Title: Les Miserables
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Author: Victor Hugo
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Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
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Les Miserables .....................................................................................................................................................1
Victor Hugo.............................................................................................................................................1
VOLUME I. FANTINE. ..........................................................................................................................9
PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................9
BOOK FIRSTA JUST MAN..............................................................................................................9
CHAPTER I. M. MYRIEL......................................................................................................................9
CHAPTER II. M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME....................................................................11
CHAPTER III. A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP .........................................................15
CHAPTER IV. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS...............................................................16
CHAPTER V. MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG ...........20
CHAPTER VI. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM .................................................................21
CHAPTER VII. CRAVATTE...............................................................................................................24
CHAPTER VIII. PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING........................................................................27
CHAPTER IX. THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER..................................................29
CHAPTER X. THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT.............................31
CHAPTER XI. A RESTRICTION........................................................................................................39
CHAPTER XII. THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME ...............................................41
CHAPTER XIII. WHAT HE BELIEVED .............................................................................................42
CHAPTER XIV. WHAT HE THOUGHT .............................................................................................44
BOOK SECONDTHE FALL ............................................................................................................46
CHAPTER I. THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING .................................................................46
CHAPTER II. PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM...............................................................55
CHAPTER III. THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. ............................................................57
CHAPTER IV. DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESEDAIRIES OF PONTARLIER...............61
CHAPTER V. TRANQUILLITY ..........................................................................................................63
CHAPTER VI. JEAN VALJEAN.........................................................................................................64
CHAPTER VII. THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR ..................................................................................67
CHAPTER VIII. BILLOWS AND SHADOWS...................................................................................71
CHAPTER IX. NEW TROUBLES.......................................................................................................72
CHAPTER X. THE MAN AROUSED.................................................................................................73
CHAPTER XI. WHAT HE DOES........................................................................................................75
CHAPTER XII. THE BISHOP WORKS..............................................................................................77
CHAPTER XIII. LITTLE GERVAIS ....................................................................................................80
BOOK THIRD.IN THE YEAR 1817 ................................................................................................86
CHAPTER I. THE YEAR 1817............................................................................................................86
CHAPTER II. A DOUBLE QUARTETTE ...........................................................................................88
CHAPTER III. FOUR AND FOUR......................................................................................................91
CHAPTER IV. THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY..................93
CHAPTER V. AT BOMBARDA'S.......................................................................................................94
CHAPTER VI. A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER ........................................96
CHAPTER VII. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES ............................................................................97
CHAPTER VIII. THE DEATH OF A HORSE ...................................................................................100
CHAPTER IX. A MERRY END TO MIRTH .....................................................................................102
BOOK FOURTH.TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S
POWER...............................................................................................................................................104
CHAPTER I. ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER .........................................................104
CHAPTER II. FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES ...................................110
CHAPTER III. THE LARK .................................................................................................................111
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BOOK FIFTH.THE DESCENT. .....................................................................................................113
CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS ........................113
CHAPTER II. MADELEINE..............................................................................................................114
CHAPTER III. SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE ....................................................................116
CHAPTER IV. M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING ...........................................................................118
CHAPTER V. VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON ...................................................................119
CHAPTER VI. FATHER FAUCHELEVENT ....................................................................................122
CHAPTER VII. FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS...................................124
CHAPTER VIII. MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY ......125
CHAPTER IX. MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS...................................................................127
CHAPTER X. RESULT OF THE SUCCESS.....................................................................................128
CHAPTER XI. CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT ..................................................................................132
CHAPTER XII. M. BAMATABOIS'S INACTIVITY ........................................................................133
CHAPTER XIII. THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE
MUNICIPAL POLICE........................................................................................................................134
BOOK SIXTH.JAVERT .................................................................................................................140
CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE ..................................................................................140
CHAPTER II. HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP......................................................................143
BOOK SEVENTH.THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR .................................................................149
CHAPTER I. SISTER SIMPLICE......................................................................................................149
CHAPTER II. THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE ..............................................151
CHAPTER III. A TEMPEST IN A SKULL ........................................................................................155
CHAPTER IV. FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP ........................................166
CHAPTER V. HINDRANCES ............................................................................................................169
CHAPTER VI. SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF ..............................................................179
CHAPTER VII. THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR
DEPARTURE ......................................................................................................................................183
CHAPTER VIII. AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR................................................................................187
CHAPTER IX. A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION .........189
CHAPTER X. THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS .....................................................................................193
CHAPTER XI. CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED .......................................197
BOOK EIGHTH.A COUNTERBLOW ........................................................................................200
CHAPTER I. IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR....................200
CHAPTER II. FANTINE HAPPY......................................................................................................202
CHAPTER III. JAVERT SATISFIED................................................................................................204
CHAPTER IV. AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS...............................................................207
CHAPTER V. A SUITABLE TOMB ..................................................................................................210
VOLUME II. COSETTE.....................................................................................................................214
BOOK FIRST.WATERLOO..........................................................................................................214
CHAPTER I. WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES .......................................214
CHAPTER II. HOUGOMONT...........................................................................................................215
CHAPTER III. THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815 ........................................................................219
CHAPTER IV. A.................................................................................................................................220
CHAPTER V. THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES..................................................................222
CHAPTER VI. FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON................................................................223
CHAPTER VII. NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR ........................................................................225
CHAPTER VIII. THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE ...................227
CHAPTER IX. THE UNEXPECTED.................................................................................................229
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CHAPTER X. THE PLATEAU OF MONTSAINTJEAN.............................................................231
CHAPTER XI. A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW........................234
CHAPTER XII. THE GUARD ............................................................................................................235
CHAPTER XIII. THE CATASTROPHE ............................................................................................236
CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST SQUARE.............................................................................................237
CHAPTER XV. CAMBRONNE .........................................................................................................237
CHAPTER XVI. QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE? ....................................................................................239
CHAPTER XVII. IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD? ................................................241
CHAPTER XVIII. A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT .......................................................242
CHAPTER XIX. THE BATTLEFIELD AT NIGHT ........................................................................244
BOOK SECOND.THE SHIP ORION .............................................................................................248
CHAPTER I. NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430 ..........................................................248
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF
THE DEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY .....................................................................................250
CHAPTER III. THE ANKLECHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN
PREPARATORY MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A
