which have no counterparts nowadays, had something
distorted and hunchbacked about them; and when one saw them passing in
the distance, and climbing up some road to the horizon, they resembled
the insects which are called, I think, termites, and which, though with
but little corselet, drag a great train behind them. But they travelled
at a very rapid rate. The post-wagon which set out from Arras at one
o'clock every night, after the mail from Paris had passed, arrived at M.
sur M. a little before five o'clock in the morning.
That night the wagon which was descending to M. sur M. by the Hesdin
road, collided at the corner of a street, just as it was entering the
town, with a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going
in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man
enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a violent
shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the traveller paid no
heed and pursued his road at full gallop.
"That man is in a devilish hurry!" said the postman.
The man thus hastening on was the one whom we have just seen struggling
in convulsions which are certainly deserving of pity.
Whither was he going? He could not have told. Why was he hastening?
He did not know. He was driving at random, straight ahead. Whither?
To Arras, no doubt; but he might have been going elsewhere as well.
At times he was conscious of it, and he shuddered. He plunged into the
night as into a gulf. Something urged him forward; something drew him
on. No one could have told what was taking place within him; every one
will understand it. What man is there who has not entered, at least once
in his life, into that obscure cavern of the unknown?
However, he had resolved on nothing, decided nothing, formed no plan,
done nothing. None of the actions of his conscience had been decisive.
He was, more than ever, as he had been at the first moment.
Why was he going to Arras?
He repeated what he had already said to himself when he had hired
Scaufflaire's cabriolet: that, whatever the result was to be, there was
no reason why he should not see with his own eyes, and judge of matters
for himself; that this was even prudent; that he must know what took
place; that no decision could be arrived at without having observed and
scrutinized; that one made mountains out of everything from a distance;
that, at any rate, when he should have seen that Champmathieu, some
wretch, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to allow him
to go to the galleys in his stead; that Javert would indeed be there;
and that Brevet, that Chenildieu, that Cochepaille, old convicts who
had known him; but they certainly would not recognize him;--bah! what an
idea! that Javert was a hundred leagues from suspecting the truth; that
all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed on Champmathieu, and
that there is nothing so headstrong as suppositions and conjectures;
that accordingly there was no danger.
That it was, no doubt, a dark moment, but that he should emerge from it;
that, after all, he held his destiny, however bad it might be, in his
own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to this thought.
At bottom, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go to
Arras.
Nevertheless, he was going thither.
As he meditated, he whipped up his horse, which was proceeding at that
fine, regular, and even trot which accomplishes two leagues and a half
an hour.
In proportion as the cabriolet advanced, he felt something within him
draw back.
At daybreak he was in the open country; the town of M. sur M. lay far
behind him. He watched the horizon grow white; he stared at all the
chilly figures of a winter's dawn as they passed before his eyes,
but without seeing them. The morning has its spectres as well as the
evening. He did not see them; but without his being aware of it, and by
means of a sort of penetration which was almost physical, these black
silhouettes of trees and of hills added some gloomy and sinister quality
to the violent state of his soul.
Each time that he passed one of those isolated dwellings which sometimes
border on the highway, he said to himself, "And yet there are people
there within who are sleeping!"
The trot of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the road,
produced a gentle, monotonous noise. These things are charming when one
is joyous, and lugubrious when one is sad.
It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He halted in front of
the inn, to allow the horse a breathing spell, and to have him given
some oats.
The horse belonged, as Scaufflaire had said, to that small race of the
Boulonnais, which has too much head, too much belly, and not enough neck
and shoulders, but which has a broad chest, a large crupper, thin, fine
legs, and solid hoofs--a homely, but a robust and healthy race. The
excellent beast had travelled five leagues in two hours, and had not a
drop of sweat on his loins.
He did not get out of the tilbury. The stableman who brought the oats
suddenly bent down and examined the left wheel.
"Are you going far in this condition?" said the man.
He replied, with an air of not having roused himself from his revery:--
"Why?"
"Have you come from a great distance?" went on the man.
"Five leagues."
"Ah!"
"Why do you say, 'Ah?'"
The man bent down once more, was silent for a moment, with his eyes
fixed on the wheel; then he rose erect and said:--
"Because, though this wheel has travelled five leagues, it certainly
will not travel another quarter of a league."
He sprang out of the tilbury.
"What is that you say, my friend?"
"I say that it is a miracle that you should have travelled five leagues
without you and your horse rolling into some ditch on the highway. Just
see here!"
The wheel really had suffered serious damage. The shock administered by
the mail-wagon had split two spokes and strained the hub, so that the
nut no longer held firm.
"My friend," he said to the stableman, "is there a wheelwright here?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Do me the service to go and fetch him."
"He is only a step from here. Hey! Master Bourgaillard!"
Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own threshold.
He came, examined the wheel and made a grimace like a surgeon when the
latter thinks a limb is broken.
"Can you repair this wheel immediately?"
"Yes, sir."
"When can I set out again?"
"To-morrow."
"To-morrow!"
"There is a long day's work on it. Are you in a hurry, sir?"
"In a very great hurry. I must set out again in an hour at the latest."
"Impossible, sir."
"I will pay whatever you ask."
"Impossible."
"Well, in two hours, then."
"Impossible to-day. Two new spokes and a hub must be made. Monsieur will
not be able to start before to-morrow morning."
"The matter cannot wait until to-morrow. What if you were to replace
this wheel instead of repairing it?"
"How so?"
"You are a wheelwright?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Have you not a wheel that you can sell me? Then I could start again at
once."
"A spare wheel?"
"Yes."
"I have no wheel on hand that would fit your cabriolet. Two wheels make
a pair. Two wheels cannot be put together hap-hazard."
"In that case, sell me a pair of wheels."
"Not all wheels fit all axles, sir."
"Try, nevertheless."
"It is useless, sir. I have nothing to sell but cart-wheels. We are but
a poor country here."
"Have you a cabriolet that you can let me have?"
The wheelwright had seen at the first glance that the tilbury was a
hired vehicle. He shrugged his shoulders.
"You treat the cabriolets that people let you so well! If I had one, I
would not let it to you!"
"Well, sell it to me, then."
"I have none."
"What! not even a spring-cart? I am not hard to please, as you see."
"We live in a poor country. There is, in truth," added the wheelwright,
"an old calash under the shed yonder, which belongs to a bourgeois of
the town, who gave it to me to take care of, and who only uses it on the
thirty-sixth of the month--never, that is to say. I might let that
to you, for what matters it to me? But the bourgeois must not see it
pass--and then, it is a calash; it would require two horses."
"I will take two post-horses."
"Where is Monsieur going?"
"To Arras."
"And Monsieur wishes to reach there to-day?"
"Yes, of course."
"By taking two post-horses?"
"Why not?"
"Does it make any difference whether Monsieur arrives at four o'clock
to-morrow morning?"
"Certainly not."
"There is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking
post-horses--Monsieur has his passport?"
"Yes."
"Well, by taking post-horses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before
to-morrow. We are on a cross-road. The relays are badly served, the
horses are in the fields. The season for ploughing is just beginning;
heavy teams are required, and horses are seized upon everywhere, from
the post as well as elsewhere. Monsieur will have to wait three or four
hours at the least at every relay. And, then, they drive at a walk.
There are many hills to ascend."
"Come then, I will go on horseback. Unharness the cabriolet. Some one
can surely sell me a saddle in the neighborhood."
"Without doubt. But will this horse bear the saddle?"
"That is true; you remind me of that; he will not bear it."
"Then--"
"But I can surely hire a horse in the village?"
"A horse to travel to Arras at one stretch?"
"Yes."
"That would require such a horse as does not exist in these parts. You
would have to buy it to begin with, because no one knows you. But you
will not find one for sale nor to let, for five hundred francs, or for a
thousand."
"What am I to do?"
"The best thing is to let me repair the wheel like an honest man, and
set out on your journey to-morrow."
"To-morrow will be too late."
"The deuce!"
"Is there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?"
"To-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as well as the
one coming."
"What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?"
"A day, and a good long one."
"If you set two men to work?"
"If I set ten men to work."
"What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?"
"That could be done with the spokes, not with the hub; and the felly is
in a bad state, too."
"Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?"
"No."
"Is there another wheelwright?"
The stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert, with a toss of the
head.
"No."
He felt an immense joy.
It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it who had
broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road.
He had not yielded to this sort of first summons; he had just made every
possible effort to continue the journey; he had loyally and scrupulously
exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor
fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with which to reproach
himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It did not
concern him further. It was no longer his fault. It was not the act of
his own conscience, but the act of Providence.
He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his
lungs for the first time since Javert's visit. It seemed to him that the
hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty
hours had just released him.
It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.
He said himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had
nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.
If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a chamber
of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard him,
things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not
have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about
to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any
colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always
people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was
questioning the wheelwright, some people who were passing back and forth
halted around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young lad, to
whom no one had paid any heed, detached himself from the group and ran
off.
At the moment when the traveller, after the inward deliberation which we
have just described, resolved to retrace his steps, this child returned.
He was accompanied by an old woman.
"Monsieur," said the woman, "my boy tells me that you wish to hire a
cabriolet."
These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the
perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld the hand
which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness behind him, ready
to seize him once more.
He answered:--
"Yes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire."
And he hastened to add:--
"But there is none in the place."
"Certainly there is," said the old woman.
"Where?" interpolated the wheelwright.
"At my house," replied the old woman.
He shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.
The old woman really had in her shed a sort of basket spring-cart.
The wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect of the
traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.
"It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an actual
fact that the seats were suspended inside it by leather thongs; the rain
came into it; the wheels were rusted and eaten with moisture; it
would not go much further than the tilbury; a regular ramshackle old
stage-wagon; the gentleman would make a great mistake if he trusted
himself to it," etc., etc.
All this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle, this
thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go to Arras.
He paid what was asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright to be
repaired, intending to reclaim it on his return, had the white horse
put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed the road which he had been
travelling since morning.
At the moment when the cart moved off, he admitted that he had felt, a
moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not
go whither he was now proceeding. He examined this joy with a sort of
wrath, and found it absurd. Why should he feel joy at turning back?
After all, he was taking this trip of his own free will. No one was
forcing him to it.
And assuredly nothing would happen except what he should choose.
As he left Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: "Stop! Stop!" He
halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained a feverish and
convulsive element resembling hope.
It was the old woman's little boy.
"Monsieur," said the latter, "it was I who got the cart for you."
"Well?"
"You have not given me anything."
He who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant and almost
odious.
"Ah! it's you, you scamp?" said he; "you shall have nothing."
He whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.
He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good.
The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the
month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then,
it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy, and in addition,
there were many ascents.
He took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours for
five leagues.
At Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he came to
and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood beside
the manger while the horse was eating; he thought of sad and confusing
things.
The inn-keeper's wife came to the stable.
"Does not Monsieur wish to breakfast?"
"Come, that is true; I even have a good appetite."
He followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him to the
public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.
"Make haste!" said he; "I must start again; I am in a hurry."
A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he
looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.
"That is what ailed me," he thought; "I had not breakfasted."
His breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful, and then
slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.
A carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:--
"Why is their bread so bitter here?"
The carter was a German and did not understand him.
He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.
An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course
towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.
What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the
morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields
pass by, and the way in which the landscape, broken at every turn of the
road, vanished; this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes
suffices to the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more
melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the
first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every
instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make
comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all
the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and
bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse;
we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing;
each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel
a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door; the gloomy
horse of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and
unknown person unharnessing amid the shadows.
Twilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school
beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true that the days were still
short; he did not halt at Tinques; as he emerged from the village, a
laborer, who was mending the road with stones, raised his head and said
to him:--
"That horse is very much fatigued."
The poor beast was, in fact, going at a walk.
"Are you going to Arras?" added the road-mender.
"Yes."
"If you go on at that rate you will not arrive very early."
He stopped his horse, and asked the laborer:--
"How far is it from here to Arras?"
"Nearly seven good leagues."
"How is that? the posting guide only says five leagues and a quarter."
"Ah!" returned the road-mender, "so you don't know that the road is
under repair? You will find it barred a quarter of an hour further on;
there is no way to proceed further."
"Really?"
"You will take the road on the left, leading to Carency; you will cross
the river; when you reach Camblin, you will turn to the right; that is
the road to Mont-Saint-Éloy which leads to Arras."
"But it is night, and I shall lose my way."
"You do not belong in these parts?"
"No."
"And, besides, it is all cross-roads; stop! sir," resumed the
road-mender; "shall I give you a piece of advice? your horse is tired;
return to Tinques; there is a good inn there; sleep there; you can reach
Arras to-morrow."
"I must be there this evening."
"That is different; but go to the inn all the same, and get an extra
horse; the stable-boy will guide you through the cross-roads."
He followed the road-mender's advice, retraced his steps, and, half an
hour later, he passed the same spot again, but this time at full speed,
with a good horse to aid; a stable-boy, who called himself a postilion,
was seated on the shaft of the cariole.
Still, he felt that he had lost time.
Night had fully come.
They turned into the cross-road; the way became frightfully bad; the
cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said to the postilion:--
"Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee."
In one of the jolts, the whiffle-tree broke.
"There's the whiffle-tree broken, sir," said the postilion; "I don't
know how to harness my horse now; this road is very bad at night; if
you wish to return and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early
to-morrow morning."
He replied, "Have you a bit of rope and a knife?"
"Yes, sir."
He cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffle-tree of it.
This caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again at a
gallop.
The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the
hills and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish gleams
in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea produced a
sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of some one moving furniture;
everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror. How many
things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!
He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before;
he vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain in
the neighborhood of D----, eight years previously, and it seemed but
yesterday.
The hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:--
"What time is it?"
"Seven o'clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have but three
leagues still to go."
At that moment, he for the first time indulged in this reflection,
thinking it odd the while that it had not occurred to him sooner: that
all this trouble which he was taking was, perhaps, useless; that he did
not know so much as the hour of the trial; that he should, at least,
have informed himself of that; that he was foolish to go thus straight
ahead without knowing whether he would be of any service or not; then
he sketched out some calculations in his mind: that, ordinarily, the
sittings of the Court of Assizes began at nine o'clock in the morning;
that it could not be a long affair; that the theft of the apples would
be very brief; that there would then remain only a question of identity,
four or five depositions, and very little for the lawyers to say; that
he should arrive after all was over.
The postilion whipped up the horses; they had crossed the river and left
Mont-Saint-Éloy behind them.
The night grew more profound.
CHAPTER VI--SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF
But at that moment Fantine was joyous.
She had passed a very bad night; her cough was frightful; her fever
had doubled in intensity; she had had dreams: in the morning, when the
doctor paid his visit, she was delirious; he assumed an alarmed look,
and ordered that he should be informed as soon as M. Madeleine arrived.
All the morning she was melancholy, said but little, and laid plaits
in her sheets, murmuring the while, in a low voice, calculations
which seemed to be calculations of distances. Her eyes were hollow and
staring. They seemed almost extinguished at intervals, then lighted up
again and shone like stars. It seems as though, at the approach of a
certain dark hour, the light of heaven fills those who are quitting the
light of earth.
Each time that Sister Simplice asked her how she felt, she replied
invariably, "Well. I should like to see M. Madeleine."
Some months before this, at the moment when Fantine had just lost her
last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow of
herself; now she was the spectre of herself. Physical suffering had
completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five and twenty
had a wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils, teeth from which
the gums had receded, a leaden complexion, a bony neck, prominent
shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was
growing out sprinkled with gray. Alas! how illness improvises old-age!
At mid-day the physician returned, gave some directions, inquired
whether the mayor had made his appearance at the infirmary, and shook
his head.
M. Madeleine usually came to see the invalid at three o'clock. As
exactness is kindness, he was exact.
About half-past two, Fantine began to be restless. In the course of
twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times, "What time is it,
sister?"
Three o'clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed; she
who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow, fleshless
hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one
of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Fantine
turned and looked at the door.
No one entered; the door did not open.
She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on the
door, motionless and apparently holding her breath. The sister dared not
speak to her. The clock struck a quarter past three. Fantine fell back
on her pillow.
She said nothing, but began to plait the sheets once more.
Half an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every time the clock
struck, Fantine started up and looked towards the door, then fell back
again.
Her thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made
no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way.
One would have said that something dark was descending upon her. She was
livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.
Five o'clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently,
"He is wrong not to come to-day, since I am going away to-morrow."
Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay.
In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed. She
seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she began to
sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what
Fantine was singing:--
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.
"Yestere'en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle
clad, and said to me, 'Here, hide 'neath my veil the child whom you
one day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy
thread.'
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
"Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons
decked. God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou hast
granted me. 'Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?'--'Make of it
clothes for thy new-born babe.'
"Roses are pink and corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.
"'Wash this linen.'--'Where?'--'In the stream. Make of it, soiling
not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will
embroider and fill with flowers.'--'Madame, the child is no longer here;
what is to be done?'--'Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury
me.'
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue."
This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days,
lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her
mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her
child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it
was enough to make any one, even a nun, weep. The sister, accustomed as
she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.
The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear it. She no longer
seemed to pay attention to anything about her.
Sister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the portress of the
factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if he would not come to the
infirmary soon. The girl returned in a few minutes.
Fantine was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.
The servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone, that the
mayor had set out that morning before six o'clock, in a little tilbury
harnessed to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone
alone, without even a driver; that no one knew what road he had taken;
that people said he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras; that
others asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris. That when he
went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and that he had merely told
the portress not to expect him that night.
While the two women were whispering together, with their backs turned
to Fantine's bed, the sister interrogating, the servant conjecturing,
Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies, which
unite the free movements of health with the frightful emaciation of
death, had raised herself to her knees in bed, with her shrivelled hands
resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through the opening of the
curtains, and was listening. All at once she cried:--
"You are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking so low? What is
he doing? Why does he not come?"
Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard
the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.
"Answer me!" cried Fantine.
The servant stammered:--
"The portress told me that he could not come to-day."
"Be calm, my child," said the sister; "lie down again."
Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and
with an accent that was both imperious and heart-rending:--
"He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to
each other there. I want to know it."
The servant-maid hastened to say in the nun's ear, "Say that he is busy
with the city council."
Sister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid had
proposed to her.
On the other hand, it seemed to her that the mere communication of the
truth to the invalid would, without doubt, deal her a terrible blow, and
that this was a serious matter in Fantine's present state. Her flush
did not last long; the sister raised her calm, sad eyes to Fantine, and
said, "Monsieur le Maire has gone away."
Fantine raised herself and crouched on her heels in the bed: her eyes
sparkled; indescribable joy beamed from that melancholy face.
"Gone!" she cried; "he has gone to get Cosette."
Then she raised her arms to heaven, and her white face became ineffable;
her lips moved; she was praying in a low voice.
When her prayer was finished, "Sister," she said, "I am willing to lie
down again; I will do anything you wish; I was naughty just now; I beg
your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong to talk loudly;
I know that well, my good sister, but, you see, I am very happy: the
good God is good; M. Madeleine is good; just think! he has gone to
Montfermeil to get my little Cosette."
She lay down again, with the nun's assistance, helped the nun to arrange
her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore on her
neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.
"My child," said the sister, "try to rest now, and do not talk any
more."
Fantine took the sister's hand in her moist hands, and the latter was
pained to feel that perspiration.
"He set out this morning for Paris; in fact, he need not even go through
Paris; Montfermeil is a little to the left as you come thence. Do you
remember how he said to me yesterday, when I spoke to him of Cosette,
_Soon, soon?_ He wants to give me a surprise, you know! he made me sign
a letter so that she could be taken from the Thénardiers; they cannot
say anything, can they? they will give back Cosette, for they have been
paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the child since they
have received their pay. Do not make signs to me that I must not talk,
sister! I am extremely happy; I am doing well; I am not ill at all any
more; I am going to see Cosette again; I am even quite hungry; it is
nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot imagine how much
attached one gets to children, and then, she will be so pretty; you will
see! If you only knew what pretty little rosy fingers she had! In the
first place, she will have very beautiful hands; she had ridiculous
hands when she was only a year old; like this! she must be a big girl
now; she is seven years old; she is quite a young lady; I call her
Cosette, but her name is really Euphrasie. Stop! this morning I was
looking at the dust on the chimney-piece, and I had a sort of idea come
across me, like that, that I should see Cosette again soon. Mon Dieu!
how wrong it is not to see one's children for years! One ought to
reflect that life is not eternal. Oh, how good M. le Maire is to go! it
is very cold! it is true; he had on his cloak, at least? he will be
here to-morrow, will he not? to-morrow will be a festival day; to-morrow
morning, sister, you must remind me to put on my little cap that has
lace on it. What a place that Montfermeil is! I took that journey on
foot once; it was very long for me, but the diligences go very quickly!
he will be here to-morrow with Cosette: how far is it from here to
Montfermeil?"
The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, "Oh, I think that he
will be here to-morrow."
"To-morrow! to-morrow!" said Fantine, "I shall see Cosette to-morrow!
you see, good sister of the good God, that I am no longer ill; I am mad;
I could dance if any one wished it."
A person who had seen her a quarter of an hour previously would not have
understood the change; she was all rosy now; she spoke in a lively and
natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she talked,
she laughed softly; the joy of a mother is almost infantile.
"Well," resumed the nun, "now that you are happy, mind me, and do not
talk any more."
Fantine laid her head on her pillow and said in a low voice: "Yes,
lie down again; be good, for you are going to have your child; Sister
Simplice is right; every one here is right."
And then, without stirring, without even moving her head, she began to
stare all about her with wide-open eyes and a joyous air, and she said
nothing more.
The sister drew the curtains together again, hoping that she would
fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o'clock the doctor came; not
hearing any sound, he thought Fantine was asleep, entered softly, and
approached the bed on tiptoe; he opened the curtains a little, and, by
the light of the taper, he saw Fantine's big eyes gazing at him.
She said to him, "She will be allowed to sleep beside me in a little
bed, will she not, sir?"
The doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:--
"See! there is just room."
The doctor took Sister Simplice aside, and she explained matters to him;
that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and that in their doubt
they had not thought it well to undeceive the invalid, who believed that
the mayor had gone to Montfermeil; that it was possible, after all, that
her guess was correct: the doctor approved.
He returned to Fantine's bed, and she went on:--
"You see, when she wakes up in the morning, I shall be able to say good
morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night, I can
hear her asleep; her little gentle breathing will do me good."
"Give me your hand," said the doctor.
She stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:--
"Ah, hold! in truth, you did not know it; I am cured; Cosette will
arrive to-morrow."
The doctor was surprised; she was better; the pressure on her chest
had decreased; her pulse had regained its strength; a sort of life had
suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature.
"Doctor," she went on, "did the sister tell you that M. le Maire has
gone to get that mite of a child?"
The doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should be
avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case the
fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion. As he
took his departure, he said to the sister:--
"She is doing better; if good luck willed that the mayor should
actually arrive to-morrow with the child, who knows? there are crises
so astounding; great joy has been known to arrest maladies; I know well
that this is an organic disease, and in an advanced state, but all those
things are such mysteries: we may be able to save her."
CHAPTER VII--THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR
DEPARTURE
It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening when the cart, which we
left on the road, entered the porte-cochère of the Hotel de la Poste in
Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted
from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions of the
people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his own hands
led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened the door of a
billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor, sat down there,
and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken fourteen hours for
the journey which he had counted on making in six; he did himself the
justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault, but at bottom, he was
not sorry.
The landlady of the hotel entered.
"Does Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?"
He made a sign of the head in the negative.
"The stableman says that Monsieur's horse is extremely fatigued."
Here he broke his silence.
"Will not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow
morning?"
"Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least."
He inquired:--
"Is not the posting-station located here?"
"Yes, sir."
The hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport, and
inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night to M.
sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced to be
vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. "Monsieur," said the clerk,
"do not fail to be here ready to start at precisely one o'clock in the
morning."
This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.
He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he
walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the
passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found himself in a
labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way. A citizen was passing
along with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to apply to this
man, not without having first glanced behind and in front of him, as
though he feared lest some one should hear the question which he was
about to put.
"Monsieur," said he, "where is the court-house, if you please."
"You do not belong in town, sir?" replied the bourgeois, who was an
oldish man; "well, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of
the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the
prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this
moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the
prefecture."
"Is it there that the Assizes are held?" he asked.
"Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop's
palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzié, who was bishop in '82, built
a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court is held."
On the way, the bourgeois said to him:--
"If Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late. The sittings
generally close at six o'clock."
When they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed out to
him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast and gloomy
building.
"Upon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season. Do you
see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes. There is light
there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly
protracted, and they are holding an evening session. Do you take an
interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case? Are you a witness?"
He replied:--
"I have not come on any business; I only wish to speak to one of the
lawyers."
"That is different," said the bourgeois. "Stop, sir; here is the door
where the sentry stands. You have only to ascend the grand staircase."
He conformed to the bourgeois's directions, and a few minutes later he
was in a hall containing many people, and where groups, intermingled
with lawyers in their gowns, were whispering together here and there.
It is always a heart-breaking thing to see these congregations of men
robed in black, murmuring together in low voices, on the threshold of
the halls of justice. It is rare that charity and pity are the outcome
of these words. Condemnations pronounced in advance are more likely
to be the result. All these groups seem to the passing and thoughtful
observer so many sombre hives where buzzing spirits construct in concert
all sorts of dark edifices.
This spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was the old hall of
the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace
of justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment,
separated it from the large apartment where the court was sitting.
The obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first lawyer
whom he met.
"What stage have they reached, sir?" he asked.
"It is finished," said the lawyer.
"Finished!"
This word was repeated in such accents that the lawyer turned round.
"Excuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?"
"No; I know no one here. Has judgment been pronounced?"
"Of course. Nothing else was possible."
"To penal servitude?"
"For life."
He continued, in a voice so weak that it was barely audible:--
"Then his identity was established?"
"What identity?" replied the lawyer. "There was no identity to be
established. The matter was very simple. The woman had murdered her
child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw out the question of
premeditation, and she was condemned for life."
"So it was a woman?" said he.
"Why, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?"
"Nothing. But since it is all over, how comes it that the hall is still
lighted?"
"For another case, which was begun about two hours ago."
"What other case?"
"Oh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard;
a man arrested for a second offence; a convict who has been guilty of
theft. I don't know his name exactly. There's a bandit's phiz for you!
I'd send him to the galleys on the strength of his face alone."
"Is there any way of getting into the court-room, sir?" said he.
"I really think that there is not. There is a great crowd. However,
the hearing has been suspended. Some people have gone out, and when the
hearing is resumed, you might make an effort."
"Where is the entrance?"
"Through yonder large door."
The lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced,
almost simultaneously, almost intermingled with each other, all possible
emotions. The words of this indifferent spectator had, in turn, pierced
his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire. When he saw that
nothing was settled, he breathed freely once more; but he could not have
told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure.
He drew near to many groups and listened to what they were saying. The
docket of the session was very heavy; the president had appointed
for the same day two short and simple cases. They had begun with the
infanticide, and now they had reached the convict, the old offender, the
"return horse." This man had stolen apples, but that did not appear to
be entirely proved; what had been proved was, that he had already been
in the galleys at Toulon. It was that which lent a bad aspect to
his case. However, the man's examination and the depositions of the
witnesses had been completed, but the lawyer's plea, and the speech
of the public prosecutor were still to come; it could not be
finished before midnight. The man would probably be condemned; the
attorney-general was very clever, and never _missed_ his culprits; he
was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses.
An usher stood at the door communicating with the hall of the Assizes.
He inquired of this usher:--
"Will the door be opened soon, sir?"
"It will not be opened at all," replied the usher.
"What! It will not be opened when the hearing is resumed? Is not the
hearing suspended?"
"The hearing has just been begun again," replied the usher, "but the
door will not be opened again."
"Why?"
"Because the hall is full."
"What! There is not room for one more?"
"Not another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now."
The usher added after a pause: "There are, to tell the truth, two
or three extra places behind Monsieur le Président, but Monsieur le
Président only admits public functionaries to them."
So saying, the usher turned his back.
He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly
descended the stairs, as though hesitating at every step. It is probable
that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent conflict which had
been going on within him since the preceding evening was not yet ended;
and every moment he encountered some new phase of it. On reaching the
landing-place, he leaned his back against the balusters and folded his
arms. All at once he opened his coat, drew out his pocket-book, took
from it a pencil, tore out a leaf, and upon that leaf he wrote rapidly,
by the light of the street lantern, this line: _M. Madeleine, Mayor of
M. sur M._; then he ascended the stairs once more with great strides,
made his way through the crowd, walked straight up to the usher, handed
him the paper, and said in an authoritative manner:--
"Take this to Monsieur le Président."
The usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed.
CHAPTER VIII--AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR
Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed
a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation for
virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed
the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through
two or three neighboring departments. Besides the service which he had
rendered to the chief town by resuscitating the black jet industry,
there was not one out of the hundred and forty communes of the
arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him for some
benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply the
industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when
occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the linen
factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frévent, and the
hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the
name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai
envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.
The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding over this
session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in common with the rest
of the world, with this name which was so profoundly and universally
honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door which connected
the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the back of the
President's arm-chair and handed him the paper on which was inscribed
the line which we have just perused, adding: "The gentleman desires to
be present at the trial," the President, with a quick and deferential
movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper
and returned it to the usher, saying, "Admit him."
The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near the door
of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in which the usher
had left him. In the midst of his revery he heard some one saying to
him, "Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?" It was the same usher
who had turned his back upon him but a moment previously, and who was
now bowing to the earth before him. At the same time, the usher handed
him the paper. He unfolded it, and as he chanced to be near the light,
he could read it.
"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects to M.
Madeleine."
He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained for him
a strange and bitter aftertaste.
He followed the usher.
A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a
table with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just
quitted him still rang in his ears: "Monsieur, you are now in the
council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door,
and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's
chair." These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of
narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.
The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought
to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment
when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful
realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. He
was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned. With
stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment,
where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring with his
name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing. He stared at
the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering that it should be that
chamber and that it should be he.
He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn out by the
jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it. It seemed to him that
he felt nothing.
He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall, and which
contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter of Jean Nicolas
Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated, through an error, no
doubt, the _9th of June_, of the year II., and in which Pache forwarded
to the commune the list of ministers and deputies held in arrest by
them. Any spectator who had chanced to see him at that moment, and who
had watched him, would have imagined, doubtless, that this letter struck
him as very curious, for he did not take his eyes from it, and he read
it two or three times. He read it without paying any attention to it,
and unconsciously. He was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.
As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass knob
of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes. He had almost
forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first, paused there, remained
fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified, and little by little
became impregnated with fear. Beads of perspiration burst forth among
his hair and trickled down upon his temples.
At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of a sort of
authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended to convey, and
which does so well convey, _"Pardieu! who compels me to this?"_ Then
he wheeled briskly round, caught sight of the door through which he had
entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out. He was
no longer in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long, narrow
corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts of angles,
lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night taper of
invalids, the corridor through which he had approached. He breathed, he
listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him, and he fled as
though pursued.
When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still listened. The
same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness around him. He was
out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall. The stone was
cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow; he straightened himself
up with a shiver.
Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and with
something else, too, perchance, he meditated.
He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the day: he heard
within him but one voice, which said, "Alas!"
A quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his head, sighed
with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly,
and as though crushed. It seemed as though some one had overtaken him in
his flight and was leading him back.
He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught sight of
was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round and of polished
brass, shone like a terrible star for him. He gazed at it as a lamb
might gaze into the eye of a tiger.
He could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he advanced a step
and approached the door.
Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining hall
like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and he did not
hear.
Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself near
the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door opened.
He was in the court-room.
CHAPTER IX--A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION
He advanced a pace, closed the door mechanically behind him, and
remained standing, contemplating what he saw.
It was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of uproar, now full
of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case, with its petty
and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng, was in process of
development.
At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges, with
abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their nails or
closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd; lawyers in
all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient,
spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was
yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room
lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in
the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness,
ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and
august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is
called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.
No one in all that throng paid any attention to him; all glances were
directed towards a single point, a wooden bench placed against a small
door, in the stretch of wall on the President's left; on this bench,
illuminated by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.
This man was _the_ man.
He did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither naturally, as
though they had known beforehand where that figure was.
He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the same
in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect, with his
bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that blouse, just as
it was on the day when he entered D----, full of hatred, concealing
his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he had spent
nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.
He said to himself with a shudder, "Good God! shall I become like that
again?"
This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something
indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him.
At the sound made by the opening door, people had drawn aside to make
way for him; the President had turned his head, and, understanding that
the personage who had just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had
bowed to him; the attorney-general, who had seen M. Madeleine at M.
sur M., whither the duties of his office had called him more than once,
recognized him and saluted him also: he had hardly perceived it; he was
the victim of a sort of hallucination; he was watching.
Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these
he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before;
he had encountered those fatal things once more; there they were; they
moved; they existed; it was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage
of his thought; they were real gendarmes and real judges, a real
crowd, and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over; he beheld the
monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him,
with all that there is formidable in reality.
All this was yawning before him.
He was horrified by it; he shut his eyes, and exclaimed in the deepest
recesses of his soul, "Never!"
And by a tragic play of destiny which made all his ideas tremble, and
rendered him nearly mad, it was another self of his that was there! all
called that man who was being tried Jean Valjean.
Under his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation
of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.
Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night,
the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were the
same, only above the President's head there hung a crucifix, something
which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation: God had
been absent when he had been judged.
There was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at the
thought that he might be seen; when he was seated, he took advantage of
a pile of cardboard boxes, which stood on the judge's desk, to conceal
his face from the whole room; he could now see without being seen; he
had fully regained consciousness of the reality of things; gradually he
recovered; he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to
listen.
M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors.
He looked for Javert, but did not see him; the seat of the witnesses was
hidden from him by the clerk's table, and then, as we have just said,
the hall was sparely lighted.
At the moment of this entrance, the defendant's lawyer had just finished
his plea.
The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; the affair had
lasted for three hours: for three hours that crowd had been watching a
strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid
or profoundly subtle, gradually bending beneath the weight of a terrible
likeness. This man, as the reader already knows, was a vagabond who had
been found in a field carrying a branch laden with ripe apples, broken
in the orchard of a neighbor, called the Pierron orchard. Who was this
man? an examination had been made; witnesses had been heard, and they
were unanimous; light had abounded throughout the entire debate; the
accusation said: "We have in our grasp not only a marauder, a stealer
of fruit; we have here, in our hands, a bandit, an old offender who
has broken his ban, an ex-convict, a miscreant of the most dangerous
description, a malefactor named Jean Valjean, whom justice has long been
in search of, and who, eight years ago, on emerging from the galleys
at Toulon, committed a highway robbery, accompanied by violence, on the
person of a child, a Savoyard named Little Gervais; a crime provided
for by article 383 of the Penal Code, the right to try him for which
we reserve hereafter, when his identity shall have been judicially
established. He has just committed a fresh theft; it is a case of a
second offence; condemn him for the fresh deed; later on he will be
judged for the old crime." In the face of this accusation, in the face
of the unanimity of the witnesses, the accused appeared to be astonished
more than anything else; he made signs and gestures which were meant to
convey No, or else he stared at the ceiling: he spoke with difficulty,
replied with embarrassment, but his whole person, from head to foot, was
a denial; he was an idiot in the presence of all these minds ranged in
order of battle around him, and like a stranger in the midst of this
society which was seizing fast upon him; nevertheless, it was a question
of the most menacing future for him; the likeness increased every
moment, and the entire crowd surveyed, with more anxiety than he did
himself, that sentence freighted with calamity, which descended
ever closer over his head; there was even a glimpse of a possibility
afforded; besides the galleys, a possible death penalty, in case his
identity were established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end
thereafter in condemnation. Who was this man? what was the nature of his
apathy? was it imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did
he not understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd,
and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible and
puzzling in this case: the drama was not only melancholy; it was also
obscure.
The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that
provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar,
and which was formerly employed by all advocates, at Paris as well as at
Romorantin or at Montbrison, and which to-day, having become classic, is
no longer spoken except by the official orators of magistracy, to whom
it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness and its majestic
stride; a tongue in which a husband is called _a consort_, and a woman
_a spouse_; Paris, _the centre of art and civilization_; the king,
_the monarch_; Monseigneur the Bishop, _a sainted pontiff_; the
district-attorney, _the eloquent interpreter of public prosecution_;
the arguments, _the accents which we have just listened to_; the age of
Louis XIV., _the grand age_; a theatre, _the temple of Melpomene_; the
reigning family, _the august blood of our kings_; a concert, _a musical
solemnity_; the General Commandant of the province, _the illustrious
warrior, who, etc._; the pupils in the seminary, _these tender
levities_; errors imputed to newspapers, _the imposture which distills
its venom through the columns of those organs_; etc. The lawyer
had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the theft of the
apples,--an awkward matter couched in fine style; but Bénigne Bossuet
himself was obliged to allude to a chicken in the midst of a funeral
oration, and he extricated himself from the situation in stately
fashion. The lawyer established the fact that the theft of the apples
had not been circumstantially proved. His client, whom he, in his
character of counsel, persisted in calling Champmathieu, had not been
seen scaling that wall nor breaking that branch by any one. He had been
taken with that branch (which the lawyer preferred to call a _bough_) in
his possession; but he said that he had found it broken off and lying
on the ground, and had picked it up. Where was there any proof to the
contrary? No doubt that branch had been broken off and concealed after
the scaling of the wall, then thrown away by the alarmed marauder; there
was no doubt that there had been a thief in the case. But what proof
was there that that thief had been Champmathieu? One thing only. His
character as an ex-convict. The lawyer did not deny that that character
appeared to be, unhappily, well attested; the accused had resided at
Faverolles; the accused had exercised the calling of a tree-pruner
there; the name of Champmathieu might well have had its origin in
Jean Mathieu; all that was true,--in short, four witnesses recognize
Champmathieu, positively and without hesitation, as that convict, Jean
Valjean; to these signs, to this testimony, the counsel could oppose
nothing but the denial of his client, the denial of an interested party;
but supposing that he was the convict Jean Valjean, did that prove that
he was the thief of the apples? that was a presumption at the most, not
a proof. The prisoner, it was true, and his counsel, "in good faith,"
was obliged to admit it, had adopted "a bad system of defence." He
obstinately denied everything, the theft and his character of convict.
An admission upon this last point would certainly have been better, and
would have won for him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel
had advised him to do this; but the accused had obstinately refused,
thinking, no doubt, that he would save everything by admitting nothing.
It was an error; but ought not the paucity of this intelligence to be
taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid. Long-continued
wretchedness in the galleys, long misery outside the galleys, had
brutalized him, etc. He defended himself badly; was that a reason for
condemning him? As for the affair with Little Gervais, the counsel need
not discuss it; it did not enter into the case. The lawyer wound up
by beseeching the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean
appeared to them to be evident, to apply to him the police penalties
which are provided for a criminal who has broken his ban, and not the
frightful chastisement which descends upon the convict guilty of a
second offence.
The district-attorney answered the counsel for the defence. He was
violent and florid, as district-attorneys usually are.
He congratulated the counsel for the defence on his "loyalty," and
skilfully took advantage of this loyalty. He reached the accused through
all the concessions made by his lawyer. The advocate had seemed to admit
that the prisoner was Jean Valjean. He took note of this. So this man
was Jean Valjean. This point had been conceded to the accusation and
could no longer be disputed. Here, by means of a clever
autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the
district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic
school, then dawning under the name of _the Satanic school_, which
had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the _Quotidienne_ and
the _Oriflamme_; he attributed, not without some probability, to the
influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, or
rather, to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean. Having exhausted these
considerations, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean
Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a monster spewed forth, etc.
The model for this sort of description is contained in the tale of
Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders
great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury
"shuddered." The description finished, the district-attorney resumed
with an oratorical turn calculated to raise the enthusiasm of the
journal of the prefecture to the highest pitch on the following day: And
it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., vagabond, beggar, without means of
existence, etc., etc., inured by his past life to culpable deeds, and
but little reformed by his sojourn in the galleys, as was proved by the
crime committed against Little Gervais, etc., etc.; it is such a man,
caught upon the highway in the very act of theft, a few paces from a
wall that had been scaled, still holding in his hand the object
stolen, who denies the crime, the theft, the climbing the wall; denies
everything; denies even his own identity! In addition to a hundred
other proofs, to which we will not recur, four witnesses recognize
him--Javert, the upright inspector of police; Javert, and three of
his former companions in infamy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and
Cochepaille. What does he offer in opposition to this overwhelming
unanimity? His denial. What obduracy! You will do justice, gentlemen
of the jury, etc., etc. While the district-attorney was speaking, the
accused listened to him open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which
some admiration was assuredly blended. He was evidently surprised that
a man could talk like that. From time to time, at those "energetic"
moments of the prosecutor's speech, when eloquence which cannot contain
itself overflows in a flood of withering epithets and envelops the
accused like a storm, he moved his head slowly from right to left and
from left to right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with which
he had contented himself since the beginning of the argument. Two or
three times the spectators who were nearest to him heard him say in
a low voice, "That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup." The
district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this stupid
attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility, but craft,
skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all its
nakedness the "profound perversity" of this man. He ended by making
his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a severe
sentence.
At that time, as the reader will remember, it was penal servitude for
life.
The counsel for the defence rose, began by complimenting Monsieur
l'Avocat-General on his "admirable speech," then replied as best he
could; but he weakened; the ground was evidently slipping away from
under his feet.
CHAPTER X--THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS
The moment for closing the debate had arrived. The President had the
accused stand up, and addressed to him the customary question, "Have you
anything to add to your defence?"
The man did not appear to understand, as he stood there, twisting in his
hands a terrible cap which he had.
The President repeated the question.
This time the man heard it. He seemed to understand. He made a motion
like a man who is just waking up, cast his eyes about him, stared at
the audience, the gendarmes, his counsel, the jury, the court, laid
his monstrous fist on the rim of woodwork in front of his bench,
took another look, and all at once, fixing his glance upon the
district-attorney, he began to speak. It was like an eruption.
It seemed, from the manner in which the words escaped from his
mouth,--incoherent, impetuous, pell-mell, tumbling over each other,--as
though they were all pressing forward to issue forth at once. He said:--
"This is what I have to say. That I have been a wheelwright in Paris,
and that it was with Monsieur Baloup. It is a hard trade. In the
wheelwright's trade one works always in the open air, in courtyards,
under sheds when the masters are good, never in closed workshops,
because space is required, you see. In winter one gets so cold that one
beats one's arms together to warm one's self; but the masters don't like
it; they say it wastes time. Handling iron when there is ice between
the paving-stones is hard work. That wears a man out quickly. One is old
while he is still quite young in that trade. At forty a man is done for.
I was fifty-three. I was in a bad state. And then, workmen are so mean!
When a man is no longer young, they call him nothing but an old bird,
old beast! I was not earning more than thirty sous a day. They paid me
as little as possible. The masters took advantage of my age--and then I
had my daughter, who was a laundress at the river. She earned a little
also. It sufficed for us two. She had trouble, also; all day long up to
her waist in a tub, in rain, in snow. When the wind cuts your face, when
it freezes, it is all the same; you must still wash. There are people
who have not much linen, and wait until late; if you do not wash, you
lose your custom. The planks are badly joined, and water drops on you
from everywhere; you have your petticoats all damp above and below. That
penetrates. She has also worked at the laundry of the Enfants-Rouges,
where the water comes through faucets. You are not in the tub there; you
wash at the faucet in front of you, and rinse in a basin behind you. As
it is enclosed, you are not so cold; but there is that hot steam, which
is terrible, and which ruins your eyes. She came home at seven o'clock
in the evening, and went to bed at once, she was so tired. Her husband
beat her. She is dead. We have not been very happy. She was a good girl,
who did not go to the ball, and who was very peaceable. I remember
one Shrove-Tuesday when she went to bed at eight o'clock. There, I am
telling the truth; you have only to ask. Ah, yes! how stupid I am! Paris
is a gulf. Who knows Father Champmathieu there? But M. Baloup does, I
tell you. Go see at M. Baloup's; and after all, I don't know what is
wanted of me."
The man ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these things
in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and savage
ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd. The sort
of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came
like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a wood-cutter who is
splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst into a laugh.
He stared at the public, and, perceiving that they were laughing, and
not understanding why, he began to laugh himself.
It was inauspicious.
The President, an attentive and benevolent man, raised his voice.
He reminded "the gentlemen of the jury" that "the sieur Baloup, formerly
a master-wheelwright, with whom the accused stated that he had served,
had been summoned in vain. He had become bankrupt, and was not to be
found." Then turning to the accused, he enjoined him to listen to what
he was about to say, and added: "You are in a position where reflection
is necessary. The gravest presumptions rest upon you, and may induce
vital results. Prisoner, in your own interests, I summon you for the
last time to explain yourself clearly on two points. In the first place,
did you or did you not climb the wall of the Pierron orchard, break
the branch, and steal the apples; that is to say, commit the crime
of breaking in and theft? In the second place, are you the discharged
convict, Jean Valjean--yes or no?"
The prisoner shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has
thoroughly understood, and who knows what answer he is going to make. He
opened his mouth, turned towards the President, and said:--
"In the first place--"
Then he stared at his cap, stared at the ceiling, and held his peace.
"Prisoner," said the district-attorney, in a severe voice; "pay
attention. You are not answering anything that has been asked of you.
Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident that your name is not
Champmathieu; that you are the convict, Jean Valjean, concealed first
under the name of Jean Mathieu, which was the name of his mother; that
you went to Auvergne; that you were born at Faverolles, where you were
a pruner of trees. It is evident that you have been guilty of entering,
and of the theft of ripe apples from the Pierron orchard. The gentlemen
of the jury will form their own opinion."
Enlarge
The prisoner had finally resumed his seat; he arose abruptly when the
district-attorney had finished, and exclaimed:--
"You are very wicked; that you are! This what I wanted to say; I could
not find words for it at first. I have stolen nothing. I am a man who
does not have something to eat every day. I was coming from Ailly; I
was walking through the country after a shower, which had made the whole
country yellow: even the ponds were overflowed, and nothing sprang from
the sand any more but the little blades of grass at the wayside. I
found a broken branch with apples on the ground; I picked up the branch
without knowing that it would get me into trouble. I have been in
prison, and they have been dragging me about for the last three months;
more than that I cannot say; people talk against me, they tell me,
'Answer!' The gendarme, who is a good fellow, nudges my elbow, and says
to me in a low voice, 'Come, answer!' I don't know how to explain; I
have no education; I am a poor man; that is where they wrong me, because
they do not see this. I have not stolen; I picked up from the ground
things that were lying there. You say, Jean Valjean, Jean Mathieu! I
don't know those persons; they are villagers. I worked for M. Baloup,
Boulevard de l'Hôpital; my name is Champmathieu. You are very clever to
tell me where I was born; I don't know myself: it's not everybody
who has a house in which to come into the world; that would be too
convenient. I think that my father and mother were people who strolled
along the highways; I know nothing different. When I was a child, they
called me _young fellow_; now they call me _old Fellow_; those are my
baptismal names; take that as you like. I have been in Auvergne; I have
been at Faverolles. Pardi. Well! can't a man have been in Auvergne, or
at Faverolles, without having been in the galleys? I tell you that I
have not stolen, and that I am Father Champmathieu; I have been with M.
Baloup; I have had a settled residence. You worry me with your nonsense,
there! Why is everybody pursuing me so furiously?"
The district-attorney had remained standing; he addressed the
President:--
"Monsieur le Président, in view of the confused but exceedingly clever
denials of the prisoner, who would like to pass himself off as an idiot,
but who will not succeed in so doing,--we shall attend to that,--we
demand that it shall please you and that it shall please the court to
summon once more into this place the convicts Brevet, Cochepaille, and
Chenildieu, and Police-Inspector Javert, and question them for the last
time as to the identity of the prisoner with the convict Jean Valjean."
"I would remind the district-attorney," said the President, "that
Police-Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the capital of a
neighboring arrondissement, left the court-room and the town as soon as
he had made his deposition; we have accorded him permission, with the
consent of the district-attorney and of the counsel for the prisoner."
"That is true, Mr. President," responded the district-attorney. "In the
absence of sieur Javert, I think it my duty to remind the gentlemen of
the jury of what he said here a few hours ago. Javert is an estimable
man, who does honor by his rigorous and strict probity to inferior but
important functions. These are the terms of his deposition: 'I do not
even stand in need of circumstantial proofs and moral presumptions to
give the lie to the prisoner's denial. I recognize him perfectly. The
name of this man is not Champmathieu; he is an ex-convict named Jean
Valjean, and is very vicious and much to be feared. It is only with
extreme regret that he was released at the expiration of his term. He
underwent nineteen years of penal servitude for theft. He made five or
six attempts to escape. Besides the theft from Little Gervais, and from
the Pierron orchard, I suspect him of a theft committed in the house of
His Grace the late Bishop of D---- I often saw him at the time when I
was adjutant of the galley-guard at the prison in Toulon. I repeat that
I recognize him perfectly.'"
This extremely precise statement appeared to produce a vivid impression
on the public and on the jury. The district-attorney concluded by
insisting, that in default of Javert, the three witnesses Brevet,
Chenildieu, and Cochepaille should be heard once more and solemnly
interrogated.
The President transmitted the order to an usher, and, a moment later,
the door of the witnesses' room opened. The usher, accompanied by a
gendarme ready to lend him armed assistance, introduced the convict
Brevet. The audience was in suspense; and all breasts heaved as though
they had contained but one soul.
The ex-convict Brevet wore the black and gray waistcoat of the central
prisons. Brevet was a person sixty years of age, who had a sort of
business man's face, and the air of a rascal. The two sometimes go
together. In prison, whither fresh misdeeds had led him, he had become
something in the nature of a turnkey. He was a man of whom his superiors
said, "He tries to make himself of use." The chaplains bore good
testimony as to his religious habits. It must not be forgotten that this
passed under the Restoration.
"Brevet," said the President, "you have undergone an ignominious
sentence, and you cannot take an oath."
Brevet dropped his eyes.
"Nevertheless," continued the President, "even in the man whom the law
has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy permits it, a
sentiment of honor and of equity. It is to this sentiment that I
appeal at this decisive hour. If it still exists in you,--and I hope
it does,--reflect before replying to me: consider on the one hand, this
man, whom a word from you may ruin; on the other hand, justice, which a
word from you may enlighten. The instant is solemn; there is still time
to retract if you think you have been mistaken. Rise, prisoner. Brevet,
take a good look at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on
your soul and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as your
former companion in the galleys, Jean Valjean?"
Brevet looked at the prisoner, then turned towards the court.
"Yes, Mr. President, I was the first to recognize him, and I stick to
it; that man is Jean Valjean, who entered at Toulon in 1796, and left in
1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it must be
because age has brutalized him; he was sly at the galleys: I recognize
him positively."
"Take your seat," said the President. "Prisoner, remain standing."
Chenildieu was brought in, a prisoner for life, as was indicated by his
red cassock and his green cap. He was serving out his sentence at the
galleys of Toulon, whence he had been brought for this case. He was a
small man of about fifty, brisk, wrinkled, frail, yellow, brazen-faced,
feverish, who had a sort of sickly feebleness about all his limbs and
his whole person, and an immense force in his glance. His companions in
the galleys had nicknamed him _I-deny-God_ (_Je-nie Dieu_, Chenildieu).
The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had
used to Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him of his infamy which
deprived him of the right to take an oath, Chenildieu raised his
head and looked the crowd in the face. The President invited him to
reflection, and asked him as he had asked Brevet, if he persisted in
recognition of the prisoner.
Chenildieu burst out laughing.
"Pardieu, as if I didn't recognize him! We were attached to the same
chain for five years. So you are sulking, old fellow?"
"Go take your seat," said the President.
The usher brought in Cochepaille. He was another convict for life, who
had come from the galleys, and was dressed in red, like Chenildieu, was
a peasant from Lourdes, and a half-bear of the Pyrenees. He had guarded
the flocks among the mountains, and from a shepherd he had slipped into
a brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage and seemed even more stupid
than the prisoner. He was one of those wretched men whom nature has
sketched out for wild beasts, and on whom society puts the finishing
touches as convicts in the galleys.
The President tried to touch him with some grave and pathetic words,
and asked him, as he had asked the other two, if he persisted, without
hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man who was standing before
him.
"He is Jean Valjean," said Cochepaille. "He was even called
Jean-the-Screw, because he was so strong."
Each of these affirmations from these three men, evidently sincere and
in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of bad augury for the
prisoner,--a murmur which increased and lasted longer each time that a
fresh declaration was added to the proceeding.
The prisoner had listened to them, with that astounded face which was,
according to the accusation, his principal means of defence; at the
first, the gendarmes, his neighbors, had heard him mutter between his
teeth: "Ah, well, he's a nice one!" after the second, he said, a little
louder, with an air that was almost that of satisfaction, "Good!" at the
third, he cried, "Famous!"
The President addressed him:--
"Have you heard, prisoner? What have you to say?"
He replied:--
"I say, 'Famous!'"
An uproar broke out among the audience, and was communicated to the
jury; it was evident that the man was lost.
"Ushers," said the President, "enforce silence! I am going to sum up the
arguments."
At that moment there was a movement just beside the President; a voice
was heard crying:--
"Brevet! Chenildieu! Cochepaille! look here!"
All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was
it; all eyes were turned to the point whence it had proceeded. A man,
placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind the
court, had just risen, had pushed open the half-door which separated the
tribunal from the audience, and was standing in the middle of the hall;
the President, the district-attorney, M. Bamatabois, twenty persons,
recognized him, and exclaimed in concert:--
"M. Madeleine!"
CHAPTER XI--CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED
It was he, in fact. The clerk's lamp illumined his countenance. He held
his hat in his hand; there was no disorder in his clothing; his coat
was carefully buttoned; he was very pale, and he trembled slightly;
his hair, which had still been gray on his arrival in Arras, was now
entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he had sat there.
All heads were raised: the sensation was indescribable; there was
a momentary hesitation in the audience, the voice had been so
heart-rending; the man who stood there appeared so calm that they did
not understand at first. They asked themselves whether he had indeed
uttered that cry; they could not believe that that tranquil man had been
the one to give that terrible outcry.
This indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before the President
and the district-attorney could utter a word, before the ushers and the
gendarmes could make a gesture, the man whom all still called, at that
moment, M. Madeleine, had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille,
Brevet, and Chenildieu.
"Do you not recognize me?" said he.
All three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head that
they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated, made a military
salute. M. Madeleine turned towards the jury and the court, and said in
a gentle voice:--
"Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr.
President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are in search
of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean."
Not a mouth breathed; the first commotion of astonishment had been
followed by a silence like that of the grave; those within the hall
experienced that sort of religious terror which seizes the masses when
something grand has been done.
In the meantime, the face of the President was stamped with sympathy and
sadness; he had exchanged a rapid sign with the district-attorney and a
few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the public,
and asked in accents which all understood:--
"Is there a physician present?"
The district-attorney took the word:--
"Gentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident
which disturbs the audience inspires us, like yourselves, only with a
sentiment which it is unnecessary for us to express. You all know, by
reputation at least, the honorable M. Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M.;
if there is a physician in the audience, we join the President in
requesting him to attend to M. Madeleine, and to conduct him to his
home."
M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he
interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority. These are the
words which he uttered; here they are literally, as they were written
down, immediately after the trial by one of the witnesses to this scene,
and as they now ring in the ears of those who heard them nearly forty
years ago:--
"I thank you, Mr. District-Attorney, but I am not mad; you shall see;
you were on the point of committing a great error; release this man! I
am fulfilling a duty; I am that miserable criminal. I am the only one
here who sees the matter clearly, and I am telling you the truth. God,
who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that
suffices. You can take me, for here I am: but I have done my best; I
concealed myself under another name; I have become rich; I have become
a mayor; I have tried to re-enter the ranks of the honest. It seems that
that is not to be done. In short, there are many things which I cannot
tell. I will not narrate the story of my life to you; you will hear it
one of these days. I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, it is true; it is
true that I robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you that
Jean Valjean was a very vicious wretch. Perhaps it was not altogether
his fault. Listen, honorable judges! a man who has been so greatly
humbled as I have has neither any remonstrances to make to Providence,
nor any advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy from which I
have tried to escape is an injurious thing; the galleys make the convict
what he is; reflect upon that, if you please. Before going to the
galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort
of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. I was stupid; I became
vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand. Later on,
indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had ruined me. But, pardon
me, you cannot understand what I am saying. You will find at my house,
among the ashes in the fireplace, the forty-sou piece which I stole,
seven years ago, from little Gervais. I have nothing farther to add;
take me. Good God! the district-attorney shakes his head; you say, 'M.
Madeleine has gone mad!' you do not believe me! that is distressing. Do
not, at least, condemn this man! What! these men do not recognize me! I
wish Javert were here; he would recognize me."
Nothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone which
accompanied these words.
He turned to the three convicts, and said:--
"Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?"
He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:--
"Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which you
wore in the galleys?"
Brevet gave a start of surprise, and surveyed him from head to foot with
a frightened air. He continued:--
"Chenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of 'Jenie-Dieu,'
your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn, because you one day laid
your shoulder against the chafing-dish full of coals, in order to efface
the three letters T. F. P., which are still visible, nevertheless;
answer, is this true?"
"It is true," said Chenildieu.
He addressed himself to Cochepaille:--
"Cochepaille, you have, near the bend in your left arm, a date stamped
in blue letters with burnt powder; the date is that of the landing of
the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!"
Cochepaille pushed up his sleeve; all eyes were focused on him and on
his bare arm.
A gendarme held a light close to it; there was the date.
The unhappy man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile
which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of
it. It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.
"You see plainly," he said, "that I am Jean Valjean."
In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor
gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing hearts.
No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon
to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of
prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel for
the defence that he was there to defend. It was a striking circumstance
that no question was put, that no authority intervened. The peculiarity
of sublime spectacles is, that they capture all souls and turn witnesses
into spectators. No one, probably, could have explained what he felt;
no one, probably, said to himself that he was witnessing the splendid
outburst of a grand light: all felt themselves inwardly dazzled.
It was evident that they had Jean Valjean before their eyes. That was
clear. The appearance of this man had sufficed to suffuse with light
that matter which had been so obscure but a moment previously, without
any further explanation: the whole crowd, as by a sort of electric
revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance the simple
and magnificent history of a man who was delivering himself up so
that another man might not be condemned in his stead. The details, the
hesitations, little possible oppositions, were swallowed up in that vast
and luminous fact.
It was an impression which vanished speedily, but which was irresistible
at the moment.
"I do not wish to disturb the court further," resumed Jean Valjean. "I
shall withdraw, since you do not arrest me. I have many things to do.
The district-attorney knows who I am; he knows whither I am going; he
can have me arrested when he likes."