HAMMER...........................................................................................................................................252
BOOK THIRD.ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD
WOMAN ..............................................................................................................................................256
CHAPTER I. THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL .......................................................256
CHAPTER II. TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS ................................................................................258
CHAPTER III. MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER.....................261
CHAPTER IV. ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL ............................................................263
CHAPTER V. THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE ...............................................................................264
CHAPTER VI. WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE.................267
CHAPTER VII. COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK..................270
CHAPTER VIII. THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A
POOR MAN WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN .....................................................................................274
CHAPTER IX. THENARDIER AND HIS MANOEUVRES .............................................................287
CHAPTER X. HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION
WORSE...............................................................................................................................................292
CHAPTER XI. NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY ...296
BOOK FOURTH.THE GORBEAU HOVEL.................................................................................297
CHAPTER I. MASTER GORBEAU..................................................................................................297
CHAPTER II. A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER ...................................................................300
CHAPTER III. TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE......................302
CHAPTER IV. THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT..................................................304
CHAPTER V. A FIVEFRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A
TUMULT .............................................................................................................................................305
BOOK FIFTH.FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK.............................................................308
CHAPTER I. THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY.................................................................................308
CHAPTER II. IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D'AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES............310
CHAPTER III. TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727 .................................................................311
CHAPTER IV. THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT ..................................................................................313
CHAPTER V. WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS...............................314
CHAPTER VI. THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA.......................................................................317
CHAPTER VII. CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA....................................................................318
CHAPTER VIII. THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS .........................................320
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CHAPTER IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELL ...................................................................................321
CHAPTER X. WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT ...................................325
BOOK SIXTH.LE PETITPICPUS...............................................................................................329
CHAPTER I. NUMBER 62 RUE PETITPICPUS............................................................................329
CHAPTER II. THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA .................................................................331
CHAPTER III. AUSTERITIES ...........................................................................................................335
CHAPTER IV. GAYETIES .................................................................................................................336
CHAPTER V. DISTRACTIONS........................................................................................................339
CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE CONVENT ..........................................................................................341
CHAPTER VII. SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS ......................................................343
CHAPTER VIII. POST CORDA LAPIDES.......................................................................................344
CHAPTER IX. A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE..........................................................................345
CHAPTER X. ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION........................................................346
CHAPTER XI. END OF THE PETITPICPUS.................................................................................346
BOOK SEVENTH.PARENTHESIS ...............................................................................................347
CHAPTER I. THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA ..............................................................348
CHAPTER II. THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT .........................................................348
CHAPTER III. ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST ................................349
CHAPTER IV. THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES.......................351
CHAPTER V. PRAYER ......................................................................................................................352
CHAPTER VI. THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER.........................................................352
CHAPTER VII. PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME................................................354
CHAPTER VIII. FAITH, LAW ...........................................................................................................355
BOOK EIGHTH.CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM....................356
CHAPTER I. WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING A CONVENT .....................356
CHAPTER II. FAUCHELEVENT IN THE PRESENCE OF A DIFFICULTY .................................361
CHAPTER III. MOTHER INNOCENTE ............................................................................................363
CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ
AUSTIN CASTILLEJO .......................................................................................................................372
CHAPTER V. IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL .........378
CHAPTER VI. BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS .....................................................................................382
CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T
LOSE THE CARD ...............................................................................................................................384
CHAPTER VIII. A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY ..................................................................391
CHAPTER IX. CLOISTERED ............................................................................................................394
VOLUME III. MARIUS. .....................................................................................................................398
BOOK FIRST.PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM..........................................................................398
CHAPTER I. PARVULUS ..................................................................................................................398
CHAPTER II. SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS.............................................399
CHAPTER III. HE IS AGREEABLE ..................................................................................................400
CHAPTER IV. HE MAY BE OF USE ................................................................................................400
CHAPTER V. HIS FRONTIERS........................................................................................................401
CHAPTER VI. A BIT OF HISTORY.................................................................................................402
CHAPTER VII. THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS
OF INDIA............................................................................................................................................403
CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE
LAST KING .........................................................................................................................................404
CHAPTER IX. THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL.....................................................................................405
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CHAPTER X. ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO.....................................................................................405
CHAPTER XI. TO SCOFF, TO REIGN .............................................................................................407
CHAPTER XII. THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE............................................................408
CHAPTER XIII. LITTLE GAVROCHE .............................................................................................408
BOOK SECOND.THE GREAT BOURGEOIS ..............................................................................410
CHAPTER I. NINETY YEARS AND THIRTYTWO TEETH ........................................................410
CHAPTER II. LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE ..................................................................................411
CHAPTER III. LUCESPRIT .............................................................................................................411
CHAPTER IV. A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT...............................................................................412
CHAPTER V. BASQUE AND NICOLETTE .....................................................................................412
CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN........................413
CHAPTER VII. RULE: RECEIVE NO ONE EXCEPT IN THE EVENING...................................414
CHAPTER VIII. TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR ..............................................................................414
BOOK THIRD.THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON...............................................415
CHAPTER I. AN ANCIENT SALON................................................................................................415
CHAPTER II. ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT EPOCH.................................................418
CHAPTER III. REQUIESCANT .........................................................................................................421
CHAPTER IV. END OF THE BRIGAND ..........................................................................................425
CHAPTER V. THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME A
REVOLUTIONIST ..............................................................................................................................427
CHAPTER VI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN .....................................428
CHAPTER VII. SOME PETTICOAT .................................................................................................432
CHAPTER VIII. MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE ............................................................................437
BOOK FOURTH.THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC..........................................................................440
CHAPTER I. A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC .............................440
CHAPTER II. BLONDEAU'S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET .............................................447
CHAPTER III. MARIUS' ASTONISHMENTS ..................................................................................450
CHAPTER IV. THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFE MUSAIN........................................................452
CHAPTER V. ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON..............................................................................456
CHAPTER VI. RES ANGUSTA .........................................................................................................458
BOOK FIFTH.THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE.............................................................461
CHAPTER I. MARIUS INDIGENT...................................................................................................461
CHAPTER II. MARIUS POOR..........................................................................................................462
CHAPTER III. MARIUS GROWN UP ...............................................................................................464
CHAPTER IV. M. MABEUF ..............................................................................................................466
CHAPTER V. POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY ....................................................469
CHAPTER VI. THE SUBSTITUTE...................................................................................................470
BOOK SIXTH.THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS.............................................................473
CHAPTER I. THE SOBRIQUET: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY NAMES .....................473
CHAPTER II. LUX FACTA EST.......................................................................................................475
CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF THE SPRING ........................................................................................476
CHAPTER IV. BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY ...................................................................477
CHAPTER V. DIVRS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON...............................478
CHAPTER VI. TAKEN PRISONER..................................................................................................479
CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO
CONJECTURES ..................................................................................................................................481
CHAPTER VIII. THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY...........................................482
CHAPTER IX. ECLIPSE....................................................................................................................483
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BOOK SEVENTH.PATRON MINETTE .......................................................................................485
CHAPTER I. MINES AND MINERS .................................................................................................485
CHAPTER II. THE LOWEST DEPTHS .............................................................................................486
CHAPTER III. BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE....................487
CHAPTER IV. COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE.........................................................................488
BOOK EIGHTH.THE WICKED POOR MAN..............................................................................490
CHAPTER I. MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A
MAN IN A CAP..................................................................................................................................490
CHAPTER II. TREASURE TROVE ...................................................................................................491
CHAPTER III. QUADRIFRONS ........................................................................................................493
CHAPTER IV. A ROSE IN MISERY .................................................................................................496
CHAPTER V. A PROVIDENTIAL PEEPHOLE .............................................................................501
CHAPTER VI. THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR ................................................................................502
CHAPTER VII. STRATEGY AND TACTICS ...................................................................................505
CHAPTER VIII. THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL .................................................................508
CHAPTER IX. JONDRETTE COMES NEAR WEEPING ................................................................510
CHAPTER X. TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR ..................................513
CHAPTER XI. OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS ..........................515
CHAPTER XII. THE USE MADE OF M. LEBLANC'S FIVEFRANC PIECE ..............................517
CHAPTER XIII. SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABUNTUR
ORARE PATER NOSTER ..................................................................................................................522
CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS ON A
LAWYER............................................................................................................................................524
CHAPTER XV. JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES.............................................................527
CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN ENGLISH AIR
WHICH WAS IN FASHION IN 1832................................................................................................529
CHAPTER XVII. THE USE MADE OF MARIUS' FIVEFRANC PIECE ......................................533
CHAPTER XVIII. MARIUS' TWO CHAIRS FORM A VISAVIS ...............................................536
CHAPTER XIX. OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS....................................537
CHAPTER XX. THE TRAP...............................................................................................................540
CHAPTER XXI. ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS................558
CHAPTER XXII. THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO..........................562
VOLUME IV. SAINTDENIS. THE IDYL IN THE RUE PLUMET AND THE EPIC IN THE
RUE SAINTDENIS ...........................................................................................................................564
BOOK FIRST.A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY..............................................................................564
CHAPTER I. WELL CUT ...................................................................................................................564
CHAPTER II. BADLY SEWED.........................................................................................................567
CHAPTER III. LOUIS PHILIPPE......................................................................................................570
CHAPTER IV. CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION............................................................573
CHAPTER V. FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES......578
CHAPTER VI. ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS ...................................................................585
BOOK SECOND.EPONINE ...........................................................................................................589
CHAPTER I. THE LARK'S MEADOW .............................................................................................589
CHAPTER II. EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF
PRISONS.............................................................................................................................................592
CHAPTER III. APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF ....................................................................595
CHAPTER IV. AN APPARITION TO MARIUS ...............................................................................598
BOOK THIRD.THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET.................................................................602
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CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET ..................................................................................602
CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD ..........................................................604
CHAPTER III. FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS ..........................................................................................606
CHAPTER IV. CHANGE OF GATE ..................................................................................................607
CHAPTER V. THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR ................................610
CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE BEGUN.............................................................................................613
CHAPTER VII. TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF ..................................615
CHAPTER VIII. THE CHAINGANG..............................................................................................618
BOOK FOURTH.SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM
ON HIGH .............................................................................................................................................624
CHAPTER I. A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN .............................................................624
CHAPTER II. MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A
PHENOMENON ..................................................................................................................................625
BOOK FIFTH.THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING................631
CHAPTER I. SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED....................................................631
CHAPTER II. COSETTE'S APPREHENSIONS ................................................................................632
CHAPTER III. ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT ......................................634
CHAPTER IV. A HEART BENEATH A STONE.............................................................................636
CHAPTER V. COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER.............................................................................639
CHAPTER VI. OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY..................................640
BOOK SIXTH.LITTLE GAVROCHE...........................................................................................642
CHAPTER I. THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND................................................642
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON
THE GREAT.......................................................................................................................................644
CHAPTER III. THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT...........................................................................663
BOOK SEVENTH.SLANG............................................................................................................672
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN .........................................................................................................................672
CHAPTER II. ROOTS........................................................................................................................676
CHAPTER III. SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS ...................................681
CHAPTER IV. THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE...............................................683
BOOK EIGHTH.ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS ......................................................685
CHAPTER I. FULL LIGHT ................................................................................................................685
CHAPTER II. THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS..............................................689
CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW .............................................................................690
CHAPTER IV. A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG.........................................692
CHAPTER V. THINGS OF THE NIGHT..........................................................................................699
CHAPTER VI. MARIUS BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE EXTENT OF
GIVING COSETTE HIS ADDRESS..................................................................................................699
CHAPTER VII. THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF
EACH OTHER....................................................................................................................................704
BOOK NINTH.WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?........................................................................713
CHAPTER I. JEAN VALJEAN..........................................................................................................713
CHAPTER II. MARIUS......................................................................................................................714
CHAPTER III. M. MABEUF..............................................................................................................716
BOOK TENTH.THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832 ....................................................................................718
CHAPTER I. THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION........................................................................718
CHAPTER II. THE ROOT OF THE MATTER ..................................................................................720
CHAPTER III. A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN ..............................................724
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CHAPTER IV. THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS ..............................................................726
CHAPTER V. ORIGINALITY OF PARIS .........................................................................................729
BOOK ELEVENTH.THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE..........................731
CHAPTER I. SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF
GAVROCHE'S POETRY. THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN ON THIS POETRY......731
CHAPTER II. GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH................................................................................733
CHAPTER III. JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIRDRESSER .......................................................736
CHAPTER IV. THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN ......................................................737
CHAPTER V. THE OLD MAN..........................................................................................................738
CHAPTER VI. RECRUITS .................................................................................................................740