He directed his steps towards the door. Not a voice was raised, not an
arm extended to hinder him. All stood aside. At that moment there was
about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside
and make way for a man. He traversed the crowd slowly. It was never
known who opened the door, but it is certain that he found the door open
when he reached it. On arriving there he turned round and said:--
"I am at your command, Mr. District-Attorney."
Then he addressed the audience:--
"All of you, all who are present--consider me worthy of pity, do you
not? Good God! When I think of what I was on the point of doing, I
consider that I am to be envied. Nevertheless, I should have preferred
not to have had this occur."
He withdrew, and the door closed behind him as it had opened, for those
who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being served by some
one in the crowd.
Less than an hour after this, the verdict of the jury freed the said
Champmathieu from all accusations; and Champmathieu, being at once
released, went off in a state of stupefaction, thinking that all men
were fools, and comprehending nothing of this vision.
BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW
CHAPTER I--IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR
The day had begun to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless and feverish
night, filled with happy visions; at daybreak she fell asleep. Sister
Simplice, who had been watching with her, availed herself of this
slumber to go and prepare a new potion of chinchona. The worthy sister
had been in the laboratory of the infirmary but a few moments, bending
over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on
account of the dimness which the half-light of dawn spreads over all
objects. Suddenly she raised her head and uttered a faint shriek. M.
Madeleine stood before her; he had just entered silently.
"Is it you, Mr. Mayor?" she exclaimed.
He replied in a low voice:--
"How is that poor woman?"
"Not so bad just now; but we have been very uneasy."
She explained to him what had passed: that Fantine had been very ill the
day before, and that she was better now, because she thought that the
mayor had gone to Montfermeil to get her child. The sister dared not
question the mayor; but she perceived plainly from his air that he had
not come from there.
"All that is good," said he; "you were right not to undeceive her."
"Yes," responded the sister; "but now, Mr. Mayor, she will see you and
will not see her child. What shall we say to her?"
He reflected for a moment.
"God will inspire us," said he.
"But we cannot tell a lie," murmured the sister, half aloud.
It was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full on M. Madeleine's
face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it.
"Good God, sir!" she exclaimed; "what has happened to you? Your hair is
perfectly white!"
"White!" said he.
Sister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out
the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary used to see whether
a patient was dead and whether he no longer breathed. M. Madeleine took
the mirror, looked at his hair, and said:--
"Well!"
He uttered the word indifferently, and as though his mind were on
something else.
The sister felt chilled by something strange of which she caught a
glimpse in all this.
He inquired:--
"Can I see her?"
"Is not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought back to her?"
said the sister, hardly venturing to put the question.
"Of course; but it will take two or three days at least."
"If she were not to see Monsieur le Maire until that time," went on
the sister, timidly, "she would not know that Monsieur le Maire had
returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with patience; and when
the child arrived, she would naturally think Monsieur le Maire had just
come with the child. We should not have to enact a lie."
M. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments; then he said with his
calm gravity:--
"No, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste."
The nun did not appear to notice this word "perhaps," which communicated
an obscure and singular sense to the words of the mayor's speech. She
replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully:--
"In that case, she is asleep; but Monsieur le Maire may enter."
He made some remarks about a door which shut badly, and the noise of
which might awaken the sick woman; then he entered Fantine's chamber,
approached the bed and drew aside the curtains. She was asleep. Her
breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar
to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are
watching through the night beside their sleeping child who is condemned
to death. But this painful respiration hardly troubled a sort of
ineffable serenity which overspread her countenance, and which
transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her
cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her
youth and her virginity which remained to her, palpitated, though they
remained closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an
indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her
away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be
seen. To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was
an invalid whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather
something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of
dying.
The branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a flower, and
seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time.
The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives in
which the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.
M. Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that bed, gazing
in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as he had done two months
before, on the day when he had come for the first time to see her
in that asylum. They were both still there in the same attitude--she
sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair
was gray and his was white.
The sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the bed, with his
finger on his lips, as though there were some one in the chamber whom he
must enjoin to silence.
She opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a smile:--
"And Cosette?"
CHAPTER II--FANTINE HAPPY
She made no movement of either surprise or of joy; she was joy itself.
That simple question, "And Cosette?" was put with so profound a faith,
with so much certainty, with such a complete absence of disquiet and of
doubt, that he found not a word of reply. She continued:--
"I knew that you were there. I was asleep, but I saw you. I have seen
you for a long, long time. I have been following you with my eyes all
night long. You were in a glory, and you had around you all sorts of
celestial forms."
He raised his glance to the crucifix.
"But," she resumed, "tell me where Cosette is. Why did not you place her
on my bed against the moment of my waking?"
He made some mechanical reply which he was never afterwards able to
recall.
Fortunately, the doctor had been warned, and he now made his appearance.
He came to the aid of M. Madeleine.
"Calm yourself, my child," said the doctor; "your child is here."
Fantine's eyes beamed and filled her whole face with light. She clasped
her hands with an expression which contained all that is possible to
prayer in the way of violence and tenderness.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "bring her to me!"
Touching illusion of a mother! Cosette was, for her, still the little
child who is carried.
"Not yet," said the doctor, "not just now. You still have some fever.
The sight of your child would agitate you and do you harm. You must be
cured first."
She interrupted him impetuously:--
"But I am cured! Oh, I tell you that I am cured! What an ass that doctor
is! The idea! I want to see my child!"
"You see," said the doctor, "how excited you become. So long as you are
in this state I shall oppose your having your child. It is not enough
to see her; it is necessary that you should live for her. When you are
reasonable, I will bring her to you myself."
The poor mother bowed her head.
"I beg your pardon, doctor, I really beg your pardon. Formerly I should
never have spoken as I have just done; so many misfortunes have happened
to me, that I sometimes do not know what I am saying. I understand you;
you fear the emotion. I will wait as long as you like, but I swear to
you that it would not have harmed me to see my daughter. I have been
seeing her; I have not taken my eyes from her since yesterday evening.
Do you know? If she were brought to me now, I should talk to her very
gently. That is all. Is it not quite natural that I should desire to see
my daughter, who has been brought to me expressly from Montfermeil? I
am not angry. I know well that I am about to be happy. All night long I
have seen white things, and persons who smiled at me. When Monsieur le
Docteur pleases, he shall bring me Cosette. I have no longer any fever;
I am well. I am perfectly conscious that there is nothing the matter
with me any more; but I am going to behave as though I were ill, and not
stir, to please these ladies here. When it is seen that I am very calm,
they will say, 'She must have her child.'"
M. Madeleine was sitting on a chair beside the bed. She turned towards
him; she was making a visible effort to be calm and "very good," as she
expressed it in the feebleness of illness which resembles infancy, in
order that, seeing her so peaceable, they might make no difficulty about
bringing Cosette to her. But while she controlled herself she could not
refrain from questioning M. Madeleine.
"Did you have a pleasant trip, Monsieur le Maire? Oh! how good you were
to go and get her for me! Only tell me how she is. Did she stand the
journey well? Alas! she will not recognize me. She must have forgotten
me by this time, poor darling! Children have no memories. They are like
birds. A child sees one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and
thinks of nothing any longer. And did she have white linen? Did those
Thénardiers keep her clean? How have they fed her? Oh! if you only knew
how I have suffered, putting such questions as that to myself during all
the time of my wretchedness. Now, it is all past. I am happy. Oh, how I
should like to see her! Do you think her pretty, Monsieur le Maire?
Is not my daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that
diligence! Could she not be brought for just one little instant? She
might be taken away directly afterwards. Tell me; you are the master; it
could be so if you chose!"
He took her hand. "Cosette is beautiful," he said, "Cosette is well.
You shall see her soon; but calm yourself; you are talking with too much
vivacity, and you are throwing your arms out from under the clothes, and
that makes you cough."
In fact, fits of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word.
Fantine did not murmur; she feared that she had injured by her too
passionate lamentations the confidence which she was desirous of
inspiring, and she began to talk of indifferent things.
"Montfermeil is quite pretty, is it not? People go there on pleasure
parties in summer. Are the Thénardiers prosperous? There are not many
travellers in their parts. That inn of theirs is a sort of a cook-shop."
M. Madeleine was still holding her hand, and gazing at her with anxiety;
it was evident that he had come to tell her things before which his mind
now hesitated. The doctor, having finished his visit, retired. Sister
Simplice remained alone with them.
But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed:--
"I hear her! mon Dieu, I hear her!"
She stretched out her arm to enjoin silence about her, held her breath,
and began to listen with rapture.
There was a child playing in the yard--the child of the portress or
of some work-woman. It was one of those accidents which are always
occurring, and which seem to form a part of the mysterious stage-setting
of mournful scenes. The child--a little girl--was going and coming,
running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice.
Alas! in what are the plays of children not intermingled. It was this
little girl whom Fantine heard singing.
"Oh!" she resumed, "it is my Cosette! I recognize her voice."
The child retreated as it had come; the voice died away. Fantine
listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over, and M.
Madeleine heard her say, in a low voice: "How wicked that doctor is not
to allow me to see my daughter! That man has an evil countenance, that
he has."
But the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again. She
continued to talk to herself, with her head resting on the pillow: "How
happy we are going to be! We shall have a little garden the very first
thing; M. Madeleine has promised it to me. My daughter will play in the
garden. She must know her letters by this time. I will make her spell.
She will run over the grass after butterflies. I will watch her. Then
she will take her first communion. Ah! when will she take her first
communion?"
She began to reckon on her fingers.
"One, two, three, four--she is seven years old. In five years she will
have a white veil, and openwork stockings; she will look like a little
woman. O my good sister, you do not know how foolish I become when I
think of my daughter's first communion!"
She began to laugh.
He had released Fantine's hand. He listened to her words as one listens
to the sighing of the breeze, with his eyes on the ground, his mind
absorbed in reflection which had no bottom. All at once she ceased
speaking, and this caused him to raise his head mechanically. Fantine
had become terrible.
She no longer spoke, she no longer breathed; she had raised herself to
a sitting posture, her thin shoulder emerged from her chemise; her face,
which had been radiant but a moment before, was ghastly, and she
seemed to have fixed her eyes, rendered large with terror, on something
alarming at the other extremity of the room.
"Good God!" he exclaimed; "what ails you, Fantine?"
She made no reply; she did not remove her eyes from the object which
she seemed to see. She removed one hand from his arm, and with the other
made him a sign to look behind him.
He turned, and beheld Javert.
CHAPTER III--JAVERT SATISFIED
This is what had taken place.
The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M. Madeleine quitted
the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time to set
out again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place. A little
before six o'clock in the morning he had arrived at M. sur M., and his
first care had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to enter the
infirmary and see Fantine.
However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of
Assizes, when the district-attorney, recovering from his first shock,
had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of the honorable mayor of
M. sur M., to declare that his convictions had not been in the least
modified by that curious incident, which would be explained thereafter,
and to demand, in the meantime, the condemnation of that Champmathieu,
who was evidently the real Jean Valjean. The district-attorney's
persistence was visibly at variance with the sentiments of every one, of
the public, of the court, and of the jury. The counsel for the defence
had some difficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that,
in consequence of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, of
the real Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had been thoroughly
altered, and that the jury had before their eyes now only an innocent
man. Thence the lawyer had drawn some epiphonemas, not very fresh,
unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in his
summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutes
the jury had thrown Champmathieu out of the case.
Nevertheless, the district-attorney was bent on having a Jean Valjean;
and as he had no longer Champmathieu, he took Madeleine.
Immediately after Champmathieu had been set at liberty, the
district-attorney shut himself up with the President. They conferred "as
to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le Maire of M. sur M."
This phrase, in which there was a great deal of _of_, is the
district-attorney's, written with his own hand, on the minutes of his
report to the attorney-general. His first emotion having passed off, the
President did not offer many objections. Justice must, after all, take
its course. And then, when all was said, although the President was
a kindly and a tolerably intelligent man, he was, at the same time, a
devoted and almost an ardent royalist, and he had been shocked to hear
the Mayor of M. sur M. say the _Emperor_, and not _Bonaparte_, when
alluding to the landing at Cannes.
The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. The
district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger, at
full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Javert.
The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M. immediately after
having given his deposition.
Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him the
order of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.
The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in
two words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras. The order
of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words:
"Inspector Javert will apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayor
of M. sur M., who, in this day's session of the court, was recognized as
the liberated convict, Jean Valjean."
Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at the
moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could have
divined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his air
the most ordinary in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his gray
hair was perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mounted
the stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was thoroughly
acquainted with him, and who had examined him attentively at the moment,
would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under his
left ear instead of at the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwonted
agitation.
Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or
in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of
his coat.
That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was
indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those
emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.
He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the neighboring
post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in the
courtyard, had had Fantine's room pointed out to him by the portress,
who was utterly unsuspicious, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men
inquiring for the mayor.
On arriving at Fantine's chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushed
the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, and
entered.
Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-open
door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat, which
was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow the leaden head of
his enormous cane, which was hidden behind him, could be seen.
Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence being
perceived. All at once Fantine raised her eyes, saw him, and made M.
Madeleine turn round.
The instant that Madeleine's glance encountered Javert's glance, Javert,
without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him,
became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.
It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.
The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all that
was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having been
stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, in
some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few
moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride
at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of
having for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert's content shone
forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspread
that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied
face can afford were there.
Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly
to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his
presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and
truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him and
around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case
judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he
was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders,
he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the absolute,
he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed in his
victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant,
he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious
archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing
caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched
fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion,
perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there
was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.
Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.
Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things
which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when
hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human
conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues
which have one vice,--error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic
in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously
venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his
formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who
triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face,
wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the
good.
CHAPTER IV--AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS
Fantine had not seen Javert since the day on which the mayor had torn
her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehended nothing, but the only
thing which she did not doubt was that he had come to get her. She could
not endure that terrible face; she felt her life quitting her; she hid
her face in both hands, and shrieked in her anguish:--
"Monsieur Madeleine, save me!"
Jean Valjean--we shall henceforth not speak of him otherwise--had risen.
He said to Fantine in the gentlest and calmest of voices:--
"Be at ease; it is not for you that he is come."
Then he addressed Javert, and said:--
"I know what you want."
Javert replied:--
"Be quick about it!"
There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words
something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Javert did not say, "Be
quick about it!" he said "Bequiabouit."
No orthography can do justice to the accent with which it was uttered:
it was no longer a human word: it was a roar.
He did not proceed according to his custom, he did not enter into the
matter, he exhibited no warrant of arrest. In his eyes, Jean Valjean
was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon,
a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his grasp for the last five
years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning,
but an end. He confined himself to saying, "Be quick about it!"
As he spoke thus, he did not advance a single step; he hurled at Jean
Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with
which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him.
It was this glance which Fantine had felt penetrating to the very marrow
of her bones two months previously.
At Javert's exclamation, Fantine opened her eyes once more. But the
mayor was there; what had she to fear?
Javert advanced to the middle of the room, and cried:--
"See here now! Art thou coming?"
The unhappy woman glanced about her. No one was present excepting the
nun and the mayor. To whom could that abject use of "thou" be addressed?
To her only. She shuddered.
Then she beheld a most unprecedented thing, a thing so unprecedented
that nothing equal to it had appeared to her even in the blackest
deliriums of fever.
She beheld Javert, the police spy, seize the mayor by the collar; she
saw the mayor bow his head. It seemed to her that the world was coming
to an end.
Javert had, in fact, grasped Jean Valjean by the collar.
"Monsieur le Maire!" shrieked Fantine.
Javert burst out laughing with that frightful laugh which displayed all
his gums.
"There is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!"
Jean Valjean made no attempt to disengage the hand which grasped the
collar of his coat. He said:--
"Javert--"
Javert interrupted him: "Call me Mr. Inspector."
"Monsieur," said Jean Valjean, "I should like to say a word to you in
private."
"Aloud! Say it aloud!" replied Javert; "people are in the habit of
talking aloud to me."
Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:--
"I have a request to make of you--"
"I tell you to speak loud."
"But you alone should hear it--"
"What difference does that make to me? I shall not listen."
Jean Valjean turned towards him and said very rapidly and in a very low
voice:--
"Grant me three days' grace! three days in which to go and fetch the
child of this unhappy woman. I will pay whatever is necessary. You shall
accompany me if you choose."
"You are making sport of me!" cried Javert. "Come now, I did not think
you such a fool! You ask me to give you three days in which to run away!
You say that it is for the purpose of fetching that creature's child!
Ah! Ah! That's good! That's really capital!"
Fantine was seized with a fit of trembling.
"My child!" she cried, "to go and fetch my child! She is not here,
then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur
Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire!"
Javert stamped his foot.
"And now there's the other one! Will you hold your tongue, you hussy?
It's a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates, and where
women of the town are cared for like countesses! Ah! But we are going to
change all that; it is high time!"
He stared intently at Fantine, and added, once more taking into his
grasp Jean Valjean's cravat, shirt and collar:--
"I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is no
Monsieur le Maire. There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named Jean
Valjean! And I have him in my grasp! That's what there is!"
Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her
stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Jean Valjean, she gazed
at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to
speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat, her teeth
chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands
convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then
suddenly fell back on her pillow.
Her head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards on her
breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.
She was dead.
Jean Valjean laid his hand upon the detaining hand of Javert, and opened
it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:--
"You have murdered that woman."
"Let's have an end of this!" shouted Javert, in a fury; "I am not here
to listen to argument. Let us economize all that; the guard is below;
march on instantly, or you'll get the thumb-screws!"
In the corner of the room stood an old iron bedstead, which was in a
decidedly decrepit state, and which served the sisters as a camp-bed
when they were watching with the sick. Jean Valjean stepped up to this
bed, in a twinkling wrenched off the head-piece, which was already in a
dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his, grasped the
principal rod like a bludgeon, and glanced at Javert. Javert retreated
towards the door. Jean Valjean, armed with his bar of iron, walked
slowly up to Fantine's couch. When he arrived there he turned and said
to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:--
"I advise you not to disturb me at this moment."
One thing is certain, and that is, that Javert trembled.
It did occur to him to summon the guard, but Jean Valjean might avail
himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained, grasped
his cane by the small end, and leaned against the door-post, without
removing his eyes from Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean rested his elbow on the knob at the head of the bed, and
his brow on his hand, and began to contemplate the motionless body of
Fantine, which lay extended there. He remained thus, mute, absorbed,
evidently with no further thought of anything connected with this life.
Upon his face and in his attitude there was nothing but inexpressible
pity. After a few moments of this meditation he bent towards Fantine,
and spoke to her in a low voice.
What did he say to her? What could this man, who was reproved, say to
that woman, who was dead? What words were those? No one on earth heard
them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are some touching illusions
which are, perhaps, sublime realities. The point as to which there
exists no doubt is, that Sister Simplice, the sole witness of the
incident, often said that at the moment that Jean Valjean whispered in
Fantine's ear, she distinctly beheld an ineffable smile dawn on those
pale lips, and in those dim eyes, filled with the amazement of the tomb.
Jean Valjean took Fantine's head in both his hands, and arranged it on
the pillow as a mother might have done for her child; then he tied the
string of her chemise, and smoothed her hair back under her cap. That
done, he closed her eyes.
Fantine's face seemed strangely illuminated at that moment.
Death, that signifies entrance into the great light.
Fantine's hand was hanging over the side of the bed. Jean Valjean knelt
down before that hand, lifted it gently, and kissed it.
Then he rose, and turned to Javert.
"Now," said he, "I am at your disposal."
CHAPTER V--A SUITABLE TOMB
Javert deposited Jean Valjean in the city prison.
The arrest of M. Madeleine occasioned a sensation, or rather, an
extraordinary commotion in M. sur M. We are sorry that we cannot conceal
the fact, that at the single word, "He was a convict," nearly every one
deserted him. In less than two hours all the good that he had done had
been forgotten, and he was nothing but a "convict from the galleys." It
is just to add that the details of what had taken place at Arras were
not yet known. All day long conversations like the following were to be
heard in all quarters of the town:--
"You don't know? He was a liberated convict!" "Who?" "The mayor." "Bah!
M. Madeleine?" "Yes." "Really?" "His name was not Madeleine at all; he
had a frightful name, Béjean, Bojean, Boujean." "Ah! Good God!" "He
has been arrested." "Arrested!" "In prison, in the city prison, while
waiting to be transferred." "Until he is transferred!" "He is to be
transferred!" "Where is he to be taken?" "He will be tried at the
Assizes for a highway robbery which he committed long ago." "Well! I
suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected.
He refused the cross; he bestowed sous on all the little scamps he came
across. I always thought there was some evil history back of all that."
The "drawing-rooms" particularly abounded in remarks of this nature.
One old lady, a subscriber to the _Drapeau Blanc_, made the following
remark, the depth of which it is impossible to fathom:--
"I am not sorry. It will be a lesson to the Bonapartists!"
It was thus that the phantom which had been called M. Madeleine vanished
from M. sur M. Only three or four persons in all the town remained
faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served him was among
the number.
On the evening of that day the worthy old woman was sitting in her
lodge, still in a thorough fright, and absorbed in sad reflections.
The factory had been closed all day, the carriage gate was bolted, the
street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns,
Sister Perpétue and Sister Simplice, who were watching beside the body
of Fantine.
Towards the hour when M. Madeleine was accustomed to return home,
the good portress rose mechanically, took from a drawer the key of
M. Madeleine's chamber, and the flat candlestick which he used every
evening to go up to his quarters; then she hung the key on the nail
whence he was accustomed to take it, and set the candlestick on one
side, as though she was expecting him. Then she sat down again on her
chair, and became absorbed in thought once more. The poor, good old
woman had done all this without being conscious of it.
It was only at the expiration of two hours that she roused herself from
her revery, and exclaimed, "Hold! My good God Jesus! And I hung his key
on the nail!"
At that moment the small window in the lodge opened, a hand passed
through, seized the key and the candlestick, and lighted the taper at
the candle which was burning there.
The portress raised her eyes, and stood there with gaping mouth, and a
shriek which she confined to her throat.
She knew that hand, that arm, the sleeve of that coat.
It was M. Madeleine.
It was several seconds before she could speak; she had a _seizure_, as
she said herself, when she related the adventure afterwards.
"Good God, Monsieur le Maire," she cried at last, "I thought you were--"
She stopped; the conclusion of her sentence would have been lacking in
respect towards the beginning. Jean Valjean was still Monsieur le Maire
to her.
He finished her thought.
"In prison," said he. "I was there; I broke a bar of one of the windows;
I let myself drop from the top of a roof, and here I am. I am going up
to my room; go and find Sister Simplice for me. She is with that poor
woman, no doubt."
The old woman obeyed in all haste.
He gave her no orders; he was quite sure that she would guard him better
than he should guard himself.
No one ever found out how he had managed to get into the courtyard
without opening the big gates. He had, and always carried about him,
a pass-key which opened a little side-door; but he must have been
searched, and his latch-key must have been taken from him. This point
was never explained.
He ascended the staircase leading to his chamber. On arriving at the
top, he left his candle on the top step of his stairs, opened his door
with very little noise, went and closed his window and his shutters by
feeling, then returned for his candle and re-entered his room.
It was a useful precaution; it will be recollected that his window could
be seen from the street.
He cast a glance about him, at his table, at his chair, at his bed which
had not been disturbed for three days. No trace of the disorder of the
night before last remained. The portress had "done up" his room; only
she had picked out of the ashes and placed neatly on the table the two
iron ends of the cudgel and the forty-sou piece which had been blackened
by the fire.
He took a sheet of paper, on which he wrote: "These are the two tips of
my iron-shod cudgel and the forty-sou piece stolen from Little Gervais,
which I mentioned at the Court of Assizes," and he arranged this piece
of paper, the bits of iron, and the coin in such a way that they were
the first things to be seen on entering the room. From a cupboard he
pulled out one of his old shirts, which he tore in pieces. In the
strips of linen thus prepared he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. He
betrayed neither haste nor agitation; and while he was wrapping up the
Bishop's candlesticks, he nibbled at a piece of black bread. It was
probably the prison-bread which he had carried with him in his flight.
This was proved by the crumbs which were found on the floor of the room
when the authorities made an examination later on.
There came two taps at the door.
"Come in," said he.
It was Sister Simplice.
She was pale; her eyes were red; the candle which she carried trembled
in her hand. The peculiar feature of the violences of destiny is, that
however polished or cool we may be, they wring human nature from our
very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface. The emotions of
that day had turned the nun into a woman once more. She had wept, and
she was trembling.
Jean Valjean had just finished writing a few lines on a paper, which he
handed to the nun, saying, "Sister, you will give this to Monsieur le
Curé."
The paper was not folded. She cast a glance upon it.
"You can read it," said he.
She read:--
"I beg Monsieur le Curé to keep an eye on all that I leave behind me. He
will be so good as to pay out of it the expenses of my trial, and of the
funeral of the woman who died yesterday. The rest is for the poor."
The sister tried to speak, but she only managed to stammer a few
inarticulate sounds. She succeeded in saying, however:--
"Does not Monsieur le Maire desire to take a last look at that poor,
unhappy woman?"
"No," said he; "I am pursued; it would only end in their arresting me in
that room, and that would disturb her."
He had hardly finished when a loud noise became audible on the
staircase. They heard a tumult of ascending footsteps, and the old
portress saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:--
"My good sir, I swear to you by the good God, that not a soul has
entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I have not
even left the door."
A man responded:--
"But there is a light in that room, nevertheless."
They recognized Javert's voice.
The chamber was so arranged that the door in opening masked the corner
of the wall on the right. Jean Valjean blew out the light and placed
himself in this angle. Sister Simplice fell on her knees near the table.
The door opened.
Javert entered.
The whispers of many men and the protestations of the portress were
audible in the corridor.
The nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying.
The candle was on the chimney-piece, and gave but very little light.
Javert caught sight of the nun and halted in amazement.
It will be remembered that the fundamental point in Javert, his element,
the very air he breathed, was veneration for all authority. This was
impregnable, and admitted of neither objection nor restriction. In his
eyes, of course, the ecclesiastical authority was the chief of all; he
was religious, superficial and correct on this point as on all others.
In his eyes, a priest was a mind, who never makes a mistake; a nun was a
creature who never sins; they were souls walled in from this world,
with a single door which never opened except to allow the truth to pass
through.
On perceiving the sister, his first movement was to retire.
But there was also another duty which bound him and impelled him
imperiously in the opposite direction. His second movement was to remain
and to venture on at least one question.
This was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life. Javert
knew it, and held her in special veneration in consequence.
"Sister," said he, "are you alone in this room?"
A terrible moment ensued, during which the poor portress felt as though
she should faint.
The sister raised her eyes and answered:--
"Yes."
"Then," resumed Javert, "you will excuse me if I persist; it is my duty;
you have not seen a certain person--a man--this evening? He has escaped;
we are in search of him--that Jean Valjean; you have not seen him?"
The sister replied:--
"No."
She lied. She had lied twice in succession, one after the other, without
hesitation, promptly, as a person does when sacrificing herself.
"Pardon me," said Javert, and he retired with a deep bow.
O sainted maid! you left this world many years ago; you have rejoined
your sisters, the virgins, and your brothers, the angels, in the light;
may this lie be counted to your credit in paradise!
The sister's affirmation was for Javert so decisive a thing that he did
not even observe the singularity of that candle which had but just been
extinguished, and which was still smoking on the table.
An hour later, a man, marching amid trees and mists, was rapidly
departing from M. sur M. in the direction of Paris. That man was Jean
Valjean. It has been established by the testimony of two or three
carters who met him, that he was carrying a bundle; that he was dressed
in a blouse. Where had he obtained that blouse? No one ever found out.
But an aged workman had died in the infirmary of the factory a few days
before, leaving behind him nothing but his blouse. Perhaps that was the
one.
One last word about Fantine.
We all have a mother,--the earth. Fantine was given back to that mother.
The curé thought that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was, in
reserving as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean had left for
the poor. Who was concerned, after all? A convict and a woman of the
town. That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced
it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper's grave.
So Fantine was buried in the free corner of the cemetery which belongs
to anybody and everybody, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately, God
knows where to find the soul again. Fantine was laid in the shade,
among the first bones that came to hand; she was subjected to the
promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave. Her
grave resembled her bed.
[THE END OF VOLUME I. "FANTINE"] Enlarge
Enlarge
VOLUME II.--COSETTE
BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO
CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES
Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person
who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directing his
course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing a broad paved
road, which undulated between two rows of trees, over the hills which
succeed each other, raise the road and let it fall again, and produce
something in the nature of enormous waves.
He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west he perceived
the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which has the form of a
reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon an eminence; and
at the angle of the cross-road, by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbet
bearing the inscription _Ancient Barrier No. 4_, a public house,
bearing on its front this sign: _At the Four Winds_ (Aux Quatre Vents).
_Échabeau, Private Café_.
A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of a little
valley, where there is water which passes beneath an arch made through
the embankment of the road. The clump of sparsely planted but very green
trees, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is dispersed over
the meadows on the other, and disappears gracefully and as in order in
the direction of Braine-l'Alleud.
On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart
at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried
brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and
a ladder suspended along an old penthouse with straw partitions. A young
girl was weeding in a field, where a huge yellow poster, probably of
some outside spectacle, such as a parish festival, was fluttering in
the wind. At one corner of the inn, beside a pool in which a flotilla
of ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plunged into the bushes. The
wayfarer struck into this.
After traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of the fifteenth
century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, he
found himself before a large door of arched stone, with a rectilinear
impost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flanked by two flat
medallions. A severe façade rose above this door; a wall, perpendicular
to the façade, almost touched the door, and flanked it with an abrupt
right angle. In the meadow before the door lay three harrows, through
which, in disorder, grew all the flowers of May. The door was closed.
The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented with an old
rusty knocker.
The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May,
which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind. A brave
little bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distracted manner in a
large tree.
The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation,
resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left, at the foot
of the pier of the door.
At this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasant woman
emerged.
She saw the wayfarer, and perceived what he was looking at.
"It was a French cannon-ball which made that," she said to him. And she
added:--
"That which you see there, higher up in the door, near a nail, is the
hole of a big iron bullet as large as an egg. The bullet did not pierce
the wood."
"What is the name of this place?" inquired the wayfarer.
"Hougomont," said the peasant woman.
The traveller straightened himself up. He walked on a few paces, and
went off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the horizon through the
trees, he perceived a sort of little elevation, and on this elevation
something which at that distance resembled a lion.
He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.
CHAPTER II--HOUGOMONT
Hougomont,--this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle,
the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called
Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of his
axe.
It was a château; it is no longer anything but a farm. For the
antiquary, Hougomont is _Hugomons_. This manor was built by Hugo, Sire
of Somerel, the same who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of the Abbey of
Villiers.
The traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an ancient calash under the
porch, and entered the courtyard.
The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the
sixteenth century, which here simulates an arcade, everything else
having fallen prostrate around it. A monumental aspect often has its
birth in ruin. In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door, of
the time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees of an orchard;
beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes, some shovels, some
carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chicken
jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a small
bell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree trained in espalier against the
wall of the chapel--behold the court, the conquest of which was one of
Napoleon's dreams. This corner of earth, could he but have seized
it, would, perhaps, have given him the world likewise. Chickens are
scattering its dust abroad with their beaks. A growl is audible; it is a
huge dog, who shows his teeth and replaces the English.
The English behaved admirably there. Cooke's four companies of guards
there held out for seven hours against the fury of an army.
Hougomont viewed on the map, as a geometrical plan, comprising buildings
and enclosures, presents a sort of irregular rectangle, one angle of
which is nicked out. It is this angle which contains the southern
door, guarded by this wall, which commands it only a gun's length away.
Hougomont has two doors,--the southern door, that of the château; and
the northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brother
Jérôme against Hougomont; the divisions of Foy, Guilleminot, and Bachelu
hurled themselves against it; nearly the entire corps of Reille was
employed against it, and miscarried; Kellermann's balls were exhausted
on this heroic section of wall. Bauduin's brigade was not strong enough
to force Hougomont on the north, and the brigade of Soye could not do
more than effect the beginning of a breach on the south, but without
taking it.
The farm buildings border the courtyard on the south. A bit of the north
door, broken by the French, hangs suspended to the wall. It consists of
four planks nailed to two cross-beams, on which the scars of the attack
are visible.
The northern door, which was beaten in by the French, and which has had
a piece applied to it to replace the panel suspended on the wall, stands
half-open at the bottom of the paddock; it is cut squarely in the wall,
built of stone below, of brick above which closes in the courtyard on
the north. It is a simple door for carts, such as exist in all farms,
with the two large leaves made of rustic planks: beyond lie the meadows.
The dispute over this entrance was furious. For a long time, all sorts
of imprints of bloody hands were visible on the door-posts. It was there
that Bauduin was killed.
The storm of the combat still lingers in this courtyard; its horror is
visible there; the confusion of the fray was petrified there; it lives
and it dies there; it was only yesterday. The walls are in the death
agony, the stones fall; the breaches cry aloud; the holes are wounds;
the drooping, quivering trees seem to be making an effort to flee.
This courtyard was more built up in 1815 than it is to-day. Buildings
which have since been pulled down then formed redans and angles.
The English barricaded themselves there; the French made their way in,
but could not stand their ground. Beside the chapel, one wing of the
château, the only ruin now remaining of the manor of Hougomont, rises in
a crumbling state,--disembowelled, one might say. The château served
for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated each
other. The French, fired on from every point,--from behind the walls,
from the summits of the garrets, from the depths of the cellars, through
all the casements, through all the air-holes, through every crack in the
stones,--fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the
grape-shot was a conflagration.
In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, the
dismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible; the
English guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral of the
staircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof, appears
like the inside of a broken shell. The staircase has two stories; the
English, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps, had
cut off the lower steps. These consisted of large slabs of blue stone,
which form a heap among the nettles. Half a score of steps still
cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident. These
inaccessible steps are solid in their niches. All the rest resembles a
jaw which has been denuded of its teeth. There are two old trees there:
one is dead; the other is wounded at its base, and is clothed with
verdure in April. Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the
staircase.
A massacre took place in the chapel. The interior, which has recovered
its calm, is singular. The mass has not been said there since the
carnage. Nevertheless, the altar has been left there--an altar of
unpolished wood, placed against a background of roughhewn stone. Four
whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows;
over the door a large wooden crucifix, below the crucifix a square
air-hole stopped up with a bundle of hay; on the ground, in one corner,
an old window-frame with the glass all broken to pieces--such is the
chapel. Near the altar there is nailed up a wooden statue of Saint Anne,
of the fifteenth century; the head of the infant Jesus has been carried
off by a large ball. The French, who were masters of the chapel for a
moment, and were then dislodged, set fire to it. The flames filled this
building; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was
burned, the wooden Christ was not burned. The fire preyed upon his
feet, of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then it
stopped,--a miracle, according to the assertion of the people of the
neighborhood. The infant Jesus, decapitated, was less fortunate than the
Christ.
The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ this
name is to be read: _Henquinez_. Then these others: _Conde de Rio Maior
Marques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana)_. There are French names with
exclamation points,--a sign of wrath. The wall was freshly whitewashed
in 1849. The nations insulted each other there.
It was at the door of this chapel that the corpse was picked up which
held an axe in its hand; this corpse was Sub-Lieutenant Legros.
On emerging from the chapel, a well is visible on the left. There are
two in this courtyard. One inquires, Why is there no bucket and pulley
to this? It is because water is no longer drawn there. Why is water not
drawn there? Because it is full of skeletons.
The last person who drew water from the well was named Guillaume van
Kylsom. He was a peasant who lived at Hougomont, and was gardener there.
On the 18th of June, 1815, his family fled and concealed themselves in
the woods.
The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate
people who had been scattered abroad, for many days and nights. There
are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burned
trees, which mark the site of these poor bivouacs trembling in the
depths of the thickets.
Guillaume van Kylsom remained at Hougomont, "to guard the château," and
concealed himself in the cellar. The English discovered him there.
They tore him from his hiding-place, and the combatants forced this
frightened man to serve them, by administering blows with the flats of
their swords. They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It
was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught.
This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself.
After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death
has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow
glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and
it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into
it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they
were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble
voices were heard calling from the well.
This well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, part
stone, part brick, and simulating a small, square tower, and folded like
the leaves of a screen, surround it on all sides. The fourth side is
open. It is there that the water was drawn. The wall at the bottom has
a sort of shapeless loophole, possibly the hole made by a shell. This
little tower had a platform, of which only the beams remain. The iron
supports of the well on the right form a cross. On leaning over, the
eye is lost in a deep cylinder of brick which is filled with a heaped-up
mass of shadows. The base of the walls all about the well is concealed
in a growth of nettles.
This well has not in front of it that large blue slab which forms the
table for all wells in Belgium. The slab has here been replaced by a
cross-beam, against which lean five or six shapeless fragments of knotty
and petrified wood which resemble huge bones. There is no longer either
pail, chain, or pulley; but there is still the stone basin which served
the overflow. The rain-water collects there, and from time to time a
bird of the neighboring forests comes thither to drink, and then flies
away. One house in this ruin, the farmhouse, is still inhabited. The
door of this house opens on the courtyard. Upon this door, beside a
pretty Gothic lock-plate, there is an iron handle with trefoils placed
slanting. At the moment when the Hanoverian lieutenant, Wilda, grasped
this handle in order to take refuge in the farm, a French sapper hewed
off his hand with an axe.
The family who occupy the house had for their grandfather Guillaume van
Kylsom, the old gardener, dead long since. A woman with gray hair said
to us: "I was there. I was three years old. My sister, who was older,
was terrified and wept. They carried us off to the woods. I went there
in my mother's arms. We glued our ears to the earth to hear. I imitated
the cannon, and went _boum! boum!_"
A door opening from the courtyard on the left led into the orchard, so
we were told. The orchard is terrible.
It is in three parts; one might almost say, in three acts. The first
part is a garden, the second is an orchard, the third is a wood. These
three parts have a common enclosure: on the side of the entrance, the
buildings of the château and the farm; on the left, a hedge; on the
right, a wall; and at the end, a wall. The wall on the right is of
brick, the wall at the bottom is of stone. One enters the garden first.
It slopes downwards, is planted with gooseberry bushes, choked with a
wild growth of vegetation, and terminated by a monumental terrace of cut
stone, with balustrade with a double curve.
It was a seignorial garden in the first French style which preceded Le
Nôtre; to-day it is ruins and briars. The pilasters are surmounted by
globes which resemble cannon-balls of stone. Forty-three balusters can
still be counted on their sockets; the rest lie prostrate in the grass.
Almost all bear scratches of bullets. One broken baluster is placed on
the pediment like a fractured leg.
It was in this garden, further down than the orchard, that six
light-infantry men of the 1st, having made their way thither, and being
unable to escape, hunted down and caught like bears in their dens,
accepted the combat with two Hanoverian companies, one of which was
armed with carbines. The Hanoverians lined this balustrade and fired
from above. The infantry men, replying from below, six against two
hundred, intrepid and with no shelter save the currant-bushes, took a
quarter of an hour to die.
One mounts a few steps and passes from the garden into the orchard,
properly speaking. There, within the limits of those few square fathoms,
fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour. The wall seems ready
to renew the combat. Thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by the English at
irregular heights, are there still. In front of the sixth are placed two
English tombs of granite. There are loopholes only in the south wall, as
the principal attack came from that quarter. The wall is hidden on the
outside by a tall hedge; the French came up, thinking that they had to
deal only with a hedge, crossed it, and found the wall both an obstacle
and an ambuscade, with the English guards behind it, the thirty-eight
loopholes firing at once a shower of grape-shot and balls, and Soye's
brigade was broken against it. Thus Waterloo began.
Nevertheless, the orchard was taken. As they had no ladders, the French
scaled it with their nails. They fought hand to hand amid the trees.
All this grass has been soaked in blood. A battalion of Nassau, seven
hundred strong, was overwhelmed there. The outside of the wall, against
which Kellermann's two batteries were trained, is gnawed by grape-shot.
This orchard is sentient, like others, in the month of May. It has its
buttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall there; the cart-horses
browse there; cords of hair, on which linen is drying, traverse the
spaces between the trees and force the passer-by to bend his head; one
walks over this uncultivated land, and one's foot dives into mole-holes.
In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies
there all verdant. Major Blackmann leaned against it to die. Beneath
a great tree in the neighborhood fell the German general, Duplat,
descended from a French family which fled on the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. An aged and falling apple-tree leans far over to one side,
its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam. Nearly all
the apple-trees are falling with age. There is not one which has not had
its bullet or its biscayan.6 The skeletons of dead trees abound in this
orchard. Crows fly through their branches, and at the end of it is a
wood full of violets.
Bauduin, killed, Foy wounded, conflagration, massacre, carnage, a
rivulet formed of English blood, French blood, German blood mingled
in fury, a well crammed with corpses, the regiment of Nassau and the
regiment of Brunswick destroyed, Duplat killed, Blackmann killed, the
English Guards mutilated, twenty French battalions, besides the forty
from Reille's corps, decimated, three thousand men in that hovel of
Hougomont alone cut down, slashed to pieces, shot, burned, with their
throats cut,--and all this so that a peasant can say to-day to the
traveller: _Monsieur, give me three francs, and if you like, I will
explain to you the affair of Waterloo!_
CHAPTER III--THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815
Let us turn back,--that is one of the story-teller's rights,--and put
ourselves once more in the year 1815, and even a little earlier than
the epoch when the action narrated in the first part of this book took
place.
If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of
June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops
of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon. All that
Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz
was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season
sufficed to make a world crumble.
The battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half-past eleven
o'clock, and that gave Blücher time to come up. Why? Because the ground
was wet. The artillery had to wait until it became a little firmer
before they could manouvre.
Napoleon was an artillery officer, and felt the effects of this. The
foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report
to the Directory on Aboukir, said: _Such a one of our balls killed six
men_. All his plans of battle were arranged for projectiles. The key to
his victory was to make the artillery converge on one point. He treated
the strategy of the hostile general like a citadel, and made a breach
in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape-shot; he joined and
dissolved battles with cannon. There was something of the sharpshooter
in his genius. To beat in squares, to pulverize regiments, to break
lines, to crush and disperse masses,--for him everything lay in this, to
strike, strike, strike incessantly,--and he intrusted this task to the
cannon-ball. A redoubtable method, and one which, united with genius,
rendered this gloomy athlete of the pugilism of war invincible for the
space of fifteen years.
On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery,
because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred and
fifty-nine mouths of fire; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.
Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action
would have begun at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have
been won and ended at two o'clock, three hours before the change of
fortune in favor of the Prussians. What amount of blame attaches to
Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?
Was it the evident physical decline of Napoleon that complicated this
epoch by an inward diminution of force? Had the twenty years of war worn
out the blade as it had worn the scabbard, the soul as well as the body?
Did the veteran make himself disastrously felt in the leader? In a word,
was this genius, as many historians of note have thought, suffering from
an eclipse? Did he go into a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened
powers from himself? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of
a breath of adventure? Had he become--a grave matter in a
general--unconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of
material great men, who may be called the giants of action, when genius
grows short-sighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal;
for the Dantes and Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness;
is it to grow less for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes? Had Napoleon
lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he
could no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare, no
longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses? Had he lost his power of
scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days known all the
roads to triumph, and who, from the summit of his chariot of lightning,
pointed them out with a sovereign finger, had he now reached that
state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions
harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty-six
with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer
anything more than an immense dare-devil?
We do not think so.
His plan of battle was, by the confession of all, a masterpiece. To
go straight to the centre of the Allies' line, to make a breach in the
enemy, to cut them in two, to drive the British half back on Hal,
and the Prussian half on Tongres, to make two shattered fragments of
Wellington and Blücher, to carry Mont-Saint-Jean, to seize Brussels,
to hurl the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All
this was contained in that battle, according to Napoleon. Afterwards
people would see.
Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of
Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which we
are relating is connected with this battle, but this history is not our
subject; this history, moreover, has been finished, and finished in a
masterly manner, from one point of view by Napoleon, and from another
point of view by a whole pleiad of historians.7
As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a distant
witness, a passer-by on the plain, a seeker bending over that soil all
made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities, perchance; we
have no right to oppose, in the name of science, a collection of facts
which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice
nor strategic ability which authorize a system; in our opinion, a chain
of accidents dominated the two leaders at Waterloo; and when it becomes
a question of destiny, that mysterious culprit, we judge like that
ingenious judge, the populace.
CHAPTER IV--A
Those persons who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo
have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left limb
of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right limb is the road to Genappe,
the tie of the A is the hollow road to Ohain from Braine-l'Alleud. The
top of the A is Mont-Saint-Jean, where Wellington is; the lower left tip
is Hougomont, where Reille is stationed with Jérôme Bonaparte; the right
tip is the Belle-Alliance, where Napoleon was. At the centre of this
chord is the precise point where the final word of the battle was
pronounced. It was there that the lion has been placed, the involuntary
symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard.
The triangle included in the top of the A, between the two limbs and the
tie, is the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. The dispute over this plateau
constituted the whole battle. The wings of the two armies extended to
the right and left of the two roads to Genappe and Nivelles; d'Erlon
facing Picton, Reille facing Hill.
Behind the tip of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, is the
forest of Soignes.
As for the plain itself, let the reader picture to himself a vast
undulating sweep of ground; each rise commands the next rise, and all
the undulations mount towards Mont-Saint-Jean, and there end in the
forest.
Two hostile troops on a field of battle are two wrestlers. It is a
question of seizing the opponent round the waist. The one seeks to trip
up the other. They clutch at everything: a bush is a point of support;
an angle of the wall offers them a rest to the shoulder; for the lack
of a hovel under whose cover they can draw up, a regiment yields its
ground; an unevenness in the ground, a chance turn in the landscape, a
cross-path encountered at the right moment, a grove, a ravine, can
stay the heel of that colossus which is called an army, and prevent its
retreat. He who quits the field is beaten; hence the necessity devolving
on the responsible leader, of examining the most insignificant clump of
trees, and of studying deeply the slightest relief in the ground.
The two generals had attentively studied the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean,
now called the plain of Waterloo. In the preceding year, Wellington,
with the sagacity of foresight, had examined it as the possible seat of
a great battle. Upon this spot, and for this duel, on the 18th of June,
Wellington had the good post, Napoleon the bad post. The English army
was stationed above, the French army below.
It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on
horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on
June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we can show him.
That calm profile under the little three-cornered hat of the school of
Brienne, that green uniform, the white revers concealing the star of the
Legion of Honor, his great coat hiding his epaulets, the corner of red
ribbon peeping from beneath his vest, his leather trousers, the white
horse with the saddle-cloth of purple velvet bearing on the corners
crowned N's and eagles, Hessian boots over silk stockings, silver spurs,
the sword of Marengo,--that whole figure of the last of the Cæsars is
present to all imaginations, saluted with acclamations by some, severely
regarded by others.
That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from
a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and which
always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day history
and daylight have arrived.
That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and
divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it
is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had
hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different
phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and
the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.
Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations.
Babylon violated lessens Alexander, Rome enchained lessens Cæsar,
Jerusalem murdered lessens Titus, tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a
misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which bears his form.
CHAPTER V--THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES
Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle; a beginning
which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both armies, but
still more so for the English than for the French.
It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour, the
water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain as if
in casks; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages was buried
up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping with liquid
mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports
on the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the
wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction of
Papelotte would have been impossible.
The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in
the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand, like a pistol,
aiming it now at one point, now at another, of the battle; and it had
been his wish to wait until the horse batteries could move and gallop
freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come
out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was
no longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was fired,
the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted that it
was thirty-five minutes past eleven.
The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the
Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting on
Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling
Quiot's brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right
wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which rested on
Papelotte.
The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was to draw
Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would
have succeeded if the four companies of the English guards and the brave
Belgians of Perponcher's division had not held the position solidly, and
Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, could confine himself
to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four more companies of
guards and one battalion from Brunswick.
The attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated,
in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road to Brussels,
to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force Mont-Saint-Jean,
to turn Wellington back on Hougomont, thence on Braine-l'Alleud, thence
on Hal; nothing easier. With the exception of a few incidents this
attack succeeded Papelotte was taken; La Haie-Sainte was carried.
A detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry, particularly
in Kempt's brigade, a great many raw recruits. These young soldiers were
valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry; their inexperience
extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they performed particularly
excellent service as skirmishers: the soldier skirmisher, left somewhat
to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own general. These recruits
displayed some of the French ingenuity and fury. This novice of an
infantry had dash. This displeased Wellington.
After the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.
There is in this day an obscure interval, from mid-day to four o'clock;
the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates
in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns over it.
We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia
of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches,
cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades, hussar dolmans, red boots
with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos garlanded with torsades, the
almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled with the scarlet infantry
of England, the English soldiers with great, white circular pads on the
slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the Hanoverian light-horse with
their oblong casques of leather, with brass hands and red horse-tails,
the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters
of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lines--what Salvator Rosa
requires, not what is suited to the needs of Gribeauval.
A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. _Quid
obscurum, quid divinum_. Each historian traces, to some extent, the
particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may
be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an
incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter
into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point of
the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just as
more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water which
is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than
one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen. The
line of battle waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood
gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments
form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are
continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the
artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the
battalions are like smoke. There was something there; seek it. It has
disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and
retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back,
distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? an
oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute,
not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those
powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better
than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o'clock.
Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what
confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, that
there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat,
becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats,
which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, "belong rather to
the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army." The
historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He
cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and
it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be,
to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a
battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly
applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a
point.
CHAPTER VI--FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
Towards four o'clock the condition of the English army was serious. The
Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing,
Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid,
shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: "Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!"
Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington;
Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from
the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the
English general, Picton, with a bullet through the head. The battle
had, for Wellington, two bases of action, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte;
Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of
the German battalion which defended it, only forty-two men survived; all
the officers, except five, were either dead or captured. Three thousand
combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English
Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his
companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Baring
had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been lost,
one from Alten's division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg,
carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays no
longer existed; Ponsonby's great dragoons had been hacked to pieces.
That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and beneath
the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six
hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the
earth,--Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by
seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the
fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.
Hougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one
rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington
reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle-Braine; he
summoned Chassé, who was at Braine-l'Alleud.
The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and
very compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau of
Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it the
slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout stone
dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, and
which marks the intersection of the roads--a pile of the sixteenth
century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from it without
injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges here
and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust the throat of
a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs. There artillery was
ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably authorized
by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo, who had been
despatched by the Emperor at nine o'clock in the morning to reconnoitre
the enemy's batteries, had discovered nothing of it, and had returned
and reported to Napoleon that there were no obstacles except the two
barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to Genappe. It was
at the season when the grain is tall; on the edge of the plateau a
battalion of Kempt's brigade, the 95th, armed with carabines, was
concealed in the tall wheat.
Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was well
posted. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes,
then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of
Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither without
dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there.
The artillery would have been lost among the morasses. The retreat,
according to many a man versed in the art,--though it is disputed by
others,--would have been a disorganized flight.
To this centre, Wellington added one of Chassé's brigades taken from the
right wing, and one of Wincke's brigades taken from the left wing, plus
Clinton's division. To his English, to the regiments of Halkett, to
the brigades of Mitchell, to the guards of Maitland, he gave as
reinforcements and aids, the infantry of Brunswick, Nassau's contingent,
Kielmansegg's Hanoverians, and Ompteda's Germans. This placed twenty-six
battalions under his hand. _The right wing_, as Charras says, _was
thrown back on the centre_. An enormous battery was masked by sacks of
earth at the spot where there now stands what is called the "Museum of
Waterloo." Besides this, Wellington had, behind a rise in the ground,
Somerset's Dragoon Guards, fourteen hundred horse strong. It was the
remaining half of the justly celebrated English cavalry. Ponsonby
destroyed, Somerset remained.
The battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was
ranged behind a very low garden wall, backed up with a coating of bags
of sand and a large slope of earth. This work was not finished; there
had been no time to make a palisade for it.
Wellington, uneasy but impassive, was on horseback, and there remained
the whole day in the same attitude, a little in advance of the old mill
of Mont-Saint-Jean, which is still in existence, beneath an elm, which
an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal, purchased later on for two
hundred francs, cut down, and carried off. Wellington was coldly heroic.
The bullets rained about him. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, fell at his
side. Lord Hill, pointing to a shell which had burst, said to him: "My
lord, what are your orders in case you are killed?" "To do like me,"
replied Wellington. To Clinton he said laconically, "To hold this spot
to the last man." The day was evidently turning out ill. Wellington
shouted to his old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Salamanca:
"Boys, can retreat be thought of? Think of old England!"
Towards four o'clock, the English line drew back. Suddenly nothing
was visible on the crest of the plateau except the artillery and the
sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments, dislodged by
the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom, now
intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean; a
retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself, Wellington
drew back. "The beginning of retreat!" cried Napoleon.
CHAPTER VII--NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR
The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a local trouble,
had never been in a better humor than on that day. His impenetrability
had been smiling ever since the morning. On the 18th of June, that
profound soul masked by marble beamed blindly. The man who had been
gloomy at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The greatest favorites of
destiny make mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme
smile is God's alone.
_Ridet Cæsar, Pompeius flebit_, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix
Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion, but it is
certain that Cæsar laughed. While exploring on horseback at one o'clock
on the preceding night, in storm and rain, in company with Bertrand, the
communes in the neighborhood of Rossomme, satisfied at the sight of the
long line of the English camp-fires illuminating the whole horizon from
Frischemont to Braine-l'Alleud, it had seemed to him that fate, to
whom he had assigned a day on the field of Waterloo, was exact to
the appointment; he stopped his horse, and remained for some time
motionless, gazing at the lightning and listening to the thunder;
and this fatalist was heard to cast into the darkness this mysterious
saying, "We are in accord." Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer
in accord.
He took not a moment for sleep; every instant of that night was marked
by a joy for him. He traversed the line of the principal outposts,
halting here and there to talk to the sentinels. At half-past two, near
the wood of Hougomont, he heard the tread of a column on the march; he
thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington.
He said: "It is the rear-guard of the English getting under way for the
purpose of decamping. I will take prisoners the six thousand English who
have just arrived at Ostend." He conversed expansively; he regained the
animation which he had shown at his landing on the first of March, when
he pointed out to the Grand-Marshal the enthusiastic peasant of the Gulf
Juan, and cried, "Well, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement already!" On
the night of the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington. "That
little Englishman needs a lesson," said Napoleon. The rain redoubled in
violence; the thunder rolled while the Emperor was speaking.
At half-past three o'clock in the morning, he lost one illusion;
officers who had been despatched to reconnoitre announced to him that
the enemy was not making any movement. Nothing was stirring; not a
bivouac-fire had been extinguished; the English army was asleep. The
silence on earth was profound; the only noise was in the heavens.
At four o'clock, a peasant was brought in to him by the scouts; this
peasant had served as guide to a brigade of English cavalry, probably
Vivian's brigade, which was on its way to take up a position in the
village of Ohain, at the extreme left. At five o'clock, two Belgian
deserters reported to him that they had just quitted their regiment,
and that the English army was ready for battle. "So much the better!"
exclaimed Napoleon. "I prefer to overthrow them rather than to drive
them back."
In the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope which forms an
angle with the Plancenoit road, had a kitchen table and a peasant's
chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a
truss of straw for a carpet, and spread out on the table the chart
of the battle-field, saying to Soult as he did so, "A pretty
checker-board."
In consequence of the rains during the night, the transports of
provisions, embedded in the soft roads, had not been able to arrive by
morning; the soldiers had had no sleep; they were wet and fasting. This
did not prevent Napoleon from exclaiming cheerfully to Ney, "We have
ninety chances out of a hundred." At eight o'clock the Emperor's
breakfast was brought to him. He invited many generals to it. During
breakfast, it was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights
before, in Brussels, at the Duchess of Richmond's; and Soult, a rough
man of war, with a face of an archbishop, said, "The ball takes place
to-day." The Emperor jested with Ney, who said, "Wellington will not be
so simple as to wait for Your Majesty." That was his way, however. "He
was fond of jesting," says Fleury de Chaboulon. "A merry humor was
at the foundation of his character," says Gourgaud. "He abounded in
pleasantries, which were more peculiar than witty," says Benjamin
Constant. These gayeties of a giant are worthy of insistence. It was
he who called his grenadiers "his grumblers"; he pinched their ears; he
pulled their mustaches. "The Emperor did nothing but play pranks on us,"
is the remark of one of them. During the mysterious trip from the island
of Elba to France, on the 27th of February, on the open sea, the French
brig of war, _Le Zéphyr_, having encountered the brig _L'Inconstant_, on
which Napoleon was concealed, and having asked the news of Napoleon from
_L'Inconstant_, the Emperor, who still wore in his hat the white and
amaranthine cockade sown with bees, which he had adopted at the isle of
Elba, laughingly seized the speaking-trumpet, and answered for himself,
"The Emperor is well." A man who laughs like that is on familiar terms
with events. Napoleon indulged in many fits of this laughter during the
breakfast at Waterloo. After breakfast he meditated for a quarter of an
hour; then two generals seated themselves on the truss of straw, pen in
hand and their paper on their knees, and the Emperor dictated to them
the order of battle.
At nine o'clock, at the instant when the French army, ranged in echelons
and set in motion in five columns, had deployed--the divisions in two
lines, the artillery between the brigades, the music at their head; as
they beat the march, with rolls on the drums and the blasts of trumpets,
mighty, vast, joyous, a sea of casques, of sabres, and of bayonets on
the horizon, the Emperor was touched, and twice exclaimed, "Magnificent!
Magnificent!"
Between nine o'clock and half-past ten the whole army, incredible as it
may appear, had taken up its position and ranged itself in six lines,
forming, to repeat the Emperor's expression, "the figure of six V's."
A few moments after the formation of the battle-array, in the midst of
that profound silence, like that which heralds the beginning of a storm,
which precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo on the shoulder, as
he beheld the three batteries of twelve-pounders, detached by his orders
from the corps of Erlon, Reille, and Lobau, and destined to begin the
action by taking Mont-Saint-Jean, which was situated at the intersection
of the Nivelles and the Genappe roads, and said to him, "There are four
and twenty handsome maids, General."
Sure of the issue, he encouraged with a smile, as they passed before
him, the company of sappers of the first corps, which he had appointed
to barricade Mont-Saint-Jean as soon as the village should be carried.
All this serenity had been traversed by but a single word of haughty
pity; perceiving on his left, at a spot where there now stands a large
tomb, those admirable Scotch Grays, with their superb horses, massing
themselves, he said, "It is a pity."