BOOK TWELFTH.CORINTHE .....................................................................................................742
CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION ............................................742
CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARY GAYETIES ......................................................................................745
CHAPTER III. NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE ...........................................751
CHAPTER IV. AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP...............................754
CHAPTER V. PREPARATIONS ........................................................................................................756
CHAPTER VI. WAITING ...................................................................................................................757
CHAPTER VII. THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES ....................................760
CHAPTER VIII. MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE
CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC ....................................................762
BOOK THIRTEENTH.MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW ........................................................766
CHAPTER I. FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINTDENIS ..........................766
CHAPTER II. AN OWL'S VIEW OF PARIS .....................................................................................768
CHAPTER III. THE EXTREME EDGE .............................................................................................769
BOOK FOURTEENTH.THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR........................................................772
CHAPTER I. THE FLAG: ACT FIRST .............................................................................................772
CHAPTER II. THE FLAG: ACT SECOND......................................................................................774
CHAPTER III. GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS'
CARBINE ............................................................................................................................................776
CHAPTER IV. THE BARREL OF POWDER...................................................................................777
CHAPTER V. END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE ......................................................779
CHAPTER VI. THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE ...................................780
CHAPTER VII. GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES ...................785
BOOK FIFTEENTH.THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME...............................................................787
CHAPTER I. A DRINKER IS A BABBLER.....................................................................................787
CHAPTER II. THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT .....................................................792
CHAPTER III. WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP...........................................796
CHAPTER IV. GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL ..........................................................................796
VOLUME V. JEAN VALJEAN ..........................................................................................................801
BOOK FIRST.THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS................................................................801
CHAPTER I. THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE
SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE .................................................................................801
CHAPTER II. WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE........805
CHAPTER III. LIGHT AND SHADOW............................................................................................808
CHAPTER IV. MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE........................................................................................809
CHAPTER V. THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A
BARRICADE......................................................................................................................................814
CHAPTER VI. MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC ............................................................815
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CHAPTER VII. THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED ....................................................817
CHAPTER VIII. THE ARTILLERYMEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM
SERIOUSLY.......................................................................................................................................819
CHAPTER IX. EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT
INFALLIBLE MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONDEMNATION OF 1796 ...822
CHAPTER X. DAWN .........................................................................................................................823
CHAPTER XI. THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE..........................825
CHAPTER XII. DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER ..................................................................826
CHAPTER XIII. PASSING GLEAMS...............................................................................................828
CHAPTER XIV. WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS' MISTRESS ..............829
CHAPTER XV. GAVROCHE OUTSIDE..........................................................................................831
CHAPTER XVI. HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER..................................833
CHAPTER XVII. MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT .................................838
CHAPTER XVIII. THE VULTURE BECOME PREY......................................................................839
CHAPTER XIX. JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE...........................................................843
CHAPTER XX. THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE
WRONG..............................................................................................................................................845
CHAPTER XXI. THE HEROES .........................................................................................................851
CHAPTER XXII. FOOT TO FOOT ....................................................................................................853
CHAPTER XXIII. ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK...............................................855
CHAPTER XXIV. PRISONER ...........................................................................................................857
BOOK SECOND.THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN.......................................................859
CHAPTER I. THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA............................................................859
CHAPTER II. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER....................................................................862
CHAPTER III. BRUNESEAU............................................................................................................863
CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................865
CHAPTER V. PRESENT PROGRESS ...............................................................................................867
CHAPTER VI. FUTURE PROGRESS...............................................................................................867
BOOK THIRD.MUD BUT THE SOUL .........................................................................................870
CHAPTER I. THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES..........................................................................870
CHAPTER II. EXPLANATION.........................................................................................................873
CHAPTER III. THE "SPUN" MAN ....................................................................................................874
CHAPTER IV. HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS................................................................................877
CHAPTER V. IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A
FINENESS WHICH IS TREACHEROUS ..........................................................................................879
CHAPTER VI. THE FONTIS.............................................................................................................882
CHAPTER VII. ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE
IS DISEMBARKING..........................................................................................................................883
CHAPTER VIII. THE TORN COATTAIL......................................................................................884
CHAPTER IX. MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE
MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD....................................................................................888
CHAPTER X. RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE .............................891
CHAPTER XI. CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE .......................................................................893
CHAPTER XII. THE GRANDFATHER............................................................................................894
BOOK FOURTH.JAVERT DERAILED ........................................................................................898
CHAPTER I .........................................................................................................................................898
BOOK FIFTH.GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER ..................................................................905
CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN...............905
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER II. MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR
DOMESTIC WAR ...............................................................................................................................907
CHAPTER III. MARIUS ATTACKED..............................................................................................910
CHAPTER IV. MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND ENDS BY NO LONGER THINKING
IT A BAD THING THAT M. FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD HAVE ENTERED WITH
SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM ......................................................................................................912
CHAPTER V. DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A
NOTARY .............................................................................................................................................916
CHAPTER VI. THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN
FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY...................................................................................917
CHAPTER VII. THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS............................922
CHAPTER VIII. TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.....................................................................923
BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT. ....................................................................................926
CHAPTER I. THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833..............................................................................926
CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING .......................................933
CHAPTER III. THE INSEPARABLE................................................................................................939
CHAPTER IV. THE IMMORTAL LIVER .........................................................................................940
BOOK SEVENTH.THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP....................................................943
CHAPTER I. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN .........................................943
CHAPTER II. THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN ..........................955
BOOK EIGHTH.FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT .............................................................960
CHAPTER I. THE LOWER CHAMBER...........................................................................................960
CHAPTER II. ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS ..............................................................................965
CHAPTER III. THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET ......................................966
CHAPTER IV. ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION ........................................................................970
BOOK NINTH.SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN........................................................971
CHAPTER I. PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY....................971
CHAPTER II. LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL...............................................972
CHAPTER III. A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE FAUCHELEVENT'S
CART ...................................................................................................................................................974
CHAPTER IV. A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN WHITENING..................975
CHAPTER V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY..........................................................989
CHAPTER VI. THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES..............................................997
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Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
VOLUME I
BOOK FIRST.A JUST MAN
Preface
I. M. Myriel
II. M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome
III. A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
IV. Works corresponding to Words
V. Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long
VI. Who guarded his House for him
VII. Cravatte
VIII. Philosophy after Drinking
IX. The Brother as depicted by the Sister
X. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
XI. A Restriction
XII. The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome
XIII. What he believed
XIV. What he thought
BOOK SECOND.THE FALL
I. The Evening of a Day of Walking
II. Prudence counselled to Wisdom
III. The Heroism of Passive Obedience
IV. Details concerning the CheeseDairies of Pontarlier
V. Tranquillity
VI. Jean Valjean
VII. The Interior of Despair
VIII. Billows and Shadows
IX. New Troubles
X. The Man aroused
XI. What he does
XII. The Bishop works
XIII. Little Gervais
BOOK THIRD.IN THE YEAR 1817
I. The Year 1817
II. A Double Quartette
III. Four and Four
IV. Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty
V. At Bombardas
VI. A Chapter in which they adore Each Other
VII. The Wisdom of Tholomyes
VIII. The Death of a Horse
IX. A Merry End to Mirth
BOOK FOURTH.TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER
I. One Mother meets Another Mother
II. First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
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III. The Lark
BOOK FIFTH. THE DESCENT
I. The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
II. Madeleine
III. Sums deposited with Laffitte
IV. M. Madeleine in Mourning
V. Vague Flashes on the Horizon
VI. Father Fauchelevent
VII. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris
VIII. Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality
IX. Madame Victurnien's Success
X. Result of the Success
XI. Christus nos Liberavit
XII. M. Bamatabois's Inactivity
XIII. The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police
BOOK SIXTH.JAVERT
I. The Beginning of Repose
II. How Jean may become Champ
BOOK SEVENTH.THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
I. Sister Simplice
II. The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
III. A Tempest in a Skull
IV. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep
V. Hindrances
VI. Sister Simplice put to the Proof
VII. The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions for Departure
VIII. An Entrance by Favor
IX. A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation
X. The System of Denials
XI. Champmathieu more and more Astonished
BOOK EIGHTH.A COUNTERBLOW
I. In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair
II. Fantine Happy
III. Javert Satisfied
IV. Authority reasserts its Rights
V. A Suitable Tomb
VOLUME II
BOOK FIRST.WATERLOO
I. What is met with on the Way from Nivelles
II. Hougomont
III. The Eighteenth of June, 1815
IV. A
V. The Quid Obscurum of Battles
VI. Four o'clock in the Afternoon
VII. Napoleon in a Good Humor
VIII. The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste
IX. The Unexpected
X. The Plateau of MontSaintJean
XI. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow
XII. The Guard
XIII. The Catastrophe
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XIV. The Last Square
XV. Cambronne
XVI. Quot Libras in Duce?
XVII. Is Waterloo to be considered Good?
XVIII. A Recrudescence of Divine Right
XIX. The BattleField at Night
BOOK SECOND.THE SHIP ORION
I. Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430
II. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly
III. The AnkleChain 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
I. The Water Question at Montfermeil
II. Two Complete Portraits
III. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water
IV. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
V. The Little One All Alone
VI. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence
VII. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
VIII. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor Man who may be a Rich Man
IX. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres
X. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse
XI. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery
BOOK FOURTH.THE GORBEAU HOVEL
I. Master Gorbeau
II. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
III. Two Misfortunes make One Piece of Good Fortune
IV. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
V. A FiveFranc Piece falls on the Ground and produces a Tumult
BOOK FIFTH.FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
I. The Zigzags of Strategy
II. It is Lucky that the Pont d'Austerlitz bears Carriages
III. To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727
IV. The Gropings of Flight
V. Which would be Impossible with Gas Lanterns
VI. The Beginning of an Enigma
VII. Continuation of the Enigma
VIII. The Enigma becomes Doubly Mysterious
IX. The Man with the Bell
X. Which explains how Javert got on the Scent
BOOK SIXTH.LE PETITPICPUS
I. Number 62 Rue PetitPicpus
II. The Obedience of Martin Verga
III. Austerities
IV. Gayeties
V. Distractions
VI. The Little Convent
VII. Some Silhouettes of this Darkness
VIII. Post Corda Lapides
IX. A Century under a Guimpe
X. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
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XI. End of the PetitPicpus
BOOK SEVENTH.PARENTHESIS
I. The Convent as an Abstract Idea
II. The Convent as an Historical Fact
III. On What Conditions One can respect the Past
IV. The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
V. Prayer
VI. The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
VII. Precautions to be observed in Blame
VIII. Faith, Law
BOOK EIGHTH.CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
I. Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent
II. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty
III. Mother Innocente
IV. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read Austin Castillejo
V. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal
VI. Between Four Planks
VII. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don't lose the Card
VIII. A Successful Interrogatory
IX. Cloistered
VOLUME III
BOOK FIRST.PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
I. Parvulus
II. Some of his Particular Characteristics
III. He is Agreeable
IV. He may be of Use
V. His Frontiers
VI. A Bit of History
VII. The Gamin should have his Place in the Classifications of India
VIII. In which the Reader will find a Charming Saying of the Last King
IX. The Old Soul of Gaul
X. Ecce Paris, ecce Homo
XI. To Scoff, to Reign
XII. The Future Latent in the People
XIII. Little Gavroche
BOOK SECOND.THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
I. Ninety Years and Thirtytwo Teeth
II. Like Master, Like House
III. LucEsprit
IV. A Centenarian Aspirant
V. Basque and Nicolette
VI. In which Magnon and her Two Children are seen
VII. Rule: Receive No One except in the Evening
VIII. Two do not make a Pair
BOOK THIRD.THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
I. An Ancient Salon
II. One of the Red Spectres of that Epoch
III. Requiescant
IV. End of the Brigand
V. The Utility of going to Mass, in order to become a Revolutionist
VI. The Consequences of having met a Warden
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VII. Some Petticoat
VIII. Marble against Granite
BOOK FOURTH.THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC
I. A Group which barely missed becoming Historic
II. Blondeau's Funeral Oration by Bossuet
III. Marius' Astonishments
IV. The Back Room of the Cafe Musain
V. Enlargement of Horizon
VI. Res Angusta
BOOK FIFTH.THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
I. Marius Indigent
II. Marius Poor
III. Marius Grown Up
IV. M. Mabeuf
V. Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery
VI. The Substitute
BOOK SIXTH.THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
I. The Sobriquet; Mode of Formation of Family Names
II. Lux Facta Est
III. Effect of the Spring
IV. Beginning of a Great Malady
V. Divers Claps of Thunder fall on Ma'am Bougon
VI. Taken Prisoner
VII. Adventures of the Letter U delivered over to Conjectures
VIII. The Veterans themselves can be Happy
IX. Eclipse
BOOK SEVENTH.PATRON MINETTE
I. Mines and Miners
II. The Lowest Depths
III. Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
IV. Composition of the Troupe
BOOK EIGHTH.THE WICKED POOR MAN
I. Marius, while seeking a Girl in a Bonnet encounters a Man in a Cap
II. Treasure Trove
III. Quadrifrons
IV. A Rose in Misery
V. A Providential PeepHole
VI. The Wild Man in his Lair
VII. Strategy and Tactics
VIII. The Ray of Light in the Hovel
IX. Jondrette comes near Weeping
X. Tariff of Licensed Cabs, Two Francs an Hour
XI. Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness
XII. The Use made of M. Leblanc's FiveFranc Piece
XIII. Solus cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster
XIV. In which a Police Agent bestows Two Fistfuls on a Lawyer
XV. Jondrette makes his Purchases
XVI. In which will be found the Words to an English Air which was in Fashion in 1832
XVII. The Use made of Marius' FiveFranc Piece
XVIII. Marius' Two Chairs form a VisaVis
XIX. Occupying One's Self with Obscure Depths
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Page No 17
XX. The Trap
XXI. One should always begin by arresting the Victims
XXII. The Little One who was crying in Volume Two
VOLUME IV
BOOK FIRST.A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
I. Well Cut
II. Badly Sewed
III. Louis Philippe
IV. Cracks beneath the Foundation
V. Facts whence History springs and which History ignores
VI. Enjolras and his Lieutenants
BOOK SECOND.EPONINE
I. The Lark's Meadow
II. Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the Incubation of Prisons