Then he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossomme, and selected for
his post of observation a contracted elevation of turf to the right of
the road from Genappe to Brussels, which was his second station during
the battle. The third station, the one adopted at seven o'clock in the
evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte, is formidable;
it is a rather elevated knoll, which still exists, and behind which the
guard was massed on a slope of the plain. Around this knoll the balls
rebounded from the pavements of the road, up to Napoleon himself. As at
Brienne, he had over his head the shriek of the bullets and of the
heavy artillery. Mouldy cannon-balls, old sword-blades, and shapeless
projectiles, eaten up with rust, were picked up at the spot where his
horse' feet stood. _Scabra rubigine_. A few years ago, a shell of sixty
pounds, still charged, and with its fuse broken off level with the bomb,
was unearthed. It was at this last post that the Emperor said to his
guide, Lacoste, a hostile and terrified peasant, who was attached to the
saddle of a hussar, and who turned round at every discharge of canister
and tried to hide behind Napoleon: "Fool, it is shameful! You'll get
yourself killed with a ball in the back." He who writes these lines has
himself found, in the friable soil of this knoll, on turning over
the sand, the remains of the neck of a bomb, disintegrated, by the
oxidization of six and forty years, and old fragments of iron which
parted like elder-twigs between the fingers.
Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the
plains, where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place,
are no longer what they were on June 18, 1815. By taking from this
mournful field the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real relief
has been taken away, and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her
bearings there. It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying
it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later,
exclaimed, "They have altered my field of battle!" Where the great
pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion, rises to-day, there was a
hillock which descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but
which was almost an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe.
The elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of
the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from
Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other,
the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole
of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the thousands upon
thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one hundred and
fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the plateau
of Mont-Saint-Jean is now accessible by an easy slope. On the day of
battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte, it was abrupt and
difficult of approach. The slope there is so steep that the English
cannon could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley,
which was the centre of the combat. On the 18th of June, 1815, the rains
had still farther increased this acclivity, the mud complicated the
problem of the ascent, and the men not only slipped back, but stuck fast
in the mire. Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose
presence it was impossible for the distant observer to divine.
What was this trench? Let us explain. Braine-l'Alleud is a Belgian
village; Ohain is another. These villages, both of them concealed in
curves of the landscape, are connected by a road about a league and a
half in length, which traverses the plain along its undulating level,
and often enters and buries itself in the hills like a furrow, which
makes a ravine of this road in some places. In 1815, as at the present
day, this road cut the crest of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean between
the two highways from Genappe and Nivelles; only, it is now on a level
with the plain; it was then a hollow way. Its two slopes have been
appropriated for the monumental hillock. This road was, and still is,
a trench throughout the greater portion of its course; a hollow trench,
sometimes a dozen feet in depth, and whose banks, being too steep,
crumbled away here and there, particularly in winter, under driving
rains. Accidents happened here. The road was so narrow at the
Braine-l'Alleud entrance that a passer-by was crushed by a cart, as is
proved by a stone cross which stands near the cemetery, and which gives
the name of the dead, _Monsieur Bernard Debrye, Merchant of Brussels_,
and the date of the accident, _February, 1637_.8 It was so deep on
the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean that a peasant, Mathieu Nicaise,
was crushed there, in 1783, by a slide from the slope, as is stated on
another stone cross, the top of which has disappeared in the process of
clearing the ground, but whose overturned pedestal is still visible on
the grassy slope to the left of the highway between La Haie-Sainte and
the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean.
On the day of battle, this hollow road whose existence was in no way
indicated, bordering the crest of Mont-Saint-Jean, a trench at the
summit of the escarpment, a rut concealed in the soil, was invisible;
that is to say, terrible.
CHAPTER VIII--THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE
So, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content.
He was right; the plan of battle conceived by him was, as we have seen,
really admirable.
The battle once begun, its very various changes,--the resistance of
Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin; the
disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye's brigade was
shattered; Guilleminot's fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard
nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries; the fifteen unescorted
pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge; the small effect of the
bombs falling in the English lines, and there embedding themselves in
the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud,
so that the canister was turned into a splash; the uselessness of Piré's
demonstration on Braine-l'Alleud; all that cavalry, fifteen squadrons,
almost exterminated; the right wing of the English badly alarmed, the
left wing badly cut into; Ney's strange mistake in massing, instead of
echelonning the four divisions of the first corps; men delivered over to
grape-shot, arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep and with a frontage
of two hundred; the frightful holes made in these masses by the
cannon-balls; attacking columns disorganized; the side-battery suddenly
unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte compromised;
Quiot repulsed; Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules graduated at the
Polytechnic School, wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an
axe the door of La Haie-Sainte under the downright fire of the English
barricade which barred the angle of the road from Genappe to Brussels;
Marcognet's division caught between the infantry and the cavalry, shot
down at the very muzzle of the guns amid the grain by Best and Pack, put
to the sword by Ponsonby; his battery of seven pieces spiked; the Prince
of Saxe-Weimar holding and guarding, in spite of the Comte d'Erlon, both
Frischemont and Smohain; the flag of the 105th taken, the flag of the
45th captured; that black Prussian hussar stopped by runners of the
flying column of three hundred light cavalry on the scout between Wavre
and Plancenoit; the alarming things that had been said by prisoners;
Grouchy's delay; fifteen hundred men killed in the orchard of Hougomont
in less than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter
time about La Haie-Sainte,--all these stormy incidents passing like the
clouds of battle before Napoleon, had hardly troubled his gaze and
had not overshadowed that face of imperial certainty. Napoleon was
accustomed to gaze steadily at war; he never added up the heart-rending
details, cipher by cipher; ciphers mattered little to him, provided that
they furnished the total, victory; he was not alarmed if the beginnings
did go astray, since he thought himself the master and the possessor
at the end; he knew how to wait, supposing himself to be out of the
question, and he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate,
Thou wilt not dare.
Composed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself
protected in good and tolerated in evil. He had, or thought that he had,
a connivance, one might almost say a complicity, of events in his favor,
which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity.
Nevertheless, when one has Bérésina, Leipzig, and Fontainebleau behind
one, it seems as though one might distrust Waterloo. A mysterious frown
becomes perceptible in the depths of the heavens.
At the moment when Wellington retreated, Napoleon shuddered. He suddenly
beheld the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean cleared, and the van of the
English army disappear. It was rallying, but hiding itself. The Emperor
half rose in his stirrups. The lightning of victory flashed from his
eyes.
Wellington, driven into a corner at the forest of Soignes and
destroyed--that was the definitive conquest of England by France; it was
Crécy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies avenged. The man of Marengo
was wiping out Agincourt.
So the Emperor, meditating on this terrible turn of fortune, swept his
glass for the last time over all the points of the field of battle. His
guard, standing behind him with grounded arms, watched him from below
with a sort of religion. He pondered; he examined the slopes, noted the
declivities, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the square of rye, the
path; he seemed to be counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness
at the English barricades of the two highways,--two large abatis of
trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two
cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded
the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles
where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chassé's brigade. Near this
barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white,
which stands at the angle of the cross-road near Braine-l'Alleud; he
bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste. The guide made
a negative sign with his head, which was probably perfidious.
The Emperor straightened himself up and fell to thinking.
Wellington had drawn back.
All that remained to do was to complete this retreat by crushing him.
Napoleon turning round abruptly, despatched an express at full speed to
Paris to announce that the battle was won.
Napoleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder darts.
He had just found his clap of thunder.
He gave orders to Milhaud's cuirassiers to carry the table-land of
Mont-Saint-Jean.
CHAPTER IX--THE UNEXPECTED
There were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front a
quarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses.
There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them to
support them Lefebvre-Desnouettes's division,--the one hundred and six
picked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and
ninety-seven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred and
eighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirasses
of beaten iron, with horse-pistols in their holsters, and long
sabre-swords. That morning the whole army had admired them, when, at
nine o'clock, with braying of trumpets and all the music playing "Let us
watch o'er the Safety of the Empire," they had come in a solid column,
with one of their batteries on their flank, another in their centre, and
deployed in two ranks between the roads to Genappe and Frischemont,
and taken up their position for battle in that powerful second line,
so cleverly arranged by Napoleon, which, having on its extreme left
Kellermann's cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers,
had, so to speak, two wings of iron.
Aide-de-camp Bernard carried them the Emperor's orders. Ney drew his
sword and placed himself at their head. The enormous squadrons were set
in motion.
Then a formidable spectacle was seen.
All their cavalry, with upraised swords, standards and trumpets flung to
the breeze, formed in columns by divisions, descended, by a simultaneous
movement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ram
which is effecting a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, plunged into
the terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared
there in the smoke, then emerging from that shadow, reappeared on the
other side of the valley, still compact and in close ranks, mounting at
a full trot, through a storm of grape-shot which burst upon them,
the terrible muddy slope of the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean. They
ascended, grave, threatening, imperturbable; in the intervals between
the musketry and the artillery, their colossal trampling was audible.
Being two divisions, there were two columns of them; Wathier's division
held the right, Delort's division was on the left. It seemed as though
two immense adders of steel were to be seen crawling towards the crest
of the table-land. It traversed the battle like a prodigy.
Nothing like it had been seen since the taking of the great redoubt of
the Muskowa by the heavy cavalry; Murat was lacking here, but Ney was
again present. It seemed as though that mass had become a monster and
had but one soul. Each column undulated and swelled like the ring of a
polyp. They could be seen through a vast cloud of smoke which was rent
here and there. A confusion of helmets, of cries, of sabres, a stormy
heaving of the cruppers of horses amid the cannons and the flourish of
trumpets, a terrible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasses
like the scales on the hydra.
These narrations seemed to belong to another age. Something parallel to
this vision appeared, no doubt, in the ancient Orphic epics, which told
of the centaurs, the old hippanthropes, those Titans with human
heads and equestrian chests who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible,
invulnerable, sublime--gods and beasts.
Odd numerical coincidence,--twenty-six battalions rode to meet
twenty-six battalions. Behind the crest of the plateau, in the shadow of
the masked battery, the English infantry, formed into thirteen squares,
two battalions to the square, in two lines, with seven in the first
line, six in the second, the stocks of their guns to their shoulders,
taking aim at that which was on the point of appearing, waited, calm,
mute, motionless. They did not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers
did not see them. They listened to the rise of this flood of men. They
heard the swelling noise of three thousand horse, the alternate and
symmetrical tramp of their hoofs at full trot, the jingling of the
cuirasses, the clang of the sabres and a sort of grand and savage
breathing. There ensued a most terrible silence; then, all at once,
a long file of uplifted arms, brandishing sabres, appeared above the
crest, and casques, trumpets, and standards, and three thousand heads
with gray mustaches, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" All this cavalry
debouched on the plateau, and it was like the appearance of an
earthquake.
All at once, a tragic incident; on the English left, on our right, the
head of the column of cuirassiers reared up with a frightful clamor. On
arriving at the culminating point of the crest, ungovernable, utterly
given over to fury and their course of extermination of the squares and
cannon, the cuirassiers had just caught sight of a trench,--a trench
between them and the English. It was the hollow road of Ohain.
It was a terrible moment. The ravine was there, unexpected, yawning,
directly under the horses' feet, two fathoms deep between its double
slopes; the second file pushed the first into it, and the third pushed
on the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on their
haunches, slid down, all four feet in the air, crushing and overwhelming
the riders; and there being no means of retreat,--the whole column being
no longer anything more than a projectile,--the force which had been
acquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravine
could only yield when filled; horses and riders rolled there pell-mell,
grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when
this trench was full of living men, the rest marched over them and
passed on. Almost a third of Dubois's brigade fell into that abyss.
This began the loss of the battle.
A local tradition, which evidently exaggerates matters, says that two
thousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the hollow road
of Ohain. This figure probably comprises all the other corpses which
were flung into this ravine the day after the combat.
Let us note in passing that it was Dubois's sorely tried brigade which,
an hour previously, making a charge to one side, had captured the flag
of the Lunenburg battalion.
Napoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud's
cuirassiers, had scrutinized the ground, but had not been able to see
that hollow road, which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface of
the plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the little
white chapel which marks its angle of junction with the Nivelles
highway, he had probably put a question as to the possibility of an
obstacle, to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered No. We might
almost affirm that Napoleon's catastrophe originated in that sign of a
peasant's head.
Other fatalities were destined to arise.
Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No.
Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No. Because of God.
Bonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of the
nineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in which
there was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events had
declared itself long before.
It was time that this vast man should fall.
The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance.
This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. These
plethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the world
mounting to the brain of one man,--this would be mortal to civilization
were it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and
supreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and the
elements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of the
material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled
cemeteries, mothers in tears,--these are formidable pleaders. When
the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious
groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear.
Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been
decided on.
He embarrassed God.
Waterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of the
Universe.
CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN
The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine.
Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning point-blank on
the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute to
the English battery.
The whole of the flying artillery of the English had re-entered the
squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not had even the time for a
halt. The disaster of the hollow road had decimated, but not discouraged
them. They belonged to that class of men who, when diminished in number,
increase in courage.
Wathier's column alone had suffered in the disaster; Delort's column,
which Ney had deflected to the left, as though he had a presentiment of
an ambush, had arrived whole.
The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares.
At full speed, with bridles loose, swords in their teeth, pistols in
fist,--such was the attack.
There are moments in battles in which the soul hardens the man until
the soldier is changed into a statue, and when all this flesh turns into
granite. The English battalions, desperately assaulted, did not stir.
Then it was terrible.
All the faces of the English squares were attacked at once. A frenzied
whirl enveloped them. That cold infantry remained impassive. The first
rank knelt and received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second
ranks shot them down; behind the second rank the cannoneers charged
their guns, the front of the square parted, permitted the passage of
an eruption of grape-shot, and closed again. The cuirassiers replied
by crushing them. Their great horses reared, strode across the ranks,
leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four
living wells. The cannon-balls ploughed furrows in these cuirassiers;
the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared,
ground to dust under the horses. The bayonets plunged into the bellies
of these centaurs; hence a hideousness of wounds which has probably
never been seen anywhere else. The squares, wasted by this mad cavalry,
closed up their ranks without flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of
grape-shot, they created explosions in their assailants' midst. The form
of this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions,
they were craters; those cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were
a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a cloud; lava contended
with lightning.
The square on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the
air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed
of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre
dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the
forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being
exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under
his arm, played the Highland airs. These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben
Lothian, as did the Greeks recalling Argos. The sword of a cuirassier,
which hewed down the bagpipes and the arm which bore it, put an end to
the song by killing the singer.
The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, and still further diminished
by the catastrophe of the ravine, had almost the whole English army
against them, but they multiplied themselves so that each man of them
was equal to ten. Nevertheless, some Hanoverian battalions yielded.
Wellington perceived it, and thought of his cavalry. Had Napoleon at
that same moment thought of his infantry, he would have won the battle.
This forgetfulness was his great and fatal mistake.
All at once, the cuirassiers, who had been the assailants, found
themselves assailed. The English cavalry was at their back. Before
them two squares, behind them Somerset; Somerset meant fourteen hundred
dragoons of the guard. On the right, Somerset had Dornberg with the
German light-horse, and on his left, Trip with the Belgian carabineers;
the cuirassiers attacked on the flank and in front, before and in the
rear, by infantry and cavalry, had to face all sides. What mattered it
to them? They were a whirlwind. Their valor was something indescribable.
In addition to this, they had behind them the battery, which was still
thundering. It was necessary that it should be so, or they could never
have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, pierced on
the shoulder by a ball from a biscayan,9 is in the collection of the
Waterloo Museum.
For such Frenchmen nothing less than such Englishmen was needed. It
was no longer a hand-to-hand conflict; it was a shadow, a fury, a dizzy
transport of souls and courage, a hurricane of lightning swords. In an
instant the fourteen hundred dragoon guards numbered only eight hundred.
Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, fell dead. Ney rushed up with
the lancers and Lefebvre-Desnouettes's light-horse. The plateau
of Mont-Saint-Jean was captured, recaptured, captured again. The
cuirassiers quitted the cavalry to return to the infantry; or, to put
it more exactly, the whole of that formidable rout collared each other
without releasing the other. The squares still held firm.
There were a dozen assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half
the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This conflict lasted two hours.
The English army was profoundly shaken. There is no doubt that, had they
not been enfeebled in their first shock by the disaster of the hollow
road the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the centre and decided the
victory. This extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton, who had seen
Talavera and Badajoz. Wellington, three-quarters vanquished, admired
heroically. He said in an undertone, "Sublime!"
The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or
spiked sixty pieces of ordnance, and captured from the English regiments
six flags, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the Guard bore
to the Emperor, in front of the farm of La Belle Alliance.
Wellington's situation had grown worse. This strange battle was like a
duel between two raging, wounded men, each of whom, still fighting and
still resisting, is expending all his blood.
Which of the two will be the first to fall?
The conflict on the plateau continued.
What had become of the cuirassiers? No one could have told. One thing
is certain, that on the day after the battle, a cuirassier and his
horse were found dead among the woodwork of the scales for vehicles at
Mont-Saint-Jean, at the very point where the four roads from Nivelles,
Genappe, La Hulpe, and Brussels meet and intersect each other. This
horseman had pierced the English lines. One of the men who picked up the
body still lives at Mont-Saint-Jean. His name is Dehaze. He was eighteen
years old at that time.
Wellington felt that he was yielding. The crisis was at hand.
The cuirassiers had not succeeded, since the centre was not broken
through. As every one was in possession of the plateau, no one held it,
and in fact it remained, to a great extent, with the English. Wellington
held the village and the culminating plain; Ney had only the crest and
the slope. They seemed rooted in that fatal soil on both sides.
But the weakening of the English seemed irremediable. The bleeding
of that army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, demanded
reinforcements. "There are none," replied Wellington; "he must let
himself be killed!" Almost at that same moment, a singular coincidence
which paints the exhaustion of the two armies, Ney demanded infantry
from Napoleon, and Napoleon exclaimed, "Infantry! Where does he expect
me to get it? Does he think I can make it?"
Nevertheless, the English army was in the worse case of the two. The
furious onsets of those great squadrons with cuirasses of iron and
breasts of steel had ground the infantry to nothing. A few men clustered
round a flag marked the post of a regiment; such and such a battalion
was commanded only by a captain or a lieutenant; Alten's division,
already so roughly handled at La Haie-Sainte, was almost destroyed;
the intrepid Belgians of Van Kluze's brigade strewed the rye-fields
all along the Nivelles road; hardly anything was left of those Dutch
grenadiers, who, intermingled with Spaniards in our ranks in 1811,
fought against Wellington; and who, in 1815, rallied to the
English standard, fought against Napoleon. The loss in officers was
considerable. Lord Uxbridge, who had his leg buried on the following
day, had his knee shattered. If, on the French side, in that tussle
of the cuirassiers, Delort, l'Héritier, Colbert, Dnop, Travers, and
Blancard were disabled, on the side of the English there was Alten
wounded, Barne wounded, Delancey killed, Van Meeren killed, Ompteda
killed, the whole of Wellington's staff decimated, and England had the
worse of it in that bloody scale. The second regiment of foot-guards
had lost five lieutenant-colonels, four captains, and three ensigns;
the first battalion of the 30th infantry had lost 24 officers and 1,200
soldiers; the 79th Highlanders had lost 24 officers wounded, 18 officers
killed, 450 soldiers killed. The Hanoverian hussars of Cumberland, a
whole regiment, with Colonel Hacke at its head, who was destined to be
tried later on and cashiered, had turned bridle in the presence of the
fray, and had fled to the forest of Soignes, sowing defeat all the way
to Brussels. The transports, ammunition-wagons, the baggage-wagons, the
wagons filled with wounded, on perceiving that the French were gaining
ground and approaching the forest, rushed headlong thither. The Dutch,
mowed down by the French cavalry, cried, "Alarm!" From Vert-Coucou to
Groentendael, for a distance of nearly two leagues in the direction
of Brussels, according to the testimony of eye-witnesses who are still
alive, the roads were encumbered with fugitives. This panic was such
that it attacked the Prince de Condé at Mechlin, and Louis XVIII. at
Ghent. With the exception of the feeble reserve echelonned behind the
ambulance established at the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean, and of Vivian's
and Vandeleur's brigades, which flanked the left wing, Wellington had
no cavalry left. A number of batteries lay unhorsed. These facts are
attested by Siborne; and Pringle, exaggerating the disaster, goes so far
as to say that the Anglo-Dutch army was reduced to thirty-four thousand
men. The Iron Duke remained calm, but his lips blanched. Vincent, the
Austrian commissioner, Alava, the Spanish commissioner, who were present
at the battle in the English staff, thought the Duke lost. At five
o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and he was heard to murmur these
sinister words, "Blücher, or night!"
It was at about that moment that a distant line of bayonets gleamed on
the heights in the direction of Frischemont.
Here comes the change of face in this giant drama.
CHAPTER XI--A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW
The painful surprise of Napoleon is well known. Grouchy hoped for,
Blücher arriving. Death instead of life.
Fate has these turns; the throne of the world was expected; it was Saint
Helena that was seen.
If the little shepherd who served as guide to Bülow, Blücher's
lieutenant, had advised him to debouch from the forest above
Frischemont, instead of below Plancenoit, the form of the nineteenth
century might, perhaps, have been different. Napoleon would have won the
battle of Waterloo. By any other route than that below Plancenoit,
the Prussian army would have come out upon a ravine impassable for
artillery, and Bülow would not have arrived.
Now the Prussian general, Muffling, declares that one hour's delay, and
Blücher would not have found Wellington on his feet. "The battle was
lost."
It was time that Bülow should arrive, as will be seen. He had, moreover,
been very much delayed. He had bivouacked at Dion-le-Mont, and had set
out at daybreak; but the roads were impassable, and his divisions stuck
fast in the mire. The ruts were up to the hubs of the cannons. Moreover,
he had been obliged to pass the Dyle on the narrow bridge of Wavre;
the street leading to the bridge had been fired by the French, so
the caissons and ammunition-wagons could not pass between two rows of
burning houses, and had been obliged to wait until the conflagration was
extinguished. It was mid-day before Bülow's vanguard had been able to
reach Chapelle-Saint-Lambert.
Had the action been begun two hours earlier, it would have been over
at four o'clock, and Blücher would have fallen on the battle won by
Napoleon. Such are these immense risks proportioned to an infinite which
we cannot comprehend.
The Emperor had been the first, as early as mid-day, to descry with his
field-glass, on the extreme horizon, something which had attracted his
attention. He had said, "I see yonder a cloud, which seems to me to be
troops." Then he asked the Duc de Dalmatie, "Soult, what do you see in
the direction of Chapelle-Saint-Lambert?" The marshal, levelling his
glass, answered, "Four or five thousand men, Sire; evidently Grouchy."
But it remained motionless in the mist. All the glasses of the staff
had studied "the cloud" pointed out by the Emperor. Some said: "It is
trees." The truth is, that the cloud did not move. The Emperor detached
Domon's division of light cavalry to reconnoitre in that quarter.
Bülow had not moved, in fact. His vanguard was very feeble, and could
accomplish nothing. He was obliged to wait for the body of the army
corps, and he had received orders to concentrate his forces before
entering into line; but at five o'clock, perceiving Wellington's peril,
Blücher ordered Bülow to attack, and uttered these remarkable words: "We
must give air to the English army."
A little later, the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hacke, and Ryssel
deployed before Lobau's corps, the cavalry of Prince William of Prussia
debouched from the forest of Paris, Plancenoit was in flames, and the
Prussian cannon-balls began to rain even upon the ranks of the guard in
reserve behind Napoleon.
CHAPTER XII--THE GUARD
Every one knows the rest,--the irruption of a third army; the battle
broken to pieces; eighty-six mouths of fire thundering simultaneously;
Pirch the first coming up with Bülow; Zieten's cavalry led by Blücher
in person, the French driven back; Marcognet swept from the plateau of
Ohain; Durutte dislodged from Papelotte; Donzelot and Quiot retreating;
Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh battle precipitating itself on our
dismantled regiments at nightfall; the whole English line resuming the
offensive and thrust forward; the gigantic breach made in the French
army; the English grape-shot and the Prussian grape-shot aiding each
other; the extermination; disaster in front; disaster on the flank; the
Guard entering the line in the midst of this terrible crumbling of all
things.
Conscious that they were about to die, they shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"
History records nothing more touching than that agony bursting forth in
acclamations.
The sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at that very
moment,--it was eight o'clock in the evening--the clouds on the horizon
parted, and allowed the grand and sinister glow of the setting sun to
pass through, athwart the elms on the Nivelles road. They had seen it
rise at Austerlitz.
Each battalion of the Guard was commanded by a general for this final
catastrophe. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan,
were there. When the tall caps of the grenadiers of the Guard, with
their large plaques bearing the eagle appeared, symmetrical, in line,
tranquil, in the midst of that combat, the enemy felt a respect for
France; they thought they beheld twenty victories entering the field
of battle, with wings outspread, and those who were the conquerors,
believing themselves to be vanquished, retreated; but Wellington
shouted, "Up, Guards, and aim straight!" The red regiment of English
guards, lying flat behind the hedges, sprang up, a cloud of grape-shot
riddled the tricolored flag and whistled round our eagles; all hurled
themselves forwards, and the final carnage began. In the darkness, the
Imperial Guard felt the army losing ground around it, and in the vast
shock of the rout it heard the desperate flight which had taken the
place of the "Vive l'Empereur!" and, with flight behind it, it continued
to advance, more crushed, losing more men at every step that it took.
There were none who hesitated, no timid men in its ranks. The soldier in
that troop was as much of a hero as the general. Not a man was missing
in that suicide.
Ney, bewildered, great with all the grandeur of accepted death, offered
himself to all blows in that tempest. He had his fifth horse killed
under him there. Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at the mouth, with
uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut off by a sword-stroke
from a horseguard, his plaque with the great eagle dented by a bullet;
bleeding, bemired, magnificent, a broken sword in his hand, he said,
"Come and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of battle!" But
in vain; he did not die. He was haggard and angry. At Drouet d'Erlon he
hurled this question, "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" In
the midst of all that artillery engaged in crushing a handful of men,
he shouted: "So there is nothing for me! Oh! I should like to have all
these English bullets enter my bowels!" Unhappy man, thou wert reserved
for French bullets!
CHAPTER XIII--THE CATASTROPHE
The rout behind the Guard was melancholy.
The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,--Hougomont, La
Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry "Treachery!" was followed by
a cry of "Save yourselves who can!" An army which is disbanding is
like a thaw. All yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles,
hastens, is precipitated. The disintegration is unprecedented. Ney
borrows a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword,
places himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English and
French. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty, he
insults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers fly
from him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney!" Two of Durutte's regiments
go and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between the
swords of the Uhlans and the fusillade of the brigades of Kempt, Best,
Pack, and Rylandt; the worst of hand-to-hand conflicts is the defeat;
friends kill each other in order to escape; squadrons and battalions
break and disperse against each other, like the tremendous foam of
battle. Lobau at one extremity, and Reille at the other, are drawn into
the tide. In vain does Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him of
his Guard; in vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceable
squadrons. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur,
Lobau before Bülow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before
Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor's squadrons to the
charge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops
past the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats
them. All the mouths which in the morning had shouted, "Long live
the Emperor!" remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The Prussian
cavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews, slashes, kills,
exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee; the soldiers of the
artillery-train unharness the caissons and use the horses to make their
escape; transports overturned, with all four wheels in the air, clog the
road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk
over the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy multitude fills the
roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys,
the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand men. Shouts
despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced at
the point of the sword, no more comrades, no more officers, no more
generals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting France to the sword at
its leisure. Lions converted into goats. Such was the flight.
At Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present a battle
front, to draw up in line. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entrance
to the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussian
canister, all took to flight again, and Lobau was taken. That volley of
grape-shot can be seen to-day imprinted on the ancient gable of a brick
building on the right of the road at a few minutes' distance before you
enter Genappe. The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe, furious, no
doubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors. The pursuit was
stupendous. Blücher ordered extermination. Roguet had set the lugubrious
example of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bring
him a Prussian prisoner. Blücher outdid Roguet. Duhesme, the general
of the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an inn at Genappe,
surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death, who took the sword and slew
the prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of the
vanquished. Let us inflict punishment, since we are history: old
Blücher disgraced himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to the
disaster. The desperate route traversed Genappe, traversed Quatre-Bras,
traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi, traversed
Thuin, and only halted at the frontier. Alas! and who, then, was fleeing
in that manner? The Grand Army.
This vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest
bravery which ever astounded history,--is that causeless? No. The shadow
of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of
destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence
the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls
surrendering their swords. Those who had conquered Europe have fallen
prone on the earth, with nothing left to say nor to do, feeling the
present shadow of a terrible presence. _Hoc erat in fatis_. That day the
perspective of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is the
hinge of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man was
necessary to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whom
one replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroes
can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more than
a cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by.
At nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by
the skirt of his coat and detained a man, haggard, pensive, sinister,
gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just
dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with
wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense
somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more to
advance.
CHAPTER XIV--THE LAST SQUARE
Several squares of the Guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat,
as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came,
death also; they awaited that double shadow, and, invincible, allowed
themselves to be enveloped therein. Each regiment, isolated from the
rest, and having no bond with the army, now shattered in every part,
died alone. They had taken up position for this final action, some on
the heights of Rossomme, others on the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean. There,
abandoned, vanquished, terrible, those gloomy squares endured their
death-throes in formidable fashion. Ulm, Wagram, Jena, Friedland, died
with them.
At twilight, towards nine o'clock in the evening, one of them was left
at the foot of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. In that fatal valley,
at the foot of that declivity which the cuirassiers had ascended, now
inundated by the masses of the English, under the converging fires
of the victorious hostile cavalry, under a frightful density of
projectiles, this square fought on. It was commanded by an obscure
officer named Cambronne. At each discharge, the square diminished and
replied. It replied to the grape-shot with a fusillade, continually
contracting its four walls. The fugitives pausing breathless for a
moment in the distance, listened in the darkness to that gloomy and
ever-decreasing thunder.
When this legion had been reduced to a handful, when nothing was left
of their flag but a rag, when their guns, the bullets all gone, were no
longer anything but clubs, when the heap of corpses was larger than the
group of survivors, there reigned among the conquerors, around those men
dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the English artillery,
taking breath, became silent. This furnished a sort of respite. These
combatants had around them something in the nature of a swarm of
spectres, silhouettes of men on horseback, the black profiles of cannon,
the white sky viewed through wheels and gun-carriages, the colossal
death's-head, which the heroes saw constantly through the smoke, in the
depths of the battle, advanced upon them and gazed at them. Through the
shades of twilight they could hear the pieces being loaded; the matches
all lighted, like the eyes of tigers at night, formed a circle round
their heads; all the lintstocks of the English batteries approached the
cannons, and then, with emotion, holding the supreme moment suspended
above these men, an English general, Colville according to some,
Maitland according to others, shouted to them, "Surrender, brave
Frenchmen!" Cambronne replied, "----."
{EDITOR'S COMMENTARY: Another edition of this book has the word "Merde!"
in lieu of the ---- above.}
CHAPTER XV--CAMBRONNE
If any French reader object to having his susceptibilities offended, one
would have to refrain from repeating in his presence what is perhaps
the finest reply that a Frenchman ever made. This would enjoin us from
consigning something sublime to History.
At our own risk and peril, let us violate this injunction.
Now, then, among those giants there was one Titan,--Cambronne.
To make that reply and then perish, what could be grander? For being
willing to die is the same as to die; and it was not this man's fault if
he survived after he was shot.
The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to
flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, in despair at five;
nor Blücher, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo
was Cambronne.
To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that kills you is
to conquer!
Thus to answer the Catastrophe, thus to speak to Fate, to give this
pedestal to the future lion, to hurl such a challenge to the midnight
rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of Hougomont, to the sunken road of
Ohain, to Grouchy's delay, to Blücher's arrival, to be Irony itself in
the tomb, to act so as to stand upright though fallen, to drown in
two syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which
the Cæsars once knew, to make the lowest of words the most lofty by
entwining with it the glory of France, insolently to end Waterloo with
Mardigras, to finish Leonidas with Rabellais, to set the crown on this
victory by a word impossible to speak, to lose the field and preserve
history, to have the laugh on your side after such a carnage,--this is
immense!
It was an insult such as a thunder-cloud might hurl! It reaches the
grandeur of Æschylus!
Cambronne's reply produces the effect of a violent break. 'Tis like the
breaking of a heart under a weight of scorn. 'Tis the overflow of agony
bursting forth. Who conquered? Wellington? No! Had it not been for
Blücher, he was lost. Was it Blücher? No! If Wellington had not begun,
Blücher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this man spending his
last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realizes
that here is a falsehood, a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly
agonizing; and at the moment when his rage is bursting forth because of
it, he is offered this mockery,--life! How could he restrain himself?
Yonder are all the kings of Europe, the general's flushed with victory,
the Jupiter's darting thunderbolts; they have a hundred thousand
victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their
cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down
under their heels the Imperial guards, and the grand army; they have
just crushed Napoleon, and only Cambronne remains,--only this earthworm
is left to protest. He will protest. Then he seeks for the appropriate
word as one seeks for a sword. His mouth froths, and the froth is the
word. In face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory
which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect. He
grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality;
and he does more than spit upon it. Borne down by numbers, by
superior force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul an expression:
_"Excrément!"_ We repeat it,--to use that word, to do thus, to invent
such an expression, is to be the conqueror!
The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent
on that unknown man. Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget
invents the "Marseillaise," under the visitation of a breath from on
high. An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes
sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings the song
supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.
This challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in
the name of the Empire,--that would be a trifle: he hurls it at the past
in the name of the Revolution. It is heard, and Cambronne is recognized
as possessed by the ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be
speaking! Kléber seems to be bellowing!
At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded, "Fire!"
The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths
belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot; a vast volume of smoke,
vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the
smoke dispersed, there was no longer anything there. That formidable
remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead. The four walls of the
living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible, here and
there, even a quiver in the bodies; it was thus that the French legions,
greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Jean, on the soil
watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where
nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles, passes
whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o'clock in the
morning.
CHAPTER XVI--QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?
The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won
it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Blücher sees
nothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard to
it. Look at the reports. The bulletins are confused, the commentaries
involved. Some stammer, others lisp. Jomini divides the battle of
Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes;
Charras alone, though we hold another judgment than his on some points,
seized with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that
catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance. All the
other historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzled
state they fumble about. It was a day of lightning brilliancy; in fact,
a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast stupefaction of
kings, drew all the kingdoms after it--the fall of force, the defeat of
war.
In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by men
amounts to nothing.
If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blücher, do we thereby deprive
England and Germany of anything? No. Neither that illustrious England
nor that august Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo. Thank
Heaven, nations are great, independently of the lugubrious feats of
the sword. Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is contained in
a scabbard. At this epoch when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords,
above Blücher, Germany has Schiller; above Wellington, England has
Byron. A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in
that aurora England and Germany have a magnificent radiance. They
are majestic because they think. The elevation of level which they
contribute to civilization is intrinsic with them; it proceeds from
themselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they have
brought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source. It is
only barbarous peoples who undergo rapid growth after a victory. That is
the temporary vanity of torrents swelled by a storm. Civilized people,
especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or
bad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human species
results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God! their
dignity, their intelligence, their genius, are not numbers which those
gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles.
Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory
and more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It is
a game in which he who loses wins. Let us, therefore, speak of Waterloo
coldly from both sides. Let us render to chance that which is due
to chance, and to God that which is due to God. What is Waterloo? A
victory? No. The winning number in the lottery.
The quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France.
It was not worth while to place a lion there.
Waterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and
Wellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God,
who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more
extraordinary comparison. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry,
prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate
coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantage
of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions,
carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand,
nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage,
absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military
oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable
something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the
lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries
of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the
forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, forced to obey, the despot
going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in
a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it.
Wellington was the Barême of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; and
on this occasion, genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides
some one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who succeeded.
Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expected
Blücher; he came.
Wellington is classic war taking its revenge. Bonaparte, at his dawning,
had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl had
fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struck
as by lightning, but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty?
What signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything against
him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition,
without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere
handful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined,
and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Whence had issued that
fulminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the same
set of combatants in hand, pulverized, one after the other, the five
armies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmser
on Beaulieu, Mélas on Wurmser, Mack on Mélas? Who was this novice in
war with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical military school
excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing; hence, the implacable
rancor of the old Cæsarism against the new; of the regular sword against
the flaming sword; and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th of
June, 1815, that rancor had the last word, and beneath Lodi, Montebello,
Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A triumph of the
mediocres which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to this
irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in
front of him.
In fact, to get Wurmser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington.
Waterloo is a battle of the first order, won by a captain of the second.
That which must be admired in the battle of Waterloo, is England; the
English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood; the superb
thing about England there, no offence to her, was herself. It was not
her captain; it was her army.
Wellington, oddly ungrateful, declares in a letter to Lord Bathurst,
that his army, the army which fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a
"detestable army." What does that sombre intermingling of bones buried
beneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that?
England has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make
Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but
a hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, those
regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt,
that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the
pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt,
those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musket
holding their own against Essling's and Rivoli's old troops,--that is
what was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and we
are not seeking to lessen it: but the least of his foot-soldiers and of
his cavalry would have been as solid as he. The iron soldier is worth
as much as the Iron Duke. As for us, all our glorification goes to the
English soldier, to the English army, to the English people. If trophy
there be, it is to England that the trophy is due. The column of
Waterloo would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it bore
on high the statue of a people.
But this great England will be angry at what we are saying here. She
still cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion.
She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none
in power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. And
as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for its
head. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained; as a soldier, it
allows itself to be flogged.
It will be remembered, that at the battle of Inkermann a sergeant who
had, it appears, saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Paglan,
as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below the
grade of an officer to be mentioned in the reports.
That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of
Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, the
wall of Hougomont, the hollow road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon,
Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bülow's guide enlightening him,--the
whole of this cataclysm is wonderfully conducted.
On the whole, let us say it plainly, it was more of a massacre than of a
battle at Waterloo.
Of all pitched battles, Waterloo is the one which has the smallest front
for such a number of combatants. Napoleon three-quarters of a league;
Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side.
From this denseness the carnage arose.
The following calculation has been made, and the following proportion
established: Loss of men: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent;
Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram,
French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French,
thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French,
thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo,
French, fifty-six per cent; the Allies, thirty-one. Total for Waterloo,
forty-one per cent; one hundred and forty-four thousand combatants;
sixty thousand dead.
To-day the field of Waterloo has the calm which belongs to the earth,
the impassive support of man, and it resembles all plains.
At night, moreover, a sort of visionary mist arises from it; and if a
traveller strolls there, if he listens, if he watches, if he dreams
like Virgil in the fatal plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the
catastrophe takes possession of him. The frightful 18th of June lives
again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in
air, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate
over the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the frightened
dreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of
bombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders; he hears, as it were,
the death rattle in the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the battle
phantom; those shadows are grenadiers, those lights are cuirassiers;
that skeleton Napoleon, that other skeleton is Wellington; all this no
longer exists, and yet it clashes together and combats still; and the
ravines are empurpled, and the trees quiver, and there is fury even in
the clouds and in the shadows; all those terrible heights, Hougomont,
Mont-Saint-Jean, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, appear confusedly
crowned with whirlwinds of spectres engaged in exterminating each other.
CHAPTER XVII--IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?
There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate
Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied
date of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg is
certainly unexpected.
If one places one's self at the culminating point of view of the
question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It
is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against
Paris; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14th
of July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the
monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French
rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in
eruption for twenty-six years--such was the dream. The solidarity of the
Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs
with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It is
true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural
reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional
order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the
conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, and
that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always cropping
up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones;
after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter.
Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant
on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality;
Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights
of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it
Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress,
call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is
already fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches its goal strangely. It
employs Wellington to make of Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator.
Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the tribune. Thus does
progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman.
It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the
man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid
of Father Élysée. It makes use of the gouty man as well as of the
conqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo,
by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had
no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in
another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the
thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued
its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.
In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that
which smiled in Wellington's rear; that which brought him all the
marshals' staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a
marshal of France; that which joyously trundled the barrows full of
bones to erect the knoll of the lion; that which triumphantly inscribed
on that pedestal the date "_June_ 18, 1815"; that which encouraged
Blücher, as he put the flying army to the sword; that which, from the
heights of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, hovered over France as over
its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution
which murmured that infamous word "dismemberment." On arriving in Paris,
it beheld the crater close at hand; it felt those ashes which scorched
its feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer of a
charter.
Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of intentional
liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal,
in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was
involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of June, 1815, the mounted
Robespierre was hurled from his saddle.
CHAPTER XVIII--A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT
End of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away.
The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world as
it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the barbarians;
only the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its pet name of the
counter-revolution, was not long breathed, soon fell to panting, and
halted short. The Empire was bewept,--let us acknowledge the fact,--and
bewept by heroic eyes. If glory lies in the sword converted into a
sceptre, the Empire had been glory in person. It had diffused over the
earth all the light which tyranny can give a sombre light. We will say
more; an obscure light. Compared to the true daylight, it is night. This
disappearance of night produces the effect of an eclipse.
Louis XVIII. re-entered Paris. The circling dances of the 8th of July
effaced the enthusiasms of the 20th of March. The Corsican became the
antithesis of the Bearnese. The flag on the dome of the Tuileries was
white. The exile reigned. Hartwell's pine table took its place in front
of the fleur-de-lys-strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy
were mentioned as though they had taken place on the preceding
day, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the throne
fraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed forms of the health
of society in the nineteenth century was established over France, and
over the continent. Europe adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon was
celebrated. The device _non pluribus impar_ re-appeared on the stone
rays representing a sun upon the front of the barracks on the Quai
d'Orsay. Where there had been an Imperial Guard, there was now a red
house. The Arc du Carrousel, all laden with badly borne victories,
thrown out of its element among these novelties, a little ashamed, it
may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament
with the statue of the Duc d'Angoulême. The cemetery of the Madeleine,
a terrible pauper's grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble,
since the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lay in that dust.
In the moat of Vincennes a sepulchral shaft sprang from the earth,
recalling the fact that the Duc d'Enghien had perished in the very
month when Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius VII., who had performed the
coronation very near this death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the
fall as he had bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was
a little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the King of
Rome. And these things took place, and the kings resumed their thrones,
and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became
the new regime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth
changed place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, a
shepherd said to a Prussian in the forest, "Go this way, and not that!"
This 1815 was a sort of lugubrious April. Ancient unhealthy and
poisonous realities were covered with new appearances. A lie wedded
1789; the right divine was masked under a charter; fictions became
constitutional; prejudices, superstitions and mental reservations, with
Article 14 in the heart, were varnished over with liberalism. It was the
serpent's change of skin.
Man had been rendered both greater and smaller by Napoleon. Under this
reign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name of
ideology! It is a grave imprudence in a great man to turn the future
into derision. The populace, however, that food for cannon which is so
fond of the cannoneer, sought him with its glance. Where is he? What is
he doing? "Napoleon is dead," said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengo
and Waterloo. "He dead!" cried the soldier; "you don't know him."
Imagination distrusted this man, even when overthrown. The depths of
Europe were full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remained
long empty through Napoleon's disappearance.
The kings placed themselves in this void. Ancient Europe profited by
it to undertake reforms. There was a Holy Alliance; _Belle-Alliance_,
Beautiful Alliance, the fatal field of Waterloo had said in advance.
In presence and in face of that antique Europe reconstructed, the
features of a new France were sketched out. The future, which the
Emperor had rallied, made its entry. On its brow it bore the star,
Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it.
Singular fact! people were, at one and the same time, in love with
the future, Liberty, and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered the
vanquished greater. Bonaparte fallen seemed more lofty than Napoleon
erect. Those who had triumphed were alarmed. England had him guarded by
Hudson Lowe, and France had him watched by Montchenu. His folded arms
became a source of uneasiness to thrones. Alexander called him "my
sleeplessness." This terror was the result of the quantity of
revolution which was contained in him. That is what explains and excuses
Bonapartist liberalism. This phantom caused the old world to tremble.
The kings reigned, but ill at their ease, with the rock of Saint Helena
on the horizon.
While Napoleon was passing through the death struggle at Longwood, the
sixty thousand men who had fallen on the field of Waterloo were quietly
rotting, and something of their peace was shed abroad over the world.
The Congress of Vienna made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called this
the Restoration.
This is what Waterloo was.
But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud,
that war, then that peace? All that darkness did not trouble for a
moment the light of that immense Eye before which a grub skipping from
one blade of grass to another equals the eagle soaring from belfry to
belfry on the towers of Notre Dame.
CHAPTER XIX--THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
Let us return--it is a necessity in this book--to that fatal
battle-field.
On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Blücher's
ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered
up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the
massacre. Such tragic favors of the night do occur sometimes during
catastrophes.
After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean
remained deserted.
The English occupied the encampment of the French; it is the usual sign
of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their
bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, let loose on the retreating
rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to draw
up his report to Lord Bathurst.
If ever the _sic vos non vobis_ was applicable, it certainly is to that
village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from
the scene of action. Mont-Saint-Jean was cannonaded, Hougomont was
burned, La Haie-Sainte was taken by assault, Papelotte was burned,
Plancenoit was burned, La Belle-Alliance beheld the embrace of the two
conquerors; these names are hardly known, and Waterloo, which worked not
in the battle, bears off all the honor.
We are not of the number of those who flatter war; when the occasion
presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War has frightful beauties
which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous
features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the
bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle
always rises on naked corpses.
Who does this? Who thus soils the triumph? What hideous, furtive hand is
that which is slipped into the pocket of victory? What pickpockets
are they who ply their trade in the rear of glory? Some
philosophers--Voltaire among the number--affirm that it is precisely
those persons have made the glory. It is the same men, they say; there
is no relief corps; those who are erect pillage those who are prone
on the earth. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. One has
assuredly the right, after all, to strip a corpse a bit when one is the
author of that corpse. For our own part, we do not think so; it seems
to us impossible that the same hand should pluck laurels and purloin the
shoes from a dead man.
One thing is certain, which is, that generally after conquerors follow
thieves. But let us leave the soldier, especially the contemporary
soldier, out of the question.
Every army has a rear-guard, and it is that which must be blamed.
Bat-like creatures, half brigands and lackeys; all the sorts of
vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders; wearers of
uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended invalids;
formidable limpers; interloping sutlers, trotting along in little carts,
sometimes accompanied by their wives, and stealing things which they
sell again; beggars offering themselves as guides to officers; soldiers'
servants; marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,--we are not
speaking of the present,--dragged all this behind them, so that in the
special language they are called "stragglers." No army, no nation,
was responsible for those beings; they spoke Italian and followed the
Germans, then spoke French and followed the English. It was by one of
these wretches, a Spanish straggler who spoke French, that the Marquis
of Fervacques, deceived by his Picard jargon, and taking him for one
of our own men, was traitorously slain and robbed on the battle-field
itself, in the course of the night which followed the victory of
Cerisoles. The rascal sprang from this marauding. The detestable maxim,
_Live on the enemy!_ produced this leprosy, which a strict discipline
alone could heal. There are reputations which are deceptive; one does
not always know why certain generals, great in other directions, have
been so popular. Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated
pillage; evil permitted constitutes part of goodness. Turenne was so
good that he allowed the Palatinate to be delivered over to fire and
blood. The marauders in the train of an army were more or less in
number, according as the chief was more or less severe. Hoche and
Marceau had no stragglers; Wellington had few, and we do him the justice
to mention it.
Nevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead
were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in
the act should be shot; but rapine is tenacious. The marauders stole in
one corner of the battlefield while others were being shot in another.
The moon was sinister over this plain.
Towards midnight, a man was prowling about, or rather, climbing in the
direction of the hollow road of Ohain. To all appearance he was one of
those whom we have just described,--neither English nor French, neither
peasant nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul attracted by the scent
of the dead bodies having theft for his victory, and come to rifle
Waterloo. He was clad in a blouse that was something like a great coat;
he was uneasy and audacious; he walked forwards and gazed behind him.
Who was this man? The night probably knew more of him than the day. He
had no sack, but evidently he had large pockets under his coat. From
time to time he halted, scrutinized the plain around him as though to
see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed something
silent and motionless on the ground, then rose and fled. His sliding
motion, his attitudes, his mysterious and rapid gestures, caused him
to resemble those twilight larvæ which haunt ruins, and which ancient
Norman legends call the Alleurs.
Certain nocturnal wading birds produce these silhouettes among the
marshes.
A glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have perceived
at some distance a sort of little sutler's wagon with a fluted wicker
hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was cropping the grass across
its bit as it halted, hidden, as it were, behind the hovel which adjoins
the highway to Nivelles, at the angle of the road from Mont-Saint-Jean
to Braine l'Alleud; and in the wagon, a sort of woman seated on coffers
and packages. Perhaps there was some connection between that wagon and
that prowler.
The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it if
the earth be red! the moon remains white; these are the indifferences of
the sky. In the fields, branches of trees broken by grape-shot, but not
fallen, upheld by their bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night.
A breath, almost a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which
resembled the departure of souls ran through the grass.
In the distance the coming and going of patrols and the general rounds
of the English camp were audible.
Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, forming, one in the
west, the other in the east, two great flames which were joined by the
cordon of bivouac fires of the English, like a necklace of rubies
with two carbuncles at the extremities, as they extended in an immense
semicircle over the hills along the horizon.
We have described the catastrophe of the road of Ohain. The heart is
terrified at the thought of what that death must have been to so many
brave men.
If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses
dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun; to be in full possession
of virile force; to possess health and joy; to laugh valiantly; to rush
towards a glory which one sees dazzling in front of one; to feel in
one's breast lungs which breathe, a heart which beats, a will which
reasons; to speak, think, hope, love; to have a mother, to have a wife,
to have children; to have the light--and all at once, in the space of a
shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss; to fall, to
roll, to crush, to be crushed; to see ears of wheat, flowers, leaves,
branches; not to be able to catch hold of anything; to feel one's sword
useless, men beneath one, horses on top of one; to struggle in vain,
since one's bones have been broken by some kick in the darkness; to feel
a heel which makes one's eyes start from their sockets; to bite horses'
shoes in one's rage; to stifle, to yell, to writhe; to be beneath, and
to say to one's self, "But just a little while ago I was a living man!"
There, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death-rattle,
all was silence now. The edges of the hollow road were encumbered with
horses and riders, inextricably heaped up. Terrible entanglement! There
was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the
plain, and reached the brim like a well-filled bushel of barley. A
heap of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower
part--such was that road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The
blood ran even to the Nivelles highway, and there overflowed in a large
pool in front of the abatis of trees which barred the way, at a spot
which is still pointed out.
It will be remembered that it was at the opposite point, in the
direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of the cuirassiers
had taken place. The thickness of the layer of bodies was proportioned
to the depth of the hollow road. Towards the middle, at the point
where it became level, where Delort's division had passed, the layer of
corpses was thinner.
The nocturnal prowler whom we have just shown to the reader was going
in that direction. He was searching that vast tomb. He gazed about. He
passed the dead in some sort of hideous review. He walked with his feet
in the blood.
All at once he paused.
A few paces in front of him, in the hollow road, at the point where
the pile of dead came to an end, an open hand, illumined by the moon,
projected from beneath that heap of men. That hand had on its finger
something sparkling, which was a ring of gold.
The man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a moment, and
when he rose there was no longer a ring on the hand.
He did not precisely rise; he remained in a stooping and frightened
attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead, scanning the horizon
on his knees, with the whole upper portion of his body supported on his
two forefingers, which rested on the earth, and his head peering above
the edge of the hollow road. The jackal's four paws suit some actions.
Then coming to a decision, he rose to his feet.
At that moment, he gave a terrible start. He felt some one clutch him
from behind.
He wheeled round; it was the open hand, which had closed, and had seized
the skirt of his coat.
An honest man would have been terrified; this man burst into a laugh.
"Come," said he, "it's only a dead body. I prefer a spook to a
gendarme."
But the hand weakened and released him. Effort is quickly exhausted in
the grave.
"Well now," said the prowler, "is that dead fellow alive? Let's see."
He bent down again, fumbled among the heap, pushed aside everything that
was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the arm, freed the head, pulled
out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging the lifeless, or
at least the unconscious, man, through the shadows of hollow road. He
was a cuirassier, an officer, and even an officer of considerable rank;
a large gold epaulette peeped from beneath the cuirass; this officer
no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut had scarred his face,
where nothing was discernible but blood.
However, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and, by some happy
chance, if that word is permissible here, the dead had been vaulted
above him in such a manner as to preserve him from being crushed. His
eyes were still closed.
On his cuirass he wore the silver cross of the Legion of Honor.
The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one of the gulfs
which he had beneath his great coat.
Then he felt of the officer's fob, discovered a watch there, and took
possession of it. Next he searched his waistcoat, found a purse and
pocketed it.
When he had arrived at this stage of succor which he was administering
to this dying man, the officer opened his eyes.
"Thanks," he said feebly.
The abruptness of the movements of the man who was manipulating him, the
freshness of the night, the air which he could inhale freely, had roused
him from his lethargy.
The prowler made no reply. He raised his head. A sound of footsteps was
audible in the plain; some patrol was probably approaching.
The officer murmured, for the death agony was still in his voice:--
"Who won the battle?"
"The English," answered the prowler.
The officer went on:--
"Look in my pockets; you will find a watch and a purse. Take them."
It was already done.
The prowler executed the required feint, and said:--
"There is nothing there."
"I have been robbed," said the officer; "I am sorry for that. You should
have had them."
The steps of the patrol became more and more distinct.
"Some one is coming," said the prowler, with the movement of a man who
is taking his departure.
The officer raised his arm feebly, and detained him.
"You have saved my life. Who are you?"
The prowler answered rapidly, and in a low voice:--
"Like yourself, I belonged to the French army. I must leave you. If they
were to catch me, they would shoot me. I have saved your life. Now get
out of the scrape yourself."
"What is your rank?"
"Sergeant."
"What is your name?"
"Thénardier."
"I shall not forget that name," said the officer; "and do you remember
mine. My name is Pontmercy."
BOOK SECOND.--THE SHIP ORION
CHAPTER I--NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430
Jean Valjean had been recaptured.
The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad
details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs
published by the journals of that day, a few months after the surprising
events which had taken place at M. sur M.
These articles are rather summary. It must be remembered, that at that
epoch the _Gazette des Tribunaux_ was not yet in existence.
We borrow the first from the _Drapeau Blanc_. It bears the date of July
25, 1823.
An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the theatre of an
event quite out of the ordinary course. A man, who was a stranger in the
Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the
new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the
manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune
in the business, and that of the arrondissement as well, we will admit.
He had been appointed mayor, in recognition of his services. The police
discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict who had
broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous
to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of M.
Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there, and
which he had, moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means, acquired in
his business. No one has been able to discover where Jean Valjean has
concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon.
The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an
extract from the _Journal de Paris_, of the same date.
A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean, has just
appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under circumstances
calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping
the vigilance of the police, he had changed his name, and had succeeded
in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns;
in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last
been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the
public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who
died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is
endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or
four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once more,
in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of those
little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of
Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this
interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable
sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been
estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is
to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone,
and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be,
the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the Assizes of the
Department of the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with
violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest
children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said, in immortal verse,
". . . Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot."
This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and
eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the theft was
committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean was a member
of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty
and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal
refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has
deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean
Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.
The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious habits at
M. sur M. Some papers, among others the _Constitutional_, presented this
commutation as a triumph of the priestly party.
Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430.
However, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be
obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of M. sur M. vanished
with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen during his night of fever
and hesitation was realized; lacking him, there actually was _a
soul lacking_. After this fall, there took place at M. sur M. that
egotistical division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal
dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day,
obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only
once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants
are crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of
themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine's vast workshops were
shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some
of them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth,
everything was done on a small scale, instead of on a grand scale;
for lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre;
everywhere there was competition and animosity. M. Madeleine had reigned
over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled
things to himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of
organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the
benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine
had set were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the
products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished,
for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still,
bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All
had vanished.
The state itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere.
Less than four years after the judgment of the Court of Assizes
establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine, for the
benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the
arrondissement of M. sur M.; and M. de Villèle called attention to the
fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.
CHAPTER II--IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE
DEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate in some
detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch,
in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence with certain
conjectures of the indictment.
There exists in the region of Montfermeil a very ancient superstition,
which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because
a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in
Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the
nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil:
it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the
forest as a hiding-place for his treasures. Goodwives affirm that it is
no rarity to encounter at nightfall, in secluded nooks of the forest,
a black man with the air of a carter or a wood-chopper, wearing wooden
shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the
fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his
head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is
habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting
by such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to him.
Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears black
because it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole whatever, but
is cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been taken for horns
is nothing but a dung-fork which he is carrying on his back, and whose
teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to spring from his
head. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way is
to watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole, until he has filled it
and has gone away; then to run with great speed to the trench, to
open it once more and to seize the "treasure" which the black man
has necessarily placed there. In this case one dies within the month.
Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black man, not to look
at him, and to flee at the best speed of one's legs. One then dies
within the year.
As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences, the
second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others that
of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most generally
adopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have quite
frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the black
man, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation appears
to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and in
particular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous Latin, which an
evil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon has left on
this subject. This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of Saint-Georges de
Bocherville, near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.
Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily
extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night--for it must be done
at night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock,
and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on
the "treasure," what does he find? What is the devil's treasure? A sou,
sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimes
a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a portfolio,
sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon's verses seem to announce to the
indiscreet and curious:--
"Fodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca,
As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque."
It seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder-horn with
bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which has
evidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds,
since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does not
appear to have had the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon's time,
and cards before the time of Charles VI.
Moreover, if one plays at cards, one is sure to lose all that one
possesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the property
of making your gun burst in your face.
Now, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the prosecuting
attorney that the liberated convict Jean Valjean during his flight of
several days had been prowling around Montfermeil, it was remarked in
that village that a certain old road-laborer, named Boulatruelle, had
"peculiar ways" in the forest. People thereabouts thought they knew that
this Boulatruelle had been in the galleys. He was subjected to
certain police supervision, and, as he could find work nowhere, the
administration employed him at reduced rates as a road-mender on the
cross-road from Gagny to Lagny.
This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the
inhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble, too prompt in
removing his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the presence
of the gendarmes,--probably affiliated to robber bands, they said;
suspected of lying in ambush at verge of copses at nightfall. The only
thing in his favor was that he was a drunkard.
This is what people thought they had noticed:--
Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking
and care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself to
the forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered towards evening in
the most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had the
appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was digging
holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub; then
they recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least reassured
thereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a lively
displeasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that there was
some mystery in what he was doing.
It was said in the village: "It is clear that the devil has appeared.
Boulatruelle has seen him, and is on the search. In sooth, he is cunning
enough to pocket Lucifer's hoard."
The Voltairians added, "Will Boulatruelle catch the devil, or will the
devil catch Boulatruelle?" The old women made a great many signs of the
cross.
In the meantime, Boulatruelle's manouvres in the forest ceased; and he
resumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people gossiped of
something else.
Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all this
there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some
fine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil's
bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret. The
most "puzzled" were the school-master and Thénardier, the proprietor of
the tavern, who was everybody's friend, and had not disdained to ally
himself with Boulatruelle.
"He has been in the galleys," said Thénardier. "Eh! Good God! no one
knows who has been there or will be there."
One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law would
have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle did in the forest,
and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that he would
have been put to the torture in case of need, and that Boulatruelle
would not have resisted the water test, for example. "Let us put him to
the wine test," said Thénardier.
They made an effort, and got the old road-mender to drinking.
Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He combined
with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of a
gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of
returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few
obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thénardier
and the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:--
One morning, when Boulatruelle was on his way to his work, at daybreak,
he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush,
a shovel and a pickaxe, _concealed, as one might say_.
However, he might have supposed that they were probably the shovel and
pick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would have thought no
more about it. But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without being
seen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, "a person who did not
belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew well," directing
his steps towards the densest part of the wood. Translation by
Thénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately refused
to reveal his name. This person carried a package--something square,
like a large box or a small trunk. Surprise on the part of Boulatruelle.
However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight minutes that
the idea of following that "person" had occurred to him. But it was too
late; the person was already in the thicket, night had descended, and
Boulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him. Then he had
adopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the woods. "It was
moonlight." Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this person
emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the coffer, but a shovel
and pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the person to pass, and had not
dreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself that the other man
was three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe, and that
he would probably knock him over the head on recognizing him, and on
perceiving that he was recognized. Touching effusion of two old comrades
on meeting again. But the shovel and pick had served as a ray of light
to Boulatruelle; he had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had
found neither shovel nor pick. From this he had drawn the inference that
this person, once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried
the coffer, and reclosed the hole with his shovel. Now, the coffer was
too small to contain a body; therefore it contained money. Hence his
researches. Boulatruelle had explored, sounded, searched the entire
forest and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to him
to have been recently turned up. In vain.
He had "ferreted out" nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any more
about it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said, "You may be
certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that trouble
for nothing; he was sure that the devil had come."
CHAPTER III--THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY
MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of
Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and for
the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship _Orion_, which was
employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part
of the Mediterranean squadron.
This vessel, battered as it was,--for the sea had handled it
roughly,--produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew some
colors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns, which
it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been calculated
that what with salvos, royal and military politenesses, courteous
exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads and
citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses and
all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc., the civilized
world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twenty
hours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At six francs the
shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundred
millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere detail. All this
time the poor were dying of hunger.
The year 1823 was what the Restoration called "the epoch of the Spanish
war."
This war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities.
A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of France
succoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say,
performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent return to our
national traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to the
cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d'Angoulême, surnamed by the liberal
sheets _the hero of Andujar_, compressing in a triumphal attitude that
was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very
powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical
terrorism of the liberals; the _sansculottes_ resuscitated, to the great
terror of dowagers, under the name of _descamisados_; monarchy opposing
an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of '89
roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the French
idea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of France
as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert,
enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as a
volunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers of the
Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eight
years of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standard
waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard had
been thirty years earlier at Coblentz; monks mingled with our troops;
the spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by bayonets;
principles slaughtered by cannonades; France undoing by her arms that
which she had done by her mind; in addition to this, hostile leaders
sold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions; no military
perils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is surprised
and invaded; but little bloodshed, little honor won, shame for some,
glory for no one. Such was this war, made by the princes descended from
Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under Napoleon. Its
sad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand politics.
Some feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocadéro, among
others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, the
trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect was
suspicious; history approves of France for making a difficulty about
accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish
officers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea of
corruption was connected with the victory; it appears as though generals
and not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier returned
humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the _Bank of France_
could be read in the folds of the flag.
Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable
ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to
regret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have Rostopchine
rather than Ballesteros in front of her.
From a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also proper
to insist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spirit
of France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of
inthralment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the
son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous
contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to
stifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French
Revolution: liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blind
is he who will not see! It was Bonaparte who said it.
The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then,
at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was France
who committed this monstrous violence; by foul means, for, with the
exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul
means. The words _passive obedience_ indicate this. An army is a strange
masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sum
of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despite
humanity, explained.
As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it for
a success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an idea
slain to order. They went astray, in their innocence, to such a degree
that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into their
establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush
entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish
campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for
adventures by right Divine. France, having re-established _el rey netto_
in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home. They
fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier for
the consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of thrones. It is
not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machineel tree,
nor in the shadow of an army.
Let us return to the ship _Orion_.
During the operations of the army commanded by the prince generalissimo,
a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We have just stated
that the _Orion_ belonged to this fleet, and that accidents of the sea
had brought it into port at Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which
attracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowd
loves what is great.
A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the
genius of man with the powers of nature.
A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and
the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same time
with three forms of substance,--solid, liquid, and fluid,--and it must
do battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which to
seize the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more
antennæ than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath
pours out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous
trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead it
astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has its
soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north. In
the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus,
against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water,
wood; against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the shadows,
its light; against immensity, a needle.
If one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions which,
taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one has only to enter
one of the six-story covered construction stocks, in the ports of Brest
or Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a bell-glass
there, as it were. This colossal beam is a yard; that great column of
wood which stretches out on the earth as far as the eye can reach is
the main-mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its tip in the
clouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter at its base is
three feet. The English main-mast rises to a height of two hundred and
seventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our fathers employed
cables, ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains on a ship of a
hundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth, and eight
feet in depth. And how much wood is required to make this ship? Three
thousand cubic metres. It is a floating forest.
And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here of
the military vessel of forty years ago, of the simple sailing-vessel;
steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigy
which is called a war vessel. At the present time, for example, the
mixed vessel with a screw is a surprising machine, propelled by three
thousand square metres of canvas and by an engine of two thousand five
hundred horse-power.
Not to mention these new marvels, the ancient vessel of Christopher
Columbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It is as
inexhaustible in force as is the Infinite in gales; it stores up
the wind in its sails, it is precise in the immense vagueness of the
billows, it floats, and it reigns.
There comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that sixty-foot
yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall,
when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in the jaws
of the waves like a fisherman's hook in the jaws of a pike, when those
monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricane
bears forth into the void and into night, when all that power and all
that majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which are superior.
Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immense
feebleness it affords men food for thought. Hence in the ports curious
people abound around these marvellous machines of war and of navigation,
without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why. Every day,
accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices, and the
jetties of the port of Toulon were covered with a multitude of idlers
and loungers, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in staring
at the _Orion_.
The _Orion_ was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in the
course of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collected
on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it
had gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the
barnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning
had affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic
Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating
in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak.
A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in
a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the
foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the _Orion_
had run back to Toulon.
It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs were
begun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of the
planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to permit
of air entering the hold.
One morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an accident.
Enlarge
The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take the
upper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost his balance;
he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered a
cry; the man's head overbalanced his body; the man fell around the yard,
with his hands outstretched towards the abyss; on his way he seized the
footrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and remained hanging
from it: the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the shock of his fall
had imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging motion; the man swayed
back and forth at the end of that rope, like a stone in a sling.
It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance; not one
of the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied for the
service, dared to attempt it. In the meantime, the unfortunate topman
was losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his face,
but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were contracted
in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served
but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout, for
fear of exhausting his strength. All were awaiting the minute when he
should release his hold on the rope, and, from instant to instant, heads
were turned aside that his fall might not be seen. There are moments
when a bit of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and
it is a terrible thing to see a living being detach himself from it and
fall like a ripe fruit.
All at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with the agility
of a tiger-cat; this man was dressed in red; he was a convict; he wore a
green cap; he was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the top, a
gust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head to
be seen: he was not a young man.
A convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys had, in
fact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer of the watch,
and, in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation of the crew,
while all the sailors were trembling and drawing back, he had asked
the officer's permission to risk his life to save the topman; at an
affirmative sign from the officer he had broken the chain riveted to his
ankle with one blow of a hammer, then he had caught up a rope, and had
dashed into the rigging: no one noticed, at the instant, with what ease
that chain had been broken; it was only later on that the incident was
recalled.
In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds and
appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which
the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemed
centuries to those who were looking on. At last, the convict raised his
eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath. He was
seen to run out along the yard: on arriving at the point, he fastened
the rope which he had brought to it, and allowed the other end to hang
down, then he began to descend the rope, hand over hand, and then,--and
the anguish was indescribable,--instead of one man suspended over the
gulf, there were two.
One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here the
spider brought life, not death. Ten thousand glances were fastened on
this group; not a cry, not a word; the same tremor contracted every
brow; all mouths held their breath as though they feared to add the
slightest puff to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.
In the meantime, the convict had succeeded in lowering himself to a
position near the sailor. It was high time; one minute more, and the
exhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall into
the abyss. The convict had moored him securely with the cord to which
he clung with one hand, while he was working with the other. At last, he
was seen to climb back on the yard, and to drag the sailor up after him;
he held him there a moment to allow him to recover his strength, then he
grasped him in his arms and carried him, walking on the yard himself to
the cap, and from there to the main-top, where he left him in the hands
of his comrades.
At that moment the crowd broke into applause: old convict-sergeants
among them wept, and women embraced each other on the quay, and all
voices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, "Pardon for that
man!"
He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin
his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped
into the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes were
following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it was
that he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw him
hesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout: the
convict had fallen into the sea.
The fall was perilous. The frigate _Algésiras_ was anchored alongside
the _Orion_, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels: it
was to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Four
men flung themselves hastily into a boat; the crowd cheered them on;
anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not risen to
the surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple, as
though he had fallen into a cask of oil: they sounded, they dived. In
vain. The search was continued until the evening: they did not even find
the body.
On the following day the Toulon newspaper printed these lines:--
"Nov. 17, 1823. Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment on
board of the _Orion_, on his return from rendering assistance to a
sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet been
found; it is supposed that it is entangled among the piles of the
Arsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his
name was Jean Valjean."
BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
CHAPTER I--THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern edge
of that lofty table-land which separates the Ourcq from the Marne. At
the present day it is a tolerably large town, ornamented all the year
through with plaster villas, and on Sundays with beaming bourgeois. In
1823 there were at Montfermeil neither so many white houses nor so
many well-satisfied citizens: it was only a village in the forest. Some
pleasure-houses of the last century were to be met with there, to be
sure, which were recognizable by their grand air, their balconies in
twisted iron, and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts
of varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters; but
Montfermeil was none the less a village. Retired cloth-merchants and
rusticating attorneys had not discovered it as yet; it was a peaceful
and charming place, which was not on the road to anywhere: there people
lived, and cheaply, that peasant rustic life which is so bounteous and
so easy; only, water was rare there, on account of the elevation of the
plateau.
It was necessary to fetch it from a considerable distance; the end of
the village towards Gagny drew its water from the magnificent ponds
which exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds the
church and which lies in the direction of Chelles, found drinking-water
only at a little spring half-way down the slope, near the road to
Chelles, about a quarter of an hour from Montfermeil.
Thus each household found it hard work to keep supplied with water. The
large houses, the aristocracy, of which the Thénardier tavern formed a
part, paid half a farthing a bucketful to a man who made a business of
it, and who earned about eight sous a day in his enterprise of supplying
Montfermeil with water; but this good man only worked until seven
o'clock in the evening in summer, and five in winter; and night once
come and the shutters on the ground floor once closed, he who had no
water to drink went to fetch it for himself or did without it.
This constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the reader has
probably not forgotten,--little Cosette. It will be remembered that
Cosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways: they made the mother
pay them, and they made the child serve them. So when the mother ceased
to pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in preceding
chapters, the Thénardiers kept Cosette. She took the place of a servant
in their house. In this capacity she it was who ran to fetch water when
it was required. So the child, who was greatly terrified at the idea of
going to the spring at night, took great care that water should never be
lacking in the house.
Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at Montfermeil.
The beginning of the winter had been mild; there had been neither snow
nor frost up to that time. Some mountebanks from Paris had obtained
permission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of
the village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of the
same tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the Church Square,
and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader will
perhaps remember, the Thénardiers' hostelry was situated. These people
filled the inns and drinking-shops, and communicated to that tranquil
little district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part of
a faithful historian, we ought even to add that, among the curiosities
displayed in the square, there was a menagerie, in which frightful
clowns, clad in rags and coming no one knew whence, exhibited to
the peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those horrible Brazilian
vultures, such as our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and which
have a tricolored cockade for an eye. I believe that naturalists call
this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicides,
and to the family of the vultures. Some good old Bonapartist soldiers,
who had retired to the village, went to see this creature with great
devotion. The mountebanks gave out that the tricolored cockade was a
unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie.
On Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and peddlers, were
seated at table, drinking and smoking around four or five candles in
the public room of Thénardier's hostelry. This room resembled all
drinking-shop rooms,--tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers;
but little light and a great deal of noise. The date of the year 1823
was indicated, nevertheless, by two objects which were then fashionable
in the bourgeois class: to wit, a kaleidoscope and a lamp of ribbed tin.
The female Thénardier was attending to the supper, which was roasting in
front of a clear fire; her husband was drinking with his customers and
talking politics.
Besides political conversations which had for their principal subjects
the Spanish war and M. le Duc d'Angoulême, strictly local parentheses,
like the following, were audible amid the uproar:--
"About Nanterre and Suresnes the vines have flourished greatly. When
ten pieces were reckoned on there have been twelve. They have yielded a
great deal of juice under the press." "But the grapes cannot be ripe?"
"In those parts the grapes should not be ripe; the wine turns oily as
soon as spring comes." "Then it is very thin wine?" "There are wines
poorer even than these. The grapes must be gathered while green." Etc.
Or a miller would call out:--
"Are we responsible for what is in the sacks? We find in them a quantity
of small seed which we cannot sift out, and which we are obliged to send
through the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed,
fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which
abound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I am not fond of
grinding Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams with
nails in them. You can judge of the bad dust that makes in grinding. And
then people complain of the flour. They are in the wrong. The flour is
no fault of ours."
In a space between two windows a mower, who was seated at table with a
landed proprietor who was fixing on a price for some meadow work to be
performed in the spring, was saying:--
"It does no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better. Dew is a good
thing, sir. It makes no difference with that grass. Your grass is young
and very hard to cut still. It's terribly tender. It yields before the
iron." Etc.
Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of the kitchen
table near the chimney. She was in rags; her bare feet were thrust into
wooden shoes, and by the firelight she was engaged in knitting woollen
stockings destined for the young Thénardiers. A very young kitten was
playing about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible in
the adjoining room, from two fresh children's voices: it was Éponine and
Azelma.
In the chimney-corner a cat-o'-nine-tails was hanging on a nail.
At intervals the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in the
house, rang through the noise of the dram-shop. It was a little boy
who had been born to the Thénardiers during one of the preceding
winters,--"she did not know why," she said, "the result of the
cold,"--and who was a little more than three years old. The mother had
nursed him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of the
brat became too annoying, "Your son is squalling," Thénardier would
say; "do go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would reply, "he
bothers me." And the neglected child continued to shriek in the dark.
CHAPTER II--TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS
So far in this book the Thénardiers have been viewed only in profile;
the moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple, and
considering it under all its aspects.
Thénardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thénardier was
approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so
that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.
Our readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this Thénardier
woman, ever since her first appearance,--tall, blond, red, fat, angular,
square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to the
race of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs with
paving-stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about the
house,--made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything
else. Cosette was her only servant; a mouse in the service of an
elephant. Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,--window panes,
furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches,
presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal
market-porter dressed in woman's clothes. She swore splendidly; she
boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except
for the romances which she had read, and which made the affected lady
peep through the ogress at times, in a very queer way, the idea would
never have occurred to any one to say of her, "That is a woman."
This Thénardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a
fishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, "That is a gendarme"; when
one saw her drink, one said, "That is a carter"; when one saw her handle
Cosette, one said, "That is the hangman." One of her teeth projected
when her face was in repose.
Thénardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had
a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here;
he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to
everybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He had
the glance of a pole-cat and the bearing of a man of letters. He greatly
resembled the portraits of the Abbé Delille. His coquetry consisted in
drinking with the carters. No one had ever succeeded in rendering him
drunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse an
old black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism.
There were certain names which he often pronounced to support whatever
things he might be saying,--Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and, singularly
enough, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had "a system." In
addition, he was a great swindler. A _filousophe_ [philosophe], a
scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he
pretended to have served in the army; he was in the habit of relating
with exuberance, how, being a sergeant in the 6th or the 9th light
something or other, at Waterloo, he had alone, and in the presence of a
squadron of death-dealing hussars, covered with his body and saved
from death, in the midst of the grape-shot, "a general, who had been
dangerously wounded." Thence arose for his wall the flaring sign, and
for his inn the name which it bore in the neighborhood, of "the cabaret
of the Sergeant of Waterloo." He was a liberal, a classic, and a
Bonapartist. He had subscribed for the Champ d'Asile. It was said in the
village that he had studied for the priesthood.
We believe that he had simply studied in Holland for an inn-keeper. This
rascal of composite order was, in all probability, some Fleming from
Lille, in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian at Brussels, being
comfortably astride of both frontiers. As for his prowess at Waterloo,
the reader is already acquainted with that. It will be perceived that
he exaggerated it a trifle. Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was
the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary
life, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Thénardier
belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken,
beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and
travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety
cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always
attaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, and
having, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set up
an inn there.
This _quibus_, composed of purses and watches, of gold rings and silver
crosses, gathered in harvest-time in furrows sown with corpses, did
not amount to a large total, and did not carry this sutler turned
eating-house-keeper very far.
Thénardier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestures
which, accompanied by an oath, recalls the barracks, and by a sign
of the cross, the seminary. He was a fine talker. He allowed it to be
thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had
noticed that he pronounced improperly.12
He composed the travellers' tariff card in a superior manner, but
practised eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it.
Thénardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain
his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess
was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must
be an object coveted by all.
Thénardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a
scamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species; hypocrisy enters
into it.
It is not that Thénardier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath to
quite the same degree as his wife; but this was very rare, and at such
times, since he was enraged with the human race in general, as he bore
within him a deep furnace of hatred. And since he was one of those
people who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything
that passes before them of everything which has befallen them, and who
are always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand, as a
legitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies,
and the calamities of their lives,--when all this leaven was stirred up
in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to
the person who came under his wrath at such a time!
In addition to his other qualities, Thénardier was attentive and
penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always
highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who are
accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses.
Thénardier was a statesman.
Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame
Thénardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was not
even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked;
he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant
magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the
mastodon obeyed. Thénardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in
Madame Thénardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it.
She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a
disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thénardier,"--which was
an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,--she would not have blamed
her husband in public on any subject whatever. She would never have
committed "before strangers" that mistake so often committed by women,
and which is called in parliamentary language, "exposing the crown."
Although their concord had only evil as its result, there was
contemplation in Madame Thénardier's submission to her husband. That
mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that
frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that
grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain
ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There
was an unknown quantity about Thénardier; hence the absolute empire
of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a
lighted candle; at others she felt him like a claw.
This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her
children, and who did not fear any one except her husband. She was a
mother because she was mammiferous. But her maternity stopped short with
her daughters, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man had
but one thought,--how to enrich himself.
He did not succeed in this. A theatre worthy of this great talent was
lacking. Thénardier was ruining himself at Montfermeil, if ruin is
possible to zero; in Switzerland or in the Pyrenees this penniless scamp
would have become a millionaire; but an inn-keeper must browse where
fate has hitched him.
It will be understood that the word _inn-keeper_ is here employed in a
restricted sense, and does not extend to an entire class.
In this same year, 1823, Thénardier was burdened with about fifteen
hundred francs' worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious.
Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case,
Thénardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most
profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue
among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized
peoples,--hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted
for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh,
which was particularly dangerous.
His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes.
He had professional aphorisms, which he inserted into his wife's mind.
"The duty of the inn-keeper," he said to her one day, violently, and in
a low voice, "is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire,
dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty
small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling
families respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick
the child clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the
chimney-corner, the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the
feather-bed, the mattress and the truss of straw; to know how much
the shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five
hundred thousand devils, to make the traveller pay for everything, even
for the flies which his dog eats!"
This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded--a hideous and
terrible team.
While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thénardier thought not
of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and
lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute.
Such were these two beings. Cosette was between them, subjected to their
double pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground up
in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman each
had a different method: Cosette was overwhelmed with blows--this was the
woman's; she went barefooted in winter--that was the man's doing.
Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran,
fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was,
did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and
venomous master. The Thénardier hostelry was like a spider's web, in
which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal
of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something
like the fly serving the spiders.
The poor child passively held her peace.
What takes place within these souls when they have but just quitted God,
find themselves thus, at the very dawn of life, very small and in the
midst of men all naked!
CHAPTER III--MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER
Four new travellers had arrived.
Cosette was meditating sadly; for, although she was only eight years
old, she had already suffered so much that she reflected with the
lugubrious air of an old woman. Her eye was black in consequence of a
blow from Madame Thénardier's fist, which caused the latter to remark
from time to time, "How ugly she is with her fist-blow on her eye!"
Cosette was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the pitchers and
caraffes in the chambers of the travellers who had arrived must have
been filled and that there was no more water in the cistern.
She was somewhat reassured because no one in the Thénardier
establishment drank much water. Thirsty people were never lacking there;
but their thirst was of the sort which applies to the jug rather than to
the pitcher. Any one who had asked for a glass of water among all those
glasses of wine would have appeared a savage to all these men. But there
came a moment when the child trembled; Madame Thénardier raised the
cover of a stew-pan which was boiling on the stove, then seized a glass
and briskly approached the cistern. She turned the faucet; the child
had raised her head and was following all the woman's movements. A thin
stream of water trickled from the faucet, and half filled the glass.
"Well," said she, "there is no more water!" A momentary silence ensued.
The child did not breathe.
"Bah!" resumed Madame Thénardier, examining the half-filled glass, "this
will be enough."
Cosette applied herself to her work once more, but for a quarter of an
hour she felt her heart leaping in her bosom like a big snow-flake.
She counted the minutes that passed in this manner, and wished it were
the next morning.
From time to time one of the drinkers looked into the street, and
exclaimed, "It's as black as an oven!" or, "One must needs be a cat
to go about the streets without a lantern at this hour!" And Cosette
trembled.
All at once one of the pedlers who lodged in the hostelry entered, and
said in a harsh voice:--
"My horse has not been watered."
"Yes, it has," said Madame Thénardier.
"I tell you that it has not," retorted the pedler.
Cosette had emerged from under the table.
"Oh, yes, sir!" said she, "the horse has had a drink; he drank out of a
bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I
spoke to him."
It was not true; Cosette lied.
"There's a brat as big as my fist who tells lies as big as the house,"
exclaimed the pedler. "I tell you that he has not been watered, you
little jade! He has a way of blowing when he has had no water, which I
know well."
Cosette persisted, and added in a voice rendered hoarse with anguish,
and which was hardly audible:--
"And he drank heartily."
"Come," said the pedler, in a rage, "this won't do at all, let my horse
be watered, and let that be the end of it!"
Cosette crept under the table again.
"In truth, that is fair!" said Madame Thénardier, "if the beast has not
been watered, it must be."
Then glancing about her:--
"Well, now! Where's that other beast?"
She bent down and discovered Cosette cowering at the other end of the
table, almost under the drinkers' feet.
"Are you coming?" shrieked Madame Thénardier.
Cosette crawled out of the sort of hole in which she had hidden herself.
The Thénardier resumed:--
"Mademoiselle Dog-lack-name, go and water that horse."
"But, Madame," said Cosette, feebly, "there is no water."
The Thénardier threw the street door wide open:--
"Well, go and get some, then!"
Cosette dropped her head, and went for an empty bucket which stood near
the chimney-corner.
This bucket was bigger than she was, and the child could have set down
in it at her ease.
The Thénardier returned to her stove, and tasted what was in the
stewpan, with a wooden spoon, grumbling the while:--
"There's plenty in the spring. There never was such a malicious creature
as that. I think I should have done better to strain my onions."
Then she rummaged in a drawer which contained sous, pepper, and
shallots.
"See here, Mam'selle Toad," she added, "on your way back, you will get a
big loaf from the baker. Here's a fifteen-sou piece."
Cosette had a little pocket on one side of her apron; she took the coin
without saying a word, and put it in that pocket.
Then she stood motionless, bucket in hand, the open door before her. She
seemed to be waiting for some one to come to her rescue.
"Get along with you!" screamed the Thénardier.
Cosette went out. The door closed behind her.
CHAPTER IV--ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL
The line of open-air booths starting at the church, extended, as the
reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thénardiers. These
booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on
their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels,
which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Thénardiers'
observed, produced "a magical effect." In compensation, not a star was
visible in the sky.
The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the
Thénardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass,
and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the
merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll,
nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold
wheat-ears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that
day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passers-by
under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil
sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child.
Éponine and Azelma had passed hours in contemplating it, and Cosette
herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true.
At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and
overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that
wonderful doll, towards _the lady_, as she called it. The poor child
paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The
whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a
vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared in
a sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly
engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity
of childhood, Cosette measured the abyss which separated her from
that doll. She said to herself that one must be a queen, or at least a
princess, to have a "thing" like that. She gazed at that beautiful pink
dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, "How happy that doll
must be!" She could not take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The
more she looked, the more dazzled she grew. She thought she was gazing
at paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one, which seemed
to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and
forth in front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of being
the Eternal Father.
In this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand with which she
was charged.
All at once the Thénardier's coarse voice recalled her to reality:
"What, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I'll give it to you! I
want to know what you are doing there! Get along, you little monster!"
The Thénardier had cast a glance into the street, and had caught sight
of Cosette in her ecstasy.
Cosette fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest strides of which
she was capable.
CHAPTER V--THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE
As the Thénardier hostelry was in that part of the village which is
near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of
Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her water.
She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long
as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood of the church, the
lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon the last light from the
last stall vanished. The poor child found herself in the dark. She
plunged into it. Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she made as
much motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked
along. This made a noise which afforded her company.
The further she went, the denser the darkness became. There was no one
in the streets. However, she did encounter a woman, who turned around
on seeing her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: "Where can
that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?" Then the woman recognized
Cosette. "Well," said she, "it's the Lark!"
In this manner Cosette traversed the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted
streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil on the side of
Chelles. So long as she had the houses or even the walls only on both
sides of her path, she proceeded with tolerable boldness. From time
to time she caught the flicker of a candle through the crack of a
shutter--this was light and life; there were people there, and it
reassured her. But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened
mechanically, as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last
house, Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further than the last
stall; it became impossible to proceed further than the last house. She
set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair, and
began slowly to scratch her head,--a gesture peculiar to children when
terrified and undecided what to do. It was no longer Montfermeil; it
was the open fields. Black and desert space was before her. She gazed in
despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there
were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly. She took a good
look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she distinctly saw
spectres moving in the trees. Then she seized her bucket again; fear had
lent her audacity. "Bah!" said she; "I will tell him that there was no
more water!" And she resolutely re-entered Montfermeil.
Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began to scratch
her head again. Now it was the Thénardier who appeared to her, with her
hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a
melancholy glance before her and behind her. What was she to do? What
was to become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her was the
spectre of the Thénardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night
and of the forest. It was before the Thénardier that she recoiled. She
resumed her path to the spring, and began to run. She emerged from
the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or
listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath
failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went straight
before her in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.
She no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity of night was
facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an
atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes' walk from the edge of the woods to
the spring. Cosette knew the way, through having gone over it many times
in daylight. Strange to say, she did not get lost. A remnant of instinct
guided her vaguely. But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to
left, for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood. In
this manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey
soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall,
crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.'s frills, and paved with
several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little
noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but she was in
the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the
dark for a young oak which leaned over the spring, and which usually
served to support her, found one of its branches, clung to it, bent
down, and plunged the bucket in the water. She was in a state of such
violent excitement that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over,
she did not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into
the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Cosette neither
saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket nearly full, and set it
on the grass.
That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue. She would
have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill the
bucket had been such that she found it impossible to take a step. She
was forced to sit down. She dropped on the grass, and remained crouching
there.
She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing why, but
because she could not do otherwise. The agitated water in the bucket
beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents.
Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which were like
masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over
the child.
Jupiter was setting in the depths.
The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which she
was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact, very
near the horizon and was traversing a dense layer of mist which imparted
to it a horrible ruddy hue. The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the
star. One would have called it a luminous wound.
A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was dark, not a leaf
was moving; there were none of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide.
Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise. Slender and
misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated
like eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms
furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of dry heather, tossed
by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror
before something which was coming after. On all sides there were
lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself
in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees
black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty
opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks
alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees--two
formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct
depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you with
a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space or in one's
own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the
dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the horizon.
One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to
glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night,
things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances,
obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious
reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown
but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of
trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,--against all this one has no
protection. There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does
not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous,
as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This
penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in the case of a
child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a tiny soul
produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was conscious that she was
seized upon by that black enormity of nature; it was no longer terror
alone which was gaining possession of her; it was something more
terrible even than terror; she shivered. There are no words to express
the strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of
her heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that she should not
be able to refrain from returning there at the same hour on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one, two, three,
four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from that singular state
which she did not understand, but which terrified her, and, when she had
finished, she began again; this restored her to a true perception of
the things about her. Her hands, which she had wet in drawing the water,
felt cold; she rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable terror, had
returned: she had but one thought now,--to flee at full speed through
the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the windows, to the
lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her;
such was the fright which the Thénardier inspired in her, that she dared
not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle with both
hands; she could hardly lift the pail.
In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket was full; it
was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground once more. She took
breath for an instant, then lifted the handle of the bucket again, and
resumed her march, proceeding a little further this time, but again she
was obliged to pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again.
She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the
weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron
handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands;
she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did so,
the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs. This
took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all
human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing
at the moment.
And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat,
but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thénardier, even at a
distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thénardier always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went
on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and
of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish
that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in
this manner, and that the Thénardier would beat her. This anguish was
mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was
worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the forest. On
arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made
a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might get well
rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket
again, and courageously resumed her march, but the poor little desperate
creature could not refrain from crying, "O my God! my God!"
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer
weighed anything at all: a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just
seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A
large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside her through the
darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach
she had not heard. This man, without uttering a word, had seized the
handle of the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid.
CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked
for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de
l'Hôpital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking
lodgings, and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest
houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.
We shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired a chamber in
that isolated quarter.
This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of what
may be called the well-bred mendicant,--extreme wretchedness combined
with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare mixture which inspires
intelligent hearts with that double respect which one feels for the man
who is very poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He wore a very
old and very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn perfectly
threadbare, of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the least
eccentric at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a venerable
cut; black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of black worsted;
and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been pronounced a
preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration. He would
have been taken for more than sixty years of age, from his perfectly
white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips, and his countenance,
where everything breathed depression and weariness of life. Judging from
his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements,
he would have hardly been thought fifty. The wrinkles on his brow were
well placed, and would have disposed in his favor any one who observed
him attentively. His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed
severe, and which was humble. There was in the depth of his glance an
indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little
bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a
cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and
had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made of its
knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from red wax: it was
a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.
There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the
winter. The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this
without any affectation.
At that epoch, King Louis XVIII. went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi:
it was one of his favorite excursions. Towards two o'clock, almost
invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade was seen to pass at full
speed along the Boulevard de l'Hôpital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the quarter
who said, "It is two o'clock; there he is returning to the Tuileries."
And some rushed forward, and others drew up in line, for a passing king
always creates a tumult; besides, the appearance and disappearance of
Louis XVIII. produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was
rapid but majestic. This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop;
as he was not able to walk, he wished to run: that cripple would gladly
have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed, pacific and severe,
in the midst of naked swords. His massive couch, all covered with
gilding, with great branches of lilies painted on the panels, thundered
noisily along. There was hardly time to cast a glance upon it. In the
rear angle on the right there was visible on tufted cushions of white
satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered _à l'oiseau
royal_, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two
great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the
Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of
Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide
blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked
with white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high English
gaiters; when he re-entered the city, he put on his hat and saluted
rarely; he stared coldly at the people, and they returned it in kind.
When he appeared for the first time in the Saint-Marceau quarter,
the whole success which he produced is contained in this remark of an
inhabitant of the faubourg to his comrade, "That big fellow yonder is
the government."
This infallible passage of the king at the same hour was, therefore, the
daily event of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital.
The promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong in the
quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was ignorant as to
this detail. When, at two o'clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by a
squadron of the body-guard all covered with silver lace, debouched
on the boulevard, after having made the turn of the Salpêtrière, he
appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but himself in
this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an
enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le Duc de Havré from spying
him out.
M. le Duc de Havré, as captain of the guard on duty that day, was seated
in the carriage, opposite the king. He said to his Majesty, "Yonder
is an evil-looking man." Members of the police, who were clearing the
king's route, took equal note of him: one of them received an order to
follow him. But the man plunged into the deserted little streets of the
faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the agent lost trace of
him, as is stated in a report addressed that same evening to M. le Comte
d'Anglès, Minister of State, Prefect of Police.
When the man in the yellow coat had thrown the agent off his track,
he redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a time to assure
himself that he was not being followed. At a quarter-past four, that is
to say, when night was fully come, he passed in front of the theatre of
the Porte Saint-Martin, where _The Two Convicts_ was being played that
day. This poster, illuminated by the theatre lanterns, struck him; for,
although he was walking rapidly, he halted to read it. An instant later
he was in the blind alley of La Planchette, and he entered the _Plat
d'Etain_ [the Pewter Platter], where the office of the coach for Lagny
was then situated. This coach set out at half-past four. The horses were
harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman, were hastily
climbing the lofty iron ladder of the vehicle.
The man inquired:--
"Have you a place?"
"Only one--beside me on the box," said the coachman.
"I will take it."
"Climb up."
Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the
traveller's shabby dress, at the diminutive size of his bundle, and made
him pay his fare.
"Are you going as far as Lagny?" demanded the coachman.
"Yes," said the man.
The traveller paid to Lagny.
They started. When they had passed the barrier, the coachman tried
to enter into conversation, but the traveller only replied in
monosyllables. The coachman took to whistling and swearing at his
horses.
The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man
did not appear to be thinking of that. Thus they passed Gournay and
Neuilly-sur-Marne.
Towards six o'clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman
drew up in front of the carters' inn installed in the ancient buildings
of the Royal Abbey, to give his horses a breathing spell.
"I get down here," said the man.
He took his bundle and his cudgel and jumped down from the vehicle.
An instant later he had disappeared.
He did not enter the inn.
When the coach set out for Lagny a few minutes later, it did not
encounter him in the principal street of Chelles.
The coachman turned to the inside travellers.
"There," said he, "is a man who does not belong here, for I do not know
him. He had not the air of owning a sou, but he does not consider money;
he pays to Lagny, and he goes only as far as Chelles. It is night; all
the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is not to be
found. So he has dived through the earth."
The man had not plunged into the earth, but he had gone with great
strides through the dark, down the principal street of Chelles, then he
had turned to the right before reaching the church, into the cross-road
leading to Montfermeil, like a person who was acquainted with the
country and had been there before.
He followed this road rapidly. At the spot where it is intersected by
the ancient tree-bordered road which runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard
people coming. He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there
waited until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was
nearly superfluous, however; for, as we have already said, it was a very
dark December night. Not more than two or three stars were visible in
the sky.
It is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins. The man did not
return to the road to Montfermeil; he struck across the fields to the
right, and entered the forest with long strides.
Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful
examination of all the trees, advancing, step by step, as though seeking
and following a mysterious road known to himself alone. There came a
moment when he appeared to lose himself, and he paused in indecision. At
last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by inch, at a clearing
where there was a great heap of whitish stones. He stepped up briskly to
these stones, and examined them attentively through the mists of night,
as though he were passing them in review. A large tree, covered with
those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces
distant from the pile of stones. He went up to this tree and passed
his hand over the bark of the trunk, as though seeking to recognize and
count all the warts.
Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree,
suffering from a peeling of the bark, to which a band of zinc had been
nailed by way of dressing. He raised himself on tiptoe and touched this
band of zinc.
Then he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the space
between the tree and the heap of stones, like a person who is trying to
assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed.
That done, he took his bearings, and resumed his march through the
forest.
It was the man who had just met Cosette.
As he walked through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil, he had
espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing a burden on
the ground, then taking it up and setting out again. He drew near, and
perceived that it was a very young child, laden with an enormous bucket
of water. Then he approached the child, and silently grasped the handle
of the bucket.
CHAPTER VII--COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK
Cosette, as we have said, was not frightened.
The man accosted her. He spoke in a voice that was grave and almost
bass.
"My child, what you are carrying is very heavy for you."
Cosette raised her head and replied:--
"Yes, sir."
"Give it to me," said the man; "I will carry it for you."
Cosette let go of the bucket-handle. The man walked along beside her.
"It really is very heavy," he muttered between his teeth. Then he
added:--
"How old are you, little one?"
"Eight, sir."
"And have you come from far like this?"
"From the spring in the forest."
"Are you going far?"
"A good quarter of an hour's walk from here."
The man said nothing for a moment; then he remarked abruptly:--
"So you have no mother."
"I don't know," answered the child.
Before the man had time to speak again, she added:--
"I don't think so. Other people have mothers. I have none."
And after a silence she went on:--
"I think that I never had any."
The man halted; he set the bucket on the ground, bent down and placed
both hands on the child's shoulders, making an effort to look at her and
to see her face in the dark.
Cosette's thin and sickly face was vaguely outlined by the livid light
in the sky.
"What is your name?" said the man.
"Cosette."
The man seemed to have received an electric shock. He looked at her once
more; then he removed his hands from Cosette's shoulders, seized the
bucket, and set out again.
After a moment he inquired:--
"Where do you live, little one?"
"At Montfermeil, if you know where that is."
"That is where we are going?"
"Yes, sir."
He paused; then began again:--
"Who sent you at such an hour to get water in the forest?"
"It was Madame Thénardier."
The man resumed, in a voice which he strove to render indifferent, but
in which there was, nevertheless, a singular tremor:--
"What does your Madame Thénardier do?"
"She is my mistress," said the child. "She keeps the inn."
"The inn?" said the man. "Well, I am going to lodge there to-night. Show
me the way."
"We are on the way there," said the child.
The man walked tolerably fast. Cosette followed him without difficulty.
She no longer felt any fatigue. From time to time she raised her eyes
towards the man, with a sort of tranquillity and an indescribable
confidence. She had never been taught to turn to Providence and to pray;
nevertheless, she felt within her something which resembled hope and
joy, and which mounted towards heaven.
Several minutes elapsed. The man resumed:--
"Is there no servant in Madame Thénardier's house?"
"No, sir."
"Are you alone there?"
"Yes, sir."
Another pause ensued. Cosette lifted up her voice:--
"That is to say, there are two little girls."
"What little girls?"
"Ponine and Zelma."
This was the way the child simplified the romantic names so dear to the
female Thénardier.
"Who are Ponine and Zelma?"
"They are Madame Thénardier's young ladies; her daughters, as you would
say."
"And what do those girls do?"
"Oh!" said the child, "they have beautiful dolls; things with gold in
them, all full of affairs. They play; they amuse themselves."
"All day long?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you?"
"I? I work."
"All day long?"
The child raised her great eyes, in which hung a tear, which was not
visible because of the darkness, and replied gently:--
"Yes, sir."
After an interval of silence she went on:--
"Sometimes, when I have finished my work and they let me, I amuse
myself, too."
"How do you amuse yourself?"
"In the best way I can. They let me alone; but I have not many
playthings. Ponine and Zelma will not let me play with their dolls. I
have only a little lead sword, no longer than that."
The child held up her tiny finger.
"And it will not cut?"
"Yes, sir," said the child; "it cuts salad and the heads of flies."
They reached the village. Cosette guided the stranger through the
streets. They passed the bakeshop, but Cosette did not think of the
bread which she had been ordered to fetch. The man had ceased to ply her
with questions, and now preserved a gloomy silence.
When they had left the church behind them, the man, on perceiving all
the open-air booths, asked Cosette:--
"So there is a fair going on here?"
"No, sir; it is Christmas."
As they approached the tavern, Cosette timidly touched his arm:--
"Monsieur?"
"What, my child?"
"We are quite near the house."
"Well?"
"Will you let me take my bucket now?"
"Why?"
"If Madame sees that some one has carried it for me, she will beat me."
The man handed her the bucket. An instant later they were at the tavern
door.
CHAPTER VIII--THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A POOR
MAN WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN
Cosette could not refrain from casting a sidelong glance at the big
doll, which was still displayed at the toy-merchant's; then she knocked.
The door opened. The Thénardier appeared with a candle in her hand.
"Ah! so it's you, you little wretch! good mercy, but you've taken your
time! The hussy has been amusing herself!"
"Madame," said Cosette, trembling all over, "here's a gentleman who
wants a lodging."
The Thénardier speedily replaced her gruff air by her amiable grimace,
a change of aspect common to tavern-keepers, and eagerly sought the
new-comer with her eyes.
"This is the gentleman?" said she.
"Yes, Madame," replied the man, raising his hand to his hat.
Wealthy travellers are not so polite. This gesture, and an inspection
of the stranger's costume and baggage, which the Thénardier passed in
review with one glance, caused the amiable grimace to vanish, and the
gruff mien to reappear. She resumed dryly:--
"Enter, my good man."
The "good man" entered. The Thénardier cast a second glance at him, paid
particular attention to his frock-coat, which was absolutely threadbare,
and to his hat, which was a little battered, and, tossing her head,
wrinkling her nose, and screwing up her eyes, she consulted her husband,
who was still drinking with the carters. The husband replied by that
imperceptible movement of the forefinger, which, backed up by an
inflation of the lips, signifies in such cases: A regular beggar.
Thereupon, the Thénardier exclaimed:--
"Ah! see here, my good man; I am very sorry, but I have no room left."
"Put me where you like," said the man; "in the attic, in the stable. I
will pay as though I occupied a room."
"Forty sous."
"Forty sous; agreed."
"Very well, then!"
"Forty sous!" said a carter, in a low tone, to the Thénardier woman;
"why, the charge is only twenty sous!"
"It is forty in his case," retorted the Thénardier, in the same tone. "I
don't lodge poor folks for less."
"That's true," added her husband, gently; "it ruins a house to have such
people in it."
In the meantime, the man, laying his bundle and his cudgel on a bench,
had seated himself at a table, on which Cosette made haste to place a
bottle of wine and a glass. The merchant who had demanded the bucket of
water took it to his horse himself. Cosette resumed her place under the
kitchen table, and her knitting.
The man, who had barely moistened his lips in the wine which he had
poured out for himself, observed the child with peculiar attention.
Cosette was ugly. If she had been happy, she might have been pretty. We
have already given a sketch of that sombre little figure. Cosette was
thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but she seemed to be
hardly six. Her large eyes, sunken in a sort of shadow, were almost put
out with weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual
anguish which is seen in condemned persons and desperately sick people.
Her hands were, as her mother had divined, "ruined with chilblains." The
fire which illuminated her at that moment brought into relief all the
angles of her bones, and rendered her thinness frightfully apparent.
As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit of pressing her
knees one against the other. Her entire clothing was but a rag which
would have inspired pity in summer, and which inspired horror in winter.
All she had on was hole-ridden linen, not a scrap of woollen. Her skin
was visible here and there and everywhere black and blue spots could be
descried, which marked the places where the Thénardier woman had touched
her. Her naked legs were thin and red. The hollows in her neck were
enough to make one weep. This child's whole person, her mien, her
attitude, the sound of her voice, the intervals which she allowed to
elapse between one word and the next, her glance, her silence, her
slightest gesture, expressed and betrayed one sole idea,--fear.
Fear was diffused all over her; she was covered with it, so to speak;
fear drew her elbows close to her hips, withdrew her heels under her
petticoat, made her occupy as little space as possible, allowed her only
the breath that was absolutely necessary, and had become what might be
called the habit of her body, admitting of no possible variation except
an increase. In the depths of her eyes there was an astonished nook
where terror lurked.
Her fear was such, that on her arrival, wet as she was, Cosette did not
dare to approach the fire and dry herself, but sat silently down to her
work again.
The expression in the glance of that child of eight years was habitually
so gloomy, and at times so tragic, that it seemed at certain moments as
though she were on the verge of becoming an idiot or a demon.
As we have stated, she had never known what it is to pray; she had never
set foot in a church. "Have I the time?" said the Thénardier.
The man in the yellow coat never took his eyes from Cosette.
All at once, the Thénardier exclaimed:--
"By the way, where's that bread?"
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thénardier uplifted her
voice, emerged with great haste from beneath the table.
She had completely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the
expedient of children who live in a constant state of fear. She lied.
"Madame, the baker's shop was shut."
"You should have knocked."
"I did knock, Madame."
"Well?"
"He did not open the door."
"I'll find out to-morrow whether that is true," said the Thénardier;
"and if you are telling me a lie, I'll lead you a pretty dance. In the
meantime, give me back my fifteen-sou piece."
Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron, and turned green.
The fifteen-sou piece was not there.
"Ah, come now," said Madame Thénardier, "did you hear me?"
Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing in it. What
could have become of that money? The unhappy little creature could not
find a word to say. She was petrified.
"Have you lost that fifteen-sou piece?" screamed the Thénardier,
hoarsely, "or do you want to rob me of it?"
At the same time, she stretched out her arm towards the
cat-o'-nine-tails which hung on a nail in the chimney-corner.
This formidable gesture restored to Cosette sufficient strength to
shriek:--
"Mercy, Madame, Madame! I will not do so any more!"
The Thénardier took down the whip.
In the meantime, the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in the fob
of his waistcoat, without any one having noticed his movements. Besides,
the other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and were not paying
attention to anything.
Cosette contracted herself into a ball, with anguish, within the angle
of the chimney, endeavoring to gather up and conceal her poor half-nude
limbs. The Thénardier raised her arm.
"Pardon me, Madame," said the man, "but just now I caught sight of
something which had fallen from this little one's apron pocket, and
rolled aside. Perhaps this is it."
At the same time he bent down and seemed to be searching on the floor
for a moment.
"Exactly; here it is," he went on, straightening himself up.
And he held out a silver coin to the Thénardier.
"Yes, that's it," said she.
It was not it, for it was a twenty-sou piece; but the Thénardier found
it to her advantage. She put the coin in her pocket, and confined
herself to casting a fierce glance at the child, accompanied with the
remark, "Don't let this ever happen again!"
Cosette returned to what the Thénardier called "her kennel," and her
large eyes, which were riveted on the traveller, began to take on an
expression such as they had never worn before. Thus far it was only an
innocent amazement, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with
it.
"By the way, would you like some supper?" the Thénardier inquired of the
traveller.
He made no reply. He appeared to be absorbed in thought.
"What sort of a man is that?" she muttered between her teeth. "He's some
frightfully poor wretch. He hasn't a sou to pay for a supper. Will he
even pay me for his lodging? It's very lucky, all the same, that it did
not occur to him to steal the money that was on the floor."
In the meantime, a door had opened, and Éponine and Azelma entered.
They were two really pretty little girls, more bourgeois than peasant
in looks, and very charming; the one with shining chestnut tresses,
the other with long black braids hanging down her back, both vivacious,
neat, plump, rosy, and healthy, and a delight to the eye. They were
warmly clad, but with so much maternal art that the thickness of the
stuffs did not detract from the coquetry of arrangement. There was a
hint of winter, though the springtime was not wholly effaced. Light
emanated from these two little beings. Besides this, they were on the
throne. In their toilettes, in their gayety, in the noise which they
made, there was sovereignty. When they entered, the Thénardier said to
them in a grumbling tone which was full of adoration, "Ah! there you
are, you children!"
Then drawing them, one after the other to her knees, smoothing their
hair, tying their ribbons afresh, and then releasing them with
that gentle manner of shaking off which is peculiar to mothers, she
exclaimed, "What frights they are!"
They went and seated themselves in the chimney-corner. They had a doll,
which they turned over and over on their knees with all sorts of joyous
chatter. From time to time Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting,
and watched their play with a melancholy air.
Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette. She was the same as a dog
to them. These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty
years between them, but they already represented the whole society of
man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.
The doll of the Thénardier sisters was very much faded, very old, and
much broken; but it seemed none the less admirable to Cosette, who
had never had a doll in her life, _a real doll_, to make use of the
expression which all children will understand.
All at once, the Thénardier, who had been going back and forth in the
room, perceived that Cosette's mind was distracted, and that, instead of
working, she was paying attention to the little ones at their play.
"Ah! I've caught you at it!" she cried. "So that's the way you work!
I'll make you work to the tune of the whip; that I will."
The stranger turned to the Thénardier, without quitting his chair.
"Bah, Madame," he said, with an almost timid air, "let her play!"
Such a wish expressed by a traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton and
had drunk a couple of bottles of wine with his supper, and who had not
the air of being frightfully poor, would have been equivalent to an
order. But that a man with such a hat should permit himself such a
desire, and that a man with such a coat should permit himself to have a
will, was something which Madame Thénardier did not intend to tolerate.
She retorted with acrimony:--
"She must work, since she eats. I don't feed her to do nothing."
"What is she making?" went on the stranger, in a gentle voice which
contrasted strangely with his beggarly garments and his porter's
shoulders.
The Thénardier deigned to reply:--
"Stockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls, who have none,
so to speak, and who are absolutely barefoot just now."
The man looked at Cosette's poor little red feet, and continued:--
"When will she have finished this pair of stockings?"
"She has at least three or four good days' work on them still, the lazy
creature!"
"And how much will that pair of stockings be worth when she has finished
them?"
The Thénardier cast a glance of disdain on him.
"Thirty sous at least."
"Will you sell them for five francs?" went on the man.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed a carter who was listening, with a loud laugh;
"five francs! the deuce, I should think so! five balls!"
Thénardier thought it time to strike in.
"Yes, sir; if such is your fancy, you will be allowed to have that pair
of stockings for five francs. We can refuse nothing to travellers."
"You must pay on the spot," said the Thénardier, in her curt and
peremptory fashion.
"I will buy that pair of stockings," replied the man, "and," he added,
drawing a five-franc piece from his pocket, and laying it on the table,
"I will pay for them."
Then he turned to Cosette.
"Now I own your work; play, my child."
The carter was so much touched by the five-franc piece, that he
abandoned his glass and hastened up.
"But it's true!" he cried, examining it. "A real hind wheel! and not
counterfeit!"
Thénardier approached and silently put the coin in his pocket.
The Thénardier had no reply to make. She bit her lips, and her face
assumed an expression of hatred.
In the meantime, Cosette was trembling. She ventured to ask:--
"Is it true, Madame? May I play?"
"Play!" said the Thénardier, in a terrible voice.
"Thanks, Madame," said Cosette.
And while her mouth thanked the Thénardier, her whole little soul
thanked the traveller.
Thénardier had resumed his drinking; his wife whispered in his ear:--
"Who can this yellow man be?"
"I have seen millionaires with coats like that," replied Thénardier, in
a sovereign manner.
Cosette had dropped her knitting, but had not left her seat. Cosette
always moved as little as possible. She picked up some old rags and her
little lead sword from a box behind her.
Éponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on. They had just
executed a very important operation; they had just got hold of the
cat. They had thrown their doll on the ground, and Éponine, who was
the elder, was swathing the little cat, in spite of its mewing and its
contortions, in a quantity of clothes and red and blue scraps. While
performing this serious and difficult work she was saying to her sister
in that sweet and adorable language of children, whose grace, like the
splendor of the butterfly's wing, vanishes when one essays to fix it
fast.
"You see, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She twists,
she cries, she is warm. See, sister, let us play with her. She shall be
my little girl. I will be a lady. I will come to see you, and you shall
look at her. Gradually, you will perceive her whiskers, and that will
surprise you. And then you will see her ears, and then you will see her
tail and it will amaze you. And you will say to me, 'Ah! Mon Dieu!' and
I will say to you: 'Yes, Madame, it is my little girl. Little girls are
made like that just at present.'"
Azelma listened admiringly to Éponine.
In the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene song, and
to laugh at it until the ceiling shook. Thénardier accompanied and
encouraged them.
As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of
anything which comes to hand. While Éponine and Azelma were bundling up
the cat, Cosette, on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she
laid it in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one
of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to
clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress, to teach, scold a
little, to rock, to dandle, to lull to sleep, to imagine that something
is some one,--therein lies the whole woman's future. While dreaming and
chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little
gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the
young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child
is the continuation of the last doll.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as
impossible, as a woman without children.
So Cosette had made herself a doll out of the sword.
Madame Thénardier approached _the yellow man_; "My husband is right,"
she thought; "perhaps it is M. Laffitte; there are such queer rich men!"
She came and set her elbows on the table.
"Monsieur," said she. At this word, _Monsieur_, the man turned; up to
that time, the Thénardier had addressed him only as _brave home_ or
_bonhomme_.
"You see, sir," she pursued, assuming a sweetish air that was even more
repulsive to behold than her fierce mien, "I am willing that the child
should play; I do not oppose it, but it is good for once, because you
are generous. You see, she has nothing; she must needs work."
"Then this child is not yours?" demanded the man.
"Oh! mon Dieu! no, sir! she is a little beggar whom we have taken in
through charity; a sort of imbecile child. She must have water on the
brain; she has a large head, as you see. We do what we can for her, for
we are not rich; we have written in vain to her native place, and have
received no reply these six months. It must be that her mother is dead."
"Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once more.
"Her mother didn't amount to much," added the Thénardier; "she abandoned
her child."
During the whole of this conversation Cosette, as though warned by some
instinct that she was under discussion, had not taken her eyes from the
Thénardier's face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words here and
there.
Meanwhile, the drinkers, all three-quarters intoxicated, were repeating
their unclean refrain with redoubled gayety; it was a highly spiced and
wanton song, in which the Virgin and the infant Jesus were introduced.
The Thénardier went off to take part in the shouts of laughter. Cosette,
from her post under the table, gazed at the fire, which was reflected
from her fixed eyes. She had begun to rock the sort of baby which she
had made, and, as she rocked it, she sang in a low voice, "My mother is
dead! my mother is dead! my mother is dead!"
On being urged afresh by the hostess, the yellow man, "the millionaire,"
consented at last to take supper.
"What does Monsieur wish?"
"Bread and cheese," said the man.
"Decidedly, he is a beggar" thought Madame Thénardier.
The drunken men were still singing their song, and the child under the
table was singing hers.
All at once, Cosette paused; she had just turned round and caught sight
of the little Thénardiers' doll, which they had abandoned for the cat
and had left on the floor a few paces from the kitchen table.
Then she dropped the swaddled sword, which only half met her needs, and
cast her eyes slowly round the room. Madame Thénardier was whispering to
her husband and counting over some money; Ponine and Zelma were playing
with the cat; the travellers were eating or drinking or singing; not
a glance was fixed on her. She had not a moment to lose; she crept out
from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that no
one was watching her; then she slipped quickly up to the doll and seized
it. An instant later she was in her place again, seated motionless, and
only turned so as to cast a shadow on the doll which she held in her
arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare for her that it
contained all the violence of voluptuousness.
No one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly devouring his
meagre supper.
This joy lasted about a quarter of an hour.
But with all the precautions that Cosette had taken she did not perceive
that one of the doll's legs stuck out and that the fire on the hearth
lighted it up very vividly. That pink and shining foot, projecting from
the shadow, suddenly struck the eye of Azelma, who said to Éponine,
"Look! sister."
The two little girls paused in stupefaction; Cosette had dared to take
their doll!
Éponine rose, and, without releasing the cat, she ran to her mother, and
began to tug at her skirt.
"Let me alone!" said her mother; "what do you want?"
"Mother," said the child, "look there!"
And she pointed to Cosette.
Cosette, absorbed in the ecstasies of possession, no longer saw or heard
anything.
Madame Thénardier's countenance assumed that peculiar expression which
is composed of the terrible mingled with the trifles of life, and which
has caused this style of woman to be named _megaeras_.
On this occasion, wounded pride exasperated her wrath still further.
Cosette had overstepped all bounds; Cosette had laid violent hands on
the doll belonging to "these young ladies." A czarina who should see
a muzhik trying on her imperial son's blue ribbon would wear no other
face.
She shrieked in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation:--
"Cosette!"
Cosette started as though the earth had trembled beneath her; she turned
round.
"Cosette!" repeated the Thénardier.
Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with a sort of
veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes from
it, she clasped her hands, and, what is terrible to relate of a child
of that age, she wrung them; then--not one of the emotions of the day,
neither the trip to the forest, nor the weight of the bucket of water,
nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the whip, nor even the sad
words which she had heard Madame Thénardier utter had been able to wring
this from her--she wept; she burst out sobbing.
Meanwhile, the traveller had risen to his feet.
"What is the matter?" he said to the Thénardier.
"Don't you see?" said the Thénardier, pointing to the _corpus delicti_
which lay at Cosette's feet.
"Well, what of it?" resumed the man.
"That beggar," replied the Thénardier, "has permitted herself to touch
the children's doll!"
"All this noise for that!" said the man; "well, what if she did play
with that doll?"
"She touched it with her dirty hands!" pursued the Thénardier, "with her
frightful hands!"
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
"Will you stop your noise?" screamed the Thénardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thénardier profited by his absence to give
Cosette a hearty kick under the table, which made the child utter loud
cries.
The door opened again, the man re-appeared; he carried in both hands the
fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which all the village brats
had been staring at ever since the morning, and he set it upright in
front of Cosette, saying:--
"Here; this is for you."
It must be supposed that in the course of the hour and more which he had
spent there he had taken confused notice through his revery of that
toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots and candles so splendidly that it was
visible like an illumination through the window of the drinking-shop.
Cosette raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approaching her with that
doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she heard the unprecedented
words, "It is for you"; she stared at him; she stared at the doll; then
she slowly retreated, and hid herself at the extreme end, under the
table in a corner of the wall.
She no longer cried; she no longer wept; she had the appearance of no
longer daring to breathe.
The Thénardier, Éponine, and Azelma were like statues also; the very
drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned through the whole room.
Madame Thénardier, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures: "Who
is that old fellow? Is he a poor man? Is he a millionaire? Perhaps he is
both; that is to say, a thief."
The face of the male Thénardier presented that expressive fold which
accentuates the human countenance whenever the dominant instinct appears
there in all its bestial force. The tavern-keeper stared alternately at
the doll and at the traveller; he seemed to be scenting out the man, as
he would have scented out a bag of money. This did not last longer than
the space of a flash of lightning. He stepped up to his wife and said to
her in a low voice:--
"That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your
belly before that man!"
Gross natures have this in common with _naïve_ natures, that they
possess no transition state.