III. Apparition to Father Mabeuf
IV. An Apparition to Marius
BOOK THIRD.THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
I. The House with a Secret
II. Jean Valjean as a National Guard
III. Foliis ac Frondibus
IV. Change of Gate
V. The Rose perceives that it is an Engine of War
VI. The Battle Begun
VII. To One Sadness oppose a Sadness and a Half
VIII. The ChainGang
BOOK FOURTH.SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
I. A Wound without, Healing within
II. Mother Plutarque finds no Difficulty in explaining a Phenomenon
BOOK FIFTH.THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING
I. Solitude and Barracks Combined
II. Cosette's Apprehensions
III. Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
IV. A Heart beneath a Stone
V. Cosette after the Letter
VI. Old People are made to go out opportunely
BOOK SIXTH.LITTLE GAVROCHE
I. The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind
II. In which Little Gavroche extracts Profit from Napoleon the Great
III. The Vicissitudes of Flight
BOOK SEVENTH.SLANG
I. Origin
II. Roots
III. Slang which weeps and Slang which laughs
IV. The Two Duties: To Watch and to Hope
BOOK EIGHTH.ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
I. Full Light
II. The Bewilderment of Perfect Happiness
III. The Beginning of Shadow
IV. A Cab runs in English and barks in Slang
V. Things of the Night
VI. Marius becomes Practical once more to the Extent of Giving Cosette his Address
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Les Miserables 6
Page No 18
VII. The Old Heart and the Young Heart in the Presence of Each Other
BOOK NINTH.WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
I. Jean Valjean
II. Marius
III. M. Mabeuf
BOOK TENTH.THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832
I. The Surface of the Question
II. The Root of the Matter
III. A Burial; an Occasion to be born again
IV. The Ebullitions of Former Days
V. Originality of Paris
BOOK ELEVENTH.THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
I. Some Explanations with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche's Poetry. The Influence of an Academician on
this Poetry
II. Gavroche on the March
III. Just Indignation of a Hairdresser
IV. The Child is amazed at the Old Man
V. The Old Man
VI. Recruits
BOOK TWELFTH.CORINTHE
I. History of Corinthe from its Foundation
II. Preliminary Gayeties
III. Night begins to descend upon Grantaire
IV. An Attempt to console the Widow Hucheloup
V. Preparations
VI. Waiting
VII. The Man recruited in the Rue des Billettes
VIII. Many Interrogation Points with Regard to a Certain Le Cabuc, whose Name may not have been Le
Cabuc
BOOK THIRTEENTH.MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
I. From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier SaintDenis
II. An Owl's View of Paris
III. The Extreme Edge
BOOK FOURTEENTH.THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
I. The Flag: Act First
II. The Flag: Act Second
III. Gavroche would have done better to accept Enjolras' Carbine
IV. The Barrel of Powder
V. End of the Verses of Jean Prouvaire
VI. The Agony of Death after the Agony of Life
VII. Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances
BOOK FIFTEENTH.THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME
I. A Drinker is a Babbler
II. The Street Urchin an Enemy of Light
III. While Cosette and Toussaint are Asleep
IV. Gavroche's Excess of Zeal
VOLUME V
BOOK FIRST.THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
I. The Charybdis of the Faubourg SaintAntoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple
II. What Is to Be Done in the Abyss if One Does Not Converse
III. Light and Shadow
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IV. Minus Five, Plus One
V. The Horizon Which One Beholds from the Summit of a Barricade
VI. Marius Haggard, Javert Laconic
VII. The Situation Becomes Aggravated
VIII. The Artillerymen Compel People to Take Them Seriously
IX. Employment of the Old Talents of a Poacher and That Infallible Marksmanship Which Influenced the
Condemnation of 1796
X. Dawn
XI. The Shot Which Misses Nothing and Kills No One
XII. Disorder a Partisan of Order
XIII. Passing Gleams
XIV. Wherein Will Appear the Name of Enjolras' Mistress
XV. Gavroche Outside
XVI. How from a Brother One Becomes a Father
XVII. Mortuus Pater Filium Moriturum Expectat
XVIII. The Vulture Becomes Prey
XIX. Jean Valjean Takes His Revenge
XX. The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong
XXI. The Heroes
XXII. Foot to Foot
XXIII. Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
XXIV. Prisoner
BOOK SECOND.THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN
I. The Land Impoverished by the Sea
II. Ancient History of the Sewer
III. Bruneseau
IV
V. Present Progress
VI. Future Progress
BOOK THIRD.MUD BUT THE SOUL
I. The Sewer and Its Surprises
II. Explanation
III. The "Spun" Man
IV. He Also Bears His Cross
V. In the Case of Sand, as in That of Woman, There Is a Fineness Which Is Treacherous
VI. The Fontis
VII. One Sometimes Runs Aground When One Fancies That One Is Disembarking
VIII. The Torn CoatTail
IX. Marius Produces on Some One Who Is a Judge of the Matter, the Effect of Being Dead
X. Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
XI. Concussion in the Absolute
XII. The Grandfather
BOOK FOURTH.JAVERT DERAILED
I
BOOK FIFTH.GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
I. In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
II. Marius, Emerging from Civil War, Makes Ready for Domestic War
III. Marius Attacked
IV. Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent
Should Have Entered With Something Under His Arm
V. Deposit Your Money in a Forest Rather than with a Notary
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Page No 20
VI. The Two Old Men Do Everything, Each One After His Own Fashion, to Render Cosette Happy
VII. The Effects of Dreams Mingled with Happiness
VIII. Two Men Impossible to Find
BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT
I. The 16th of February, 1833
II. Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
III. The Inseparable
IV. The Immortal Liver
BOOK SEVENTH.THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
I. The Seventh Circle and the Eighth Heaven
II. The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain
BOOK EIGHTH.FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT
I. The Lower Chamber
II. Another Step Backwards
III. They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
IV. Attraction and Extinction
BOOK NINTH.SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
I. Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
II. Last Flickerings of a Lamp Without Oil
III. A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the Fauchelevent's Cart
IV. A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
V. A Night Behind Which There Is Day
VI. The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces
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 Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.
FANTINE
BOOK FIRSTA JUST MAN
CHAPTER I. M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. CharlesFrancoisBienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D He was an old man of about
seventyfive 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
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VOLUME I. FANTINE. 9
Page No 21
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 Cure 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 curacyjust what, is not precisely
knowntook 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 Cure, 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 Cure, 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.
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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 Cure, 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 majorgeneral. 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, Abbe 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 drawingrooms, 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
diningroom, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the groundfloor and opened on the gardens,
M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop;
Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior
of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de
Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; 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?"
"Twentysix, Monseigneur."
"That was the number which I counted," said the Bishop.
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"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 diningroom on the groundfloor.
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 diningroom?" 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 thirtysix 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 thirtysix 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 "
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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 HautesAlpes . . . . . . . . 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 Preameneu, the minister of
public worship, a very angry and confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic
lines:
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"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 ChateauArnoux can barely support oxteams. 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 postingchaise, 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 blackcapped
rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part, I am for Caesar
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 countryside 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.