"Well, Cosette," said the Thénardier, in a voice that strove to be
sweet, and which was composed of the bitter honey of malicious women,
"aren't you going to take your doll?"
Cosette ventured to emerge from her hole.
"The gentleman has given you a doll, my little Cosette," said
Thénardier, with a caressing air. "Take it; it is yours."
Cosette gazed at the marvellous doll in a sort of terror. Her face was
still flooded with tears, but her eyes began to fill, like the sky at
daybreak, with strange beams of joy. What she felt at that moment was
a little like what she would have felt if she had been abruptly told,
"Little one, you are the Queen of France."
It seemed to her that if she touched that doll, lightning would dart
from it.
This was true, up to a certain point, for she said to herself that the
Thénardier would scold and beat her.
Nevertheless, the attraction carried the day. She ended by drawing near
and murmuring timidly as she turned towards Madame Thénardier:--
"May I, Madame?"
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and
ecstatic.
"Pardi!" cried the Thénardier, "it is yours. The gentleman has given it
to you."
"Truly, sir?" said Cosette. "Is it true? Is the 'lady' mine?"
The stranger's eyes seemed to be full of tears. He appeared to have
reached that point of emotion where a man does not speak for fear lest
he should weep. He nodded to Cosette, and placed the "lady's" hand in
her tiny hand.
Cosette hastily withdrew her hand, as though that of the "lady" scorched
her, and began to stare at the floor. We are forced to add that at that
moment she stuck out her tongue immoderately. All at once she wheeled
round and seized the doll in a transport.
"I shall call her Catherine," she said.
It was an odd moment when Cosette's rags met and clasped the ribbons and
fresh pink muslins of the doll.
"Madame," she resumed, "may I put her on a chair?"
"Yes, my child," replied the Thénardier.
It was now the turn of Éponine and Azelma to gaze at Cosette with envy.
Cosette placed Catherine on a chair, then seated herself on the floor
in front of her, and remained motionless, without uttering a word, in an
attitude of contemplation.
"Play, Cosette," said the stranger.
"Oh! I am playing," returned the child.
This stranger, this unknown individual, who had the air of a visit which
Providence was making on Cosette, was the person whom the Thénardier
hated worse than any one in the world at that moment. However, it was
necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to dissimulation
through endeavoring to copy her husband in all his actions, these
emotions were more than she could endure. She made haste to send her
daughters to bed, then she asked the man's _permission_ to send Cosette
off also; "for she has worked hard all day," she added with a maternal
air. Cosette went off to bed, carrying Catherine in her arms.
From time to time the Thénardier went to the other end of the room where
her husband was, to _relieve her soul_, as she said. She exchanged with
her husband words which were all the more furious because she dared not
utter them aloud.
"Old beast! What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this
manner! To want that little monster to play! to give away forty-franc
dolls to a jade that I would sell for forty sous, so I would! A little
more and he will be saying _Your Majesty_ to her, as though to the
Duchess de Berry! Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that
mysterious old fellow?"
"Why! it is perfectly simple," replied Thénardier, "if that amuses him!
It amuses you to have the little one work; it amuses him to have her
play. He's all right. A traveller can do what he pleases when he pays
for it. If the old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you? If
he is an imbecile, it does not concern you. What are you worrying for,
so long as he has money?"
The language of a master, and the reasoning of an innkeeper, neither of
which admitted of any reply.
The man had placed his elbows on the table, and resumed his thoughtful
attitude. All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had
withdrawn a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him
from a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed
man, who drew "hind-wheels" from his pocket with so much ease, and
who lavished gigantic dolls on dirty little brats in wooden shoes, was
certainly a magnificent fellow, and one to be feared.
Many hours passed. The midnight mass was over, the chimes had ceased,
the drinkers had taken their departure, the drinking-shop was closed,
the public room was deserted, the fire extinct, the stranger still
remained in the same place and the same attitude. From time to time he
changed the elbow on which he leaned. That was all; but he had not said
a word since Cosette had left the room.
The Thénardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had remained in
the room.
"Is he going to pass the night in that fashion?" grumbled the
Thénardier. When two o'clock in the morning struck, she declared herself
vanquished, and said to her husband, "I'm going to bed. Do as you like."
Her husband seated himself at a table in the corner, lighted a candle,
and began to read the _Courrier Français_.
A good hour passed thus. The worthy inn-keeper had perused the _Courrier
Français_ at least three times, from the date of the number to the
printer's name. The stranger did not stir.
Thénardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his
chair. Not a movement on the man's part. "Is he asleep?" thought
Thénardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
At last Thénardier took off his cap, stepped gently up to him, and
ventured to say:--
"Is not Monsieur going to his repose?"
_Not going to bed_ would have seemed to him excessive and familiar.
_To repose_ smacked of luxury and respect. These words possess the
mysterious and admirable property of swelling the bill on the following
day. A chamber where one _sleeps_ costs twenty sous; a chamber in which
one _reposes_ costs twenty francs.
"Well!" said the stranger, "you are right. Where is your stable?"
"Sir!" exclaimed Thénardier, with a smile, "I will conduct you, sir."
He took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel, and
Thénardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor, which was of
rare splendor, all furnished in mahogany, with a low bedstead, curtained
with red calico.
"What is this?" said the traveller.
"It is really our bridal chamber," said the tavern-keeper. "My wife and
I occupy another. This is only entered three or four times a year."
"I should have liked the stable quite as well," said the man, abruptly.
Thénardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark.
He lighted two perfectly fresh wax candles which figured on the
chimney-piece. A very good fire was flickering on the hearth.
On the chimney-piece, under a glass globe, stood a woman's head-dress in
silver wire and orange flowers.
"And what is this?" resumed the stranger.
"That, sir," said Thénardier, "is my wife's wedding bonnet."
The traveller surveyed the object with a glance which seemed to say,
"There really was a time, then, when that monster was a maiden?"
Thénardier lied, however. When he had leased this paltry building for
the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber
decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and
obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this
would cast a graceful shadow on "his spouse," and would result in what
the English call respectability for his house.
When the traveller turned round, the host had disappeared. Thénardier
had withdrawn discreetly, without venturing to wish him a good night,
as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he
proposed to fleece royally the following morning.
The inn-keeper retired to his room. His wife was in bed, but she was not
asleep. When she heard her husband's step she turned over and said to
him:--
"Do you know, I'm going to turn Cosette out of doors to-morrow."
Thénardier replied coldly:--
"How you do go on!"
They exchanged no further words, and a few moments later their candle
was extinguished.
As for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and his bundle in a
corner. The landlord once gone, he threw himself into an arm-chair and
remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes,
took one of the two candles, blew out the other, opened the door, and
quitted the room, gazing about him like a person who is in search of
something. He traversed a corridor and came upon a staircase. There he
heard a very faint and gentle sound like the breathing of a child. He
followed this sound, and came to a sort of triangular recess built under
the staircase, or rather formed by the staircase itself. This recess was
nothing else than the space under the steps. There, in the midst of all
sorts of old papers and potsherds, among dust and spiders' webs, was a
bed--if one can call by the name of bed a straw pallet so full of holes
as to display the straw, and a coverlet so tattered as to show the
pallet. No sheets. This was placed on the floor.
In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and gazed down upon her.
Cosette was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed. In the winter
she did not undress, in order that she might not be so cold.
Against her breast was pressed the doll, whose large eyes, wide open,
glittered in the dark. From time to time she gave vent to a deep sigh as
though she were on the point of waking, and she strained the doll almost
convulsively in her arms. Beside her bed there was only one of her
wooden shoes.
A door which stood open near Cosette's pallet permitted a view of a
rather large, dark room. The stranger stepped into it. At the further
extremity, through a glass door, he saw two small, very white beds.
They belonged to Éponine and Azelma. Behind these beds, and half hidden,
stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy who had
cried all the evening lay asleep.
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected with that of the
Thénardier pair. He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell
upon the fireplace--one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is
always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are
so cold to look at. There was no fire in this one, there was not even
ashes; but there was something which attracted the stranger's gaze,
nevertheless. It was two tiny children's shoes, coquettish in shape
and unequal in size. The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial
custom in accordance with which children place their shoes in the
chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling
gift from their good fairy. Éponine and Azelma had taken care not to
omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid her visit, and
in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-sou piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point of withdrawing,
when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight
of another object. He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a
frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all
covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's sabot. Cosette, with
that touching trust of childhood, which can always be deceived yet never
discouraged, had placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also.
Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and
touching thing.
There was nothing in this wooden shoe.
The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and placed a louis d'or
in Cosette's shoe.
Then he regained his own chamber with the stealthy tread of a wolf.
CHAPTER IX-- THÉNARDIER AND HIS MANOUVRES
On the following morning, two hours at least before day-break,
Thénardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern, pen
in hand, was making out the bill for the traveller with the yellow coat.
His wife, standing beside him, and half bent over him, was following
him with her eyes. They exchanged not a word. On the one hand, there was
profound meditation, on the other, the religious admiration with which
one watches the birth and development of a marvel of the human mind. A
noise was audible in the house; it was the Lark sweeping the stairs.
After the lapse of a good quarter of an hour, and some erasures,
Thénardier produced the following masterpiece:--
BILL OF THE GENTLEMAN IN No. 1.
Supper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 francs.
Chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 "
Candle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 "
Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 "
Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 "
----------
Total . . . . . . 23 francs.
Service was written _servisse_.
"Twenty-three francs!" cried the woman, with an enthusiasm which was
mingled with some hesitation.
Like all great artists, Thénardier was dissatisfied.
"Peuh!" he exclaimed.
It was the accent of Castlereagh auditing France's bill at the Congress
of Vienna.
"Monsieur Thénardier, you are right; he certainly owes that," murmured
the wife, who was thinking of the doll bestowed on Cosette in the
presence of her daughters. "It is just, but it is too much. He will not
pay it."
Thénardier laughed coldly, as usual, and said:--
"He will pay."
This laugh was the supreme assertion of certainty and authority. That
which was asserted in this manner must needs be so. His wife did not
insist.
She set about arranging the table; her husband paced the room. A moment
later he added:--
"I owe full fifteen hundred francs!"
He went and seated himself in the chimney-corner, meditating, with his
feet among the warm ashes.
"Ah! by the way," resumed his wife, "you don't forget that I'm going to
turn Cosette out of doors to-day? The monster! She breaks my heart with
that doll of hers! I'd rather marry Louis XVIII. than keep her another
day in the house!"
Thénardier lighted his pipe, and replied between two puffs:--
"You will hand that bill to the man."
Then he went out.
Hardly had he left the room when the traveller entered.
Thénardier instantly reappeared behind him and remained motionless in
the half-open door, visible only to his wife.
The yellow man carried his bundle and his cudgel in his hand.
"Up so early?" said Madame Thénardier; "is Monsieur leaving us already?"
As she spoke thus, she was twisting the bill about in her hands with an
embarrassed air, and making creases in it with her nails. Her hard
face presented a shade which was not habitual with it,--timidity and
scruples.
To present such a bill to a man who had so completely the air "of a poor
wretch" seemed difficult to her.
The traveller appeared to be preoccupied and absent-minded. He
replied:--
"Yes, Madame, I am going."
"So Monsieur has no business in Montfermeil?"
"No, I was passing through. That is all. What do I owe you, Madame," he
added.
The Thénardier silently handed him the folded bill.
The man unfolded the paper and glanced at it; but his thoughts were
evidently elsewhere.
"Madame," he resumed, "is business good here in Montfermeil?"
"So so, Monsieur," replied the Thénardier, stupefied at not witnessing
another sort of explosion.
She continued, in a dreary and lamentable tone:--
"Oh! Monsieur, times are so hard! and then, we have so few bourgeois in
the neighborhood! All the people are poor, you see. If we had not, now
and then, some rich and generous travellers like Monsieur, we should
not get along at all. We have so many expenses. Just see, that child is
costing us our very eyes."
"What child?"
"Why, the little one, you know! Cosette--the Lark, as she is called
hereabouts!"
"Ah!" said the man.
She went on:--
"How stupid these peasants are with their nicknames! She has more the
air of a bat than of a lark. You see, sir, we do not ask charity, and we
cannot bestow it. We earn nothing and we have to pay out a great deal.
The license, the imposts, the door and window tax, the hundredths!
Monsieur is aware that the government demands a terrible deal of money.
And then, I have my daughters. I have no need to bring up other people's
children."
The man resumed, in that voice which he strove to render indifferent,
and in which there lingered a tremor:--
"What if one were to rid you of her?"
"Who? Cosette?"
"Yes."
The landlady's red and violent face brightened up hideously.
"Ah! sir, my dear sir, take her, keep her, lead her off, carry her
away, sugar her, stuff her with truffles, drink her, eat her, and the
blessings of the good holy Virgin and of all the saints of paradise be
upon you!"
"Agreed."
"Really! You will take her away?"
"I will take her away."
"Immediately?"
"Immediately. Call the child."
"Cosette!" screamed the Thénardier.
"In the meantime," pursued the man, "I will pay you what I owe you. How
much is it?"
He cast a glance on the bill, and could not restrain a start of
surprise:--
"Twenty-three francs!"
He looked at the landlady, and repeated:--
"Twenty-three francs?"
There was in the enunciation of these words, thus repeated, an accent
between an exclamation and an interrogation point.
The Thénardier had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She
replied, with assurance:--
"Good gracious, yes, sir, it is twenty-three francs."
The stranger laid five five-franc pieces on the table.
"Go and get the child," said he.
At that moment Thénardier advanced to the middle of the room, and
said:--
"Monsieur owes twenty-six sous."
"Twenty-six sous!" exclaimed his wife.
"Twenty sous for the chamber," resumed Thénardier, coldly, "and six sous
for his supper. As for the child, I must discuss that matter a little
with the gentleman. Leave us, wife."
Madame Thénardier was dazzled as with the shock caused by unexpected
lightning flashes of talent. She was conscious that a great actor was
making his entrance on the stage, uttered not a word in reply, and left
the room.
As soon as they were alone, Thénardier offered the traveller a chair.
The traveller seated himself; Thénardier remained standing, and his face
assumed a singular expression of good-fellowship and simplicity.
"Sir," said he, "what I have to say to you is this, that I adore that
child."
The stranger gazed intently at him.
"What child?"
Thénardier continued:--
"How strange it is, one grows attached. What money is that? Take back
your hundred-sou piece. I adore the child."
"Whom do you mean?" demanded the stranger.
"Eh! our little Cosette! Are you not intending to take her away from
us? Well, I speak frankly; as true as you are an honest man, I will not
consent to it. I shall miss that child. I saw her first when she was a
tiny thing. It is true that she costs us money; it is true that she has
her faults; it is true that we are not rich; it is true that I have paid
out over four hundred francs for drugs for just one of her illnesses!
But one must do something for the good God's sake. She has neither
father nor mother. I have brought her up. I have bread enough for
her and for myself. In truth, I think a great deal of that child. You
understand, one conceives an affection for a person; I am a good sort
of a beast, I am; I do not reason; I love that little girl; my wife is
quick-tempered, but she loves her also. You see, she is just the same as
our own child. I want to keep her to babble about the house."
The stranger kept his eye intently fixed on Thénardier. The latter
continued:--
"Excuse me, sir, but one does not give away one's child to a passer-by,
like that. I am right, am I not? Still, I don't say--you are rich; you
have the air of a very good man,--if it were for her happiness. But one
must find out that. You understand: suppose that I were to let her go
and to sacrifice myself, I should like to know what becomes of her; I
should not wish to lose sight of her; I should like to know with whom
she is living, so that I could go to see her from time to time; so that
she may know that her good foster-father is alive, that he is watching
over her. In short, there are things which are not possible. I do not
even know your name. If you were to take her away, I should say: 'Well,
and the Lark, what has become of her?' One must, at least, see some
petty scrap of paper, some trifle in the way of a passport, you know!"
The stranger, still surveying him with that gaze which penetrates, as
the saying goes, to the very depths of the conscience, replied in a
grave, firm voice:--
"Monsieur Thénardier, one does not require a passport to travel five
leagues from Paris. If I take Cosette away, I shall take her away, and
that is the end of the matter. You will not know my name, you will not
know my residence, you will not know where she is; and my intention is
that she shall never set eyes on you again so long as she lives. I break
the thread which binds her foot, and she departs. Does that suit you?
Yes or no?"
Since geniuses, like demons, recognize the presence of a superior God by
certain signs, Thénardier comprehended that he had to deal with a very
strong person. It was like an intuition; he comprehended it with his
clear and sagacious promptitude. While drinking with the carters,
smoking, and singing coarse songs on the preceding evening, he had
devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him
like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He had watched him,
both on his own account, for the pleasure of the thing, and through
instinct, and had spied upon him as though he had been paid for so
doing. Not a movement, not a gesture, on the part of the man in the
yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so
clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thénardier had divined his
purpose. He had caught the old man's deep glances returning constantly
to the child. Who was this man? Why this interest? Why this hideous
costume, when he had so much money in his purse? Questions which he put
to himself without being able to solve them, and which irritated him. He
had pondered it all night long. He could not be Cosette's father. Was he
her grandfather? Then why not make himself known at once? When one has
a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Cosette.
What was it, then? Thénardier lost himself in conjectures. He caught
glimpses of everything, but he saw nothing. Be that as it may, on
entering into conversation with the man, sure that there was some secret
in the case, that the latter had some interest in remaining in the
shadow, he felt himself strong; when he perceived from the stranger's
clear and firm retort, that this mysterious personage was mysterious in
so simple a way, he became conscious that he was weak. He had expected
nothing of the sort. His conjectures were put to the rout. He rallied
his ideas. He weighed everything in the space of a second. Thénardier
was one of those men who take in a situation at a glance. He decided
that the moment had arrived for proceeding straightforward, and quickly
at that. He did as great leaders do at the decisive moment, which they
know that they alone recognize; he abruptly unmasked his batteries.
"Sir," said he, "I am in need of fifteen hundred francs."
The stranger took from his side pocket an old pocketbook of black
leather, opened it, drew out three bank-bills, which he laid on the
table. Then he placed his large thumb on the notes and said to the
inn-keeper:--
"Go and fetch Cosette."
While this was taking place, what had Cosette been doing?
On waking up, Cosette had run to get her shoe. In it she had found the
gold piece. It was not a Napoleon; it was one of those perfectly new
twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on whose effigy the little
Prussian queue had replaced the laurel wreath. Cosette was dazzled. Her
destiny began to intoxicate her. She did not know what a gold piece was;
she had never seen one; she hid it quickly in her pocket, as though
she had stolen it. Still, she felt that it really was hers; she guessed
whence her gift had come, but the joy which she experienced was full of
fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such magnificent and
beautiful things did not appear real. The doll frightened her, the
gold piece frightened her. She trembled vaguely in the presence of this
magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten her. On the contrary,
he reassured her. Ever since the preceding evening, amid all her
amazement, even in her sleep, she had been thinking in her little
childish mind of that man who seemed to be so poor and so sad, and who
was so rich and so kind. Everything had changed for her since she had
met that good man in the forest. Cosette, less happy than the most
insignificant swallow of heaven, had never known what it was to take
refuge under a mother's shadow and under a wing. For the last five
years, that is to say, as far back as her memory ran, the poor child had
shivered and trembled. She had always been exposed completely naked
to the sharp wind of adversity; now it seemed to her she was clothed.
Formerly her soul had seemed cold, now it was warm. Cosette was no
longer afraid of the Thénardier. She was no longer alone; there was some
one there.
She hastily set about her regular morning duties. That louis, which she
had about her, in the very apron pocket whence the fifteen-sou piece had
fallen on the night before, distracted her thoughts. She dared not touch
it, but she spent five minutes in gazing at it, with her tongue hanging
out, if the truth must be told. As she swept the staircase, she paused,
remained standing there motionless, forgetful of her broom and of the
entire universe, occupied in gazing at that star which was blazing at
the bottom of her pocket.
It was during one of these periods of contemplation that the Thénardier
joined her. She had gone in search of Cosette at her husband's orders.
What was quite unprecedented, she neither struck her nor said an
insulting word to her.
"Cosette," she said, almost gently, "come immediately."
An instant later Cosette entered the public room.
The stranger took up the bundle which he had brought and untied it. This
bundle contained a little woollen gown, an apron, a fustian bodice, a
kerchief, a petticoat, woollen stockings, shoes--a complete outfit for a
girl of seven years. All was black.
"My child," said the man, "take these, and go and dress yourself
quickly."
Daylight was appearing when those of the inhabitants of Montfermeil who
had begun to open their doors beheld a poorly clad old man leading a
little girl dressed in mourning, and carrying a pink doll in her arms,
pass along the road to Paris. They were going in the direction of Livry.
It was our man and Cosette.
No one knew the man; as Cosette was no longer in rags, many did not
recognize her. Cosette was going away. With whom? She did not know.
Whither? She knew not. All that she understood was that she was leaving
the Thénardier tavern behind her. No one had thought of bidding her
farewell, nor had she thought of taking leave of any one. She was
leaving that hated and hating house.
Poor, gentle creature, whose heart had been repressed up to that hour!
Cosette walked along gravely, with her large eyes wide open, and gazing
at the sky. She had put her louis in the pocket of her new apron. From
time to time, she bent down and glanced at it; then she looked at the
good man. She felt something as though she were beside the good God.
CHAPTER X--HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION WORSE
Madame Thénardier had allowed her husband to have his own way, as was
her wont. She had expected great results. When the man and Cosette had
taken their departure, Thénardier allowed a full quarter of an hour
to elapse; then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred
francs.
"Is that all?" said she.
It was the first time since they had set up housekeeping that she had
dared to criticise one of the master's acts.
The blow told.
"You are right, in sooth," said he; "I am a fool. Give me my hat."
He folded up the three bank-bills, thrust them into his pocket, and ran
out in all haste; but he made a mistake and turned to the right first.
Some neighbors, of whom he made inquiries, put him on the track again;
the Lark and the man had been seen going in the direction of Livry. He
followed these hints, walking with great strides, and talking to himself
the while:--
"That man is evidently a million dressed in yellow, and I am an animal.
First he gave twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then
fifteen hundred francs, all with equal readiness. He would have given
fifteen thousand francs. But I shall overtake him."
And then, that bundle of clothes prepared beforehand for the child; all
that was singular; many mysteries lay concealed under it. One does not
let mysteries out of one's hand when one has once grasped them. The
secrets of the wealthy are sponges of gold; one must know how to subject
them to pressure. All these thoughts whirled through his brain. "I am an
animal," said he.
When one leaves Montfermeil and reaches the turn which the road takes
that runs to Livry, it can be seen stretching out before one to a great
distance across the plateau. On arriving there, he calculated that he
ought to be able to see the old man and the child. He looked as far as
his vision reached, and saw nothing. He made fresh inquiries, but he had
wasted time. Some passers-by informed him that the man and child of whom
he was in search had gone towards the forest in the direction of Gagny.
He hastened in that direction.
They were far in advance of him; but a child walks slowly, and he walked
fast; and then, he was well acquainted with the country.
All at once he paused and dealt himself a blow on his forehead like a
man who has forgotten some essential point and who is ready to retrace
his steps.
"I ought to have taken my gun," said he to himself.
Thénardier was one of those double natures which sometimes pass through
our midst without our being aware of the fact, and who disappear without
our finding them out, because destiny has only exhibited one side of
them. It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged. In a
calm and even situation, Thénardier possessed all that is required to
make--we will not say to be--what people have agreed to call an honest
trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being
given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface,
he had all the requisites for a blackguard. He was a shopkeeper in
whom there was some taint of the monster. Satan must have occasionally
crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which Thénardier dwelt, and
have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of this hideous masterpiece.
After a momentary hesitation:--
"Bah!" he thought; "they will have time to make their escape."
And he pursued his road, walking rapidly straight ahead, and with almost
an air of certainty, with the sagacity of a fox scenting a covey of
partridges.
In truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique
direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de
Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of
the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of
Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat on
which he had already erected so many conjectures; it was that man's hat.
The brushwood was not high. Thénardier recognized the fact that the man
and Cosette were sitting there. The child could not be seen on account
of her small size, but the head of her doll was visible.
Thénardier was not mistaken. The man was sitting there, and letting
Cosette get somewhat rested. The inn-keeper walked round the brushwood
and presented himself abruptly to the eyes of those whom he was in
search of.
"Pardon, excuse me, sir," he said, quite breathless, "but here are your
fifteen hundred francs."
So saying, he handed the stranger the three bank-bills.
The man raised his eyes.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Thénardier replied respectfully:--
"It means, sir, that I shall take back Cosette."
Cosette shuddered, and pressed close to the old man.
He replied, gazing to the very bottom of Thénardier's eyes the while,
and enunciating every syllable distinctly:--
"You are go-ing to take back Co-sette?"
"Yes, sir, I am. I will tell you; I have considered the matter. In fact,
I have not the right to give her to you. I am an honest man, you see;
this child does not belong to me; she belongs to her mother. It was her
mother who confided her to me; I can only resign her to her mother. You
will say to me, 'But her mother is dead.' Good; in that case I can only
give the child up to the person who shall bring me a writing, signed by
her mother, to the effect that I am to hand the child over to the person
therein mentioned; that is clear."
The man, without making any reply, fumbled in his pocket, and Thénardier
beheld the pocket-book of bank-bills make its appearance once more.
The tavern-keeper shivered with joy.
"Good!" thought he; "let us hold firm; he is going to bribe me!"
Before opening the pocket-book, the traveller cast a glance about him:
the spot was absolutely deserted; there was not a soul either in the
woods or in the valley. The man opened his pocket-book once more and
drew from it, not the handful of bills which Thénardier expected, but a
simple little paper, which he unfolded and presented fully open to the
inn-keeper, saying:--
"You are right; read!"
Thénardier took the paper and read:--
"M. SUR M., March 25, 1823.
"MONSIEUR THÉNARDIER:--
You will deliver Cosette to this person.
You will be paid for all the little things.
I have the honor to salute you with respect,
FANTINE."
"You know that signature?" resumed the man.
It certainly was Fantine's signature; Thénardier recognized it.
There was no reply to make; he experienced two violent vexations, the
vexation of renouncing the bribery which he had hoped for, and the
vexation of being beaten; the man added:--
"You may keep this paper as your receipt."
Thénardier retreated in tolerably good order.
"This signature is fairly well imitated," he growled between his teeth;
"however, let it go!"
Then he essayed a desperate effort.
"It is well, sir," he said, "since you are the person, but I must be
paid for all those little things. A great deal is owing to me."
The man rose to his feet, filliping the dust from his threadbare
sleeve:--
"Monsieur Thénardier, in January last, the mother reckoned that she owed
you one hundred and twenty francs. In February, you sent her a bill of
five hundred francs; you received three hundred francs at the end of
February, and three hundred francs at the beginning of March. Since then
nine months have elapsed, at fifteen francs a month, the price agreed
upon, which makes one hundred and thirty-five francs. You had received
one hundred francs too much; that makes thirty-five still owing you. I
have just given you fifteen hundred francs."
Thénardier's sensations were those of the wolf at the moment when he
feels himself nipped and seized by the steel jaw of the trap.
"Who is this devil of a man?" he thought.
He did what the wolf does: he shook himself. Audacity had succeeded with
him once.
"Monsieur-I-don't-know-your-name," he said resolutely, and this time
casting aside all respectful ceremony, "I shall take back Cosette if you
do not give me a thousand crowns."
The stranger said tranquilly:--
"Come, Cosette."
He took Cosette by his left hand, and with his right he picked up his
cudgel, which was lying on the ground.
Thénardier noted the enormous size of the cudgel and the solitude of the
spot.
The man plunged into the forest with the child, leaving the inn-keeper
motionless and speechless.
While they were walking away, Thénardier scrutinized his huge shoulders,
which were a little rounded, and his great fists.
Then, bringing his eyes back to his own person, they fell upon his
feeble arms and his thin hands. "I really must have been exceedingly
stupid not to have thought to bring my gun," he said to himself, "since
I was going hunting!"
However, the inn-keeper did not give up.
"I want to know where he is going," said he, and he set out to follow
them at a distance. Two things were left on his hands, an irony in the
shape of the paper signed _Fantine_, and a consolation, the fifteen
hundred francs.
The man led Cosette off in the direction of Livry and Bondy. He walked
slowly, with drooping head, in an attitude of reflection and sadness.
The winter had thinned out the forest, so that Thénardier did not lose
them from sight, although he kept at a good distance. The man turned
round from time to time, and looked to see if he was being followed.
All at once he caught sight of Thénardier. He plunged suddenly into
the brushwood with Cosette, where they could both hide themselves. "The
deuce!" said Thénardier, and he redoubled his pace.
The thickness of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When
the man had reached the densest part of the thicket, he wheeled
round. It was in vain that Thénardier sought to conceal himself in the
branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him
an uneasy glance, then elevated his head and continued his course. The
inn-keeper set out again in pursuit. Thus they continued for two or
three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more; he saw
the inn-keeper. This time he gazed at him with so sombre an air that
Thénardier decided that it was "useless" to proceed further. Thénardier
retraced his steps.
CHAPTER XI--NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY
Jean Valjean was not dead.
When he fell into the sea, or rather, when he threw himself into it, he
was not ironed, as we have seen. He swam under water until he reached a
vessel at anchor, to which a boat was moored. He found means of hiding
himself in this boat until night. At night he swam off again, and
reached the shore a little way from Cape Brun. There, as he did not lack
money, he procured clothing. A small country-house in the neighborhood
of Balaguier was at that time the dressing-room of escaped convicts,--a
lucrative specialty. Then Jean Valjean, like all the sorry fugitives
who are seeking to evade the vigilance of the law and social fatality,
pursued an obscure and undulating itinerary. He found his first
refuge at Pradeaux, near Beausset. Then he directed his course towards
Grand-Villard, near Briançon, in the Hautes-Alpes. It was a fumbling and
uneasy flight,--a mole's track, whose branchings are untraceable. Later
on, some trace of his passage into Ain, in the territory of Civrieux,
was discovered; in the Pyrenees, at Accons; at the spot called
Grange-de-Doumec, near the market of Chavailles, and in the environs of
Perigueux at Brunies, canton of La Chapelle-Gonaguet. He reached Paris.
We have just seen him at Montfermeil.
His first care on arriving in Paris had been to buy mourning clothes
for a little girl of from seven to eight years of age; then to procure
a lodging. That done, he had betaken himself to Montfermeil. It will
be remembered that already, during his preceding escape, he had made a
mysterious trip thither, or somewhere in that neighborhood, of which the
law had gathered an inkling.
However, he was thought to be dead, and this still further increased the
obscurity which had gathered about him. At Paris, one of the journals
which chronicled the fact fell into his hands. He felt reassured and
almost at peace, as though he had really been dead.
On the evening of the day when Jean Valjean rescued Cosette from the
claws of the Thénardiers, he returned to Paris. He re-entered it at
nightfall, with the child, by way of the Barrier Monceaux. There
he entered a cabriolet, which took him to the esplanade of the
Observatoire. There he got out, paid the coachman, took Cosette by
the hand, and together they directed their steps through the
darkness,--through the deserted streets which adjoin the Ourcine and the
Glacière, towards the Boulevard de l'Hôpital.
The day had been strange and filled with emotions for Cosette. They
had eaten some bread and cheese purchased in isolated taverns, behind
hedges; they had changed carriages frequently; they had travelled short
distances on foot. She made no complaint, but she was weary, and Jean
Valjean perceived it by the way she dragged more and more on his hand
as she walked. He took her on his back. Cosette, without letting go
of Catherine, laid her head on Jean Valjean's shoulder, and there fell
asleep.
BOOK FOURTH.--THE GORBEAU HOVEL
Enlarge
CHAPTER I--MASTER GORBEAU
Forty years ago, a rambler who had ventured into that unknown country of
the Salpêtrière, and who had mounted to the Barrière d'Italie by way
of the boulevard, reached a point where it might be said that Paris
disappeared. It was no longer solitude, for there were passers-by; it
was not the country, for there were houses and streets; it was not the
city, for the streets had ruts like highways, and the grass grew in
them; it was not a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it,
then? It was an inhabited spot where there was no one; it was a desert
place where there was some one; it was a boulevard of the great city, a
street of Paris; more wild at night than the forest, more gloomy by day
than a cemetery.
It was the old quarter of the Marché-aux-Chevaux.
The rambler, if he risked himself outside the four decrepit walls of
this Marché-aux-Chevaux; if he consented even to pass beyond the Rue du
Petit-Banquier, after leaving on his right a garden protected by high
walls; then a field in which tan-bark mills rose like gigantic beaver
huts; then an enclosure encumbered with timber, with a heap of stumps,
sawdust, and shavings, on which stood a large dog, barking; then a long,
low, utterly dilapidated wall, with a little black door in mourning,
laden with mosses, which were covered with flowers in the spring; then,
in the most deserted spot, a frightful and decrepit building, on which
ran the inscription in large letters: POST NO BILLS,--this daring
rambler would have reached little known latitudes at the corner of the
Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel. There, near a factory, and between two
garden walls, there could be seen, at that epoch, a mean building,
which, at the first glance, seemed as small as a thatched hovel, and
which was, in reality, as large as a cathedral. It presented its side
and gable to the public road; hence its apparent diminutiveness. Nearly
the whole of the house was hidden. Only the door and one window could be
seen.
This hovel was only one story high.
The first detail that struck the observer was, that the door could never
have been anything but the door of a hovel, while the window, if it
had been carved out of dressed stone instead of being in rough masonry,
might have been the lattice of a lordly mansion.
The door was nothing but a collection of worm-eaten planks roughly bound
together by cross-beams which resembled roughly hewn logs. It
opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky,
plaster-stained, dusty steps, of the same width as itself, which
could be seen from the street, running straight up like a ladder and
disappearing in the darkness between two walls. The top of the shapeless
bay into which this door shut was masked by a narrow scantling in the
centre of which a triangular hole had been sawed, which served both as
wicket and air-hole when the door was closed. On the inside of the
door the figures 52 had been traced with a couple of strokes of a brush
dipped in ink, and above the scantling the same hand had daubed the
number 50, so that one hesitated. Where was one? Above the door it said,
"Number 50"; the inside replied, "no, Number 52." No one knows what
dust-colored figures were suspended like draperies from the triangular
opening.
The window was large, sufficiently elevated, garnished with Venetian
blinds, and with a frame in large square panes; only these large panes
were suffering from various wounds, which were both concealed and
betrayed by an ingenious paper bandage. And the blinds, dislocated and
unpasted, threatened passers-by rather than screened the occupants.
The horizontal slats were missing here and there and had been naïvely
replaced with boards nailed on perpendicularly; so that what began as
a blind ended as a shutter. This door with an unclean, and this window
with an honest though dilapidated air, thus beheld on the same house,
produced the effect of two incomplete beggars walking side by side,
with different miens beneath the same rags, the one having always been a
mendicant, and the other having once been a gentleman.
The staircase led to a very vast edifice which resembled a shed which
had been converted into a house. This edifice had, for its intestinal
tube, a long corridor, on which opened to right and left sorts of
compartments of varied dimensions which were inhabitable under stress
of circumstances, and rather more like stalls than cells. These chambers
received their light from the vague waste grounds in the neighborhood.
All this was dark, disagreeable, wan, melancholy, sepulchral; traversed
according as the crevices lay in the roof or in the door, by cold rays
or by icy winds. An interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this sort
of dwelling is the enormous size of the spiders.
To the left of the entrance door, on the boulevard side, at about the
height of a man from the ground, a small window which had been walled up
formed a square niche full of stones which the children had thrown there
as they passed by.
A portion of this building has recently been demolished. From what still
remains of it one can form a judgment as to what it was in former days.
As a whole, it was not over a hundred years old. A hundred years is
youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging
partook of his ephemeral character, and God's house of his eternity.
The postmen called the house Number 50-52; but it was known in the
neighborhood as the Gorbeau house.
Let us explain whence this appellation was derived.
Collectors of petty details, who become herbalists of anecdotes, and
prick slippery dates into their memories with a pin, know that there
was in Paris, during the last century, about 1770, two attorneys at the
Châtelet named, one Corbeau (Raven), the other Renard (Fox). The two
names had been forestalled by La Fontaine. The opportunity was too fine
for the lawyers; they made the most of it. A parody was immediately
put in circulation in the galleries of the court-house, in verses that
limped a little:--
Maître Corbeau, sur un dossier perché,
Tenait dans son bec une saisie exécutoire;
Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché,
Lui fit à peu près cette histoire:
Hé! bonjour. Etc.13
The two honest practitioners, embarrassed by the jests, and finding the
bearing of their heads interfered with by the shouts of laughter which
followed them, resolved to get rid of their names, and hit upon the
expedient of applying to the king.
Their petition was presented to Louis XV. on the same day when the
Papal Nuncio, on the one hand, and the Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon on the
other, both devoutly kneeling, were each engaged in putting on, in his
Majesty's presence, a slipper on the bare feet of Madame du Barry, who
had just got out of bed. The king, who was laughing, continued to laugh,
passed gayly from the two bishops to the two lawyers, and bestowed on
these limbs of the law their former names, or nearly so. By the kings
command, Maître Corbeau was permitted to add a tail to his initial
letter and to call himself Gorbeau. Maître Renard was less lucky; all he
obtained was leave to place a P in front of his R, and to call himself
Prenard; so that the second name bore almost as much resemblance as the
first.
Now, according to local tradition, this Maître Gorbeau had been the
proprietor of the building numbered 50-52 on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital.
He was even the author of the monumental window.
Hence the edifice bore the name of the Gorbeau house.
Opposite this house, among the trees of the boulevard, rose a great elm
which was three-quarters dead; almost directly facing it opens the Rue
de la Barrière des Gobelins, a street then without houses, unpaved,
planted with unhealthy trees, which was green or muddy according to the
season, and which ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris. An odor
of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory.
The barrier was close at hand. In 1823 the city wall was still in
existence.
This barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the mind. It was the
road to Bicêtre. It was through it that, under the Empire and the
Restoration, prisoners condemned to death re-entered Paris on the day
of their execution. It was there, that, about 1829, was committed that
mysterious assassination, called "The assassination of the Fontainebleau
barrier," whose authors justice was never able to discover; a melancholy
problem which has never been elucidated, a frightful enigma which has
never been unriddled. Take a few steps, and you come upon that fatal Rue
Croulebarbe, where Ulbach stabbed the goat-girl of Ivry to the sound of
thunder, as in the melodramas. A few paces more, and you arrive at the
abominable pollarded elms of the Barrière Saint-Jacques, that expedient
of the philanthropist to conceal the scaffold, that miserable and
shameful Place de Grève of a shop-keeping and bourgeois society, which
recoiled before the death penalty, neither daring to abolish it with
grandeur, nor to uphold it with authority.
Leaving aside this Place Saint-Jacques, which was, as it were,
predestined, and which has always been horrible, probably the most
mournful spot on that mournful boulevard, seven and thirty years ago,
was the spot which even to-day is so unattractive, where stood the
building Number 50-52.
Bourgeois houses only began to spring up there twenty-five years later.
The place was unpleasant. In addition to the gloomy thoughts which
assailed one there, one was conscious of being between the Salpêtrière,
a glimpse of whose dome could be seen, and Bicêtre, whose outskirts one
was fairly touching; that is to say, between the madness of women and
the madness of men. As far as the eye could see, one could perceive
nothing but the abattoirs, the city wall, and the fronts of a few
factories, resembling barracks or monasteries; everywhere about stood
hovels, rubbish, ancient walls blackened like cerecloths, new white
walls like winding-sheets; everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings
erected on a line, flat constructions, long, cold rows, and the
melancholy sadness of right angles. Not an unevenness of the ground, not
a caprice in the architecture, not a fold. The _ensemble_ was glacial,
regular, hideous. Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is
because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief.
Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers
may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored. If such a hell
existed, that bit of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital might have formed the
entrance to it.
Nevertheless, at nightfall, at the moment when the daylight is
vanishing, especially in winter, at the hour when the twilight breeze
tears from the elms their last russet leaves, when the darkness is deep
and starless, or when the moon and the wind are making openings in the
clouds and losing themselves in the shadows, this boulevard suddenly
becomes frightful. The black lines sink inwards and are lost in the
shades, like morsels of the infinite. The passer-by cannot refrain from
recalling the innumerable traditions of the place which are connected
with the gibbet. The solitude of this spot, where so many crimes have
been committed, had something terrible about it. One almost had a
presentiment of meeting with traps in that darkness; all the confused
forms of the darkness seemed suspicious, and the long, hollow square, of
which one caught a glimpse between each tree, seemed graves: by day it
was ugly; in the evening melancholy; by night it was sinister.
In summer, at twilight, one saw, here and there, a few old women seated
at the foot of the elm, on benches mouldy with rain. These good old
women were fond of begging.
However, this quarter, which had a superannuated rather than an antique
air, was tending even then to transformation. Even at that time any one
who was desirous of seeing it had to make haste. Each day some detail of
the whole effect was disappearing. For the last twenty years the station
of the Orleans railway has stood beside the old faubourg and distracted
it, as it does to-day. Wherever it is placed on the borders of a
capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a
city. It seems as though, around these great centres of the movements of
a people, the earth, full of germs, trembled and yawned, to engulf the
ancient dwellings of men and to allow new ones to spring forth, at the
rattle of these powerful machines, at the breath of these monstrous
horses of civilization which devour coal and vomit fire. The old houses
crumble and new ones rise.
Since the Orleans railway has invaded the region of the Salpêtrière,
the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin the moats Saint-Victor and the
Jardin des Plantes tremble, as they are violently traversed three or
four times each day by those currents of coach fiacres and omnibuses
which, in a given time, crowd back the houses to the right and the left;
for there are things which are odd when said that are rigorously exact;
and just as it is true to say that in large cities the sun makes the
southern fronts of houses to vegetate and grow, it is certain that the
frequent passage of vehicles enlarges streets. The symptoms of a new
life are evident. In this old provincial quarter, in the wildest nooks,
the pavement shows itself, the sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow
longer, even where there are as yet no pedestrians. One morning,--a
memorable morning in July, 1845,--black pots of bitumen were seen
smoking there; on that day it might be said that civilization had
arrived in the Rue de l'Ourcine, and that Paris had entered the suburb
of Saint-Marceau.
CHAPTER II--A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER
It was in front of this Gorbeau house that Jean Valjean halted. Like
wild birds, he had chosen this desert place to construct his nest.
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a sort of a pass-key,
opened the door, entered, closed it again carefully, and ascended the
staircase, still carrying Cosette.
At the top of the stairs he drew from his pocket another key, with
which he opened another door. The chamber which he entered, and which
he closed again instantly, was a kind of moderately spacious attic,
furnished with a mattress laid on the floor, a table, and several
chairs; a stove in which a fire was burning, and whose embers were
visible, stood in one corner. A lantern on the boulevard cast a vague
light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing-room
with a folding bed; Jean Valjean carried the child to this bed and laid
her down there without waking her.
He struck a match and lighted a candle. All this was prepared beforehand
on the table, and, as he had done on the previous evening, he began
to scrutinize Cosette's face with a gaze full of ecstasy, in which the
expression of kindness and tenderness almost amounted to aberration. The
little girl, with that tranquil confidence which belongs only to extreme
strength and extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with
whom she was, and continued to sleep without knowing where she was.
Jean Valjean bent down and kissed that child's hand.
Nine months before he had kissed the hand of the mother, who had also
just fallen asleep.
The same sad, piercing, religious sentiment filled his heart.
He knelt beside Cosette's bed.
lt was broad daylight, and the child still slept. A wan ray of the
December sun penetrated the window of the attic and lay upon the
ceiling in long threads of light and shade. All at once a heavily laden
carrier's cart, which was passing along the boulevard, shook the frail
bed, like a clap of thunder, and made it quiver from top to bottom.
"Yes, madame!" cried Cosette, waking with a start, "here I am! here I
am!"
And she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half shut with the heaviness
of sleep, extending her arms towards the corner of the wall.
"Ah! mon Dieu, my broom!" said she.
She opened her eyes wide now, and beheld the smiling countenance of Jean
Valjean.
"Ah! so it is true!" said the child. "Good morning, Monsieur."
Children accept joy and happiness instantly and familiarly, being
themselves by nature joy and happiness.
Cosette caught sight of Catherine at the foot of her bed, and took
possession of her, and, as she played, she put a hundred questions to
Jean Valjean. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame Thénardier
very far away? Was she to go back? etc., etc. All at once she exclaimed,
"How pretty it is here!"
It was a frightful hole, but she felt free.
"Must I sweep?" she resumed at last.
"Play!" said Jean Valjean.
The day passed thus. Cosette, without troubling herself to understand
anything, was inexpressibly happy with that doll and that kind man.
CHAPTER III--TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE
On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean was still by
Cosette's bedside; he watched there motionless, waiting for her to wake.
Some new thing had come into his soul.
Jean Valjean had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had been
alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In
the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy.
The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his
sister's children had left him only a vague and far-off memory which
had finally almost completely vanished; he had made every effort to
find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them.
Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his youth, if he
had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.
When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her
off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.
All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that
child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with
joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it
meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to
love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.
Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!
Only, as he was five and fifty, and Cosette eight years of age, all that
might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed together
into a sort of ineffable light.
It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop
had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the
dawn of love to rise.
The early days passed in this dazzled state.
Cosette, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another
being, poor little thing! She was so little when her mother left her,
that she no longer remembered her. Like all children, who resemble young
shoots of the vine, which cling to everything, she had tried to love;
she had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,--the Thénardiers, their
children, other children. She had loved the dog, and he had died, after
which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad
thing to say, and we have already intimated it, that, at eight years of
age, her heart was cold. It was not her fault; it was not the faculty
of loving that she lacked; alas! it was the possibility. Thus, from the
very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers loved this kind
man. She felt that which she had never felt before--a sensation of
expansion.
The man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor; she
thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty.
These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty of
the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is so charming
as the coloring reflection of happiness on a garret. We all have in our
past a delightful garret.
Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between
Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly
united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted
existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, completed
the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean's
instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the
mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together.
When these two souls perceived each other, they recognized each other as
necessary to each other, and embraced each other closely.
Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we
may say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Jean
Valjean was the widower, and Cosette was the orphan: this situation
caused Jean Valjean to become Cosette's father after a celestial
fashion.
And in truth, the mysterious impression produced on Cosette in the
depths of the forest of Chelles by the hand of Jean Valjean grasping
hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of
that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God.
Moreover, Jean Valjean had chosen his refuge well. There he seemed
perfectly secure.
The chamber with a dressing-room, which he occupied with Cosette, was
the one whose window opened on the boulevard. This being the only window
in the house, no neighbors' glances were to be feared from across the
way or at the side.
The ground-floor of Number 50-52, a sort of dilapidated penthouse,
served as a wagon-house for market-gardeners, and no communication
existed between it and the first story. It was separated by the
flooring, which had neither traps nor stairs, and which formed the
diaphragm of the building, as it were. The first story contained, as we
have said, numerous chambers and several attics, only one of which
was occupied by the old woman who took charge of Jean Valjean's
housekeeping; all the rest was uninhabited.
It was this old woman, ornamented with the name of the _principal
lodger_, and in reality intrusted with the functions of portress, who
had let him the lodging on Christmas eve. He had represented himself to
her as a gentleman of means who had been ruined by Spanish bonds, who
was coming there to live with his little daughter. He had paid her six
months in advance, and had commissioned the old woman to furnish the
chamber and dressing-room, as we have seen. It was this good woman
who had lighted the fire in the stove, and prepared everything on the
evening of their arrival.
Week followed week; these two beings led a happy life in that hovel.
Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have their
morning song as well as birds.
It sometimes happened that Jean Valjean clasped her tiny red hand, all
cracked with chilblains, and kissed it. The poor child, who was used
to being beaten, did not know the meaning of this, and ran away in
confusion.
At times she became serious and stared at her little black gown. Cosette
was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She had emerged from misery,
and she was entering into life.
Jean Valjean had undertaken to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he made
the child spell, he remembered that it was with the idea of doing evil
that he had learned to read in prison. This idea had ended in teaching a
child to read. Then the ex-convict smiled with the pensive smile of the
angels.
He felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one who
was not man, and he became absorbed in revery. Good thoughts have their
abysses as well as evil ones.
To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, this constituted nearly
the whole of Jean Valjean's existence. And then he talked of her mother,
and he made her pray.
She called him _father_, and knew no other name for him.
He passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and in
listening to her prattle. Life, henceforth, appeared to him to be full
of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached
any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live to be a very
old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching
out before him, illuminated by Cosette as by a charming light. The best
of us are not exempt from egotistical thoughts. At times, he reflected
with a sort of joy that she would be ugly.
This is only a personal opinion; but, to utter our whole thought, at the
point where Jean Valjean had arrived when he began to love Cosette, it
is by no means clear to us that he did not need this encouragement in
order that he might persevere in well-doing. He had just viewed the
malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect--incomplete
aspects, which unfortunately only exhibited one side of the truth,
the fate of woman as summed up in Fantine, and public authority as
personified in Javert. He had returned to prison, this time for having
done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness; disgust and lassitude were
overpowering him; even the memory of the Bishop probably suffered
a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on luminous and
triumphant; but, after all, that sacred memory was growing dim.
Who knows whether Jean Valjean had not been on the eve of growing
discouraged and of falling once more? He loved and grew strong again.
Alas! he walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her,
and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life;
thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child's stay,
and she was his prop. Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the
balances of destiny!
CHAPTER IV--THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT
Jean Valjean was prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening,
at twilight, he walked for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with
Cosette, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the boulevard, and
entering churches at nightfall. He liked to go to Saint-Médard, which is
the nearest church. When he did not take Cosette with him, she remained
with the old woman; but the child's delight was to go out with the good
man. She preferred an hour with him to all her rapturous _tête-à-têtes_
with Catherine. He held her hand as they walked, and said sweet things
to her.
It turned out that Cosette was a very gay little person.
The old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to
market.
They lived soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in
very moderate circumstances. Jean Valjean had made no alterations in
the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door
leading to Cosette's dressing-room replaced by a solid door.
He still wore his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat.
In the street, he was taken for a poor man. It sometimes happened that
kind-hearted women turned back to bestow a sou on him. Jean Valjean
accepted the sou with a deep bow. It also happened occasionally that he
encountered some poor wretch asking alms; then he looked behind him
to make sure that no one was observing him, stealthily approached the
unfortunate man, put a piece of money into his hand, often a silver
coin, and walked rapidly away. This had its disadvantages. He began to
be known in the neighborhood under the name of _the beggar who gives
alms_.
The old _principal lodger_, a cross-looking creature, who was
thoroughly permeated, so far as her neighbors were concerned, with the
inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinized Jean Valjean
a great deal, without his suspecting the fact. She was a little deaf,
which rendered her talkative. There remained to her from her past, two
teeth,--one above, the other below,--which she was continually knocking
against each other. She had questioned Cosette, who had not been able
to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had
come from Montfermeil. One morning, this spy saw Jean Valjean, with
an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the
uninhabited compartments of the hovel. She followed him with the step
of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through a
crack in the door, which was directly opposite him. Jean Valjean had his
back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no doubt. The
old woman saw him fumble in his pocket and draw thence a case, scissors,
and thread; then he began to rip the lining of one of the skirts of his
coat, and from the opening he took a bit of yellowish paper, which he
unfolded. The old woman recognized, with terror, the fact that it was
a bank-bill for a thousand francs. It was the second or third only that
she had seen in the course of her existence. She fled in alarm.
A moment later, Jean Valjean accosted her, and asked her to go and
get this thousand-franc bill changed for him, adding that it was his
quarterly income, which he had received the day before. "Where?" thought
the old woman. "He did not go out until six o'clock in the evening, and
the government bank certainly is not open at that hour." The old
woman went to get the bill changed, and mentioned her surmises. That
thousand-franc note, commented on and multiplied, produced a vast
amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the Rue des Vignes
Saint-Marcel.
A few days later, it chanced that Jean Valjean was sawing some wood, in
his shirt-sleeves, in the corridor. The old woman was in the chamber,
putting things in order. She was alone. Cosette was occupied in admiring
the wood as it was sawed. The old woman caught sight of the coat hanging
on a nail, and examined it. The lining had been sewed up again. The good
woman felt of it carefully, and thought she observed in the skirts and
revers thicknesses of paper. More thousand-franc bank-bills, no doubt!
She also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets.
Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she had seen, but a big
pocket-book, a very large knife, and--a suspicious circumstance--several
wigs of various colors. Each pocket of this coat had the air of being in
a manner provided against unexpected accidents.
Thus the inhabitants of the house reached the last days of winter.
CHAPTER V--A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT
Near Saint-Médard's church there was a poor man who was in the habit of
crouching on the brink of a public well which had been condemned, and
on whom Jean Valjean was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed this
man without giving him a few sous. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who
envied this mendicant said that he belonged to the police. He was an
ex-beadle of seventy-five, who was constantly mumbling his prayers.
One evening, as Jean Valjean was passing by, when he had not Cosette
with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern
which had just been lighted. The man seemed engaged in prayer, according
to his custom, and was much bent over. Jean Valjean stepped up to him
and placed his customary alms in his hand. The mendicant raised his
eyes suddenly, stared intently at Jean Valjean, then dropped his head
quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean Valjean was
seized with a shudder. It seemed to him that he had just caught sight,
by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and beaming
visage of the old beadle, but of a well-known and startling face. He
experienced the same impression that one would have on finding one's
self, all of a sudden, face to face, in the dark, with a tiger. He
recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak,
to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head,
which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he
was there. At this strange moment, an instinct--possibly the mysterious
instinct of self-preservation,--restrained Jean Valjean from uttering a
word. The beggar had the same figure, the same rags, the same appearance
as he had every day. "Bah!" said Jean Valjean, "I am mad! I am dreaming!
Impossible!" And he returned profoundly troubled.
He hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he
thought he had seen was the face of Javert.
That night, on thinking the matter over, he regretted not having
questioned the man, in order to force him to raise his head a second
time.
On the following day, at nightfall, he went back. The beggar was at his
post. "Good day, my good man," said Jean Valjean, resolutely, handing
him a sou. The beggar raised his head, and replied in a whining voice,
"Thanks, my good sir." It was unmistakably the ex-beadle.
Jean Valjean felt completely reassured. He began to laugh. "How the
deuce could I have thought that I saw Javert there?" he thought. "Am I
going to lose my eyesight now?" And he thought no more about it.
A few days afterwards,--it might have been at eight o'clock in the
evening,--he was in his room, and engaged in making Cosette spell aloud,
when he heard the house door open and then shut again. This struck him
as singular. The old woman, who was the only inhabitant of the house
except himself, always went to bed at nightfall, so that she might not
burn out her candles. Jean Valjean made a sign to Cosette to be quiet.
He heard some one ascending the stairs. It might possibly be the old
woman, who might have fallen ill and have been out to the apothecary's.
Jean Valjean listened.
The step was heavy, and sounded like that of a man; but the old woman
wore stout shoes, and there is nothing which so strongly resembles the
step of a man as that of an old woman. Nevertheless, Jean Valjean blew
out his candle.
He had sent Cosette to bed, saying to her in a low voice, "Get into bed
very softly"; and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused.
Jean Valjean remained silent, motionless, with his back towards the
door, seated on the chair from which he had not stirred, and holding his
breath in the dark.
After the expiration of a rather long interval, he turned round, as he
heard nothing more, and, as he raised his eyes towards the door of his
chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort
of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was
evidently some one there, who was holding a candle in his hand and
listening.
Several minutes elapsed thus, and the light retreated. But he heard no
sound of footsteps, which seemed to indicate that the person who had
been listening at the door had removed his shoes.
Jean Valjean threw himself, all dressed as he was, on his bed, and could
not close his eyes all night.
At daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was
awakened by the creaking of a door which opened on some attic at the
end of the corridor, then he heard the same masculine footstep which had
ascended the stairs on the preceding evening. The step was approaching.
He sprang off the bed and applied his eye to the keyhole, which was
tolerably large, hoping to see the person who had made his way by night
into the house and had listened at his door, as he passed. It was a
man, in fact, who passed, this time without pausing, in front of Jean
Valjean's chamber. The corridor was too dark to allow of the person's
face being distinguished; but when the man reached the staircase, a
ray of light from without made it stand out like a silhouette, and Jean
Valjean had a complete view of his back. The man was of lofty stature,
clad in a long frock-coat, with a cudgel under his arm. The formidable
neck and shoulders belonged to Javert.
Jean Valjean might have attempted to catch another glimpse of him
through his window opening on the boulevard, but he would have been
obliged to open the window: he dared not.
It was evident that this man had entered with a key, and like himself.
Who had given him that key? What was the meaning of this?
When the old woman came to do the work, at seven o'clock in the morning,
Jean Valjean cast a penetrating glance on her, but he did not question
her. The good woman appeared as usual.
As she swept up she remarked to him:--
"Possibly Monsieur may have heard some one come in last night?"
At that age, and on that boulevard, eight o'clock in the evening was the
dead of the night.
"That is true, by the way," he replied, in the most natural tone
possible. "Who was it?"
"It was a new lodger who has come into the house," said the old woman.
"And what is his name?"
"I don't know exactly; Dumont, or Daumont, or some name of that sort."
"And who is this Monsieur Dumont?"
The old woman gazed at him with her little polecat eyes, and answered:--
"A gentleman of property, like yourself."
Perhaps she had no ulterior meaning. Jean Valjean thought he perceived
one.
When the old woman had taken her departure, he did up a hundred francs
which he had in a cupboard, into a roll, and put it in his pocket. In
spite of all the precautions which he took in this operation so that he
might not be heard rattling silver, a hundred-sou piece escaped from his
hands and rolled noisily on the floor.
When darkness came on, he descended and carefully scrutinized both sides
of the boulevard. He saw no one. The boulevard appeared to be absolutely
deserted. It is true that a person can conceal himself behind trees.
He went upstairs again.
"Come." he said to Cosette.
He took her by the hand, and they both went out.
BOOK FIFTH.--FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
CHAPTER I--THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY
An observation here becomes necessary, in view of the pages which the
reader is about to peruse, and of others which will be met with further
on.
The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning
himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been
transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after
a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves
Paris: Paris is his mind's natal city. In consequence of demolitions and
reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away
religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must
be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is
possible that when the author conducts his readers to a spot and says,
"In such a street there stands such and such a house," neither street
nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify
the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part, he is
unacquainted with the new Paris, and he writes with the old Paris before
his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him
to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he
beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished.
So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those
streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows,
those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that those walls are
strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered
haphazard; that those houses, which you do not enter, are useless to
you; that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on,
when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to
you; that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls are
necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered
those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left
a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements.
All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never
behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on
a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an
apparition, make the holy land visible to you, and are, so to speak,
the very form of France, and you love them; and you call them up as they
are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no
change: for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the
face of your mother.
May we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the present? That
said, we beg the reader to take note of it, and we continue.