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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; thirtytwo curacies, fortyone vicarships, and two hundred and eightyfive 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 springcart 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
Briancon! 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 cure recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and
on Sunday, after the mass, all the inhabitants of the villagemen, women, and childrengo 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.
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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 armchair, 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 Lo, 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 Lo 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 countryside, 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. Geborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M. Geborand 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
beggarwomen 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. Geborand
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 drawingroom 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 ultraroyalist and an ultraVoltairian. 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
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Page No 28
two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and fortysix 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 Isere, 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 Dauphine. They make bread for six months at one time; they bake it with dried
cowdung. In the winter they break this bread up with an axe, and they soak it for twentyfour hours, in
order to render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all sides of you!"
Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south. He said, "En be! moussu, ses
sage?" as in lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the BassesAlpes; "Puerte un bouen moutu embe
un bouen fromage grase," as in upper Dauphine. 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 exsinner, 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, cheek 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.
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One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the point of trial, discussed in a
drawingroom. 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 cure. 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 Cure 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
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Page No 30
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 drawingrooms. 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 vindicte; 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 choppingknife.
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 wellbeloved 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
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CHAPTER IV. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 19
Page No 31
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 vicarsgeneral. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a whole
ecclesiastical library to examine, prayerbooks, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc.,charges to
write, sermons to authorize, cures 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 midday, 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.
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 halfpast 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
cures 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 cure 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
cure, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist.
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CHAPTER V. MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG 20
Page No 32
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 Ptolemais, greatgranduncle 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, Poincot,
bookseller; and Paris, Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins.
Here is the note:
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the Allpowerful; 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 diningroom, 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 diningroom. 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.
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CHAPTER VI. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 21
Page No 33
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 cowshed. Here he passed
his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his winter salon.
In this winter salon, as in the diningroom, there was no other furniture than a square table in white wood,
and four strawseated chairs. In addition to this the diningroom 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 prieDieu, and there was an armchair, 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 prieDieu from the oratory, and the armchair 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 easychair of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which was covered with
flowered pekin; but they had been obliged to hoist this bergere 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 drawingroom 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
fortytwo 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 diningroom. 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 chimneypiece 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 armchair of straw; in front of the bed a prieDieu, 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 Abbe of
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CHAPTER VI. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 22
Page No 34
Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe Tourteau, vicargeneral of Agde, abbe of
GrandChamp, order of Citeaux, 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
donorstwo 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 Abbe of GrandChamp 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 whitewashed, 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 soupladle, 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
greataunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's chimneypiece.
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 crossform, 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 fruittrees. 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
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CHAPTER VI. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 23
Page No 35
between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor
with Jussieu against Linnaeus. 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
flowerbeds every summer evening with a tin wateringpot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the diningroom, 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 passerby 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 cure, I know not whether it was the cure of Couloubroux or the cure 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 Bes, 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 Bes's troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his way to Piedmont, 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 Jougdel'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 countryside. 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.
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CHAPTER VII. CRAVATTE 24
Page No 36
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."
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CHAPTER VII. CRAVATTE 25
Page No 37
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 countryside, and caused great consternation.
He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the mountain on muleback,
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 cure. 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 Cure.
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 cure, throwing back his head with a smile. "Godor the Devil."
The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, 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 fellowman. 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
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CHAPTER VII. CRAVATTE 26
Page No 38
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
sonsinlaw, 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
PigaultLebrun. 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 semiofficial 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
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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 shadowhand, 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 shoulderblades. 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 gravedigger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total
liquidation. This is the vanishingpoint. 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
tomorrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been
Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paulit 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, knifegrinders, and miserable
wretches. Legends, chimeras, 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 goodnatured
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."
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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 chateau in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the
paper. There were things beneath. My drawingroom, 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 piertables 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
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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 GuyEtienneAlexandre, and was commander of a regiment, and
something in the light horse of Bretagne. His daughter, MarieLouise, married AdrienCharles de Gramont,
son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards, and lieutenantgeneral 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 kneecaps, 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.
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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 Conventioncan 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 quasiregicide. 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 threequarters 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 passersby. 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.
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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 wheelchair, the armchair of the peasants, there was a whitehaired 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 halfsmile
"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:
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"I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws on. Yesterday, only my feet were
cold; today, 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."
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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 today, 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:
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"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 Greve, 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.
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"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, twentyfive thousand francs, who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat
moorhens 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 sumI 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 moorhens which I eat on Friday, how my twentyfive 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
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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?
FouquierTainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to LamoignonBaville? Maillard is terrible; but
SaulxTavannes, if you please? Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder
Letellier? JourdanCoupeTete 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.
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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
icecold 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 twentytwo 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 eightysix 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."
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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 cure." 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 NotreDame, and
assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was
one of the ninetyfive 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.
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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 exprefect, 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 allpowerful 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 townhall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old noncommissioned 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
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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 abbes, just as a general is by a covey of
young officers. This is what that charming Saint Francois de Sales calls somewhere "les pretres blancsbecs,"
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 subdiaconate. 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 abbes 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 skullcap 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 abbes 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
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folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grandvicars 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 Menaechmus 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 shortsightedness. 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, Aeschylus, 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
shoesoles for the army of the SambreandMeuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as
leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a porkpacker 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. In was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,because he loved muchthat 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,
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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 seventyfifth 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, almsgiving, 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
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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 fruittrees. 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 passerby in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him who
penetrates thither!
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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 whoare 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 metaphysicsall 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.
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BOOK SECONDTHE 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
fortysix or fortyeight 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; ironshod
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 passerby. 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
marketplace.
On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left, and directed his steps toward the
townhall. 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 townhall.
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."
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The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the countryside. 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 stewpan 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 heathercocks, 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
townhall.
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.
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"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."
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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 ironshod
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 townhall, 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
townhall, and from the townhall 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 passersby 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 crossbeam 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 lowstudded 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.
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"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 andI 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 tavernkeeper. The tavernkeeper went to
him. They exchanged a few words in a low tone. The man had again become absorbed in his reflections.
The tavernkeeper 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.
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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 doublebarrelled 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 souptureen. 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 powderhorn, 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
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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 PuyMoisson. 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'shisname'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, "Tsomaraude."[1]
[1] Patois of the French Alps: chat de maraude, rascally marauder.
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.
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Then he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot two large bolts. A moment later, the
windowshutter 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 roadlaborers
construct for themselves along the roads. He thought without doubt, that it was, in fact, the dwelling of a
roadlaborer; 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 manoeuvre 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 passerby 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 closecut 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
lowhanging 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.
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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; "today 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?"
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"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
silverware 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 diningroom.
The diningroom 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 pucecolored 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
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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, sheathlike 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 halfturning 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 barefooted 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 gallowsbird with a terrible face.
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"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 tonight. 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 passerby; 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 newcomer 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:
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"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 today 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 townhall. 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 reentered 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 moneysavings. 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 galleyslave; 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 housebreaking 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 innkeeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you ask. You are
a fine man. You are an innkeeper, are you not?"