Jean Valjean instantly quitted the boulevard and plunged into the
streets, taking the most intricate lines which he could devise,
returning on his track at times, to make sure that he was not being
followed.
Enlarge
This manouvre is peculiar to the hunted stag. On soil where an
imprint of the track may be left, this manouvre possesses, among other
advantages, that of deceiving the huntsmen and the dogs, by throwing
them on the wrong scent. In venery this is called _false re-imbushment_.
The moon was full that night. Jean Valjean was not sorry for this. The
moon, still very close to the horizon, cast great masses of light and
shadow in the streets. Jean Valjean could glide along close to the
houses on the dark side, and yet keep watch on the light side. He did
not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the
dark side escaped him. Still, in the deserted lanes which lie near the
Rue Poliveau, he thought he felt certain that no one was following him.
Cosette walked on without asking any questions. The sufferings of the
first six years of her life had instilled something passive into her
nature. Moreover,--and this is a remark to which we shall frequently
have occasion to recur,--she had grown used, without being herself
aware of it, to the peculiarities of this good man and to the freaks of
destiny. And then she was with him, and she felt safe.
Jean Valjean knew no more where he was going than did Cosette. He
trusted in God, as she trusted in him. It seemed as though he also were
clinging to the hand of some one greater than himself; he thought he
felt a being leading him, though invisible. However, he had no settled
idea, no plan, no project. He was not even absolutely sure that it was
Javert, and then it might have been Javert, without Javert knowing that
he was Jean Valjean. Was not he disguised? Was not he believed to be
dead? Still, queer things had been going on for several days. He wanted
no more of them. He was determined not to return to the Gorbeau house.
Like the wild animal chased from its lair, he was seeking a hole in
which he might hide until he could find one where he might dwell.
Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard
quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the
Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed; he combined in
various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier and the Rue
Copeau, the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l'Ermite.
There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter
one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one
had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it.
As eleven o'clock struck from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, he was traversing
the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police,
situated at No. 14. A few moments later, the instinct of which we have
spoken above made him turn round. At that moment he saw distinctly,
thanks to the commissary's lantern, which betrayed them, three men
who were following him closely, pass, one after the other, under that
lantern, on the dark side of the street. One of the three entered the
alley leading to the commissary's house. The one who marched at their
head struck him as decidedly suspicious.
"Come, child," he said to Cosette; and he made haste to quit the Rue
Pontoise.
He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was
closed on account of the hour, strode along the Rue de l'Épée-de-Bois
and the Rue de l'Arbalète, and plunged into the Rue des Postes.
At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of
streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue
Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève turns off.
It is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is an
old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des
Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes
was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots.
The moon cast a livid light into this open space. Jean Valjean went into
ambush in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following
him, he could not fail to get a good look at them, as they traversed
this illuminated space.
In point of fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men made their
appearance. There were four of them now. All were tall, dressed in long,
brown coats, with round hats, and huge cudgels in their hands. Their
great stature and their vast fists rendered them no less alarming
than did their sinister stride through the darkness. One would have
pronounced them four spectres disguised as bourgeois.
They halted in the middle of the space and formed a group, like men in
consultation. They had an air of indecision. The one who appeared to be
their leader turned round and pointed hastily with his right hand in the
direction which Jean Valjean had taken; another seemed to indicate the
contrary direction with considerable obstinacy. At the moment when the
first man wheeled round, the moon fell full in his face. Jean Valjean
recognized Javert perfectly.
CHAPTER II--IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D'AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES
Uncertainty was at an end for Jean Valjean: fortunately it still lasted
for the men. He took advantage of their hesitation. It was time lost for
them, but gained for him. He slipped from under the gate where he had
concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes, towards the region
of the Jardin des Plantes. Cosette was beginning to be tired. He took
her in his arms and carried her. There were no passers-by, and the
street lanterns had not been lighted on account of there being a moon.
He redoubled his pace.
In a few strides he had reached the Goblet potteries, on the front
of which the moonlight rendered distinctly legible the ancient
inscription:--
De Goblet fils c'est ici la fabrique;
Venez choisir des cruches et des brocs,
Des pots à fleurs, des tuyaux, de la brique.
A tout venant le Cour vend des Carreaux.14
He left behind him the Rue de la Clef, then the Fountain Saint-Victor,
skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the
quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were
deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath.
He gained the Pont d'Austerlitz.
Tolls were still collected there at that epoch.
He presented himself at the toll office and handed over a sou.
"It is two sous," said the old soldier in charge of the bridge. "You are
carrying a child who can walk. Pay for two."
He paid, vexed that his passage should have aroused remark. Every flight
should be an imperceptible slipping away.
A heavy cart was crossing the Seine at the same time as himself, and on
its way, like him, to the right bank. This was of use to him. He could
traverse the bridge in the shadow of the cart.
Towards the middle of the Bridge, Cosette, whose feet were benumbed,
wanted to walk. He set her on the ground and took her hand again.
The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right. He
directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to
risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and illuminated space.
He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the
scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted,
yes; followed, no.
A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out
between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and
narrow and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it he cast a
glance behind him.
From the point where he stood he could see the whole extent of the Pont
d'Austerlitz.
Four shadows were just entering on the bridge.
These shadows had their backs turned to the Jardin des Plantes and were
on their way to the right bank.
These four shadows were the four men.
Jean Valjean shuddered like the wild beast which is recaptured.
One hope remained to him; it was, that the men had not, perhaps, stepped
on the bridge, and had not caught sight of him while he was crossing the
large illuminated space, holding Cosette by the hand.
In that case, by plunging into the little street before him, he
might escape, if he could reach the timber-yards, the marshes, the
market-gardens, the uninhabited ground which was not built upon.
It seemed to him that he might commit himself to that silent little
street. He entered it.
CHAPTER III--TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727
Three hundred paces further on, he arrived at a point where the street
forked. It separated into two streets, which ran in a slanting line, one
to the right, and the other to the left.
Jean Valjean had before him what resembled the two branches of a Y.
Which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the one on the
right.
Why?
Because that to the left ran towards a suburb, that is to say, towards
inhabited regions, and the right branch towards the open country, that
is to say, towards deserted regions.
However, they no longer walked very fast. Cosette's pace retarded Jean
Valjean's.
He took her up and carried her again. Cosette laid her head on the
shoulder of the good man and said not a word.
He turned round from time to time and looked behind him. He took care to
keep always on the dark side of the street. The street was straight
in his rear. The first two or three times that he turned round he saw
nothing; the silence was profound, and he continued his march somewhat
reassured. All at once, on turning round, he thought he perceived in the
portion of the street which he had just passed through, far off in the
obscurity, something which was moving.
He rushed forward precipitately rather than walked, hoping to find some
side-street, to make his escape through it, and thus to break his scent
once more.
He arrived at a wall.
This wall, however, did not absolutely prevent further progress; it was
a wall which bordered a transverse street, in which the one he had taken
ended.
Here again, he was obliged to come to a decision; should he go to the
right or to the left.
He glanced to the right. The fragmentary lane was prolonged between
buildings which were either sheds or barns, then ended at a blind alley.
The extremity of the cul-de-sac was distinctly visible,--a lofty white
wall.
He glanced to the left. On that side the lane was open, and about
two hundred paces further on, ran into a street of which it was the
affluent. On that side lay safety.
At the moment when Jean Valjean was meditating a turn to the left, in
an effort to reach the street which he saw at the end of the lane, he
perceived a sort of motionless, black statue at the corner of the lane
and the street towards which he was on the point of directing his steps.
It was some one, a man, who had evidently just been posted there, and
who was barring the passage and waiting.
Jean Valjean recoiled.
The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Râpée, is one of those which recent
improvements have transformed from top to bottom,--resulting in
disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to
others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings
have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas,
circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there;
progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote.
Half a century ago, in that ordinary, popular tongue, which is all
compounded of traditions, which persists in calling the Institut _les
Quatre-Nations_, and the Opera-Comique _Feydeau_, the precise spot
whither Jean Valjean had arrived was called _le Petit Picpus_. The
Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the
Porcherons, la Galiote, les Célestins, les Capucins, le Mail, la Bourbe,
l'Arbre de Cracovie, la Petite-Pologne--these are the names of old Paris
which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace hovers over these
relics of the past.
Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and
never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish
aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets
were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets,
of which we shall presently speak, all was wall and solitude there. Not
a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a candle lighted here and there in the
windows; all lights extinguished after ten o'clock. Gardens, convents,
timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as
high as the houses.
Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed
it soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it.
Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter
was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day,
it has been utterly blotted out. The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing
plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness
in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue
Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre; and at Lyons, by Jean Girin,
Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence. Petit-Picpus had, as we have
just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du
Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on
the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of
the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex
as by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended
there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir
market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue
Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a
right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a
truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was
called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot.
It was here that Jean Valjean stood.
As we have just said, on catching sight of that black silhouette
standing on guard at the angle of the Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue
Petit-Picpus, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom
was lying in wait for him.
What was he to do?
The time for retreating was passed. That which he had perceived in
movement an instant before, in the distant darkness, was Javert and his
squad without a doubt. Javert was probably already at the commencement
of the street at whose end Jean Valjean stood. Javert, to all
appearances, was acquainted with this little labyrinth, and had taken
his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the exit. These
surmises, which so closely resembled proofs, whirled suddenly, like a
handful of dust caught up by an unexpected gust of wind, through Jean
Valjean's mournful brain. He examined the Cul-de-Sac Genrot; there he
was cut off. He examined the Rue Petit-Picpus; there stood a sentinel.
He saw that black form standing out in relief against the white
pavement, illuminated by the moon; to advance was to fall into this
man's hands; to retreat was to fling himself into Javert's arms. Jean
Valjean felt himself caught, as in a net, which was slowly contracting;
he gazed heavenward in despair.
CHAPTER IV--THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT
In order to understand what follows, it is requisite to form an exact
idea of the Droit-Mur lane, and, in particular, of the angle which one
leaves on the left when one emerges from the Rue Polonceau into this
lane. Droit-Mur lane was almost entirely bordered on the right, as far
as the Rue Petit-Picpus, by houses of mean aspect; on the left by a
solitary building of severe outlines, composed of numerous parts which
grew gradually higher by a story or two as they approached the Rue
Petit-Picpus side; so that this building, which was very lofty on the
Rue Petit-Picpus side, was tolerably low on the side adjoining the Rue
Polonceau. There, at the angle of which we have spoken, it descended to
such a degree that it consisted of merely a wall. This wall did not abut
directly on the street; it formed a deeply retreating niche, concealed
by its two corners from two observers who might have been, one in the
Rue Polonceau, the other in the Rue Droit-Mur.
Beginning with these angles of the niche, the wall extended along the
Rue Polonceau as far as a house which bore the number 49, and along the
Rue Droit-Mur, where the fragment was much shorter, as far as the gloomy
building which we have mentioned and whose gable it intersected, thus
forming another retreating angle in the street. This gable was sombre
of aspect; only one window was visible, or, to speak more correctly, two
shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept constantly closed.
The state of the places of which we are here giving a description is
rigorously exact, and will certainly awaken a very precise memory in the
mind of old inhabitants of the quarter.
The niche was entirely filled by a thing which resembled a colossal
and wretched door; it was a vast, formless assemblage of perpendicular
planks, the upper ones being broader than the lower, bound together by
long transverse strips of iron. At one side there was a carriage gate of
the ordinary dimensions, and which had evidently not been cut more than
fifty years previously.
A linden-tree showed its crest above the niche, and the wall was covered
with ivy on the side of the Rue Polonceau.
In the imminent peril in which Jean Valjean found himself, this sombre
building had about it a solitary and uninhabited look which tempted him.
He ran his eyes rapidly over it; he said to himself, that if he could
contrive to get inside it, he might save himself. First he conceived an
idea, then a hope.
In the central portion of the front of this building, on the Rue
Droit-Mur side, there were at all the windows of the different stories
ancient cistern pipes of lead. The various branches of the pipes which
led from one central pipe to all these little basins sketched out a sort
of tree on the front. These ramifications of pipes with their hundred
elbows imitated those old leafless vine-stocks which writhe over the
fronts of old farm-houses.
This odd espalier, with its branches of lead and iron, was the first
thing that struck Jean Valjean. He seated Cosette with her back against
a stone post, with an injunction to be silent, and ran to the spot where
the conduit touched the pavement. Perhaps there was some way of climbing
up by it and entering the house. But the pipe was dilapidated and past
service, and hardly hung to its fastenings. Moreover, all the windows
of this silent dwelling were grated with heavy iron bars, even the attic
windows in the roof. And then, the moon fell full upon that façade, and
the man who was watching at the corner of the street would have seen
Jean Valjean in the act of climbing. And finally, what was to be done
with Cosette? How was she to be drawn up to the top of a three-story
house?
He gave up all idea of climbing by means of the drain-pipe, and crawled
along the wall to get back into the Rue Polonceau.
When he reached the slant of the wall where he had left Cosette, he
noticed that no one could see him there. As we have just explained, he
was concealed from all eyes, no matter from which direction they were
approaching; besides this, he was in the shadow. Finally, there were
two doors; perhaps they might be forced. The wall above which he saw the
linden-tree and the ivy evidently abutted on a garden where he could, at
least, hide himself, although there were as yet no leaves on the trees,
and spend the remainder of the night.
Time was passing; he must act quickly.
He felt over the carriage door, and immediately recognized the fact that
it was impracticable outside and in.
He approached the other door with more hope; it was frightfully
decrepit; its very immensity rendered it less solid; the planks were
rotten; the iron bands--there were only three of them--were rusted. It
seemed as though it might be possible to pierce this worm-eaten barrier.
On examining it he found that the door was not a door; it had neither
hinges, cross-bars, lock, nor fissure in the middle; the iron bands
traversed it from side to side without any break. Through the crevices
in the planks he caught a view of unhewn slabs and blocks of stone
roughly cemented together, which passers-by might still have seen there
ten years ago. He was forced to acknowledge with consternation that this
apparent door was simply the wooden decoration of a building against
which it was placed. It was easy to tear off a plank; but then, one
found one's self face to face with a wall.
CHAPTER V--WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS
At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at some
distance. Jean Valjean risked a glance round the corner of the street.
Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in a platoon, had just debouched
into the Rue Polonceau. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were
advancing towards him; these soldiers, at whose head he distinguished
Javert's tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They halted
frequently; it was plain that they were searching all the nooks of the
walls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys.
This was some patrol that Javert had encountered--there could be no
mistake as to this surmise--and whose aid he had demanded.
Javert's two acolytes were marching in their ranks.
At the rate at which they were marching, and in consideration of the
halts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter of
an hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean stood. It was a frightful
moment. A few minutes only separated Jean Valjean from that terrible
precipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleys
now meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever; that is
to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.
There was but one thing which was possible.
Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say,
two beggar's pouches: in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the other
the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or the
other, according to circumstances.
Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the
prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in the
incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheer
muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his
hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the
stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if need
be; an art which has rendered so celebrated and so alarming that corner
of the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which Battemolle, condemned
to death, made his escape twenty years ago.
Jean Valjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he espied the
linden; it was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formed
with the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower extremity,
by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably intended to
preserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of those dirty
creatures called the passers-by. This practice of filling up corners of
the wall is much in use in Paris.
This mass was about five feet in height; the space above the summit of
this mass which it was necessary to climb was not more than fourteen
feet.
The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping.
Cosette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall.
Should he abandon her? Jean Valjean did not once think of that. It
was impossible to carry her. A man's whole strength is required to
successfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would
disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards.
A rope would have been required; Jean Valjean had none. Where was he to
get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean Valjean
had had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that moment.
All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes
dazzle, sometimes illuminate us.
Jean Valjean's despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the
blind alley Genrot.
At that epoch there were no gas-jets in the streets of Paris. At
nightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted; they were
ascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the street
from side to side, and was adjusted in a groove of the post. The pulley
over which this rope ran was fastened underneath the lantern in a little
iron box, the key to which was kept by the lamp-lighter, and the rope
itself was protected by a metal case.
Jean Valjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the street
at one bound, entered the blind alley, broke the latch of the little box
with the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside Cosette
once more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedients work
rapidly when they are fighting against fatality.
We have already explained that the lanterns had not been lighted that
night. The lantern in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot was thus naturally extinct,
like the rest; and one could pass directly under it without even
noticing that it was no longer in its place.
Nevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Valjean's
absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all had begun
to render Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent
to loud shrieks long before. She contented herself with plucking Jean
Valjean by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the sound of the
patrol's approach ever more and more distinctly.
"Father," said she, in a very low voice, "I am afraid. Who is coming
yonder?"
"Hush!" replied the unhappy man; "it is Madame Thénardier."
Cosette shuddered. He added:--
"Say nothing. Don't interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the
Thénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back."
Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm
and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and
Javert might come upon him at any moment, he undid his cravat, passed it
round Cosette's body under the armpits, taking care that it should not
hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by means of
that knot which seafaring men call a "swallow knot," took the other end
of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, which
he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began
to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much
solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his
feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting on
his knees on the wall.
Cosette gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Jean
Valjean's injunction, and the name of Madame Thénardier, had chilled her
blood.
All at once she heard Jean Valjean's voice crying to her, though in a
very low tone:--
"Put your back against the wall."
She obeyed.
"Don't say a word, and don't be alarmed," went on Jean Valjean.
And she felt herself lifted from the ground.
Before she had time to recover herself, she was on the top of the wall.
Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands
in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along
on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood
a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and
descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle
slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall
was much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean could
only see the ground at a great depth below him.
He had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left the
crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the
patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:--
"Search the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the Rue
Petit-Picpus. I'll answer for it that he is in the blind alley."
The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.
Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast
to Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whether
from terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a sound, though her
hands were a little abraded.
CHAPTER VI--THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA
Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast and
of singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens which seem made to
be looked at in winter and at night. This garden was oblong in shape,
with an alley of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall forest
trees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre, where could
be seen a very large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees, gnarled
and bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whose
glass frames sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and
there stood stone benches which seemed black with moss. The alleys were
bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half
taken possession of them, and a green mould covered the rest.
Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him as
a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind the fagots, directly
against the wall, a stone statue, whose mutilated face was no longer
anything more than a shapeless mask which loomed vaguely through the
gloom.
The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers were
distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to serve as a
shed.
The large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing on the Rue
Petit-Picpus, turned two façades, at right angles, towards this garden.
These interior façades were even more tragic than the exterior. All
the windows were grated. Not a gleam of light was visible at any one of
them. The upper story had scuttles like prisons. One of those façades
cast its shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immense
black pall.
No other house was visible. The bottom of the garden was lost in mist
and darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out, which
intersected as though there were more cultivated land beyond, and the
low roofs of the Rue Polonceau.
Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined. There
was no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the hour; but it
did not seem as though this spot were made for any one to walk in, even
in broad daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care had been to get hold of his shoes and put them
on again, then to step under the shed with Cosette. A man who is fleeing
never thinks himself sufficiently hidden. The child, whose thoughts were
still on the Thénardier, shared his instinct for withdrawing from sight
as much as possible.
Cosette trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the tumultuous
noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets; the blows
of their gun-stocks against the stones; Javert's appeals to the police
spies whom he had posted, and his imprecations mingled with words which
could not be distinguished.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though that
species of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Jean Valjean held his
breath.
He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth.
However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm, that this
frightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not disturb him by so
much as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed as though those walls had
been built of the deaf stones of which the Scriptures speak.
All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a
sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been
horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst
of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night;
women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure
accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,--voices which
are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant
still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded
from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment
when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of
angels was approaching through the gloom.
Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.
They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of
them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that
they must kneel.
These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent
the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in
an uninhabited house.
While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no
longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he
felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.
The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could
not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.
All fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the street;
there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced, that which had
reassured him,--all had vanished. The breeze swayed a few dry weeds
on the crest of the wall, and they gave out a faint, sweet, melancholy
sound.
CHAPTER VII--CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA
The night wind had risen, which indicated that it must be between one
and two o'clock in the morning. Poor Cosette said nothing. As she had
seated herself beside him and leaned her head against him, Jean Valjean
had fancied that she was asleep. He bent down and looked at her.
Cosette's eyes were wide open, and her thoughtful air pained Jean
Valjean.
She was still trembling.
"Are you sleepy?" said Jean Valjean.
"I am very cold," she replied.
A moment later she resumed:--
"Is she still there?"
"Who?" said Jean Valjean.
"Madame Thénardier."
Jean Valjean had already forgotten the means which he had employed to
make Cosette keep silent.
"Ah!" said he, "she is gone. You need fear nothing further."
The child sighed as though a load had been lifted from her breast.
The ground was damp, the shed open on all sides, the breeze grew more
keen every instant. The goodman took off his coat and wrapped it round
Cosette.
"Are you less cold now?" said he.
"Oh, yes, father."
"Well, wait for me a moment. I will soon be back."
He quitted the ruin and crept along the large building, seeking a better
shelter. He came across doors, but they were closed. There were bars at
all the windows of the ground floor.
Just after he had turned the inner angle of the edifice, he observed
that he was coming to some arched windows, where he perceived a light.
He stood on tiptoe and peeped through one of these windows. They all
opened on a tolerably vast hall, paved with large flagstones, cut up
by arcades and pillars, where only a tiny light and great shadows were
visible. The light came from a taper which was burning in one
corner. The apartment was deserted, and nothing was stirring in it.
Nevertheless, by dint of gazing intently he thought he perceived on the
ground something which appeared to be covered with a winding-sheet, and
which resembled a human form. This form was lying face downward, flat
on the pavement, with the arms extended in the form of a cross, in the
immobility of death. One would have said, judging from a sort of serpent
which undulated over the floor, that this sinister form had a rope round
its neck.
The whole chamber was bathed in that mist of places which are sparely
illuminated, which adds to horror.
Jean Valjean often said afterwards, that, although many funereal
spectres had crossed his path in life, he had never beheld anything more
blood-curdling and terrible than that enigmatical form accomplishing
some inexplicable mystery in that gloomy place, and beheld thus at
night. It was alarming to suppose that that thing was perhaps dead; and
still more alarming to think that it was perhaps alive.
He had the courage to plaster his face to the glass, and to watch
whether the thing would move. In spite of his remaining thus what seemed
to him a very long time, the outstretched form made no movement. All
at once he felt himself overpowered by an inexpressible terror, and he
fled. He began to run towards the shed, not daring to look behind him.
It seemed to him, that if he turned his head, he should see that form
following him with great strides and waving its arms.
He reached the ruin all out of breath. His knees were giving way beneath
him; the perspiration was pouring from him.
Where was he? Who could ever have imagined anything like that sort of
sepulchre in the midst of Paris! What was this strange house? An edifice
full of nocturnal mystery, calling to souls through the darkness with
the voice of angels, and when they came, offering them abruptly that
terrible vision; promising to open the radiant portals of heaven, and
then opening the horrible gates of the tomb! And it actually was an
edifice, a house, which bore a number on the street! It was not a dream!
He had to touch the stones to convince himself that such was the fact.
Cold, anxiety, uneasiness, the emotions of the night, had given him a
genuine fever, and all these ideas were clashing together in his brain.
He stepped up to Cosette. She was asleep.
CHAPTER VIII--THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS
The child had laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep.
He sat down beside her and began to think. Little by little, as he gazed
at her, he grew calm and regained possession of his freedom of mind.
He clearly perceived this truth, the foundation of his life henceforth,
that so long as she was there, so long as he had her near him, he should
need nothing except for her, he should fear nothing except for her. He
was not even conscious that he was very cold, since he had taken off his
coat to cover her.
Nevertheless, athwart this revery into which he had fallen he had heard
for some time a peculiar noise. It was like the tinkling of a bell. This
sound proceeded from the garden. It could be heard distinctly though
faintly. It resembled the faint, vague music produced by the bells of
cattle at night in the pastures.
This noise made Valjean turn round.
He looked and saw that there was some one in the garden.
A being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-glasses of the melon
beds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements, as though he
were dragging or spreading out something on the ground. This person
appeared to limp.
Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy. For
them everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the day
because it enables people to see them, and the night because it aids
in surprising them. A little while before he had shivered because the
garden was deserted, and now he shivered because there was some one
there.
He fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He said to himself
that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken their departure; that
they had, no doubt, left people on the watch in the street; that if this
man should discover him in the garden, he would cry out for help against
thieves and deliver him up. He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his
arms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture, which was out of
use, in the most remote corner of the shed. Cosette did not stir.
From that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being in the
melon patch. The strange thing about it was, that the sound of the bell
followed each of this man's movements. When the man approached, the
sound approached; when the man retreated, the sound retreated; if he
made any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when he
halted, the sound ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was attached
to that man; but what could that signify? Who was this man who had a
bell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?
As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's hands. They
were icy cold.
"Ah! good God!" he cried.
He spoke to her in a low voice:--
"Cosette!"
She did not open her eyes.
He shook her vigorously.
She did not wake.
"Is she dead?" he said to himself, and sprang to his feet, quivering
from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind. There
are moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort of furies, and
violently force the partitions of our brains. When those we love are in
question, our prudence invents every sort of madness. He remembered that
sleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal.
Cosette was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground at his
feet, without a movement.
He listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a respiration
which seemed to him weak and on the point of extinction.
How was he to warm her back to life? How was he to rouse her? All that
was not connected with this vanished from his thoughts. He rushed wildly
from the ruin.
It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed and beside a
fire in less than a quarter of an hour.
CHAPTER IX--THE MAN WITH THE BELL
He walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden. He had taken
in his hand the roll of silver which was in the pocket of his waistcoat.
The man's head was bent down, and he did not see him approaching. In a
few strides Jean Valjean stood beside him.
Jean Valjean accosted him with the cry:--
"One hundred francs!"
The man gave a start and raised his eyes.
"You can earn a hundred francs," went on Jean Valjean, "if you will
grant me shelter for this night."
The moon shone full upon Jean Valjean's terrified countenance.
"What! so it is you, Father Madeleine!" said the man.
That name, thus pronounced, at that obscure hour, in that unknown spot,
by that strange man, made Jean Valjean start back.
He had expected anything but that. The person who thus addressed him was
a bent and lame old man, dressed almost like a peasant, who wore on his
left knee a leather knee-cap, whence hung a moderately large bell. His
face, which was in the shadow, was not distinguishable.
However, the goodman had removed his cap, and exclaimed, trembling all
over:--
"Ah, good God! How come you here, Father Madeleine? Where did you enter?
Dieu-Jésus! Did you fall from heaven? There is no trouble about that:
if ever you do fall, it will be from there. And what a state you are in!
You have no cravat; you have no hat; you have no coat! Do you know, you
would have frightened any one who did not know you? No coat! Lord God!
Are the saints going mad nowadays? But how did you get in here?"
His words tumbled over each other. The goodman talked with a rustic
volubility, in which there was nothing alarming. All this was uttered
with a mixture of stupefaction and _naïve_ kindliness.
"Who are you? and what house is this?" demanded Jean Valjean.
"Ah! pardieu, this is too much!" exclaimed the old man. "I am the person
for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where you had
me placed. What! You don't recognize me?"
"No," said Jean Valjean; "and how happens it that you know me?"
"You saved my life," said the man.
He turned. A ray of moonlight outlined his profile, and Jean Valjean
recognized old Fauchelevent.
"Ah!" said Jean Valjean, "so it is you? Yes, I recollect you."
"That is very lucky," said the old man, in a reproachful tone.
"And what are you doing here?" resumed Jean Valjean.
"Why, I am covering my melons, of course!"
In fact, at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, old Fauchelevent
held in his hand the end of a straw mat which he was occupied in
spreading over the melon bed. During the hour or thereabouts that he had
been in the garden he had already spread out a number of them. It was
this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar movements
observed from the shed by Jean Valjean.
He continued:--
"I said to myself, 'The moon is bright: it is going to freeze. What if I
were to put my melons into their greatcoats?' And," he added, looking at
Jean Valjean with a broad smile,--"pardieu! you ought to have done the
same! But how do you come here?"
Jean Valjean, finding himself known to this man, at least only under the
name of Madeleine, thenceforth advanced only with caution. He multiplied
his questions. Strange to say, their rôles seemed to be reversed. It was
he, the intruder, who interrogated.
"And what is this bell which you wear on your knee?"
"This," replied Fauchelevent, "is so that I may be avoided."
"What! so that you may be avoided?"
Old Fauchelevent winked with an indescribable air.
"Ah, goodness! there are only women in this house--many young girls. It
appears that I should be a dangerous person to meet. The bell gives them
warning. When I come, they go."
"What house is this?"
"Come, you know well enough."
"But I do not."
"Not when you got me the place here as gardener?"
"Answer me as though I knew nothing."
"Well, then, this is the Petit-Picpus convent."
Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say, Providence,
had cast him into precisely that convent in the Quartier Saint-Antoine
where old Fauchelevent, crippled by the fall from his cart, had been
admitted on his recommendation two years previously. He repeated, as
though talking to himself:--
"The Petit-Picpus convent."
"Exactly," returned old Fauchelevent. "But to come to the point, how the
deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Father Madeleine? No matter if
you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters here."
"You certainly are here."
"There is no one but me."
"Still," said Jean Valjean, "I must stay here."
"Ah, good God!" cried Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean drew near to the old man, and said to him in a grave
voice:--
"Father Fauchelevent, I saved your life."
"I was the first to recall it," returned Fauchelevent.
"Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden
days."
Fauchelevent took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled hands Jean
Valjean's two robust hands, and stood for several minutes as though
incapable of speaking. At length he exclaimed:--
"Oh! that would be a blessing from the good God, if I could make you
some little return for that! Save your life! Monsieur le Maire, dispose
of the old man!"
A wonderful joy had transfigured this old man. His countenance seemed to
emit a ray of light.
"What do you wish me to do?" he resumed.
"That I will explain to you. You have a chamber?"
"I have an isolated hovel yonder, behind the ruins of the old convent,
in a corner which no one ever looks into. There are three rooms in it."
The hut was, in fact, so well hidden behind the ruins, and so cleverly
arranged to prevent it being seen, that Jean Valjean had not perceived
it.
"Good," said Jean Valjean. "Now I am going to ask two things of you."
"What are they, Mr. Mayor?"
"In the first place, you are not to tell any one what you know about me.
In the second, you are not to try to find out anything more."
"As you please. I know that you can do nothing that is not honest,
that you have always been a man after the good God's heart. And then,
moreover, you it was who placed me here. That concerns you. I am at your
service."
"That is settled then. Now, come with me. We will go and get the child."
"Ah!" said Fauchelevent, "so there is a child?"
He added not a word further, and followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows
his master.
Less than half an hour afterwards Cosette, who had grown rosy again
before the flame of a good fire, was lying asleep in the old gardener's
bed. Jean Valjean had put on his cravat and coat once more; his hat,
which he had flung over the wall, had been found and picked up. While
Jean Valjean was putting on his coat, Fauchelevent had removed the
bell and kneecap, which now hung on a nail beside a vintage basket that
adorned the wall. The two men were warming themselves with their elbows
resting on a table upon which Fauchelevent had placed a bit of cheese,
black bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man was
saying to Jean Valjean, as he laid his hand on the latter's knee:
"Ah! Father Madeleine! You did not recognize me immediately; you save
people's lives, and then you forget them! That is bad! But they remember
you! You are an ingrate!"
CHAPTER X--WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT
The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so to speak,
had come about in the simplest possible manner.
When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had
arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town jail
of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to
Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything
disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No
forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know
this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The
police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they
have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was
summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches. Javert had, in
fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean.
Javert's zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by
M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Anglès. M.
Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert's patron, had the
inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There
Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem
strange for such services, honorable manners.
He no longer thought of Jean Valjean,--the wolf of to-day causes these
dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday,--when,
in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he who never read newspapers;
but Javert, a monarchical man, had a desire to know the particulars of
the triumphal entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne. Just as
he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name, the name of
Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of a page. The paper
announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact
in such formal terms that Javert did not doubt it. He confined himself
to the remark, "That's a good entry." Then he threw aside the paper, and
thought no more about it.
Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted
from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police in
Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place, under
peculiar circumstances, as it was said, in the commune of Montfermeil.
A little girl of seven or eight years of age, the report said, who had
been intrusted by her mother to an inn-keeper of that neighborhood, had
been stolen by a stranger; this child answered to the name of Cosette,
and was the daughter of a girl named Fantine, who had died in the
hospital, it was not known where or when.
This report came under Javert's eye and set him to thinking.
The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean
Valjean had made him, Javert, burst into laughter, by asking him for a
respite of three days, for the purpose of going to fetch that creature's
child. He recalled the fact that Jean Valjean had been arrested in Paris
at the very moment when he was stepping into the coach for Montfermeil.
Some signs had made him suspect at the time that this was the second
occasion of his entering that coach, and that he had already, on the
previous day, made an excursion to the neighborhood of that village, for
he had not been seen in the village itself. What had he been intending
to do in that region of Montfermeil? It could not even be surmised.
Javert understood it now. Fantine's daughter was there. Jean Valjean was
going there in search of her. And now this child had been stolen by a
stranger! Who could that stranger be? Could it be Jean Valjean? But Jean
Valjean was dead. Javert, without saying anything to anybody, took the
coach from the _Pewter Platter_, Cul-de-Sac de la Planchette, and made a
trip to Montfermeil.
He expected to find a great deal of light on the subject there; he found
a great deal of obscurity.
For the first few days the Thénardiers had chattered in their rage. The
disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation in the village. He
immediately obtained numerous versions of the story, which ended in the
abduction of a child. Hence the police report. But their first vexation
having passed off, Thénardier, with his wonderful instinct, had
very quickly comprehended that it is never advisable to stir up the
prosecutor of the Crown, and that his complaints with regard to the
_abduction_ of Cosette would have as their first result to fix upon
himself, and upon many dark affairs which he had on hand, the glittering
eye of justice. The last thing that owls desire is to have a candle
brought to them. And in the first place, how explain the fifteen hundred
francs which he had received? He turned squarely round, put a gag on
his wife's mouth, and feigned astonishment when the _stolen child_
was mentioned to him. He understood nothing about it; no doubt he had
grumbled for awhile at having that dear little creature "taken from him"
so hastily; he should have liked to keep her two or three days longer,
out of tenderness; but her "grandfather" had come for her in the most
natural way in the world. He added the "grandfather," which produced a
good effect. This was the story that Javert hit upon when he arrived at
Montfermeil. The grandfather caused Jean Valjean to vanish.
Nevertheless, Javert dropped a few questions, like plummets, into
Thénardier's history. "Who was that grandfather? and what was his name?"
Thénardier replied with simplicity: "He is a wealthy farmer. I saw his
passport. I think his name was M. Guillaume Lambert."
Lambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name. Thereupon Javert
returned to Paris.
"Jean Valjean is certainly dead," said he, "and I am a ninny."
He had again begun to forget this history, when, in the course of
March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who dwelt in the parish of
Saint-Médard and who had been surnamed "the mendicant who gives alms."
This person, the story ran, was a man of means, whose name no one knew
exactly, and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years, who
knew nothing about herself, save that she had come from Montfermeil.
Montfermeil! that name was always coming up, and it made Javert prick
up his ears. An old beggar police spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person
had given alms, added a few more details. This gentleman of property was
very shy,--never coming out except in the evening, speaking to no one,
except, occasionally to the poor, and never allowing any one to approach
him. He wore a horrible old yellow frock-coat, which was worth many
millions, being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's
curiosity in a decided manner. In order to get a close look at this
fantastic gentleman without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle's
outfit for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit of
crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose, and playing
the spy under cover of prayer.
"The suspected individual" did indeed approach Javert thus disguised,
and bestow alms on him. At that moment Javert raised his head, and the
shock which Jean Valjean received on recognizing Javert was equal to the
one received by Javert when he thought he recognized Jean Valjean.
However, the darkness might have misled him; Jean Valjean's death was
official; Javert cherished very grave doubts; and when in doubt, Javert,
the man of scruples, never laid a finger on any one's collar.
He followed his man to the Gorbeau house, and got "the old woman" to
talking, which was no difficult matter. The old woman confirmed the fact
regarding the coat lined with millions, and narrated to him the episode
of the thousand-franc bill. She had seen it! She had handled it! Javert
hired a room; that evening he installed himself in it. He came and
listened at the mysterious lodger's door, hoping to catch the sound of
his voice, but Jean Valjean saw his candle through the key-hole, and
foiled the spy by keeping silent.
On the following day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise made by the
fall of the five-franc piece was noticed by the old woman, who, hearing
the rattling of coin, suspected that he might be intending to leave, and
made haste to warn Javert. At night, when Jean Valjean came out, Javert
was waiting for him behind the trees of the boulevard with two men.
Javert had demanded assistance at the Prefecture, but he had not
mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to seize; that was
his secret, and he had kept it for three reasons: in the first place,
because the slightest indiscretion might put Jean Valjean on the alert;
next, because, to lay hands on an ex-convict who had made his escape
and was reputed dead, on a criminal whom justice had formerly classed
forever as _among malefactors of the most dangerous sort_, was a
magnificent success which the old members of the Parisian police would
assuredly not leave to a new-comer like Javert, and he was afraid of
being deprived of his convict; and lastly, because Javert, being an
artist, had a taste for the unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded
successes which are talked of long in advance and have had the bloom
brushed off. He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and
to unveil them suddenly at the last.
Javert had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, then from corner
to corner of the street, and had not lost sight of him for a single
instant; even at the moments when Jean Valjean believed himself to
be the most secure Javert's eye had been on him. Why had not Javert
arrested Jean Valjean? Because he was still in doubt.
It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely
at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several arbitrary arrests
denounced by the newspapers, had echoed even as far as the Chambers, and
had rendered the Prefecture timid. Interference with individual liberty
was a grave matter. The police agents were afraid of making a mistake;
the prefect laid the blame on them; a mistake meant dismissal. The
reader can imagine the effect which this brief paragraph, reproduced
by twenty newspapers, would have caused in Paris: "Yesterday, an aged
grandfather, with white hair, a respectable and well-to-do gentleman,
who was walking with his grandchild, aged eight, was arrested and
conducted to the agency of the Prefecture as an escaped convict!"
Let us repeat in addition that Javert had scruples of his own;
injunctions of his conscience were added to the injunctions of the
prefect. He was really in doubt.
Jean Valjean turned his back on him and walked in the dark.
Sadness, uneasiness, anxiety, depression, this fresh misfortune of being
forced to flee by night, to seek a chance refuge in Paris for Cosette
and himself, the necessity of regulating his pace to the pace of
the child--all this, without his being aware of it, had altered Jean
Valjean's walk, and impressed on his bearing such senility, that the
police themselves, incarnate in the person of Javert, might, and did in
fact, make a mistake. The impossibility of approaching too close, his
costume of an _émigré_ preceptor, the declaration of Thénardier which
made a grandfather of him, and, finally, the belief in his death in
prison, added still further to the uncertainty which gathered thick in
Javert's mind.
For an instant it occurred to him to make an abrupt demand for his
papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean, and if this man was not a
good, honest old fellow living on his income, he was probably some merry
blade deeply and cunningly implicated in the obscure web of Parisian
misdeeds, some chief of a dangerous band, who gave alms to conceal
his other talents, which was an old dodge. He had trusty fellows,
accomplices' retreats in case of emergencies, in which he would, no
doubt, take refuge. All these turns which he was making through the
streets seemed to indicate that he was not a simple and honest man. To
arrest him too hastily would be "to kill the hen that laid the golden
eggs." Where was the inconvenience in waiting? Javert was very sure that
he would not escape.
Thus he proceeded in a tolerably perplexed state of mind, putting to
himself a hundred questions about this enigmatical personage.
It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the
brilliant light thrown from a dram-shop, he decidedly recognized Jean
Valjean.
There are in this world two beings who give a profound start,--the
mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers his prey.
Javert gave that profound start.
As soon as he had positively recognized Jean Valjean, the formidable
convict, he perceived that there were only three of them, and he asked
for reinforcements at the police station of the Rue de Pontoise. One
puts on gloves before grasping a thorn cudgel.
This delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult with his
agents came near causing him to lose the trail. He speedily divined,
however, that Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his
pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound
who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right
scent. Javert, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to
the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with
the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little
girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied the toll-keeper. Javert
reached the bridge in season to see Jean Valjean traverse the small
illuminated spot on the other side of the water, leading Cosette by
the hand. He saw him enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he
remembered the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the
sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. _He made sure
of his back burrows_, as huntsmen say; he hastily despatched one of his
agents, by a roundabout way, to guard that issue. A patrol which was
returning to the Arsenal post having passed him, he made a requisition
on it, and caused it to accompany him. In such games soldiers are aces.
Moreover, the principle is, that in order to get the best of a wild
boar, one must employ the science of venery and plenty of dogs. These
combinations having been effected, feeling that Jean Valjean was caught
between the blind alley Genrot on the right, his agent on the left, and
himself, Javert, in the rear, he took a pinch of snuff.
Then he began the game. He experienced one ecstatic and infernal moment;
he allowed his man to go on ahead, knowing that he had him safe, but
desirous of postponing the moment of arrest as long as possible, happy
at the thought that he was taken and yet at seeing him free, gloating
over him with his gaze, with that voluptuousness of the spider which
allows the fly to flutter, and of the cat which lets the mouse run.
Claws and talons possess a monstrous sensuality,--the obscure movements
of the creature imprisoned in their pincers. What a delight this
strangling is!
Javert was enjoying himself. The meshes of his net were stoutly knotted.
He was sure of success; all he had to do now was to close his hand.
Accompanied as he was, the very idea of resistance was impossible,
however vigorous, energetic, and desperate Jean Valjean might be.
Enlarge
Javert advanced slowly, sounding, searching on his way all the nooks of
the street like so many pockets of thieves.
When he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no longer there.
His exasperation can be imagined.
He interrogated his sentinel of the Rues Droit-Mur and Petit-Picpus;
that agent, who had remained imperturbably at his post, had not seen the
man pass.
It sometimes happens that a stag is lost head and horns; that is to
say, he escapes although he has the pack on his very heels, and then the
oldest huntsmen know not what to say. Duvivier, Ligniville, and Desprez
halt short. In a discomfiture of this sort, Artonge exclaims, "It was
not a stag, but a sorcerer." Javert would have liked to utter the same
cry.
His disappointment bordered for a moment on despair and rage.
It is certain that Napoleon made mistakes during the war with Russia,
that Alexander committed blunders in the war in India, that Cæsar made
mistakes in the war in Africa, that Cyrus was at fault in the war
in Scythia, and that Javert blundered in this campaign against Jean
Valjean. He was wrong, perhaps, in hesitating in his recognition of the
exconvict. The first glance should have sufficed him. He was wrong in
not arresting him purely and simply in the old building; he was wrong
in not arresting him when he positively recognized him in the Rue de
Pontoise. He was wrong in taking counsel with his auxiliaries in the
full light of the moon in the Carrefour Rollin. Advice is certainly
useful; it is a good thing to know and to interrogate those of the dogs
who deserve confidence; but the hunter cannot be too cautious when he is
chasing uneasy animals like the wolf and the convict. Javert, by taking
too much thought as to how he should set the bloodhounds of the pack on
the trail, alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so
made him run. Above all, he was wrong in that after he had picked up the
scent again on the bridge of Austerlitz, he played that formidable and
puerile game of keeping such a man at the end of a thread. He thought
himself stronger than he was, and believed that he could play at the
game of the mouse and the lion. At the same time, he reckoned himself
as too weak, when he judged it necessary to obtain reinforcement. Fatal
precaution, waste of precious time! Javert committed all these blunders,
and none the less was one of the cleverest and most correct spies that
ever existed. He was, in the full force of the term, what is called in
venery a _knowing dog_. But what is there that is perfect?
Great strategists have their eclipses.
The greatest follies are often composed, like the largest ropes, of
a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by thread, take all the
petty determining motives separately, and you can break them one after
the other, and you say, "That is all there is of it!" Braid them, twist
them together; the result is enormous: it is Attila hesitating between
Marcian on the east and Valentinian on the west; it is Hannibal tarrying
at Capua; it is Danton falling asleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.
However that may be, even at the moment when he saw that Jean Valjean
had escaped him, Javert did not lose his head. Sure that the convict who
had broken his ban could not be far off, he established sentinels, he
organized traps and ambuscades, and beat the quarter all that night. The
first thing he saw was the disorder in the street lantern whose rope
had been cut. A precious sign which, however, led him astray, since it
caused him to turn all his researches in the direction of the Cul-de-Sac
Genrot. In this blind alley there were tolerably low walls which abutted
on gardens whose bounds adjoined the immense stretches of waste land.
Jean Valjean evidently must have fled in that direction. The fact is,
that had he penetrated a little further in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot, he
would probably have done so and have been lost. Javert explored these
gardens and these waste stretches as though he had been hunting for a
needle.
At daybreak he left two intelligent men on the outlook, and returned to
the Prefecture of Police, as much ashamed as a police spy who had been
captured by a robber might have been.
BOOK SIXTH.--LE PETIT-PICPUS
CHAPTER I--NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS
Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate
than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance,
which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a
view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about
them,--a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face
of a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall
trees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard, when
a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass Number
62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling impression of
it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had had a glimpse.
The threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.
If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,--which was
even nearly impossible for every one, for there was an _open sesame!_
which it was necessary to know,--if, the porter once passed, one entered
a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in
between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at
a time, if one did not allow one's self to be alarmed by a daubing of
canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase, if
one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second,
and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and
the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable persistency.
Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The
corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this cape, one
arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was all the
more mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it, one
found one's self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled,
well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green
flowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a large
window, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole width
of the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one heard
neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the chamber
was not furnished; there was not even a chair.
One looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular
hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars,
black, knotted, solid, which formed squares--I had almost said
meshes--of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little
green flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to
those iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by
their funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so
wonderfully thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square
hole, this grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage
of the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to
say, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been
re-enforced by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear,
and pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of
a strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced
exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached
to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.
If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at
hand, which made one start.
"Who is there?" the voice demanded.
It was a woman's voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.
Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know. If
one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once more,
as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the other
side of it.
If one knew the password, the voice resumed, "Enter on the right."
One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door
surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and
crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression
as when one enters at the theatre into a grated _baignoire_, before the
grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in
a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a
much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from
the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean
upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only
the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a
monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the
wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.
The first minutes passed; when one's eyes began to grow used to this
cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no
further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of
black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood
painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,
narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They
were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a voice
proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:--
"I am here. What do you wish with me?"
It was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible. Hardly
the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a spirit
which had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls of the
tomb.
If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare conditions,
the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the evoked spirit
became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the shutter, one
perceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head, of which only
the mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered with a black
veil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form that was barely
defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke with you, but did
not look at you and never smiled at you.
The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that
you saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light was
symbolical.
Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which
was made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness
enveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that vagueness,
and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition. At the
expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could see
nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry mist
mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a silence
from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in which
you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.
What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.
It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called
the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in
which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you
was that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the
other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron
grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor.
The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the
parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the
side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred place.
Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a light;
there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the most
strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way into
it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing the
proper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and have,
therefore, never described.
CHAPTER II--THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA
This convent, which in 1824 had already existed for many a long year in
the Rue Petit-Picpus, was a community of Bernardines of the obedience of
Martin Verga.
These Bernardines were attached, in consequence, not to Clairvaux, like
the Bernardine monks, but to Cîteaux, like the Benedictine monks. In
other words, they were the subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of Saint
Benoît.
Any one who has turned over old folios to any extent knows that Martin
Verga founded in 1425 a congregation of Bernardines-Benedictines,
with Salamanca for the head of the order, and Alcala as the branch
establishment.
This congregation had sent out branches throughout all the Catholic
countries of Europe.
There is nothing unusual in the Latin Church in these grafts of one
order on another. To mention only a single order of Saint-Benoît, which
is here in question: there are attached to this order, without counting
the obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations,--two in Italy,
Mont-Cassin and Sainte-Justine of Padua; two in France, Cluny and
Saint-Maur; and nine orders,--Vallombrosa, Granmont, the Célestins,
the Camaldules, the Carthusians, the Humiliés, the Olivateurs, the
Silvestrins, and lastly, Cîteaux; for Cîteaux itself, a trunk for other
orders, is only an offshoot of Saint-Benoît. Cîteaux dates from Saint
Robert, Abbé de Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was
in 529 that the devil, having retired to the desert of Subiaco--he
was old--had he turned hermit?--was chased from the ancient temple of
Apollo, where he dwelt, by Saint-Benoît, then aged seventeen.
After the rule of the Carmelites, who go barefoot, wear a bit of willow
on their throats, and never sit down, the harshest rule is that of the
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black,
with a guimpe, which, in accordance with the express command of
Saint-Benoît, mounts to the chin. A robe of serge with large sleeves,
a large woollen veil, the guimpe which mounts to the chin cut square on
the breast, the band which descends over their brow to their eyes,--this
is their dress. All is black except the band, which is white. The
novices wear the same habit, but all in white. The professed nuns also
wear a rosary at their side.
The Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga practise the Perpetual
Adoration, like the Benedictines called Ladies of the Holy Sacrament,
who, at the beginning of this century, had two houses in Paris,--one at
the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. However, the
Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus, of whom we are speaking,
were a totally different order from the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament,
cloistered in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève and at the Temple. There
were numerous differences in their rule; there were some in their
costume. The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus wore the
black guimpe, and the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament and of the
Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève wore a white one, and had, besides, on their
breasts, a Holy Sacrament about three inches long, in silver gilt or
gilded copper. The nuns of the Petit-Picpus did not wear this Holy
Sacrament. The Perpetual Adoration, which was common to the house of
the Petit-Picpus and to the house of the Temple, leaves those two orders
perfectly distinct. Their only resemblance lies in this practice of the
Ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin Verga, just
as there existed a similarity in the study and the glorification of
all the mysteries relating to the infancy, the life, and death of Jesus
Christ and the Virgin, between the two orders, which were, nevertheless,
widely separated, and on occasion even hostile. The Oratory of Italy,
established at Florence by Philip de Neri, and the Oratory of France,
established by Pierre de Bérulle. The Oratory of France claimed the
precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint, while Bérulle was a
cardinal.
Let us return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga.
The Bernardines-Benedictines of this obedience fast all the year
round, abstain from meat, fast in Lent and on many other days which are
peculiar to them, rise from their first sleep, from one to three o'clock
in the morning, to read their breviary and chant matins, sleep in all
seasons between serge sheets and on straw, make no use of the bath,
never light a fire, scourge themselves every Friday, observe the rule of
silence, speak to each other only during the recreation hours, which are
very brief, and wear drugget chemises for six months in the year, from
September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, until Easter.
These six months are a modification: the rule says all the year, but
this drugget chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer, produced fevers
and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted. Even with this
palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the 14th of September,
they suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty,
chastity, perseverance in their seclusion,--these are their vows, which
the rule greatly aggravates.
The prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called
_mères vocales_ because they have a voice in the chapter. A prioress can
only be re-elected twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of a
prioress at nine years.
They never see the officiating priest, who is always hidden from them
by a serge curtain nine feet in height. During the sermon, when the
preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veils over their faces. They
must always speak low, walk with their eyes on the ground and their
heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent,--the
archbishop of the diocese.
There is really one other,--the gardener. But he is always an old man,
and, in order that he may always be alone in the garden, and that the
nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached to his knee.
Their submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the
canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation. As at the
voice of Christ, _ut voci Christi_, at a gesture, at the first sign,
_ad nutum, ad primum signum_, immediately, with cheerfulness, with
perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, _prompte, hilariter,
perseveranter et cæca quadam obedientia_, as the file in the hand of
the workman, _quasi limam in manibus fabri_, without power to read or
to write without express permission, _legere vel scribere non addiscerit
sine expressa superioris licentia_.
Each one of them in turn makes what they call _reparation_. The
reparation is the prayer for all the sins, for all the faults, for all
the dissensions, for all the violations, for all the iniquities, for
all the crimes committed on earth. For the space of twelve consecutive
hours, from four o'clock in the afternoon till four o'clock in the
morning, or from four o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the
afternoon, the sister who is making _reparation_ remains on her knees on
the stone before the Holy Sacrament, with hands clasped, a rope around
her neck. When her fatigue becomes unendurable, she prostrates herself
flat on her face against the earth, with her arms outstretched in the
form of a cross; this is her only relief. In this attitude she prays for
all the guilty in the universe. This is great to sublimity.
As this act is performed in front of a post on which burns a candle,
it is called without distinction, _to make reparation_ or _to be at
the post_. The nuns even prefer, out of humility, this last expression,
which contains an idea of torture and abasement.
_To make reparation_ is a function in which the whole soul is absorbed.
The sister at the post would not turn round were a thunderbolt to fall
directly behind her.
Besides this, there is always a sister kneeling before the Holy
Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like
soldiers on guard. This is the Perpetual Adoration.
The prioresses and the mothers almost always bear names stamped with
peculiar solemnity, recalling, not the saints and martyrs, but moments
in the life of Jesus Christ: as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception,
Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of saints are not
interdicted.
When one sees them, one never sees anything but their mouths.
All their teeth are yellow. No tooth-brush ever entered that convent.
Brushing one's teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the
loss of one's soul.
They never say _my_. They possess nothing of their own, and they must
not attach themselves to anything. They call everything _our_; thus: our
veil, our chaplet; if they were speaking of their chemise, they
would say _our chemise_. Sometimes they grow attached to some petty
object,--to a book of hours, a relic, a medal that has been blessed. As
soon as they become aware that they are growing attached to this object,
they must give it up. They recall the words of Saint Thérèse, to whom a
great lady said, as she was on the point of entering her order, "Permit
me, mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly attached." "Ah,
you are attached to something! In that case, do not enter our order!"
Every person whatever is forbidden to shut herself up, to have _a place
of her own, a chamber_. They live with their cells open. When they meet,
one says, "Blessed and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!"
The other responds, "Forever." The same ceremony when one taps at the
other's door. Hardly has she touched the door when a soft voice on the
other side is heard to say hastily, "Forever!" Like all practices, this
becomes mechanical by force of habit; and one sometimes says _forever_
before the other has had time to say the rather long sentence, "Praised
and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar."
Among the Visitandines the one who enters says: "Ave Maria," and the one
whose cell is entered says, "Gratia plena." It is their way of saying
good day, which is in fact full of grace.
At each hour of the day three supplementary strokes sound from the
church bell of the convent. At this signal prioress, vocal mothers,
professed nuns, lay-sisters, novices, postulants, interrupt what they
are saying, what they are doing, or what they are thinking, and all say
in unison if it is five o'clock, for instance, "At five o'clock and at
all hours praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!"
If it is eight o'clock, "At eight o'clock and at all hours!" and so on,
according to the hour.
This custom, the object of which is to break the thread of thought
and to lead it back constantly to God, exists in many communities; the
formula alone varies. Thus at The Infant Jesus they say, "At this
hour and at every hour may the love of Jesus kindle my heart!" The
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty years ago at
Petit-Picpus, chant the offices to a solemn psalmody, a pure Gregorian
chant, and always with full voice during the whole course of the office.
Everywhere in the missal where an asterisk occurs they pause, and say in
a low voice, "Jesus-Marie-Joseph." For the office of the dead they adopt
a tone so low that the voices of women can hardly descend to such a
depth. The effect produced is striking and tragic.
The nuns of the Petit-Picpus had made a vault under their grand altar
for the burial of their community. _The Government_, as they say, does
not permit this vault to receive coffins so they leave the convent when
they die. This is an affliction to them, and causes them consternation
as an infraction of the rules.
They had obtained a mediocre consolation at best,--permission to be
interred at a special hour and in a special corner in the ancient
Vaugirard cemetery, which was made of land which had formerly belonged
to their community.
On Fridays the nuns hear high mass, vespers, and all the offices, as on
Sunday. They scrupulously observe in addition all the little festivals
unknown to people of the world, of which the Church of France was so
prodigal in the olden days, and of which it is still prodigal in Spain
and Italy. Their stations in the chapel are interminable. As for the
number and duration of their prayers we can convey no better idea of
them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them: "The prayers
of the postulants are frightful, the prayers of the novices are still
worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse."
Once a week the chapter assembles: the prioress presides; the vocal
mothers assist. Each sister kneels in turn on the stones, and confesses
aloud, in the presence of all, the faults and sins which she has
committed during the week. The vocal mothers consult after each
confession and inflict the penance aloud.
Besides this confession in a loud tone, for which all faults in the
least serious are reserved, they have for their venial offences what
they call the _coulpe. To make one's coulpe_ means to prostrate one's
self flat on one's face during the office in front of the prioress until
the latter, who is never called anything but _our mother_, notifies the
culprit by a slight tap of her foot against the wood of her stall
that she can rise. The _coulpe_ or _peccavi_, is made for a very small
matter--a broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of a few
seconds at an office, a false note in church, etc.; this suffices, and
the _coulpe_ is made. The _coulpe_ is entirely spontaneous; it is the
culpable person herself (the word is etymologically in its place here)
who judges herself and inflicts it on herself. On festival days and
Sundays four mother precentors intone the offices before a large
reading-desk with four places. One day one of the mother precentors
intoned a psalm beginning with _Ecce_, and instead of _Ecce_ she uttered
aloud the three notes _do si sol_; for this piece of absent-mindedness
she underwent a _coulpe_ which lasted during the whole service: what
rendered the fault enormous was the fact that the chapter had laughed.
When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even were it the prioress herself,
she drops her veil, as will be remembered, so that only her mouth is
visible.
The prioress alone can hold communication with strangers. The others can
see only their immediate family, and that very rarely. If, by chance,
an outsider presents herself to see a nun, or one whom she has known and
loved in the outer world, a regular series of negotiations is required.
If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted; the nun
comes, and they talk to her through the shutters, which are opened only
for a mother or sister. It is unnecessary to say that permission is
always refused to men.
Such is the rule of Saint-Benoît, aggravated by Martin Verga.
These nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as the daughters of other
orders often are. They are pale and grave. Between 1825 and 1830 three
of them went mad.
CHAPTER III--AUSTERITIES
One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for
four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier
than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their
order.
In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations,
of which they must never speak.
On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her
handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed
until it shines, and curled. Then she prostrates herself; a great black
veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the
nuns separate into two files; one file passes close to her, saying in
plaintive accents, "Our sister is dead"; and the other file responds in
a voice of ecstasy, "Our sister is alive in Jesus Christ!"
At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was attached
to the convent--a boarding-school for young girls of noble and
mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle
de Saint-Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the
illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these
nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the
age. One of them said to us one day, "The sight of the street pavement
made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed in blue, with a
white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their breast.
On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha's day, they
were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to dress
themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of
Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the
habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and
the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is
remarkable that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt,
in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order
to give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine
happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused
themselves with it. _It was new; it gave them a change_. Candid reasons
of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings
comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one's hand
and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front of
a reading-desk.
The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the
practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered
the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded in
breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any
one knocked at her door, "forever!" Like the nuns, the pupils saw
their relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain
permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree
severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a
visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three
years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace
her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be
permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could
kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.
CHAPTER IV--GAYETIES
None the less, these young girls filled this grave house with charming
souvenirs.
At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation
hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, "Good;
here come the children!" An irruption of youth inundated that garden
intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads,
innocent eyes, full of merry light, all sorts of auroras, were scattered
about amid these shadows. After the psalmodies, the bells, the peals,
and knells and offices, the sound of these little girls burst forth on a
sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive of joy was opened,
and each one brought her honey. They played, they called to each other,
they formed into groups, they ran about; pretty little white teeth
chattered in the corners; the veils superintended the laughs from a
distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what mattered it? Still
they beamed and laughed. Those four lugubrious walls had their moment
of dazzling brilliancy. They looked on, vaguely blanched with the
reflection of so much joy at this sweet swarming of the hives. It was
like a shower of roses falling athwart this house of mourning. The young
girls frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns; the gaze of impeccability
does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these children, there was,
among so many austere hours, one hour of ingenuousness. The little ones
skipped about; the elder ones danced. In this cloister play was mingled
with heaven. Nothing is so delightful and so august as all these fresh,
expanding young souls. Homer would have come thither to laugh with
Perrault; and there was in that black garden, youth, health, noise,
cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness enough to smooth out the wrinkles
of all their ancestresses, those of the epic as well as those of the
fairy-tale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched cottage
from Hecuba to la Mère-Grand.
In that house more than anywhere else, perhaps, arise those children's
sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of
thoughtfulness. It was between those four gloomy walls that a child of
five years exclaimed one day: "Mother! one of the big girls has just
told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain
here. What happiness!"
It was here, too, that this memorable dialogue took place:--
_A Vocal Mother_. Why are you weeping, my child?
_The child_ (aged six). I told Alix that I knew my French history. She
says that I do not know it, but I do.
_Alix_, the big girl (aged nine). No; she does not know it.
_The Mother_. How is that, my child?
_Alix_. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any
question in the book, and she would answer it.
"Well?"
"She did not answer it."
"Let us see about it. What did you ask her?"
"I opened the book at random, as she proposed, and I put the first
question that I came across."
"And what was the question?"
"It was, 'What happened after that?'"
It was there that that profound remark was made anent a rather greedy
paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:--
"How well bred! it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter just
like a person!"
It was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was once
picked up a confession which had been written out in advance, in order
that she might not forget it, by a sinner of seven years:--
"Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.
"Father, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress.
"Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen."
It was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth six
years of age improvised the following tale, which was listened to by
blue eyes aged four and five years:--
"There were three little cocks who owned a country where there were
a great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them in their
pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their
playthings. There was a wolf in that country; there was a great deal of
forest; and the wolf was in the forest; and he ate the little cocks."
And this other poem:--
"There came a blow with a stick.
"It was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat.
"It was not good for her; it hurt her.
"Then a lady put Punchinello in prison."
It was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom the convent
was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and heart-breaking
saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers, and she murmured
in her corner:--
"As for me, my mother was not there when I was born!"
There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through the
corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha. The
_big big girls_--those over ten years of age--called her _Agathocles_.
The refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which
received no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the
garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts. All
the places round about furnished their contingent of insects.
Each of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils,
a special and expressive name. There was Spider corner, Caterpillar
corner, Wood-louse corner, and Cricket corner.
Cricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed. It was not
so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to
the boarding-school, and there served as in the old College Mazarin
to distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four
nations according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at
meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop while making his pastoral
visit saw a pretty little rosy girl with beautiful golden hair enter the
class-room through which he was passing.
He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks, who
stood near him:--
"Who is that?"
"She is a spider, Monseigneur."
"Bah! And that one yonder?"
"She is a cricket."
"And that one?"
"She is a caterpillar."
"Really! and yourself?"
"I am a wood-louse, Monseigneur."
Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of
this century Écouen was one of those strict and graceful places where
young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august. At
Écouen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament,
a distinction was made between virgins and florists. There were also the
"dais" and the "censors,"--the first who held the cords of the dais, and
the others who carried incense before the Holy Sacrament. The flowers
belonged by right to the florists. Four "virgins" walked in advance. On
the morning of that great day it was no rare thing to hear the question
put in the dormitory, "Who is a virgin?"
Madame Campan used to quote this saying of a "little one" of seven
years, to a "big girl" of sixteen, who took the head of the procession,
while she, the little one, remained at the rear, "You are a virgin, but
I am not."
CHAPTER V--DISTRACTIONS
Above the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the _white
Paternoster_and which possessed the property of bearing people straight
to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:--
"Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God
placed in paradise. In the evening, when I went to bed, I found three
angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good
Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without hesitation.
The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three
apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The shirt in
which God was born envelopes my body; Saint Margaret's cross is written
on my breast. Madame the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping
for God, when she met M. Saint John. 'Monsieur Saint John, whence come
you?' 'I come from _Ave Salus_.' 'You have not seen the good God; where
is he?' 'He is on the tree of the Cross, his feet hanging, his hands
nailed, a little cap of white thorns on his head.' Whoever shall say
this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning, shall win paradise at
the last."
In 1827 this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under
a triple coating of daubing paint. At the present time it is finally
disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then, and
who are old women now.
A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this
refectory, whose only door, as we think we have mentioned, opened on the
garden. Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden benches, formed
two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory.
The walls were white, the tables were black; these two mourning colors
constitute the only variety in convents. The meals were plain, and
the food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of meat and
vegetables combined, or salt fish--such was their luxury. This meagre
fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was, nevertheless, an
exception. The children ate in silence, under the eye of the mother
whose turn it was, who, if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against
the rule, opened and shut a wooden book from time to time. This silence
was seasoned with the lives of the saints, read aloud from a little
pulpit with a desk, which was situated at the foot of the crucifix. The
reader was one of the big girls, in weekly turn. At regular distances,
on the bare tables, there were large, varnished bowls in which the
pupils washed their own silver cups and knives and forks, and into which
they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled fish; this was
punished. These bowls were called _ronds d'eau_. The child who broke the
silence "made a cross with her tongue." Where? On the ground. She licked
the pavement. The dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the
chastisement of those poor little rose-leaves which had been guilty of
chirping.
There was in the convent a book which has never been printed except as
a _unique copy_, and which it is forbidden to read. It is the rule of
Saint-Benoît. An arcanum which no profane eye must penetrate. _Nemo
regulas, seu constitutiones nostras, externis communicabit_.
The pupils one day succeeded in getting possession of this book, and set
to reading it with avidity, a reading which was often interrupted by
the fear of being caught, which caused them to close the volume
precipitately.
From the great danger thus incurred they derived but a very moderate
amount of pleasure. The most "interesting thing" they found were some
unintelligible pages about the sins of young boys.
They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby
fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of
the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they
sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or
an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech
to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty
years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de----one of the most
elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: "One hides one's pear or
one's apple as best one may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil on
the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one's pillow and at night
one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the
closet." That was one of their greatest luxuries.
Once--it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop to the
convent--one of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was
connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask
for a day's leave of absence--an enormity in so austere a community. The
wager was accepted, but not one of those who bet believed that she would
do it. When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in front of
the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror of her
companions, stepped out of the ranks, and said, "Monseigneur, a day's
leave of absence." Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the
prettiest little rosy face in the world. M. de Quélen smiled and said,
"What, my dear child, a day's leave of absence! Three days if you like.
I grant you three days." The prioress could do nothing; the archbishop
had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The effect may
be imagined.
This stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but that the
life of the passions of the outside world, drama, and even romance,
did not make their way in. To prove this, we will confine ourselves to
recording here and to briefly mentioning a real and incontestable fact,
which, however, bears no reference in itself to, and is not connected by
any thread whatever with the story which we are relating. We mention the
fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent in the
reader's mind.
About this time there was in the convent a mysterious person who was
not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as
_Madame Albertine_. Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad,
and that in the world she passed for dead. Beneath this history it
was said there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary for a great
marriage.
This woman, hardly thirty years of age, of dark complexion and tolerably
pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes. Could she see? There
was some doubt about this. She glided rather than walked, she never
spoke; it was not quite known whether she breathed. Her nostrils were
livid and pinched as after yielding up their last sigh. To touch her
hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange spectral grace.
Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a sister, on seeing her
pass, said to another sister, "She passes for a dead woman." "Perhaps
she is one," replied the other.
A hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This arose from the
eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel there was a gallery
called _L'Oil de Bouf_. It was in this gallery, which had only a
circular bay, an _oil de bouf_, that Madame Albertine listened to the
offices. She always occupied it alone because this gallery, being on the
level of the first story, the preacher or the officiating priest could
be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was
occupied by a young priest of high rank, M. Le Duc de Rohan, peer of
France, officer of the Red Musketeers in 1815 when he was Prince de
Léon, and who died afterward, in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of
Besançon. It was the first time that M. de Rohan had preached at
the Petit-Picpus convent. Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect
calmness and complete immobility during the sermons and services. That
day, as soon as she caught sight of M. de Rohan, she half rose, and
said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel, "Ah! Auguste!"
The whole community turned their heads in amazement, the preacher raised
his eyes, but Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility. A
breath from the outer world, a flash of life, had passed for an instant
across that cold and lifeless face and had then vanished, and the mad
woman had become a corpse again.
Those two words, however, had set every one in the convent who had the
privilege of speech to chattering. How many things were contained in
that "Ah! Auguste!" what revelations! M. de Rohan's name really was
Auguste. It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very
highest society, since she knew M. de Rohan, and that her own rank there
was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a lord,
and that there existed between them some connection, of relationship,
perhaps, but a very close one in any case, since she knew his "pet
name."
Two very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Sérent, often
visited the community, whither they penetrated, no doubt, in virtue of
the privilege _Magnates mulieres_, and caused great consternation in the
boarding-school. When these two old ladies passed by, all the poor young
girls trembled and dropped their eyes.
Moreover, M. de Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an object of
attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had just been made,
while waiting for the episcopate, vicar-general of the Archbishop of
Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the
offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of the
young recluses could see him, because of the serge curtain, but he had
a sweet and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to
distinguish. He had been a mousquetaire, and then, he was said to be
very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was very well dressed in
a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent
moire, and that his black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the
world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of sixteen years.
Not a sound from without made its way into the convent. But there was
one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an
event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall
it.
It was a flute which was played in the neighborhood. This flute always
played the same air, an air which is very far away nowadays,--"My
Zétulbé, come reign o'er my soul,"--and it was heard two or three
times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it, the vocal
mothers were upset by it, brains were busy, punishments descended in
showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or
less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was
Zétulbé. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue
Droit-Mur; and they would have given anything, compromised everything,
attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only
for a second, of the "young man" who played that flute so deliciously,
and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same time. There
were some who made their escape by a back door, and ascended to the
third story on the Rue Droit-Mur side, in order to attempt to catch a
glimpse through the gaps. Impossible! One even went so far as to thrust
her arm through the grating, and to wave her white handkerchief. Two
were still bolder. They found means to climb on a roof, and risked their
lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing "the young man." He was an
old _émigré_ gentleman, blind and penniless, who was playing his flute
in his attic, in order to pass the time.
CHAPTER VI--THE LITTLE CONVENT
In this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly
distinct buildings,--the Great Convent, inhabited by the nuns, the
Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged; and lastly, what was
called the Little Convent. It was a building with a garden, in which
lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters
destroyed in the Revolution; a reunion of all the black, gray, and white
medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what might be
called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of harlequin
convent.
When the Empire was established, all these poor old dispersed and exiled
women had been accorded permission to come and take shelter under the
wings of the Bernardines-Benedictines. The government paid them a small
pension, the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them cordially. It was
a singular pell-mell. Each followed her own rule, Sometimes the pupils
of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them
a visit; the result is, that all those young memories have
retained among other souvenirs that of Mother Sainte-Bazile, Mother
Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother Jacob.
One of these refugees found herself almost at home. She was a nun of
Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had survived. The ancient
convent of the ladies of Sainte-Aure occupied, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, this very house of the Petit-Picpus, which belonged
later to the Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, too poor to
wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white robe with
a scarlet scapulary, had piously put it on a little manikin, which she
exhibited with complacency and which she bequeathed to the house at
her death. In 1824, only one nun of this order remained; to-day, there
remains only a doll.
In addition to these worthy mothers, some old society women had obtained
permission of the prioress, like Madame Albertine, to retire into the
Little Convent. Among the number were Madame Beaufort d'Hautpoul and
Marquise Dufresne. Another was never known in the convent except by
the formidable noise which she made when she blew her nose. The pupils
called her Madame Vacarmini (hubbub).
About 1820 or 1821, Madame de Genlis, who was at that time editing a
little periodical publication called _l'Intrépide_, asked to be allowed
to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as lady resident. The Duc
d'Orléans recommended her. Uproar in the hive; the vocal-mothers were
all in a flutter; Madame de Genlis had made romances. But she declared
that she was the first to detest them, and then, she had reached her
fierce stage of devotion. With the aid of God, and of the Prince, she
entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a
reason, that there was no shade in the garden. The nuns were delighted.
Although very old, she still played the harp, and did it very well.
When she went away she left her mark in her cell. Madame de Genlis was
superstitious and a Latinist. These two words furnish a tolerably good
profile of her. A few years ago, there were still to be seen, pasted in
the inside of a little cupboard in her cell in which she locked up her
silverware and her jewels, these five lines in Latin, written with
her own hand in red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion,
possessed the property of frightening away robbers:--
Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas;
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.
Hos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas.15
These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question whether the
two thieves of Calvary were named, as is commonly believed, Dismas and
Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. This orthography might have confounded the
pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gestas, of
a descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to
these verses forms an article of faith in the order of the Hospitallers.
The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate the
Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a veritable intrenchment,
was, of course, common to the Boarding-school, the Great Convent, and
the Little Convent. The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto
entrance on the street. But all was so arranged, that none of the
inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside world.
Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand, and
folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary churches, a
prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar, to
the right of the officiating priest; suppose this hall to be shut off by
a curtain seven feet in height, of which we have already spoken; in the
shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir
on the left, the school-girls on the right, the lay-sisters and the
novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the
Petit-Picpus assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was called
the choir, communicated with the cloister by a lobby. The church was
lighted from the garden. When the nuns were present at services where
their rule enjoined silence, the public was warned of their presence
only by the folding seats of the stalls noisily rising and falling.
CHAPTER VII--SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS
During the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the
Petit-Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemeur, whose name, in religion,
was Mother Innocente. She came of the family of Marguerite de Blemeur,
author of _Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint-Benoît_. She had
been re-elected. She was a woman about sixty years of age, short, thick,
"singing like a cracked pot," says the letter which we have already
quoted; an excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in the
whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite,
wise, competent, curiously proficient in history, crammed with Latin,
stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine monk than
a Benedictine nun.
The sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, Mother Cineres, who was almost
blind.
The most esteemed among the vocal mothers were Mother Sainte-Honorine;
the treasurer, Mother Sainte-Gertrude, the chief mistress of the
novices; Mother-Saint-Ange, the assistant mistress; Mother Annonciation,
the sacristan; Mother Saint-Augustin, the nurse, the only one in the
convent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde (Mademoiselle
Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful voice; Mother des Anges
(Mademoiselle Drouet), who had been in the convent of the Filles-Dieu,
and in the convent du Trésor, between Gisors and Magny; Mother
Saint-Joseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Adélaide
(Mademoiselle d'Auverney), Mother Miséricorde (Mademoiselle de
Cifuentes, who could not resist austerities), Mother Compassion
(Mademoiselle de la Miltière, received at the age of sixty in defiance
of the rule, and very wealthy); Mother Providence (Mademoiselle de
Laudinière), Mother Présentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was
prioress in 1847; and finally, Mother Sainte-Céligne (sister of the
sculptor Ceracchi), who went mad; Mother Sainte-Chantal (Mademoiselle de
Suzon), who went mad.
There was also, among the prettiest of them, a charming girl of three
and twenty, who was from the Isle de Bourbon, a descendant of the
Chevalier Roze, whose name had been Mademoiselle Roze, and who was
called Mother Assumption.
Mother Sainte-Mechtilde, intrusted with the singing and the choir, was
fond of making use of the pupils in this quarter. She usually took a
complete scale of them, that is to say, seven, from ten to sixteen years
of age, inclusive, of assorted voices and sizes, whom she made sing
standing, drawn up in a line, side by side, according to age, from the
smallest to the largest. This presented to the eye, something in the
nature of a reed-pipe of young girls, a sort of living Pan-pipe made of
angels.
Those of the lay-sisters whom the scholars loved most were Sister
Euphrasie, Sister Sainte-Marguérite, Sister Sainte-Marthe, who was in
her dotage, and Sister Sainte-Michel, whose long nose made them laugh.
All these women were gentle with the children. The nuns were severe only
towards themselves. No fire was lighted except in the school, and the
food was choice compared to that in the convent. Moreover, they lavished
a thousand cares on their scholars. Only, when a child passed near a nun
and addressed her, the nun never replied.
This rule of silence had had this effect, that throughout the whole
convent, speech had been withdrawn from human creatures, and bestowed
on inanimate objects. Now it was the church-bell which spoke, now it was
the gardener's bell. A very sonorous bell, placed beside the portress,
and which was audible throughout the house, indicated by its varied
peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph, all the actions of
material life which were to be performed, and summoned to the parlor, in
case of need, such or such an inhabitant of the house. Each person
and each thing had its own peal. The prioress had one and one, the
sub-prioress one and two. Six-five announced lessons, so that the pupils
never said "to go to lessons," but "to go to six-five." Four-four was
Madame de Genlis's signal. It was very often heard. "C'est le diable a
quatre,"--it's the very deuce--said the uncharitable. Tennine strokes
announced a great event. It was the opening of _the door of seclusion_,
a frightful sheet of iron bristling with bolts which only turned on its
hinges in the presence of the archbishop.
With the exception of the archbishop and the gardener, no man entered
the convent, as we have already said. The schoolgirls saw two others:
one, the chaplain, the Abbé Banés, old and ugly, whom they were
permitted to contemplate in the choir, through a grating; the other the
drawing-master, M. Ansiaux, whom the letter, of which we have perused
a few lines, calls _M. Anciot_, and describes as _a frightful old
hunchback_.
It will be seen that all these men were carefully chosen.
Such was this curious house.
CHAPTER VIII--POST CORDA LAPIDES
After having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable
to point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader
already has some idea of it.
The convent of the Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine filled almost the whole
of the vast trapezium which resulted from the intersection of the Rue
Polonceau, the Rue Droit-Mur, the Rue Petit-Picpus, and the unused lane,
called Rue Aumarais on old plans. These four streets surrounded this
trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings
and a garden. The principal building, taken in its entirety, was a
juxtaposition of hybrid constructions which, viewed from a bird's-eye
view, outlined, with considerable exactness, a gibbet laid flat on the
ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of the fragment
of the Rue Droit-Mur comprised between the Rue Petit-Picpus and the Rue
Polonceau; the lesser arm was a lofty, gray, severe grated façade which
faced the Rue Petit-Picpus; the carriage entrance No. 62 marked its
extremity. Towards the centre of this façade was a low, arched door,
whitened with dust and ashes, where the spiders wove their webs,
and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays, and on rare
occasions, when the coffin of a nun left the convent. This was the
public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a square hall
which was used as the servants' hall, and which the nuns called _the
buttery_. In the main arm were the cells of the mothers, the sisters,
and the novices. In the lesser arm lay the kitchens, the refectory,
backed up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door No. 62 and
the corner of the closed lane Aumarais, was the school, which was not
visible from without. The remainder of the trapezium formed the garden,
which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, which caused
the walls to be very much higher on the inside than on the outside. The
garden, which was slightly arched, had in its centre, on the summit of
a hillock, a fine pointed and conical fir-tree, whence ran, as from
the peaked boss of a shield, four grand alleys, and, ranged by twos
in between the branchings of these, eight small ones, so that, if the
enclosure had been circular, the geometrical plan of the alleys would
have resembled a cross superposed on a wheel. As the alleys all ended
in the very irregular walls of the garden, they were of unequal length.
They were bordered with currant bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall
poplars ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of
the Rue Droit-Mur to the house of the Little Convent, which was at the
angle of the Aumarais lane. In front of the Little Convent was what was
called the little garden. To this whole, let the reader add a courtyard,
all sorts of varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison
walls, the long black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the
Rue Polonceau for its sole perspective and neighborhood, and he will
be able to form for himself a complete image of what the house of the
Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house
had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century, which was called the "tennis-ground
of the eleven thousand devils."
All these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names,
Droit-Mur and Aumarais, are very ancient; the streets which bear them
are very much more ancient still. Aumarais Lane was called Maugout Lane;
the Rue Droit-Mur was called the Rue des Églantiers, for God opened
flowers before man cut stones.
CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE
Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the
Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open
a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other
little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and
useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.
In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbey
of Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She
talked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under Louis
XVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate.
It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on every
pretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,--that it was like
a city, and that there were streets in the monastery.
She talked with a Picard accent which amused the pupils. Every year,
she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath, she
said to the priest, "Monseigneur Saint-François gave it to Monseigneur
Saint-Julien, Monseigneur Saint-Julien gave it to Monseigneur
Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to Monseigneur
Saint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father." And the
school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under
their veils; charming little stifled laughs which made the vocal mothers
frown.
On another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories. She said
that _in her youth the Bernardine monks were every whit as good as the
mousquetaires_. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was the
eighteenth century. She told about the custom of the four wines, which
existed before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a great
personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer, traversed
a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to harangue
him and presented him with four silver gondolas into which they
had poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet this
inscription could be read, _monkey wine_; on the second, _lion wine_; on
the third, _sheep wine_; on the fourth, _hog wine_. These four
legends express the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first,
intoxication, which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the
third, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.
In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object of which
she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid this.
She would not show this object to anyone. She shut herself up, which her
rule allowed her to do, and hid herself, every time that she desired to
contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed the
cupboard again as hastily as it was possible with her aged hands. As
soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who was so fond
of talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence and the most
tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of comment for
all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What could that
treasure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so secret?
Some holy book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic relic?
They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died,
they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, and
opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like some
consecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter representing little Loves
flitting away pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes.
The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One of the
charming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting,
fluttering his tiny wings, and still making an effort to fly, but the
dancer is laughing with a satanical air. Moral: Love conquered by the
colic. This platter, which is very curious, and which had, possibly,
the honor of furnishing Molière with an idea, was still in existence
in September, 1845; it was for sale by a bric-à-brac merchant in the
Boulevard Beaumarchais.
This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside _because_,
said she, the _parlor is too gloomy_.
CHAPTER X--ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION
However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to
convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with the
same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du Temple,
in particular, which belonged, in truth, to another order, the black
shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself was a
salon with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in white
muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a portrait
of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets, and even the
head of a Turk.
It is in that garden of the Temple convent, that stood that famous
chestnut-tree which was renowned as the finest and the largest in
France, and which bore the reputation among the good people of the
eighteenth century of being _the father of all the chestnut trees of the
realm_.
As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines
of the Perpetual Adoration, Benedictines quite different from those who
depended on Cîteaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not very
ancient and does not go back more than two hundred years. In 1649 the
holy sacrament was profaned on two occasions a few days apart, in two
churches in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at Saint-Jean en Grève, a rare
and frightful sacrilege which set the whole town in an uproar. M. the
Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des Prés ordered a solemn
procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope's Nuncio officiated.
But this expiation did not satisfy two sainted women, Madame Courtin,
Marquise de Boucs, and the Comtesse de Châteauvieux. This outrage
committed on "the most holy sacrament of the altar," though but
temporary, would not depart from these holy souls, and it seemed to
them that it could only be extenuated by a "Perpetual Adoration" in some
female monastery. Both of them, one in 1652, the other in 1653, made
donations of notable sums to Mother Catherine de Bar, called of the Holy
Sacrament, a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding, to this pious
end, a monastery of the order of Saint-Benoît; the first permission for
this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé
of Saint-Germain, "on condition that no woman could be received unless
she contributed three hundred livres income, which amounts to six
thousand livres, to the principal." After the Abbé of Saint-Germain, the
king accorded letters-patent; and all the rest, abbatial charter, and
royal letters, was confirmed in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the
Parliament.
Such is the origin of the legal consecration of the establishment of the
Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris.
Their first convent was "a new building" in the Rue Cassette, out of the
contributions of Mesdames de Boucs and de Châteauvieux.
This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with
the Benedictine nuns of Cîteaux. It mounted back to the Abbé of
Saint-Germain des Prés, in the same manner that the ladies of the Sacred
Heart go back to the general of the Jesuits, and the sisters of charity
to the general of the Lazarists.
It was also totally different from the Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus,
whose interior we have just shown. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII. had
authorized, by a special brief, the Bernardines of the Rue Petit-Picpus,
to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictine nuns of the
Holy Sacrament. But the two orders remained distinct none the less.
CHAPTER XI--END OF THE PETIT-PICPUS
At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus
was in its decay; this forms a part of the general death of the order,
which, after the eighteenth century, has been disappearing like all
the religious orders. Contemplation is, like prayer, one of humanity's
needs; but, like everything which the Revolution touched, it will be
transformed, and from being hostile to social progress, it will become
favorable to it.
The house of the Petit-Picpus was becoming rapidly depopulated. In 1840,
the Little Convent had disappeared, the school had disappeared. There
were no longer any old women, nor young girls; the first were dead, the
latter had taken their departure. _Volaverunt_.
The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it
alarms, vocations recoil before it, the order receives no recruits. In
1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed
nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred;
fifteen years ago there were not more than twenty-eight of them. How
many are there to-day? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that
the circle of choice was restricted. She was not forty years old. In
proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service
of each becomes more painful; the moment could then be seen drawing near
when there would be but a dozen bent and aching shoulders to bear the
heavy rule of Saint-Benoît. The burden is implacable, and remains the
same for the few as for the many. It weighs down, it crushes. Thus they
die. At the period when the author of this book still lived in Paris,
two died. One was twenty-five years old, the other twenty-three. This
latter can say, like Julia Alpinula: _"Hic jaceo. Vixi annos viginti et
tres." _ It is in consequence of this decay that the convent gave up the
education of girls.
We have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without
entering it, and without introducing the minds which accompany us, and
which are listening to our tale, to the profit of some, perchance, of
the melancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this
community, full of those old practices which seem so novel to-day. It is
the closed garden, _hortus conclusus_. We have spoken of this singular
place in detail, but with respect, in so far, at least, as detail and
respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we insult nothing.
We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who
wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire,
who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross.
An illogical act on Voltaire's part, we may remark, by the way; for
Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and even
for those who deny superhuman incarnations, what does the crucifix
represent? The assassinated sage.
In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis.
People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that,
while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human
heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but
on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.
In the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary
to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits
of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future.
This spectre, this past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let
us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard. The past has a
visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage
and let us tear off the mask.
As for convents, they present a complex problem,--a question of
civilization, which condemns them; a question of liberty, which protects
them.
BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS
CHAPTER I--THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA
This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.
Man is the second.
Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road, it
has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which is common
to the Orient as well as to the Occident, to antiquity as well as to
modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as well as to
Christianity, is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to the
Infinite.
This is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on certain
ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our reserves, our
restrictions, and even our indignations, we must say that every time we
encounter man in the Infinite, either well or ill understood, we feel
ourselves overpowered with respect. There is, in the synagogue, in the
mosque, in the pagoda, in the wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate,
and a sublime side, which we adore. What a contemplation for the mind,
and what endless food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the
human wall!
CHAPTER II--THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism
is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in
its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where
centres of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great
social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is
to the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the
impoverishment of the country. The monastic regime, good at the
beginning of civilization, useful in the reduction of the brutal by the
spiritual, is bad when peoples have reached their manhood. Moreover,
when it becomes relaxed, and when it enters into its period of disorder,
it becomes bad for the very reasons which rendered it salutary in its
period of purity, because it still continues to set the example.
Claustration has had its day. Cloisters, useful in the early education
of modern civilization, have embarrassed its growth, and are injurious
to its development. So far as institution and formation with relation
to man are concerned, monasteries, which were good in the tenth century,
questionable in the fifteenth, are detestable in the nineteenth. The
leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful
nations, Italy and Spain; the one the light, the other the splendor of
Europe for centuries; and, at the present day, these two illustrious
peoples are but just beginning to convalesce, thanks to the healthy and
vigorous hygiene of 1789 alone.
The convent--the ancient female convent in particular, such as it still
presents itself on the threshold of this century, in Italy, in Austria,
in Spain--is one of the most sombre concretions of the Middle Ages. The
cloister, that cloister, is the point of intersection of horrors. The
Catholic cloister, properly speaking, is wholly filled with the black
radiance of death.
The Spanish convent is the most funereal of all. There rise, in
obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloom, beneath domes vague with
shadow, massive altars of Babel, as high as cathedrals; there immense
white crucifixes hang from chains in the dark; there are extended, all
nude on the ebony, great Christs of ivory; more than bleeding,--bloody;
hideous and magnificent, with their elbows displaying the bones, their
knee-pans showing their integuments, their wounds showing their flesh,
crowned with silver thorns, nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops
of rubies on their brows, and diamond tears in their eyes. The diamonds
and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep,
their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron-tipped scourges,
their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with
prayer; women who think themselves wives, spectres who think themselves
seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they
love? No. Do they live? No. Their nerves have turned to bone; their
bones have turned to stone. Their veil is of woven night. Their breath
under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of
death. The abbess, a spectre, sanctifies them and terrifies them.
The immaculate one is there, and very fierce. Such are the ancient
monasteries of Spain. Liars of terrible devotion, caverns of virgins,
ferocious places.
Catholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent was,
above all others, the Catholic convent. There was a flavor of the Orient
about it. The archbishop, the kislar-aga of heaven, locked up and kept
watch over this seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun was the
odalisque, the priest was the eunuch. The fervent were chosen in dreams
and possessed Christ. At night, the beautiful, nude young man descended
from the cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered one. Lofty walls
guarded the mystic sultana, who had the crucified for her sultan, from
all living distraction. A glance on the outer world was infidelity. The
_in pace_ replaced the leather sack. That which was cast into the sea in
the East was thrown into the ground in the West. In both quarters, women
wrung their hands; the waves for the first, the grave for the last; here
the drowned, there the buried. Monstrous parallel.
To-day the upholders of the past, unable to deny these things, have
adopted the expedient of smiling at them. There has come into fashion
a strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, of
invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all embarrassing
facts and all gloomy questions. _A matter for declamations_, say the
clever. Declamations, repeat the foolish. Jean-Jacques a declaimer;
Diderot a declaimer; Voltaire on Calas, Labarre, and Sirven, declaimers.
I know not who has recently discovered that Tacitus was a declaimer,
that Nero was a victim, and that pity is decidedly due to "that poor
Holofernes."
Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are
obstinate. The author of this book has seen, with his own eyes, eight
leagues distant from Brussels,--there are relics of the Middle Ages
there which are attainable for everybody,--at the Abbey of Villers, the
hole of the oubliettes, in the middle of the field which was formerly
the courtyard of the cloister, and on the banks of the Thil, four stone
dungeons, half under ground, half under the water. They were _in pace_.
Each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron door, a vault, and a
grated opening which, on the outside, is two feet above the level of the
river, and on the inside, six feet above the level of the ground. Four
feet of river flow past along the outside wall. The ground is always
soaked. The occupant of the _in pace_ had this wet soil for his bed. In
one of these dungeons, there is a fragment of an iron necklet riveted to
the wall; in another, there can be seen a square box made of four slabs
of granite, too short for a person to lie down in, too low for him to
stand upright in. A human being was put inside, with a coverlid of stone
on top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These _in pace_,
these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole
on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid
of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here
was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those
oozing walls,--what declaimers!
CHAPTER III--ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST
Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in
Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It
simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge
of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the
forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of
the first-born pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the
ferocities of which we have just spoken, the _in pace_, the closed
mouths, the walled-up brains, so many unfortunate minds placed in the
dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the habit, the interment of
living souls. Add individual tortures to national degradations,
and, whoever you may be, you will shudder before the frock and the
veil,--those two winding-sheets of human devising. Nevertheless, at
certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite
of progress, the spirit of the cloister persists in the midst of the
nineteenth century, and a singular ascetic recrudescence is, at this
moment, astonishing the civilized world. The obstinacy of antiquated
institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of
the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the
spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the
child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness
of corpses which should return to embrace the living.
"Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why
will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep
sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume. "I have
loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent.
To this there is but one reply: "In former days."
To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the
government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition,
to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to
refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles
on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and
militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication
of parasites, to force the past on the present,--this seems strange.
Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists,
who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple
process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social
order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique
authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about
shouting, "Look! take this, honest people." This logic was known to the
ancients. The soothsayers practise it. They rubbed a black heifer over
with chalk, and said, "She is white, _Bos cretatus_."
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above
all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive,
we attack it, and we try to kill it.
Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms,
all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails
in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war
must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the
fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms.
It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the
earth.
A convent in France, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, is
a college of owls facing the light. A cloister, caught in the very act
of asceticism, in the very heart of the city of '89 and of 1830 and
of 1848, Rome blossoming out in Paris, is an anachronism. In ordinary
times, in order to dissolve an anachronism and to cause it to vanish,
one has only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary
times.
Let us fight.
Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of
truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration?
There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which
it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly
and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is
required.
So, given the nineteenth century, we are opposed, as a general
proposition, and among all peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe,
in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says
cloister, says marsh. Their putrescence is evident, their stagnation is
unhealthy, their fermentation infects people with fever, and etiolates
them; their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think
without affright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek
monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of
vermin.
This said, the religious question remains. This question has certain
mysterious, almost formidable sides; may we be permitted to look at it
fixedly.
CHAPTER IV--THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES
Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right?
By virtue of the right of association.
They shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of
the right which every man has to open or shut his door.
They do not come forth. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right
to go and come, which implies the right to remain at home.
There, at home, what do they do?
They speak in low tones; they drop their eyes; they toil. They renounce
the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests.
They are clothed in coarse woollen or coarse linen. Not one of them
possesses in his own right anything whatever. On entering there, each
one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He
who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord, is the equal of
him who was a peasant. The cell is identical for all. All undergo the
same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on
the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sack on their backs, the
same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot,
all go barefoot. There may be a prince among them; that prince is the
same shadow as the rest. No titles. Even family names have disappeared.
They bear only first names. All are bowed beneath the equality of
baptismal names. They have dissolved the carnal family, and constituted
in their community a spiritual family. They have no other relatives than
all men. They succor the poor, they care for the sick. They elect those
whom they obey. They call each other "my brother."
You stop me and exclaim, "But that is the ideal convent!"
It is sufficient that it may be the possible convent, that I should take
notice of it.
Thence it results that, in the preceding book, I have spoken of a
convent with respectful accents. The Middle Ages cast aside, Asia cast
aside, the historical and political question held in reserve, from the
purely philosophical point of view, outside the requirements of militant
policy, on condition that the monastery shall be absolutely a voluntary
matter and shall contain only consenting parties, I shall always
consider a cloistered community with a certain attentive, and, in some
respects, a deferential gravity.
Wherever there is a community, there is a commune; where there is a
commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula:
Equality, Fraternity. Oh! how grand is liberty! And what a splendid
transfiguration! Liberty suffices to transform the monastery into a
republic.
Let us continue.
But these men, or these women who are behind these four walls. They
dress themselves in coarse woollen, they are equals, they call each
other brothers, that is well; but they do something else?
Yes.
What?
They gaze on the darkness, they kneel, and they clasp their hands.
What does this signify?
CHAPTER V--PRAYER
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God,--what is the meaning of these words?
Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent,
permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because,
if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since
it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end
there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can
attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? In other terms, is it
not the absolute, of which we are only the relative?
At the same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not
an infinite within us? Are not these two infinites (what an alarming
plural!) superposed, the one upon the other? Is not this second
infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter's
mirror, reflection, echo, an abyss which is concentric with another
abyss? Is this second infinity intelligent also? Does it think? Does
it love? Does it will? If these two infinities are intelligent, each of
them has a will principle, and there is an _I_ in the upper infinity as
there is an _I_ in the lower infinity. The _I_ below is the soul; the
_I_ on high is God.
To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought,
with the infinity on high, is called praying.
Let us take nothing from the human mind; to suppress is bad. We must
reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards
the Unknown; thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What
is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, revery,
prayer,--these are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them.
Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul? Into the shadow;
that is to say, to the light.
The grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of
humanity. Close to the right of the man, beside it, at the least, there
exists the right of the soul.
To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let
us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of
creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We
have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against
the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd,
to admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify
belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of
caterpillars.
CHAPTER VI--THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER
With regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are
sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite.
There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is
also a philosophy, pathologically classified, which denies the sun; this
philosophy is called blindness.
To erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth, is a fine blind
man's self-sufficiency.
The curious thing is the haughty, superior, and compassionate airs which
this groping philosophy assumes towards the philosophy which beholds
God. One fancies he hears a mole crying, "I pity them with their sun!"
There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led
back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that
they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in
any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove
God.
We salute them as philosophers, while inexorably denouncing their
philosophy.
Let us go on.
The remarkable thing about it is, also, their facility in paying
themselves off with words. A metaphysical school of the North,
impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied that it has worked a
revolution in human understanding by replacing the word Force with the
word Will.
To say: "the plant wills," instead of: "the plant grows": this would be
fecund in results, indeed, if we were to add: "the universe wills." Why?
Because it would come to this: the plant wills, therefore it has an _I_;
the universe wills, therefore it has a God.
As for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school, reject
nothing _a priori_, a will in the plant, accepted by this school,
appears to us more difficult to admit than a will in the universe denied
by it.
To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible on
any other conditions than a denial of the infinite. We have demonstrated
this.
The negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything
becomes "a mental conception."
With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubts
the existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite sure that it exists
itself.
From its point of view, it is possible that it may be for itself, only
"a mental conception."
Only, it does not perceive that all which it has denied it admits in the
lump, simply by the utterance of the word, mind.
In short, no way is open to the thought by a philosophy which makes all
end in the monosyllable, No.
To No there is only one reply, Yes.
Nihilism has no point.
There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everything
is something. Nothing is nothing.
Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.
Even to see and to show does not suffice. Philosophy should be an
energy; it should have for effort and effect to ameliorate the condition
of man. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; in
other words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the man
of felicity. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be
a cordial. To enjoy,--what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! The
brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as
an elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize
in them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is
the function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths.
Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practicable. It is
necessary that the ideal should be breathable, drinkable, and eatable to
the human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say: _Take, this
is my body, this is my blood_. Wisdom is holy communion. It is on this
condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science and becomes the
one and sovereign mode of human rallying, and that philosophy herself is
promoted to religion.
Philosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery to gaze upon it
at its ease, without any other result than that of being convenient to
curiosity.
For our part, adjourning the development of our thought to another
occasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we neither understand
man as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those two
forces which are their two motors: faith and love.
Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
What is this ideal? It is God.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.
CHAPTER VII--PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME
History and philosophy have eternal duties, which are, at the same time,
simple duties; to combat Caiphas the High-priest, Draco the Lawgiver,
Trimalcion the Legislator, Tiberius the Emperor; this is clear, direct,
and limpid, and offers no obscurity.
But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its
abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a
human problem.
When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence,
of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture
but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.
A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto,
sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme
abnegation.
To abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of
monasticism.
In the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of
exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light.
In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit on paradise.
The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide paid for with eternity.
It does not seem to us, that on such a subject mockery is permissible.
All about it is serious, the good as well as the bad.
The just man frowns, but never smiles with a malicious sneer. We
understand wrath, but not malice.
CHAPTER VIII--FAITH, LAW
A few words more.
We blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despise the
spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal; but we everywhere honor
the thoughtful man.
We salute the man who kneels.
A faith; this is a necessity for man. Woe to him who believes nothing.
One is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor
and invisible labor.
To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act.
Folded arms toil, clasped hands work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work.
Thales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy.
In our opinion, cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers.
To meditate on the Shadow is a serious thing.
Without invalidating anything that we have just said, we believe that
a perpetual memory of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point,
the priest and the philosopher agree. _We must die_. The Abbé de la
Trappe replies to Horace.
To mingle with one's life a certain presence of the sepulchre,--this is
the law of the sage; and it is the law of the ascetic. In this respect,
the ascetic and the sage converge. There is a material growth; we
admit it. There is a moral grandeur; we hold to that. Thoughtless and
vivacious spirits say:--
"What is the good of those motionless figures on the side of mystery?
What purpose do they serve? What do they do?"
Alas! In the presence of the darkness which environs us, and which
awaits us, in our ignorance of what the immense dispersion will make of
us, we reply: "There is probably no work more divine than that performed
by these souls." And we add: "There is probably no work which is more
useful."
There certainly must be some who pray constantly for those who never
pray at all.
In our opinion the whole question lies in the amount of thought that is
mingled with prayer.
Leibnitz praying is grand, Voltaire adoring is fine. _Deo erexit
Voltaire_.
We are for religion as against religions.
We are of the number who believe in the wretchedness of orisons, and the
sublimity of prayer.
Moreover, at this minute which we are now traversing,--a minute which
will not, fortunately, leave its impress on the nineteenth century,--at
this hour, when so many men have low brows and souls but little
elevated, among so many mortals whose morality consists in enjoyment,
and who are busied with the brief and misshapen things of matter,
whoever exiles himself seems worthy of veneration to us.
The monastery is a renunciation. Sacrifice wrongly directed is still
sacrifice. To mistake a grave error for a duty has a grandeur of its
own.
Taken by itself, and ideally, and in order to examine the truth on all
sides until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery,
the female convent in particular,--for in our century it is woman who
suffers the most, and in this exile of the cloister there is something
of protestation,--the female convent has incontestably a certain
majesty.
This cloistered existence which is so austere, so depressing, a few of
whose features we have just traced, is not life, for it is not liberty;
it is not the tomb, for it is not plenitude; it is the strange place
whence one beholds, as from the crest of a lofty mountain, on one side
the abyss where we are, on the other, the abyss whither we shall go; it
is the narrow and misty frontier separating two worlds, illuminated
and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has
become enfeebled is mingled with the vague ray of death; it is the half
obscurity of the tomb.
We, who do not believe what these women believe, but who, like them,
live by faith,--we have never been able to think without a sort of
tender and religious terror, without a sort of pity, that is full of
envy, of those devoted, trembling and trusting creatures, of these
humble and august souls, who dare to dwell on the very brink of the
mystery, waiting between the world which is closed and heaven which is
not yet open, turned towards the light which one cannot see, possessing
the sole happiness of thinking that they know where it is, aspiring
towards the gulf, and the unknown, their eyes fixed motionless on the
darkness, kneeling, bewildered, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted, at
times, by the deep breaths of eternity.
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
CHAPTER I--WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING A CONVENT
It was into this house that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent expressed
it, "fallen from the sky."
He had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the angle of the Rue
Polonceau. That hymn of the angels which he had heard in the middle
of the night, was the nuns chanting matins; that hall, of which he had
caught a glimpse in the gloom, was the chapel. That phantom which he had
seen stretched on the ground was the sister who was making reparation;
that bell, the sound of which had so strangely surprised him, was the
gardener's bell attached to the knee of Father Fauchelevent.
Cosette once put to bed, Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent had, as we have
already seen, supped on a glass of wine and a bit of cheese before a
good, crackling fire; then, the only bed in the hut being occupied by
Cosette, each threw himself on a truss of straw.
Before he shut his eyes, Jean Valjean said: "I must remain here
henceforth." This remark trotted through Fauchelevent's head all night
long.
To tell the truth, neither of them slept.
Jean Valjean, feeling that he was discovered and that Javert was on
his scent, understood that he and Cosette were lost if they returned to
Paris. Then the new storm which had just burst upon him had stranded
him in this cloister. Jean Valjean had, henceforth, but one thought,--to
remain there. Now, for an unfortunate man in his position, this
convent was both the safest and the most dangerous of places; the most
dangerous, because, as no men might enter there, if he were discovered,
it was a flagrant offence, and Jean Valjean would find but one step
intervening between the convent and prison; the safest, because, if he
could manage to get himself accepted there and remain there, who would
ever seek him in such a place? To dwell in an impossible place was
safety.
On his side, Fauchelevent was cudgelling his brains. He began by
declaring to himself that he understood nothing of the matter. How had
M. Madeleine got there, when the walls were what they were? Cloister
walls are not to be stepped over. How did he get there with a child? One
cannot scale a perpendicular wall with a child in one's arms. Who was
that child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauchelevent had lived
in the convent, he had heard nothing of M. sur M., and he knew nothing
of what had taken place there. Father Madeleine had an air which
discouraged questions; and besides, Fauchelevent said to himself: "One
does not question a saint." M. Madeleine had preserved all his prestige
in Fauchelevent's eyes. Only, from some words which Jean Valjean had let
fall, the gardener thought he could draw the inference that M. Madeleine
had probably become bankrupt through the hard times, and that he was
pursued by his creditors; or that he had compromised himself in some
political affair, and was in hiding; which last did not displease
Fauchelevent, who, like many of our peasants of the North, had an
old fund of Bonapartism about him. While in hiding, M. Madeleine had
selected the convent as a refuge, and it was quite simple that he should
wish to remain there. But the inexplicable point, to which Fauchelevent
returned constantly and over which he wearied his brain, was that M.
Madeleine should be there, and that he should have that little girl with
him. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and still did
not believe it possible. The incomprehensible had just made its entrance
into Fauchelevent's hut. Fauchelevent groped about amid conjectures, and
could see nothing clearly but this: "M. Madeleine saved my life."
This certainty alone was sufficient and decided his course. He said to
himself: "It is my turn now." He added in his conscience: "M. Madeleine
did not stop to deliberate when it was a question of thrusting himself
under the cart for the purpose of dragging me out." He made up his mind
to save M. Madeleine.
Nevertheless, he put many questions to himself and made himself divers
replies: "After what he did for me, would I save him if he were a thief?
Just the same. If he were an assassin, would I save him? Just the same.
Since he is a saint, shall I save him? Just the same."
But what a problem it was to manage to have him remain in the convent!
Fauchelevent did not recoil in the face of this almost chimerical
undertaking; this poor peasant of Picardy without any other ladder
than his self-devotion, his good will, and a little of that old
rustic cunning, on this occasion enlisted in the service of a generous
enterprise, undertook to scale the difficulties of the cloister, and the
steep escarpments of the rule of Saint-Benoît. Father Fauchelevent was
an old man who had been an egoist all his life, and who, towards the end
of his days, halt, infirm, with no interest left to him in the world,
found it sweet to be grateful, and perceiving a generous action to be
performed, flung himself upon it like a man, who at the moment when he
is dying, should find close to his hand a glass of good wine which he
had never tasted, and should swallow it with avidity. We may add,
that the air which he had breathed for many years in this convent had
destroyed all personality in him, and had ended by rendering a good
action of some kind absolutely necessary to him.
So he took his resolve: to devote himself to M. Madeleine.
We have just called him a _poor peasant of Picardy_. That description
is just, but incomplete. At the point of this story which we have now
reached, a little of Father Fauchelevent's physiology becomes useful.
He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added trickery to his
cunning, and penetration to his ingenuousness. Having, through various
causes, failed in his business, he had descended to the calling of a
carter and a laborer. But, in spite of oaths and lashings, which horses
seem to require, something of the notary had lingered in him. He had
some natural wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare
thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: "He talks almost
like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that
species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last
century qualified as _demi-bourgeois, demi-lout_, and which the
metaphors showered by the château upon the thatched cottage ticketed in
the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: _rather rustic, rather citified; pepper
and salt_. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly used by fate,
worn out, a sort of poor, threadbare old soul, was, nevertheless, an
impulsive man, and extremely spontaneous in his actions; a precious
quality which prevents one from ever being wicked. His defects and his
vices, for he had some, were all superficial; in short, his physiognomy
was of the kind which succeeds with an observer. His aged face had none
of those disagreeable wrinkles at the top of the forehead, which signify
malice or stupidity.
At daybreak, Father Fauchelevent opened his eyes, after having done an
enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss
of straw, and watching Cosette's slumbers. Fauchelevent sat up and
said:--
"Now that you are here, how are you going to contrive to enter?"
This remark summed up the situation and aroused Jean Valjean from his
revery.
The two men took counsel together.
"In the first place," said Fauchelevent, "you will begin by not setting
foot outside of this chamber, either you or the child. One step in the
garden and we are done for."
"That is true."
"Monsieur Madeleine," resumed Fauchelevent, "you have arrived at a very
auspicious moment, I mean to say a very inauspicious moment; one of
the ladies is very ill. This will prevent them from looking much in our
direction. It seems that she is dying. The prayers of the forty hours
are being said. The whole community is in confusion. That occupies them.
The one who is on the point of departure is a saint. In fact, we are
all saints here; all the difference between them and me is that they say
'our cell,' and that I say 'my cabin.' The prayers for the dying are to
be said, and then the prayers for the dead. We shall be at peace here
for to-day; but I will not answer for to-morrow."
"Still," observed Jean Valjean, "this cottage is in the niche of the
wall, it is hidden by a sort of ruin, there are trees, it is not visible
from the convent."
"And I add that the nuns never come near it."
"Well?" said Jean Valjean.
The interrogation mark which accentuated this "well" signified:
"it seems to me that one may remain concealed here?" It was to this
interrogation point that Fauchelevent responded:--
"There are the little girls."
"What little girls?" asked Jean Valjean.
Just as Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain the words which he had
uttered, a bell emitted one stroke.
"The nun is dead," said he. "There is the knell."
And he made a sign to Jean Valjean to listen.
The bell struck a second time.
"It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike
once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the
church.--You see, they play. At recreation hours it suffices to have a
ball roll aside, to send them all hither, in spite of prohibitions, to
hunt and rummage for it all about here. Those cherubs are devils."
"Who?" asked Jean Valjean.
"The little girls. You would be very quickly discovered. They would
shriek: 'Oh! a man!' There is no danger to-day. There will be no
recreation hour. The day will be entirely devoted to prayers. You hear
the bell. As I told you, a stroke each minute. It is the death knell."
"I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are pupils."
And Jean Valjean thought to himself:--
"Here is Cosette's education already provided."
Fauchelevent exclaimed:--
"Pardine! There are little girls indeed! And they would bawl around you!
And they would rush off! To be a man here is to have the plague. You see
how they fasten a bell to my paw as though I were a wild beast."
Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.--"This convent
would be our salvation," he murmured.
Then he raised his voice:--
"Yes, the difficulty is to remain here."
"No," said Fauchelevent, "the difficulty is to get out."
Jean Valjean felt the blood rush back to his heart.
"To get out!"
"Yes, Monsieur Madeleine. In order to return here it is first necessary
to get out."
And after waiting until another stroke of the knell had sounded,
Fauchelevent went on:--
"You must not be found here in this fashion. Whence come you? For me,
you fall from heaven, because I know you; but the nuns require one to
enter by the door."
All at once they heard a rather complicated pealing from another bell.
"Ah!" said Fauchelevent, "they are ringing up the vocal mothers. They
are going to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when any one dies.
She died at daybreak. People generally do die at daybreak. But cannot
you get out by the way in which you entered? Come, I do not ask for the
sake of questioning you, but how did you get in?"
Jean Valjean turned pale; the very thought of descending again into
that terrible street made him shudder. You make your way out of a forest
filled with tigers, and once out of it, imagine a friendly counsel that
shall advise you to return thither! Jean Valjean pictured to himself the
whole police force still engaged in swarming in that quarter, agents on
the watch, sentinels everywhere, frightful fists extended towards his
collar, Javert at the corner of the intersection of the streets perhaps.
"Impossible!" said he. "Father Fauchelevent, say that I fell from the
sky."
"But I believe it, I believe it," retorted Fauchelevent. "You have no
need to tell me that. The good God must have taken you in his hand for
the purpose of getting a good look at you close to, and then dropped
you. Only, he meant to place you in a man's convent; he made a mistake.
Come, there goes another peal, that is to order the porter to go and
inform the municipality that the dead-doctor is to come here and view a
corpse. All that is the ceremony of dying. These good ladies are not
at all fond of that visit. A doctor is a man who does not believe in
anything. He lifts the veil. Sometimes he lifts something else too. How
quickly they have had the doctor summoned this time! What is the matter?
Your little one is still asleep. What is her name?"
"Cosette."
"She is your daughter? You are her grandfather, that is?"
"Yes."
"It will be easy enough for her to get out of here. I have my service
door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have
my vintage basket on my back, the child is in it, I go out. Father
Fauchelevent goes out with his basket--that is perfectly natural. You
will tell the child to keep very quiet. She will be under the cover. I
will leave her for whatever time is required with a good old friend, a
fruit-seller whom I know in the Rue Chemin-Vert, who is deaf, and who
has a little bed. I will shout in the fruit-seller's ear, that she is a
niece of mine, and that she is to keep her for me until to-morrow. Then
the little one will re-enter with you; for I will contrive to have you
re-enter. It must be done. But how will you manage to get out?"
Jean Valjean shook his head.
"No one must see me, the whole point lies there, Father Fauchelevent.
Find some means of getting me out in a basket, under cover, like
Cosette."
Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his
left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment.
A third peal created a diversion.
"That is the dead-doctor taking his departure," said Fauchelevent. "He
has taken a look and said: 'She is dead, that is well.' When the doctor
has signed the passport for paradise, the undertaker's company sends a
coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out; if she is a sister,
the sisters lay her out. After which, I nail her up. That forms a part
of my gardener's duty. A gardener is a bit of a grave-digger. She is
placed in a lower hall of the church which communicates with the street,
and into which no man may enter save the doctor of the dead. I don't
count the undertaker's men and myself as men. It is in that hall that I
nail up the coffin. The undertaker's men come and get it, and whip
up, coachman! that's the way one goes to heaven. They fetch a box with
nothing in it, they take it away again with something in it. That's what
a burial is like. _De profundis_."
A horizontal ray of sunshine lightly touched the face of the sleeping
Cosette, who lay with her mouth vaguely open, and had the air of an
angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean had fallen to gazing at her.
He was no longer listening to Fauchelevent.
That one is not listened to is no reason for preserving silence. The
good old gardener went on tranquilly with his babble:--
"The grave is dug in the Vaugirard cemetery. They declare that they are
going to suppress that Vaugirard cemetery. It is an ancient cemetery
which is outside the regulations, which has no uniform, and which is
going to retire. It is a shame, for it is convenient. I have a friend
there, Father Mestienne, the grave-digger. The nuns here possess one
privilege, it is to be taken to that cemetery at nightfall. There is
a special permission from the Prefecture on their behalf. But how many
events have happened since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead, and
Father Madeleine--"
"Is buried," said Jean Valjean, smiling sadly.
Fauchelevent caught the word.
"Goodness! if you were here for good, it would be a real burial."
A fourth peal burst out. Fauchelevent hastily detached the belled
knee-cap from its nail and buckled it on his knee again.
"This time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good, now I am
pricking myself on the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don't
stir from here, and wait for me. Something new has come up. If you are
hungry, there is wine, bread and cheese."
And he hastened out of the hut, crying: "Coming! coming!"
Jean Valjean watched him hurrying across the garden as fast as his
crooked leg would permit, casting a sidelong glance by the way on his
melon patch.
Less than ten minutes later, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the
nuns in his road to flight, tapped gently at a door, and a gentle voice
replied: _"Forever! Forever!" _ that is to say: _"Enter." _
The door was the one leading to the parlor reserved for seeing the
gardener on business. This parlor adjoined the chapter hall. The
prioress, seated on the only chair in the parlor, was waiting for
Fauchelevent.
CHAPTER II--FAUCHELEVENT IN THE PRESENCE OF A DIFFICULTY
It is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions,
notably priests and nuns, to wear a grave and agitated air on critical
occasions. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, this double form of
preoccupation was imprinted on the countenance of the prioress, who was
that wise and charming Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocente, who
was ordinarily cheerful.
The gardener made a timid bow, and remained at the door of the cell. The
prioress, who was telling her beads, raised her eyes and said:--
"Ah! it is you, Father Fauvent."
This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.
Fauchelevent bowed again.
"Father Fauvent, I have sent for you."
"Here I am, reverend Mother."
"I have something to say to you."
"And so have I," said Fauchelevent with a boldness which caused him
inward terror, "I have something to say to the very reverend Mother."
The prioress stared at him.
"Ah! you have a communication to make to me."
"A request."
"Very well, speak."
Goodman Fauchelevent, the ex-notary, belonged to the category of
peasants who have assurance. A certain clever ignorance constitutes a
force; you do not distrust it, and you are caught by it. Fauchelevent
had been a success during the something more than two years which he had
passed in the convent. Always solitary and busied about his gardening,
he had nothing else to do than to indulge his curiosity. As he was at a
distance from all those veiled women passing to and fro, he saw before
him only an agitation of shadows. By dint of attention and sharpness
he had succeeded in clothing all those phantoms with flesh, and those
corpses were alive for him. He was like a deaf man whose sight grows
keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute. He had
applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals,
and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister
possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled all her secrets in his
ear. Fauchelevent knew all and concealed all; that constituted his art.
The whole convent thought him stupid. A great merit in religion. The
vocal mothers made much of Fauchelevent. He was a curious mute. He
inspired confidence. Moreover, he was regular, and never went out except
for well-demonstrated requirements of the orchard and vegetable garden.
This discretion of conduct had inured to his credit. None the less, he
had set two men to chattering: the porter, in the convent, and he
knew the singularities of their parlor, and the grave-digger, at
the cemetery, and he was acquainted with the peculiarities of their
sepulture; in this way, he possessed a double light on the subject of
these nuns, one as to their life, the other as to their death. But he
did not abuse his knowledge. The congregation thought a great deal of
him. Old, lame, blind to everything, probably a little deaf into the
bargain,--what qualities! They would have found it difficult to replace
him.
The goodman, with the assurance of a person who feels that he is
appreciated, entered into a rather diffuse and very deep rustic harangue
to the reverend prioress. He talked a long time about his age, his
infirmities, the surcharge of years counting double for him henceforth,
of the increasing demands of his work, of the great size of the garden,
of nights which must be passed, like the last, for instance, when he had
been obliged to put straw mats over the melon beds, because of the moon,
and he wound up as follows: "That he had a brother"--(the prioress made
a movement),--"a brother no longer young"--(a second movement on the
part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance),--"that, if he
might be permitted, this brother would come and live with him and help
him, that he was an excellent gardener, that the community would receive
from him good service, better than his own; that, otherwise, if his
brother were not admitted, as he, the elder, felt that his health was
broken and that he was insufficient for the work, he should be obliged,
greatly to his regret, to go away; and that his brother had a little
daughter whom he would bring with him, who might be reared for God in
the house, and who might, who knows, become a nun some day."
When he had finished speaking, the prioress stayed the slipping of her
rosary between her fingers, and said to him:--
"Could you procure a stout iron bar between now and this evening?"
"For what purpose?"
"To serve as a lever."
"Yes, reverend Mother," replied Fauchelevent.
The prioress, without adding a word, rose and entered the adjoining
room, which was the hall of the chapter, and where the vocal mothers
were probably assembled. Fauchelevent was left alone.
CHAPTER III--MOTHER INNOCENTE
About a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated
herself once more on her chair.
The two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. We will present a stenographic
report of the dialogue which then ensued, to the best of our ability.
"Father Fauvent!"
"Reverend Mother!"
"Do you know the chapel?"
"I have a little cage there, where I hear the mass and the offices."
"And you have been in the choir in pursuance of your duties?"
"Two or three times."
"There is a stone to be raised."
"Heavy?"
"The slab of the pavement which is at the side of the altar."
"The slab which closes the vault?"
"Yes."
"It would be a good thing to have two men for it."
"Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you."
"A woman is never a man."
"We have only a woman here to help you. Each one does what he can.
Because Dom Mabillon gives four hundred and seventeen epistles of
Saint Bernard, while Merlonus Horstius only gives three hundred and
sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius."
"Neither do I."
"Merit consists in working according to one's strength. A cloister is
not a dock-yard."
"And a woman is not a man. But my brother is the strong one, though!"
"And can you get a lever?"
"That is the only sort of key that fits that sort of door."
"There is a ring in the stone."
"I will put the lever through it."
"And the stone is so arranged that it swings on a pivot."
"That is good, reverend Mother. I will open the vault."
"And the four Mother Precentors will help you."
"And when the vault is open?"
"It must be closed again."
"Will that be all?"
"No."
"Give me your orders, very reverend Mother."
"Fauvent, we have confidence in you."
"I am here to do anything you wish."
"And to hold your peace about everything!"
"Yes, reverend Mother."
"When the vault is open--"
"I will close it again."
"But before that--"
"What, reverend Mother?"
"Something must be lowered into it."
A silence ensued. The prioress, after a pout of the under lip which
resembled hesitation, broke it.
"Father Fauvent!"
"Reverend Mother!"
"You know that a mother died this morning?"
"No."
"Did you not hear the bell?"
"Nothing can be heard at the bottom of the garden."
"Really?"
"I can hardly distinguish my own signal."
"She died at daybreak."
"And then, the wind is not blowing in my direction this morning."
"It was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman."
The prioress paused, moved her lips, as though in mental prayer, and
resumed:--
"Three years ago, Madame de Béthune, a Jansenist, turned orthodox,
merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer."
"Ah! yes, now I hear the knell, reverend Mother."
"The mothers have taken her to the dead-room, which opens on the
church."
"I know."
"No other man than you can or must enter that chamber. See to that. A
fine sight it would be, to see a man enter the dead-room!"
"More often!"
"Hey?"
"More often!"
"What do you say?"
"I say more often."
"More often than what?"
"Reverend Mother, I did not say more often than what, I said more
often."
"I don't understand you. Why do you say more often?"
"In order to speak like you, reverend Mother."
"But I did not say 'more often.'"
At that moment, nine o'clock struck.
"At nine o'clock in the morning and at all hours, praised and adored be
the most Holy Sacrament of the altar," said the prioress.
"Amen," said Fauchelevent.
The clock struck opportunely. It cut "more often" short. It is probable,
that had it not been for this, the prioress and Fauchelevent would never
have unravelled that skein.
Fauchelevent mopped his forehead.
The prioress indulged in another little inward murmur, probably sacred,
then raised her voice:--
"In her lifetime, Mother Crucifixion made converts; after her death, she
will perform miracles."
"She will!" replied Father Fauchelevent, falling into step, and striving
not to flinch again.
"Father Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion.
No doubt, it is not granted to every one to die, like Cardinal de
Bérulle, while saying the holy mass, and to breathe forth their souls
to God, while pronouncing these words: _Hanc igitur oblationem_. But
without attaining to such happiness, Mother Crucifixion's death was very
precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last moment.
She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She gave us her last
commands. If you had a little more faith, and if you could have been
in her cell, she would have cured your leg merely by touching it.
She smiled. We felt that she was regaining her life in God. There was
something of paradise in that death."
Fauchelevent thought that it was an orison which she was finishing.
"Amen," said he.
"Father Fauvent, what the dead wish must be done."
The prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Fauchelevent held
his peace.
She went on:--
"I have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics laboring in Our
Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises of the clerical life, and
who bear wonderful fruit."
"Reverend Mother, you can hear the knell much better here than in the
garden."
"Besides, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint."
"Like yourself, reverend Mother."
"She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express permission of our
Holy Father, Pius VII.--"
"The one who crowned the Emp--Buonaparte."
For a clever man like Fauchelevent, this allusion was an awkward one.
Fortunately, the prioress, completely absorbed in her own thoughts, did
not hear it. She continued:--
"Father Fauvent?"
"Reverend Mother?"
"Saint Didorus, Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired that this single word
might be inscribed on his tomb: _Acarus_, which signifies, a worm of the
earth; this was done. Is this true?"
"Yes, reverend Mother."
"The blessed Mezzocane, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried beneath the
gallows; this was done."
"That is true."
"Saint Terentius, Bishop of Port, where the mouth of the Tiber empties
into the sea, requested that on his tomb might be engraved the
sign which was placed on the graves of parricides, in the hope that
passers-by would spit on his tomb. This was done. The dead must be
obeyed."
"So be it."
"The body of Bernard Guidonis, born in France near Roche-Abeille, was,
as he had ordered, and in spite of the king of Castile, borne to the
church of the Dominicans in Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis was
Bishop of Tuy in Spain. Can the contrary be affirmed?"
"For that matter, no, reverend Mother."
"The fact is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse."
Several beads of the chaplet were told off, still in silence. The
prioress resumed:--
"Father Fauvent, Mother Crucifixion will be interred in the coffin in
which she has slept for the last twenty years."
"That is just."
"It is a continuation of her slumber."
"So I shall have to nail up that coffin?"
"Yes."
"And we are to reject the undertaker's coffin?"
"Precisely."
"I am at the orders of the very reverend community."
"The four Mother Precentors will assist you."
"In nailing up the coffin? I do not need them."
"No. In lowering the coffin."
"Where?"
"Into the vault."
"What vault?"
"Under the altar."
Fauchelevent started.
"The vault under the altar?"
"Under the altar."
"But--"
"You will have an iron bar."
"Yes, but--"
"You will raise the stone with the bar by means of the ring."
"But--"
"The dead must be obeyed. To be buried in the vault under the altar of
the chapel, not to go to profane earth; to remain there in death where
she prayed while living; such was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion.
She asked it of us; that is to say, commanded us."
"But it is forbidden."
"Forbidden by men, enjoined by God."
"What if it became known?"
"We have confidence in you."
"Oh! I am a stone in your walls."
"The chapter assembled. The vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted
again, and who are now deliberating, have decided that Mother
Crucifixion shall be buried, according to her wish, in her own coffin,
under our altar. Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles
here! What a glory of God for the community! And miracles issue from
tombs."
"But, reverend Mother, if the agent of the sanitary commission--"
"Saint Benoît II., in the matter of sepulture, resisted Constantine
Pogonatus."
"But the commissary of police--"
"Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who entered among the Gauls
under the Empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of nuns
to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar."
"But the inspector from the Prefecture--"
"The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the eleventh
general of the Carthusians, gave to his order this device: _Stat crux
dum volvitur orbis_."
"Amen," said Fauchelevent, who imperturbably extricated himself in this
manner from the dilemma, whenever he heard Latin.
Any audience suffices for a person who has held his peace too long. On
the day when the rhetorician Gymnastoras left his prison, bearing in
his body many dilemmas and numerous syllogisms which had struck in, he
halted in front of the first tree which he came to, harangued it and
made very great efforts to convince it. The prioress, who was usually
subjected to the barrier of silence, and whose reservoir was overfull,
rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a dam which has broken away:--
"I have on my right Benoît and on my left Bernard. Who was Bernard? The
first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a country that is
blest because it gave him birth. His father was named Técelin, and his
mother Alèthe. He began at Cîteaux, to end in Clairvaux; he was ordained
abbot by the bishop of Châlon-sur-Saône, Guillaume de Champeaux; he had
seven hundred novices, and founded a hundred and sixty monasteries; he
overthrew Abeilard at the council of Sens in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys
and Henry his disciple, and another sort of erring spirits who were
called the Apostolics; he confounded Arnauld de Brescia, darted
lightning at the monk Raoul, the murderer of the Jews, dominated the
council of Reims in 1148, caused the condemnation of Gilbert de Poréa,
Bishop of Poitiers, caused the condemnation of Éon de l'Étoile, arranged
the disputes of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, advised Pope
Eugene III., regulated the Temple, preached the crusade, performed
two hundred and fifty miracles during his lifetime, and as many
as thirty-nine in one day. Who was Benoît? He was the patriarch of
Mont-Cassin; he was the second founder of the Sainteté Claustrale,
he was the Basil of the West. His order has produced forty popes, two
hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four
thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six
kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints,
and has been in existence for fourteen hundred years. On one side Saint
Bernard, on the other the agent of the sanitary department! On one side
Saint Benoît, on the other the inspector of public ways! The state,
the road commissioners, the public undertaker, regulations, the
administration, what do we know of all that? There is not a chance
passer-by who would not be indignant to see how we are treated. We
have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ! Your sanitary
department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the
commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!"
Fauchelevent was but ill at ease under this shower bath. The prioress
continued:--
"No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics
and those in error deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. We
do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which
we should ignore. We are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist
people who do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard and
the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics, a certain good
ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so
blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of
Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was merely a king. Let us beware of God! There
is no longer just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not
the name of César de Bus. Nevertheless, César de Bus is a man of blessed
memory, and Voltaire one of unblessed memory. The last arch-bishop,
the Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that Charles de
Gondren succeeded to Berulle, and François Bourgoin to Gondren,
and Jean-François Senault to Bourgoin, and Father Sainte-Marthe to
Jean-François Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because
he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratorie, but
because he furnished Henri IV., the Huguenot king, with the material
for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint François de
Sales, is that he cheated at play. And then, religion is attacked. Why?
Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, Bishop of Gap,
was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and because both of them
followed Mommol. What has that to do with the question? Does that
prevent Martin de Tours from being a saint, and giving half of his cloak
to a beggar? They persecute the saints. They shut their eyes to the
truth. Darkness is the rule. The most ferocious beasts are beasts which
are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality. Oh! how wicked people
are! By order of the king signifies to-day, by order of the revolution.
One no longer knows what is due to the living or to the dead. A holy
death is prohibited. Burial is a civil matter. This is horrible. Saint
Leo II. wrote two special letters, one to Pierre Notaire, the other to
the king of the Visigoths, for the purpose of combating and rejecting,
in questions touching the dead, the authority of the exarch and the
supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of Châlons, held his own
in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient magistracy
agreed with him. In former times we had voices in the chapter, even on
matters of the day. The Abbot of Cîteaux, the general of the order, was
councillor by right of birth to the parliament of Burgundy. We do what
we please with our dead. Is not the body of Saint Benoît himself in
France, in the abbey of Fleury, called Saint Benoît-sur-Loire, although
he died in Italy at Mont-Cassin, on Saturday, the 21st of the month
of March, of the year 543? All this is incontestable. I abhor
psalm-singers, I hate priors, I execrate heretics, but I should detest
yet more any one who should maintain the contrary. One has only to
read Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus, Maurolics, and Dom Luc
d'Achery."
The prioress took breath, then turned to Fauchelevent.
"Is it settled, Father Fauvent?"
"It is settled, reverend Mother."
"We may depend on you?"
"I will obey."
"That is well."
"I am entirely devoted to the convent."
"That is understood. You will close the coffin. The sisters will carry
it to the chapel. The office for the dead will then be said. Then we
shall return to the cloister. Between eleven o'clock and midnight, you
will come with your iron bar. All will be done in the most profound
secrecy. There will be in the chapel only the four Mother Precentors,
Mother Ascension and yourself."
"And the sister at the post?"
"She will not turn round."
"But she will hear."
"She will not listen. Besides, what the cloister knows the world learns
not."
A pause ensued. The prioress went on:--
"You will remove your bell. It is not necessary that the sister at the
post should perceive your presence."
"Reverend Mother?"
"What, Father Fauvent?"
"Has the doctor for the dead paid his visit?"
"He will pay it at four o'clock to-day. The peal which orders the
doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do not
understand any of the peals?"
"I pay no attention to any but my own."
"That is well, Father Fauvent."
"Reverend Mother, a lever at least six feet long will be required."
"Where will you obtain it?"
"Where gratings are not lacking, iron bars are not lacking. I have my
heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden."
"About three-quarters of an hour before midnight; do not forget."
"Reverend Mother?"
"What?"
"If you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort, my brother is the
strong man for you. A perfect Turk!"
"You will do it as speedily as possible."
"I cannot work very fast. I am infirm; that is why I require an
assistant. I limp."
"To limp is no sin, and perhaps it is a blessing. The Emperor Henry II.,
who combated Antipope Gregory and re-established Benoît VIII., has two
surnames, the Saint and the Lame."
"Two surtouts are a good thing," murmured Fauchelevent, who really was a
little hard of hearing.
"Now that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to it.
That is not too much. Be near the principal altar, with your iron bar,
at eleven o'clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must have
been completed a good quarter of an hour before that."
"I will do anything to prove my zeal towards the community. These are my
orders. I am to nail up the coffin. At eleven o'clock exactly, I am to
be in the chapel. The Mother Precentors will be there. Mother Ascension
will be there. Two men would be better. However, never mind! I shall
have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the coffin, and
we will close the vault again. After which, there will be no trace
of anything. The government will have no suspicion. Thus all has been
arranged, reverend Mother?"
"No!"
"What else remains?"
"The empty coffin remains."
This produced a pause. Fauchelevent meditated. The prioress meditated.
"What is to be done with that coffin, Father Fauvent?"
"It will be given to the earth."
"Empty?"
Another silence. Fauchelevent made, with his left hand, that sort of a
gesture which dismisses a troublesome subject.
"Reverend Mother, I am the one who is to nail up the coffin in the
basement of the church, and no one can enter there but myself, and I
will cover the coffin with the pall."
"Yes, but the bearers, when they place it in the hearse and lower it
into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is nothing in it."
"Ah! the de--!" exclaimed Fauchelevent.
The prioress began to make the sign of the cross, and looked fixedly at
the gardener. The _vil_ stuck fast in his throat.
He made haste to improvise an expedient to make her forget the oath.
"I will put earth in the coffin, reverend Mother. That will produce the
effect of a corpse."
"You are right. Earth, that is the same thing as man. So you will manage
the empty coffin?"
"I will make that my special business."
The prioress's face, up to that moment troubled and clouded, grew serene
once more. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior to
him. Fauchelevent went towards the door. As he was on the point of
passing out, the prioress raised her voice gently:--
"I am pleased with you, Father Fauvent; bring your brother to me
to-morrow, after the burial, and tell him to fetch his daughter."
CHAPTER IV--IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ
AUSTIN CASTILLEJO
The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one-eyed man;
they do not reach their goal very promptly. Moreover, Fauchelevent
was in a dilemma. He took nearly a quarter of an hour to return to his
cottage in the garden. Cosette had waked up. Jean Valjean had placed her
near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, Jean Valjean was
pointing out to her the vintner's basket on the wall, and saying to her,
"Listen attentively to me, my little Cosette. We must go away from this
house, but we shall return to it, and we shall be very happy here. The
good man who lives here is going to carry you off on his back in that.
You will wait for me at a lady's house. I shall come to fetch you. Obey,
and say nothing, above all things, unless you want Madame Thénardier to
get you again!"
Cosette nodded gravely.
Jean Valjean turned round at the noise made by Fauchelevent opening the
door.
"Well?"
"Everything is arranged, and nothing is," said Fauchelevent. "I have
permission to bring you in; but before bringing you in you must be
got out. That's where the difficulty lies. It is easy enough with the
child."
"You will carry her out?"
"And she will hold her tongue?"
"I answer for that."
"But you, Father Madeleine?"
And, after a silence, fraught with anxiety, Fauchelevent exclaimed:--
"Why, get out as you came in!"
Jean Valjean, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying,
"Impossible."
Fauchelevent grumbled, more to himself than to Jean Valjean:--
"There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put
earth in it. When I come to think it over, the earth instead of the
corpse will not seem like the real thing, it won't do, it will get
displaced, it will move about. The men will bear it. You understand,
Father Madeleine, the government will notice it."
Jean Valjean stared him straight in the eye and thought that he was
raving.
Fauchelevent went on:--
"How the de--uce are you going to get out? It must all be done by
to-morrow morning. It is to-morrow that I am to bring you in. The
prioress expects you."
Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was his recompense for a
service which he, Fauchelevent, was to render to the community. That it
fell among his duties to take part in their burials, that he nailed up
the coffins and helped the grave-digger at the cemetery. That the nun
who had died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin which
had served her for a bed, and interred in the vault under the altar of
the chapel. That the police regulations forbade this, but that she was
one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the
vocal mothers intended to fulfil the wish of the deceased. That it was
so much the worse for the government. That he, Fauchelevent, was to nail
up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel, and lower the
corpse into the vault. And that, by way of thanks, the prioress was to
admit his brother to the house as a gardener, and his niece as a pupil.
That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Cosette. That
the prioress had told him to bring his brother on the following evening,
after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But that he could not
bring M. Madeleine in from the outside if M. Madeleine was not outside.
That that was the first problem. And then, that there was another: the
empty coffin.
"What is that empty coffin?" asked Jean Valjean.
Fauchelevent replied:--
"The coffin of the administration."
"What coffin? What administration?"
"A nun dies. The municipal doctor comes and says, 'A nun has died.'
The government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and
undertaker's men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The
undertaker's men will come and lift the coffin; there will be nothing in
it."
"Put something in it."
"A corpse? I have none."
"No."
"What then?"
"A living person."
"What person?"
"Me!" said Jean Valjean.
Fauchelevent, who was seated, sprang up as though a bomb had burst under
his chair.
"You!"
"Why not?"
Jean Valjean gave way to one of those rare smiles which lighted up his
face like a flash from heaven in the winter.
"You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: 'Mother Crucifixion is
dead.' and I add: 'and Father Madeleine is buried.'"
"Ah! good, you can laugh, you are not speaking seriously."
"Very seriously, I must get out of this place."
"Certainly."
"l have told you to find a basket, and a cover for me also."
"Well?"
"The basket will be of pine, and the cover a black cloth."
"In the first place, it will be a white cloth. Nuns are buried in
white."
"Let it be a white cloth, then."
"You are not like other men, Father Madeleine."
To behold such devices, which are nothing else than the savage and
daring inventions of the galleys, spring forth from the peaceable things
which surrounded him, and mingle with what he called the "petty course
of life in the convent," caused Fauchelevent as much amazement as a
gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis would inspire in a
passer-by.
Jean Valjean went on:--
"The problem is to get out of here without being seen. This offers
the means. But give me some information, in the first place. How is it
managed? Where is this coffin?"
"The empty one?"
"Yes."
"Down stairs, in what is called the dead-room. It stands on two
trestles, under the pall."
"How long is the coffin?"
"Six feet."
"What is this dead-room?"
"It is a chamber on the ground floor which has a grated window opening
on the garden, which is closed on the outside by a shutter, and two
doors; one leads into the convent, the other into the church."
"What church?"
"The church in the street, the church which any one can enter."
"Have you the keys to those two doors?"
"No; I have the key to the door which communicates with the convent; the
porter has the key to the door which communicates with the church."
"When does the porter open that door?"
"Only to allow the undertaker's men to enter, when they come to get the
coffin. When the coffin has been taken out, the door is closed again."
"Who nails up the coffin?"
"I do."
"Who spreads the pall over it?"
"I do."
"Are you alone?"
"Not another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room.
That is even written on the wall."
"Could you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?"
"No. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the
dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I have
the key."
"At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?"
"About three o'clock in the afternoon. The burial will take place at the
Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near."
"I will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the
morning. And how about food? I shall be hungry."
"I will bring you something."
"You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o'clock."
Fauchelevent recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.
"But that is impossible!"
"Bah! Impossible to take a hammer and drive some nails in a plank?"
What seemed unprecedented to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, a simple
matter to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had been in worse straits than
this. Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract
himself to fit the diameter of the escape. The prisoner is subject to
flight as the sick man is subject to a crisis which saves or kills him.
An escape is a cure. What does not a man undergo for the sake of a
cure? To have himself nailed up in a case and carried off like a bale
of goods, to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is
none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without
dying--this was one of Jean Valjean's gloomy talents.
Moreover, a coffin containing a living being,--that convict's
expedient,--is also an imperial expedient. If we are to credit the monk
Austin Castillejo, this was the means employed by Charles the Fifth,
desirous of seeing the Plombes for the last time after his abdication.
He had her brought into and carried out of the monastery of Saint-Yuste
in this manner.
Fauchelevent, who had recovered himself a little, exclaimed:--
"But how will you manage to breathe?"
"I will breathe."
"In that box! The mere thought of it suffocates me."
"You surely must have a gimlet, you will make a few holes here and
there, around my mouth, and you will nail the top plank on loosely."
"Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?"
"A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze."
And Jean Valjean added:--
"Father Fauchelevent, we must come to a decision: I must either be
caught here, or accept this escape through the hearse."
Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging
between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not
said to a cat, "Do come in!" There are men who, when an incident stands
half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision
between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the
abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent, cats as they
are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than
the audacious. Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature. But
Jean Valjean's coolness prevailed over him in spite of himself. He
grumbled:--
"Well, since there is no other means."
Jean Valjean resumed:--
"The only thing which troubles me is what will take place at the
cemetery."
"That is the very point that is not troublesome," exclaimed
Fauchelevent. "If you are sure of coming out of the coffin all right, I
am sure of getting you out of the grave. The grave-digger is a drunkard,
and a friend of mine. He is Father Mestienne. An old fellow of the old
school. The grave-digger puts the corpses in the grave, and I put the
grave-digger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. They
will arrive a little before dusk, three-quarters of an hour before the
gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive directly up to
the grave. I shall follow; that is my business. I shall have a hammer,
a chisel, and some pincers in my pocket. The hearse halts, the
undertaker's men knot a rope around your coffin and lower you down. The
priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy
water, and takes his departure. I am left alone with Father Mestienne.
He is my friend, I tell you. One of two things will happen, he will
either be sober, or he will not be sober. If he is not drunk, I shall
say to him: 'Come and drink a bout while the _Bon Coing_ [the Good
Quince] is open.' I carry him off, I get him drunk,--it does not take
long to make Father Mestienne drunk, he always has the beginning of it
about him,--I lay him under the table, I take his card, so that I can
get into the cemetery again, and I return without him. Then you have no
longer any one but me to deal with. If he is drunk, I shall say to him:
'Be off; I will do your work for you.' Off he goes, and I drag you out
of the hole."
Jean Valjean held out his hand, and Fauchelevent precipitated himself
upon it with the touching effusion of a peasant.
"That is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go well."
"Provided nothing goes wrong," thought Fauchelevent. "In that case, it
would be terrible."
CHAPTER V--IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL
On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare passers-by
on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned
hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, and tears. This hearse
contained a coffin covered with a white cloth over which spread a large
black cross, like a huge corpse with drooping arms. A mourning-coach, in
which could be seen a priest in his surplice, and a choir boy in his red
cap, followed. Two undertaker's men in gray uniforms trimmed with black
walked on the right and the left of the hearse. Behind it came an old
man in the garments of a laborer, who limped along. The procession was
going in the direction of the Vaugirard cemetery.
The handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the antennæ of a
pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the man's pocket.
The Vaugirard cemetery formed an exception among the cemeteries of
Paris. It had its peculiar usages, just as it had its carriage
entrance and its house door, which old people in the quarter, who clung
tenaciously to ancient words, still called the _porte cavalière_ and the
_porte piétonne_.16 The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Rue Petit-Picpus
had obtained permission, as we have already stated, to be buried there
in a corner apart, and at night, the plot of land having formerly
belonged to their community. The grave-diggers being thus bound to
service in the evening in summer and at night in winter, in this
cemetery, they were subjected to a special discipline. The gates of the
Paris cemeteries closed, at that epoch, at sundown, and this being a
municipal regulation, the Vaugirard cemetery was bound by it like the
rest. The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous grated
gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, and
inhabited by the door-keeper of the cemetery. These gates, therefore,
swung inexorably on their hinges at the instant when the sun disappeared
behind the dome of the Invalides. If any grave-digger were delayed
after that moment in the cemetery, there was but one way for him to
get out--his grave-digger's card furnished by the department of public
funerals. A sort of letter-box was constructed in the porter's window.
The grave-digger dropped his card into this box, the porter heard it
fall, pulled the rope, and the small door opened. If the man had not his
card, he mentioned his name, the porter, who was sometimes in bed and
asleep, rose, came out and identified the man, and opened the gate with
his key; the grave-digger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen
francs.
This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations,
embarrassed the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed
a little later than 1830. The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the
Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop
next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted
on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers' tables,
and the other on the tombs, with this sign: _Au Bon Coing_.
The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It
was falling into disuse. Dampness was invading it, the flowers were
deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in
the Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty. Père-Lachaise if you please! to be
buried in Père-Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany.
It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable
enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Straight alleys,
box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient tombs beneath aged cypress-trees, and
very tall grass. In the evening it was tragic there. There were very
lugubrious lines about it.
The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the
black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man
who followed it was no other than Fauchelevent.
The interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the
exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean Valjean to the dead-room,--all
had been executed without difficulty, and there had been no hitch.
Let us remark in passing, that the burial of Mother Crucifixion under
the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in our sight. It
is one of the faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had committed it,
not only without difficulty, but even with the applause of their own
consciences. In the cloister, what is called the "government" is only
an intermeddling with authority, an interference which is always
questionable. In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall
see. Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for yourselves.
The tribute to Cæsar is never anything but the remnants of the tribute
to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.
Fauchelevent limped along behind the hearse in a very contented frame
of mind. His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one for the convent,
the other against it, the other with M. Madeleine, had succeeded, to
all appearance. Jean Valjean's composure was one of those powerful
tranquillities which are contagious. Fauchelevent no longer felt
doubtful as to his success.
What remained to be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years,
he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at
least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked
with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne's head
adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent's will. Fauchelevent's
confidence was perfect.
At the moment when the convoy entered the avenue leading to the
cemetery, Fauchelevent glanced cheerfully at the hearse, and said half
aloud, as he rubbed his big hands:--
"Here's a fine farce!"
All at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate. The permission
for interment must be exhibited. The undertaker's man addressed himself
to the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always is
productive of a delay of from one to two minutes, some one, a stranger,
came and placed himself behind the hearse, beside Fauchelevent. He was
a sort of laboring man, who wore a waistcoat with large pockets and
carried a mattock under his arm.
Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"The man replied:--
"The grave-digger."
If a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the breast, he
would make the same face that Fauchelevent made.
"The grave-digger?"
"Yes."
"You?"
"I."
"Father Mestienne is the grave-digger."
"He was."
"What! He was?"
"He is dead."
Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a grave-digger could
die. It is true, nevertheless, that grave-diggers do die themselves. By
dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one's own.
Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the
strength to stammer:--
"But it is not possible!"
"It is so."
"But," he persisted feebly, "Father Mestienne is the grave-digger."
"After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name
is Gribier."
Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier.
He was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man. He had the air of an
unsuccessful doctor who had turned grave-digger.
Fauchelevent burst out laughing.
"Ah!" said he, "what queer things do happen! Father Mestienne is dead,
but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father Lenoir
is? He is a jug of red wine. It is a jug of Surêne, morbigou! of real
Paris Surêne? Ah! So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he was
a jolly fellow. But you are a jolly fellow, too. Are you not, comrade?
We'll go and have a drink together presently."
The man replied:--
"I have been a student. I passed my fourth examination. I never drink."
The hearse had set out again, and was rolling up the grand alley of the
cemetery.
Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than
from infirmity.
The grave-digger walked on in front of him.
Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review.
He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and
who, though slender, are extremely strong.
"Comrade!" cried Fauchelevent.
The man turned round.
"I am the convent grave-digger."
"My colleague," said the man.
Fauchelevent, who was illiterate but very sharp, understood that he
had to deal with a formidable species of man, with a fine talker. He
muttered:
"So Father Mestienne is dead."
The man replied:--
"Completely. The good God consulted his note-book which shows when the
time is up. It was Father Mestienne's turn. Father Mestienne died."
Fauchelevent repeated mechanically: "The good God--"
"The good God," said the man authoritatively. "According to the
philosophers, the Eternal Father; according to the Jacobins, the Supreme
Being."
"Shall we not make each other's acquaintance?" stammered Fauchelevent.
"It is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian."
"People do not know each other until they have drunk together. He who
empties his glass empties his heart. You must come and have a drink with
me. Such a thing cannot be refused."
"Business first."
Fauchelevent thought: "I am lost."
They were only a few turns of the wheel distant from the small alley
leading to the nuns' corner.
The grave-digger resumed:--
"Peasant, I have seven small children who must be fed. As they must eat,
I cannot drink."
And he added, with the satisfaction of a serious man who is turning a
phrase well:--
"Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst."
The hearse skirted a clump of cypress-trees, quitted the grand alley,
turned into a narrow one, entered the waste land, and plunged into
a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the place of
sepulture. Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but he could not detain the
hearse. Fortunately, the soil, which was light and wet with the winter
rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed.
He approached the grave-digger.
"They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine," murmured Fauchelevent.
"Villager," retorted the man, "I ought not be a grave-digger. My
father was a porter at the Prytaneum [Town-Hall]. He destined me for
literature. But he had reverses. He had losses on 'change. I was obliged
to renounce the profession of author. But I am still a public writer."
"So you are not a grave-digger, then?" returned Fauchelevent, clutching
at this branch, feeble as it was.
"The one does not hinder the other. I cumulate."
Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.
"Come have a drink," said he.
Here a remark becomes necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever his anguish,
offered a drink, but he did not explain himself on one point; who was to
pay? Generally, Fauchelevent offered and Father Mestienne paid. An offer
of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created by the
new grave-digger, and it was necessary to make this offer, but the old
gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after Rabelais in
the dark, and that not unintentionally. As for himself, Fauchelevent did
not wish to pay, troubled as he was.
The grave-digger went on with a superior smile:--
"One must eat. I have accepted Father Mestienne's reversion. One gets to
be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor
of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in
the market of the Rue de Sèvres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the
cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of
love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the
evening I dig graves. Such is life, rustic."
The hearse was still advancing. Fauchelevent, uneasy to the last degree,
was gazing about him on all sides. Great drops of perspiration trickled
down from his brow.
"But," continued the grave-digger, "a man cannot serve two mistresses.
I must choose between the pen and the mattock. The mattock is ruining my
hand."
The hearse halted.
The choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest.
One of the small front wheels of the hearse had run up a little on a
pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible.
"What a farce this is!" repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.
CHAPTER VI--BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS
Who was in the coffin? The reader knows. Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he
could almost breathe.
It is a strange thing to what a degree security of conscience confers
security of the rest. Every combination thought out by Jean Valjean had
been progressing, and progressing favorably, since the preceding day.
He, like Fauchelevent, counted on Father Mestienne. He had no doubt
as to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more
complete composure.
The four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It
seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Jean
Valjean's tranquillity.
From the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had
followed, all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing with
death.
Shortly after Fauchelevent had finished nailing on the upper plank, Jean
Valjean had felt himself carried out, then driven off. He knew, from the
diminution in the jolting, when they left the pavements and reached the
earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing
the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first halt, he had understood that they
were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:--
"Here is the grave."
Suddenly, he felt hands seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against
the planks; he explained it to himself as the rope which was being
fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity.
Then he experienced a giddiness.
The undertaker's man and the grave-digger had probably allowed the
coffin to lose its balance, and had lowered the head before the foot. He
recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and motionless.
He had just touched the bottom.
He had a certain sensation of cold.
A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which
he did not understand, pass over him, so slowly that he was able to
catch them one by one:--
_"Qui dormiunt in terræ pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam æternam, et
alii in approbrium, ut videant semper." _
A child's voice said:--
_"De profundis." _
The grave voice began again:--
_"Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine." _
The child's voice responded:--
_"Et lux perpetua luceat ei." _
He heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on
the plank which covered him. It was probably the holy water.
He thought: "This will be over soon now. Patience for a little while
longer. The priest will take his departure. Fauchelevent will take
Mestienne off to drink. I shall be left. Then Fauchelevent will return
alone, and I shall get out. That will be the work of a good hour."
The grave voice resumed
_"Requiescat in pace." _
And the child's voice said:--
_"Amen." _
Jean Valjean strained his ears, and heard something like retreating
footsteps.
"There, they are going now," thought he. "I am alone."
All at once, he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him to be a
clap of thunder.
It was a shovelful of earth falling on the coffin.
A second shovelful fell.
One of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up.
A third shovelful of earth fell.
Then a fourth.
There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean
Valjean lost consciousness.
CHAPTER VII--IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T LOSE
THE CARD
This is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Jean Valjean.
When the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had
entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Fauchelevent, who
had not taken his eyes from the grave-digger, saw the latter bend over
and grasp his shovel, which was sticking upright in the heap of dirt.
Then Fauchelevent took a supreme resolve.
He placed himself between the grave and the grave-digger, crossed his
arms and said:--
"I am the one to pay!"
The grave-digger stared at him in amazement, and replied:--
"What's that, peasant?"
Fauchelevent repeated:--
"I am the one who pays!"
"What?"
"For the wine."
"What wine?"
"That Argenteuil wine."
"Where is the Argenteuil?"
"At the _Bon Coing_."
"Go to the devil!" said the grave-digger.
And he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin.
The coffin gave back a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himself stagger
and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself. He shouted
in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to
mingle:--
"Comrade! Before the _Bon Coing_ is shut!"
The grave-digger took some more earth on his shovel. Fauchelevent
continued.
"I will pay."
And he seized the man's arm.
"Listen to me, comrade. I am the convent grave-digger, I have come
to help you. It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us
begin, then, by going for a drink."
And as he spoke, and clung to this desperate insistence, this melancholy
reflection occurred to him: "And if he drinks, will he get drunk?"
"Provincial," said the man, "if you positively insist upon it, I
consent. We will drink. After work, never before."
And he flourished his shovel briskly. Fauchelevent held him back.
"It is Argenteuil wine, at six."
"Oh, come," said the grave-digger, "you are a bell-ringer. Ding dong,
ding dong, that's all you know how to say. Go hang yourself."
And he threw in a second shovelful.
Fauchelevent had reached a point where he no longer knew what he was
saying.
"Come along and drink," he cried, "since it is I who pays the bill."
"When we have put the child to bed," said the grave-digger.
He flung in a third shovelful.
Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:--
"It's cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek out after us
if we were to plant her there without a coverlet."
At that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave-digger bent over,
and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped. Fauchelevent's wild gaze fell
mechanically into that pocket, and there it stopped.
The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon; there was still light
enough to enable him to distinguish something white at the bottom of
that yawning pocket.
The sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peasant can contain,
traversed Fauchelevent's pupils. An idea had just occurred to him.
He thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without the
grave-digger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovelful of earth,
observing it, and pulled out the white object which lay at the bottom of
it.
The man sent a fourth shovelful tumbling into the grave.
Just as he turned round to get the fifth, Fauchelevent looked calmly at
him and said:--
"By the way, you new man, have you your card?"
The grave-digger paused.
"What card?"
"The sun is on the point of setting."
"That's good, it is going to put on its nightcap."
"The gate of the cemetery will close immediately."
"Well, what then?"
"Have you your card?"
"Ah! my card?" said the grave-digger.
And he fumbled in his pocket.
Having searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed
on to his fobs, explored the first, returned to the second.
"Why, no," said he, "I have not my card. I must have forgotten it."
"Fifteen francs fine," said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger turned green. Green is the pallor of livid people.
"Ah! Jésus-mon-Dieu-bancroche-à-bas-la-lune!"17 he exclaimed. "Fifteen
francs fine!"
"Three pieces of a hundred sous," said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger dropped his shovel.
Fauchelevent's turn had come.
"Ah, come now, conscript," said Fauchelevent, "none of this despair.
There is no question of committing suicide and benefiting the grave.
Fifteen francs is fifteen francs, and besides, you may not be able to
pay it. I am an old hand, you are a new one. I know all the ropes and
the devices. I will give you some friendly advice. One thing is clear,
the sun is on the point of setting, it is touching the dome now, the
cemetery will be closed in five minutes more."
"That is true," replied the man.
"Five minutes more and you will not have time to fill the grave, it is
as hollow as the devil, this grave, and to reach the gate in season to
pass it before it is shut."
"That is true."
"In that case, a fine of fifteen francs."
"Fifteen francs."
"But you have time. Where do you live?"
"A couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here. No.
87 Rue de Vaugirard."
"You have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best
speed."
"That is exactly so."
"Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return,
the cemetery porter admits you. As you have your card, there will be
nothing to pay. And you will bury your corpse. I'll watch it for you in
the meantime, so that it shall not run away."
"I am indebted to you for my life, peasant."
"Decamp!" said Fauchelevent.
The grave-digger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set off
on a run.
When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened until
he heard his footsteps die away in the distance, then he leaned over the
grave, and said in a low tone:--
"Father Madeleine!"
There was no reply.
Fauchelevent was seized with a shudder. He tumbled rather than climbed
into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:--
"Are you there?"
Silence in the coffin.
Fauchelevent, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his
cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.
Jean Valjean's face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes
were closed.
Fauchelevent's hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet,
then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the
coffin. He stared at Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.
Fauchelevent murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:--
"He is dead!"
And, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that
his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:--
"And this is the way I save his life!"
Then the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while, for it is
an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion
often talks aloud.
"It is Father Mestienne's fault. Why did that fool die? What need was
there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was
expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine!
He is in the coffin. It is quite handy. All is over. Now, is there any
sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead! Well! and his little
girl, what am I to do with her? What will the fruit-seller say? The idea
of its being possible for a man like that to die like this! When I think
how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Pardine! He was suffocated, I said so. He wouldn't believe me. Well!
Here's a pretty trick to play! He is dead, that good man, the very best
man out of all the good God's good folks! And his little girl! Ah! In
the first place, I won't go back there myself. I shall stay here. After
having done such a thing as that! What's the use of being two old men,
if we are two old fools! But, in the first place, how did he manage to
enter the convent? That was the beginning of it all. One should not
do such things. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine!
Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire! He does not hear me.
Now get out of this scrape if you can!"
And he tore his hair.
A grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It was
the cemetery gate closing.
Fauchelevent bent over Jean Valjean, and all at once he bounded back and
recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit.
Jean Valjean's eyes were open and gazing at him.
To see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrection is almost as much
so. Fauchelevent became like stone, pale, haggard, overwhelmed by all
these excesses of emotion, not knowing whether he had to do with a
living man or a dead one, and staring at Jean Valjean, who was gazing at
him.
Enlarge
"I fell asleep," said Jean Valjean.
And he raised himself to a sitting posture.
Fauchelevent fell on his knees.
"Just, good Virgin! How you frightened me!"
Then he sprang to his feet and cried:--
"Thanks, Father Madeleine!"
Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him.
Joy is the ebb of terror. Fauchelevent found almost as much difficulty
in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had.
"So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that
you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I said: 'Good! there he is,
stifled,' I should have gone raving mad, mad enough for a strait jacket.
They would have put me in Bicêtre. What do you suppose I should
have done if you had been dead? And your little girl? There's that
fruit-seller,--she would never have understood it! The child is thrust
into your arms, and then--the grandfather is dead! What a story! good
saints of paradise, what a tale! Ah! you are alive, that's the best of
it!"
"I am cold," said Jean Valjean.
This remark recalled Fauchelevent thoroughly to reality, and there was
pressing need of it. The souls of these two men were troubled even when
they had recovered themselves, although they did not realize it,
and there was about them something uncanny, which was the sinister
bewilderment inspired by the place.
"Let us get out of here quickly," exclaimed Fauchelevent.
He fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a gourd with which he had
provided himself.
"But first, take a drop," said he.
The flask finished what the fresh air had begun, Jean Valjean swallowed
a mouthful of brandy, and regained full possession of his faculties.
He got out of the coffin, and helped Fauchelevent to nail on the lid
again.
Three minutes later they were out of the grave.
Moreover, Fauchelevent was perfectly composed. He took his time. The
cemetery was closed. The arrival of the grave-digger Gribier was not to
be apprehended. That "conscript" was at home busily engaged in looking
for his card, and at some difficulty in finding it in his lodgings,
since it was in Fauchelevent's pocket. Without a card, he could not get
back into the cemetery.
Fauchelevent took the shovel, and Jean Valjean the pick-axe, and
together they buried the empty coffin.
When the grave was full, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean:--
"Let us go. I will keep the shovel; do you carry off the mattock."
Night was falling.
Jean Valjean experienced some difficulty in moving and in walking. He
had stiffened himself in that coffin, and had become a little like a
corpse. The rigidity of death had seized upon him between those four
planks. He had, in a manner, to thaw out, from the tomb.
"You are benumbed," said Fauchelevent. "It is a pity that I have a game
leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly."
"Bah!" replied Jean Valjean, "four paces will put life into my legs once
more."
They set off by the alleys through which the hearse had passed. On
arriving before the closed gate and the porter's pavilion Fauchelevent,
who held the grave-digger's card in his hand, dropped it into the box,
the porter pulled the rope, the gate opened, and they went out.
"How well everything is going!" said Fauchelevent; "what a capital idea
that was of yours, Father Madeleine!"
They passed the Vaugirard barrier in the simplest manner in the world.
In the neighborhood of the cemetery, a shovel and pick are equal to two
passports.
The Rue Vaugirard was deserted.
"Father Madeleine," said Fauchelevent as they went along, and raising
his eyes to the houses, "Your eyes are better than mine. Show me No.
87."
"Here it is," said Jean Valjean.
"There is no one in the street," said Fauchelevent. "Give me your
mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me."
Fauchelevent entered No. 87, ascended to the very top, guided by the
instinct which always leads the poor man to the garret, and knocked in
the dark, at the door of an attic.
A voice replied: "Come in."
It was Gribier's voice.
Fauchelevent opened the door. The grave-digger's dwelling was, like
all such wretched habitations, an unfurnished and encumbered garret.
A packing-case--a coffin, perhaps--took the place of a commode, a
butter-pot served for a drinking-fountain, a straw mattress served for
a bed, the floor served instead of tables and chairs. In a corner, on a
tattered fragment which had been a piece of an old carpet, a thin
woman and a number of children were piled in a heap. The whole of this
poverty-stricken interior bore traces of having been overturned. One
would have said that there had been an earthquake "for one." The covers
were displaced, the rags scattered about, the jug broken, the mother had
been crying, the children had probably been beaten; traces of a vigorous
and ill-tempered search. It was plain that the grave-digger had made
a desperate search for his card, and had made everybody in the garret,
from the jug to his wife, responsible for its loss. He wore an air of
desperation.
But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry to terminate this adventure to
take any notice of this sad side of his success.
He entered and said:--
"I have brought you back your shovel and pick."
Gribier gazed at him in stupefaction.
"Is it you, peasant?"
"And to-morrow morning you will find your card with the porter of the
cemetery."
And he laid the shovel and mattock on the floor.
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Gribier.
"The meaning of it is, that you dropped your card out of your pocket,
that I found it on the ground after you were gone, that I have buried
the corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work,
that the porter will return your card to you, and that you will not have
to pay fifteen francs. There you have it, conscript."
"Thanks, villager!" exclaimed Gribier, radiant. "The next time I will
pay for the drinks."
CHAPTER VIII--A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY
An hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented
themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the
knocker and rapped.
They were Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.
The two old men had gone to fetch Cosette from the fruiterer's in
the Rue du Chemin-Vert, where Fauchelevent had deposited her on the
preceding day. Cosette had passed these twenty-four hours trembling
silently and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree that
she wept. She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit-seller had
plied her with a hundred questions, without obtaining any other reply
than a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Cosette had betrayed nothing of
what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that
they were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it was
necessary to "be good." Who has not experienced the sovereign power
of those two words, pronounced with a certain accent in the ear of a
terrified little being: _Say nothing! _ Fear is mute. Moreover, no one
guards a secret like a child.
But when, at the expiration of these lugubrious twenty-four hours, she
beheld Jean Valjean again, she gave vent to such a cry of joy, that any
thoughtful person who had chanced to hear that cry, would have guessed
that it issued from an abyss.
Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew the pass-words. All the
doors opened.
Thus was solved the double and alarming problem of how to get out and
how to get in.
The porter, who had received his instructions, opened the little
servant's door which connected the courtyard with the garden, and which
could still be seen from the street twenty years ago, in the wall at the
bottom of the court, which faced the carriage entrance.
The porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from that
point they reached the inner, reserved parlor where Fauchelevent, on the
preceding day, had received his orders from the prioress.
The prioress, rosary in hand, was waiting for them. A vocal mother, with
her veil lowered, stood beside her.
A discreet candle lighted, one might almost say, made a show of lighting
the parlor.
The prioress passed Jean Valjean in review. There is nothing which
examines like a downcast eye.
Then she questioned him:--
"You are the brother?"
"Yes, reverend Mother," replied Fauchelevent.
"What is your name?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Ultime Fauchelevent."
He really had had a brother named Ultime, who was dead.
"Where do you come from?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"From Picquigny, near Amiens."
"What is your age?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Fifty."
"What is your profession?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Gardener."
"Are you a good Christian?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Every one is in the family."
"Is this your little girl?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Yes, reverend Mother."
"You are her father?"
Fauchelevent replied:--
"Her grandfather."
The vocal mother said to the prioress in a low voice
"He answers well."
Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word.
The prioress looked attentively at Cosette, and said half aloud to the
vocal mother:--
"She will grow up ugly."
The two mothers consulted for a few moments in very low tones in the
corner of the parlor, then the prioress turned round and said:--
"Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap with a bell. Two will be
required now."
On the following day, therefore, two bells were audible in the garden,
and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner of
their veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, two
men, Fauvent and another man, were visible as they dug side by side. An
enormous event. Their silence was broken to the extent of saying to each
other: "He is an assistant gardener."
The vocal mothers added: "He is a brother of Father Fauvent."
Jean Valjean was, in fact, regularly installed; he had his belled
knee-cap; henceforth he was official. His name was Ultime Fauchelevent.
The most powerful determining cause of his admission had been the
prioress's observation upon Cosette: "She will grow up ugly."
The prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancy
to Cosette and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil.
There is nothing that is not strictly logical about this.
It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are
conscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beauty
do not easily become nuns; the vocation being voluntary in inverse
proportion to their good looks, more is to be hoped from the ugly than
from the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls.
The whole of this adventure increased the importance of good, old
Fauchelevent; he won a triple success; in the eyes of Jean Valjean, whom
he had saved and sheltered; in those of grave-digger Gribier, who said
to himself: "He spared me that fine"; with the convent, which, being
enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under
the altar, eluded Cæsar and satisfied God. There was a coffin containing
a body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard
cemetery, public order had no doubt been deeply disturbed thereby, but
no one was aware of it.
As for the convent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was very great.
Fauchelevent became the best of servitors and the most precious of
gardeners. Upon the occasion of the archbishop's next visit, the
prioress recounted the affair to his Grace, making something of a
confession at the same time, and yet boasting of her deed. On leaving
the convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a whisper
to M. de Latil, Monsieur's confessor, afterwards Archbishop of Reims
and Cardinal. This admiration for Fauchelevent became widespread, for it
made its way to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the then reigning
Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, a Monsignor in the Nuncio's
establishment in Paris, and bearing, like himself, the name of Della
Genga; it contained these lines: "It appears that there is in a convent
in Paris an excellent gardener, who is also a holy man, named Fauvent."
Nothing of this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he went on
grafting, weeding, and covering up his melon beds, without in the least
suspecting his excellences and his sanctity. Neither did he suspect his
glory, any more than a Durham or Surrey bull whose portrait is published
in the _London Illustrated News_, with this inscription: "Bull which
carried off the prize at the Cattle Show."
CHAPTER IX--CLOISTERED
Cosette continued to hold her tongue in the convent.
It was quite natural that Cosette should think herself Jean Valjean's
daughter. Moreover, as she knew nothing, she could say nothing, and
then, she would not have said anything in any case. As we have just
observed, nothing trains children to silence like unhappiness. Cosette
had suffered so much, that she feared everything, even to speak or to
breathe. A single word had so often brought down an avalanche upon her.
She had hardly begun to regain her confidence since she had been with
Jean Valjean. She speedily became accustomed to the convent. Only she
regretted Catherine, but she dared not say so. Once, however, she did
say to Jean Valjean: "Father, if I had known, I would have brought her
away with me."
Cosette had been obliged, on becoming a scholar in the convent, to don
the garb of the pupils of the house. Jean Valjean succeeded in getting
them to restore to him the garments which she laid aside. This was the
same mourning suit which he had made her put on when she had quitted
the Thénardiers' inn. It was not very threadbare even now. Jean Valjean
locked up these garments, plus the stockings and the shoes, with a
quantity of camphor and all the aromatics in which convents abound, in a
little valise which he found means of procuring. He set this valise on
a chair near his bed, and he always carried the key about his person.
"Father," Cosette asked him one day, "what is there in that box which
smells so good?"
Father Fauchelevent received other recompense for his good action, in
addition to the glory which we just mentioned, and of which he knew
nothing; in the first place it made him happy; next, he had much less
work, since it was shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff, he
found the presence of M. Madeleine an advantage, in that he used three
times as much as he had done previously, and that in an infinitely more
luxurious manner, seeing that M. Madeleine paid for it.
The nuns did not adopt the name of Ultime; they called Jean Valjean _the
other Fauvent_.
If these holy women had possessed anything of Javert's glance, they
would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be
done outside in the behalf of the garden, it was always the elder
Fauchelevent, the old, the infirm, the lame man, who went, and never the
other; but whether it is that eyes constantly fixed on God know not how
to spy, or whether they were, by preference, occupied in keeping watch
on each other, they paid no heed to this.
Moreover, it was well for Jean Valjean that he kept close and did not
stir out. Javert watched the quarter for more than a month.
This convent was for Jean Valjean like an island surrounded by gulfs.
Henceforth, those four walls constituted his world. He saw enough of the
sky there to enable him to preserve his serenity, and Cosette enough to
remain happy.
A very sweet life began for him.
He inhabited the old hut at the end of the garden, in company with
Fauchelevent. This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in
existence in 1845, was composed, as the reader already knows, of three
chambers, all of which were utterly bare and had nothing beyond the
walls. The principal one had been given up, by force, for Jean Valjean
had opposed it in vain, to M. Madeleine, by Father Fauchelevent. The
walls of this chamber had for ornament, in addition to the two nails
whereon to hang the knee-cap and the basket, a Royalist bank-note
of '93, applied to the wall over the chimney-piece, and of which the
following is an exact facsimile:--
This specimen of Vendean paper money had been nailed to the wall by
the preceding gardener, an old Chouan, who had died in the convent, and
whose place Fauchelevent had taken.
Jean Valjean worked in the garden every day and made himself very
useful. He had formerly been a pruner of trees, and he gladly found
himself a gardener once more. It will be remembered that he knew all
sorts of secrets and receipts for agriculture. He turned these to
advantage. Almost all the trees in the orchard were ungrafted, and wild.
He budded them and made them produce excellent fruit.
Cosette had permission to pass an hour with him every day. As the
sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the child made comparisons and
adored him. At the appointed hour she flew to the hut. When she entered
the lowly cabin, she filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean blossomed
out and felt his happiness increase with the happiness which he afforded
Cosette. The joy which we inspire has this charming property, that, far
from growing meagre, like all reflections, it returns to us more radiant
than ever. At recreation hours, Jean Valjean watched her running and
playing in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh from that of the
rest.
For Cosette laughed now.
Cosette's face had even undergone a change, to a certain extent. The
gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the same as sunshine; it
banishes winter from the human countenance.
Recreation over, when Cosette went into the house again, Jean Valjean
gazed at the windows of her class-room, and at night he rose to look at
the windows of her dormitory.
God has his own ways, moreover; the convent contributed, like Cosette,
to uphold and complete the Bishop's work in Jean Valjean. It is certain
that virtue adjoins pride on one side. A bridge built by the devil
exists there. Jean Valjean had been, unconsciously, perhaps, tolerably
near that side and that bridge, when Providence cast his lot in the
convent of the Petit-Picpus; so long as he had compared himself only to
the Bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had remained humble;
but for some time past he had been comparing himself to men in general,
and pride was beginning to spring up. Who knows? He might have ended by
returning very gradually to hatred.
The convent stopped him on that downward path.
This was the second place of captivity which he had seen. In his youth,
in what had been for him the beginning of his life, and later on, quite
recently again, he had beheld another,--a frightful place, a terrible
place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of
justice, and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the
cloister; and when he meditated how he had formed a part of the galleys,
and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he
confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety.
Sometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe, and slowly
descended the endless spirals of revery.
He recalled his former companions: how wretched they were; they rose at
dawn, and toiled until night; hardly were they permitted to sleep; they
lay on camp beds, where nothing was tolerated but mattresses two inches
thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of
the year; they were clothed in frightful red blouses; they were allowed,
as a great favor, linen trousers in the hottest weather, and a woollen
carter's blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they drank no
wine, and ate no meat, except when they went on "fatigue duty." They
lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted, after a
manner, into ciphers themselves, with downcast eyes, with lowered
voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace.
Then his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes.
These beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with
lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world,
not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders
lacerated with their discipline. Their names, also, had vanished from
among men; they no longer existed except under austere appellations.
They never ate meat and they never drank wine; they often remained until
evening without food; they were attired, not in a red blouse, but in a
black shroud, of woollen, which was heavy in summer and thin in winter,
without the power to add or subtract anything from it; without having
even, according to the season, the resource of the linen garment or the
woollen cloak; and for six months in the year they wore serge chemises
which gave them fever. They dwelt, not in rooms warmed only during
rigorous cold, but in cells where no fire was ever lighted; they slept,
not on mattresses two inches thick, but on straw. And finally, they were
not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they
were obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at the moment
when they were falling sound asleep and beginning to get warm, to rouse
themselves, to rise and to go and pray in an ice-cold and gloomy chapel,
with their knees on the stones.
On certain days each of these beings in turn had to remain for twelve
successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon the
pavement, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross.
The others were men; these were women.
What had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged,
murdered, assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners,
incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They had
done nothing whatever.
On the one hand, highway robbery, fraud, deceit, violence, sensuality,
homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime; on the other,
one thing only, innocence.
Perfect innocence, almost caught up into heaven in a mysterious
assumption, attached to the earth by virtue, already possessing
something of heaven through holiness.
On the one hand, confidences over crimes, which are exchanged in
whispers; on the other, the confession of faults made aloud. And what
crimes! And what faults!
On the one hand, miasms; on the other, an ineffable perfume. On the one
hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of
cannon, and literally devouring its plague-stricken victims; on
the other, the chaste flame of all souls on the same hearth. There,
darkness; here, the shadow; but a shadow filled with gleams of light,
and of gleams full of radiance.
Two strongholds of slavery; but in the first, deliverance possible,
a legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second,
perpetuity; the sole hope, at the distant extremity of the future, that
faint light of liberty which men call death.
In the first, men are bound only with chains; in the other, chained by
faith.
What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth,
hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of rage against human society, a
sarcasm against heaven.
What results flowed from the second? Blessings and love.
And in these two places, so similar yet so unlike, these two species
of beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work,
expiation.
Jean Valjean understood thoroughly the expiation of the former; that
personal expiation, the expiation for one's self. But he did not
understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and
without stain, and he trembled as he asked himself: The expiation of
what? What expiation?
A voice within his conscience replied: "The most divine of human
generosities, the expiation for others."
Here all personal theory is withheld; we are only the narrator; we
place ourselves at Jean Valjean's point of view, and we translate his
impressions.
Before his eyes he had the sublime summit of abnegation, the highest
possible pitch of virtue; the innocence which pardons men their faults,
and which expiates in their stead; servitude submitted to, torture
accepted, punishment claimed by souls which have not sinned, for the
sake of sparing it to souls which have fallen; the love of humanity
swallowed up in the love of God, but even there preserving its distinct
and mediatorial character; sweet and feeble beings possessing the misery
of those who are punished and the smile of those who are recompensed.
And he remembered that he had dared to murmur!
Often, in the middle of the night, he rose to listen to the grateful
song of those innocent creatures weighed down with severities, and the
blood ran cold in his veins at the thought that those who were justly
chastised raised their voices heavenward only in blasphemy, and that he,
wretch that he was, had shaken his fist at God.
There was one striking thing which caused him to meditate deeply, like
a warning whisper from Providence itself: the scaling of that wall, the
passing of those barriers, the adventure accepted even at the risk of
death, the painful and difficult ascent, all those efforts even, which
he had made to escape from that other place of expiation, he had made in
order to gain entrance into this one. Was this a symbol of his destiny?
This house was a prison likewise and bore a melancholy resemblance to
that other one whence he had fled, and yet he had never conceived an
idea of anything similar.
Again he beheld gratings, bolts, iron bars--to guard whom? Angels.
These lofty walls which he had seen around tigers, he now beheld once
more around lambs.
This was a place of expiation, and not of punishment; and yet, it was
still more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other.
These virgins were even more heavily burdened than the convicts. A cold,
harsh wind, that wind which had chilled his youth, traversed the barred
and padlocked grating of the vultures; a still harsher and more biting
breeze blew in the cage of these doves.
Why?
When he thought on these things, all that was within him was lost in
amazement before this mystery of sublimity.
In these meditations, his pride vanished. He scrutinized his own heart
in all manner of ways; he felt his pettiness, and many a time he wept.
All that had entered into his life for the last six months had led him
back towards the Bishop's holy injunctions; Cosette through love, the
convent through humility.
Sometimes at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when the garden was
deserted, he could be seen on his knees in the middle of the walk which
skirted the chapel, in front of the window through which he had gazed on
the night of his arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he knew,
the sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he prayed
as he knelt before the sister.
It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God.
Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant
flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and simple
women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by little,
his soul became compounded of silence like the cloister, of perfume like
the flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the children.
And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had
received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the
first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him;
the second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit
of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not
been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not
been for the second, into torment.
His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.
Many years passed in this manner; Cosette was growing up.
[THE END OF VOLUME II. "COSETTE"]
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES MISÉRABLES ***