"I am," replied the Bishop, "a priest who lives here."
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"A priest!" said the man. "Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are not going to demand any money of me? You
are the cure, are you not? the cure of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly! I had not perceived your
skullcap."
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 Cure; 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 twentyfive sous,
which I earned by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abbe, 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 cure who rules over the other cures, you understand. Pardon me, I
say that very badly; but it is such a faroff 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 chimneypiece in
Monseigneur's bedchamber, and placed them, lighted, on the table.
"Monsieur le Cure," 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
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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 Cure," 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 fortysix. 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 tearbathed 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 goodwill 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 tableclothan 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.
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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 CHEESEDAIRIES 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 Cure 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 cure? Ah, if the good God were but just, you certainly ought to be a cure!'
"`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 tomorrow. 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 FrancheComte 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 Chatillon, 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,
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"`We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the gates at Pontarlier under the old
regime.'
"`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 cheesedairies, which they call fruitieres.'
"Then my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him, with great minuteness, what these fruitieres
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 fruitieres, which belong to the poor; these are the peasants of midmountain, who hold their cows
in common, and share the proceeds. `They engage the services of a cheesemaker, 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 cheesedairies begins; it is towards the middle of June that the
cheesemakers 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. Gedeon
le Provost, 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 up stairs. Nevertheless, I sent Madame Magloire down a moment
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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 ivoryhandled
knife which I use at table.
"Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the drawingroom, 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. Tomorrow morning, before you set out, you shall
drink a cup of warm milk from our cows."
"Thanks, Monsieur l'Abbe," 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
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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, conteplating, 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, be became a treepruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his
father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a contraction of viola 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 treepruner, 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 twentyfifth 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 illpaid 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 MarieClaude; the Valjean children, habitually famished, sometimes went
to borrow from MarieClaude 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 MarieClaude for the pint of milk behind their mother's
back, and the children were not punished.
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In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as a haymaker, as laborer, as neatherd
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 generalinchief of the army of Italy,
whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floreal, year IV., calls BuonaParte,
was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of galleyslaves was put in chains at Bicetre. 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 treepruner 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 twentyseven 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 clocktower 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
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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 Rear
SaintSulpice, 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 morninglong
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 hourone 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 spinningwheel, 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 thirtysix 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 rollcall. 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?
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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 overweight 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.
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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 galleyslave, 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.
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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 pitilessthat is to say, that which is brutalizingpredominates, 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 jackscrew, 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 Jackscrew. Once, when they were
repairing the balcony of the townhall 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
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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 tablelands, some
group, some detail, vividly illuminated; here the galleysergeant 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, thingswent 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 galleysergeant standing a few paces from him; the galleysergeant 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 venthole
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 treepruner 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
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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 deathpangs, 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.
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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 seventyone 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 wordrobbed.
On the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front of an orangeflower 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.
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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
pellmell 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 servantwoman 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 diningroom.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
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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, reentered, 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 onethe 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 airhole in a cellar, before which the passersby 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.
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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 armchair
heaped with clothing, a prieDieu, 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.
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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 halfhour 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 BassesAlps,
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.
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 halflight. 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.
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The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over the chimneypiece, 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, reentered the oratory, opened the window, seized his
cudgel, bestrode the windowsill of the groundfloor, 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 flowerbed. 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?"
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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 cure?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
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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 chimneypiece, 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:
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"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 hedgerows
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
hurdygurdy on his hip, and his marmotbox 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 knucklebones with
some coins which he had in his handhis whole fortune, probably.
Among this money there was one fortysou 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 fortysou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards the brushwood until it reached Jean
Valjean.
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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 bloodred 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 ironshod 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!"
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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 fortysou 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.
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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 Cure, have you seen a child pass?"
"No," said the priest.
"One named Little Gervais?"
"I have seen no one."
He drew two fivefranc pieces from his moneybag and handed them to the priest.
"Monsieur le Cure, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Cure, he was a little lad, about ten years old,
with a marmot, I think, and a hurdygurdy. 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'Abbe, 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!"
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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 unheardof thoughts
besetting it.
When intelligence reawakened and beheld that action of the brute, Jean Valjean recoiled with anguish and
uttered a cry of terror.
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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
galleyconvict, 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
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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 twentysecond of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguiere 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 fleursdelys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as churchwarden
in the churchwarden's pew of SaintGermaindesPres, 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'Angouleme. 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
eartabs 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 Abbe 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 sidealleys 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 GrosCaillou. 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 VoltaireTouquet and the snuffbox a la Charter. The most recent
Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's head into the fountain of the
FlowerMarket.
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 Gericault with glory. Colonel
Selves was going to Egypt to become SolimanPasha. 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 skyblue 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 fingernail, 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 advocategeneral of Broe, dedicated
to the sarcasms of PaulLouis Courier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the interim,
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until there should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt. Claire d'Albe and MalekAdel 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 Angouleme
into a naval school; for the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city of
Angouleme 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 slackrope
performances, which adorned Franconi's advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins,
should be tolerated. M. Paer, 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'Eveque. All the
young girls were singing the Hermit of SaintAvelle, with words by Edmond Geraud. The Yellow Dwarf was
transferred into Mirror. The Cafe Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Cafe 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 Stael had died a year previously. The bodyguard 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
middleclass 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 PontNeuf, the word Redivivus was carved on the pedestal that awaited the
statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Therese, 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'Epingle 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 SaintDominique, 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 Feletez signed himself
A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote Therese Aubert. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums
called themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden fleurdelys, fought each
other apropos of the King of Rome. The counterpolice of the chateau had denounced to her Royal Highness
Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orleans, who made a better appearance in his
uniform of a colonelgeneral of hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonelgeneral 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 Moliere had not been
able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Odeon, 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, Pelicier, 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 hima sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:
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"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. SaintSimon, 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 Abbe Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of seminarists in the blind
alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest, named FeliciteRobert, 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 dreamridden inventor; an utopiaa
steamboat. The Parisians stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the
Institute by a coup d'etat, the distinguished author of numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of
members, after having created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg
SaintGermain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of
his piety. Dupuytren and Recamier 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. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand
efforts to have pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all. The Abbe
Gregoire, exbishop, exconventionary, exsenator, had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of
"Infamous Gregoire." The locution of which we have made usepassed to the state ofhas been
condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with
which, the two years previously, the mining aperture made by Blucher 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 QuatreBras, in the brazenness of their wellpaid turpitude, exhibited
their devotion to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pellmell, 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
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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 Felix Tholomyes, 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 Zephine, an abridgment of Josephine;
Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zephine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women, perfumed and radiant, still a little
like workingwomen, 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 twentythree. 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, Zephine, 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 Zephine. 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 Zephine, 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, Zephine, and Dahlia were philosophical young women, while
Fantine was a good girl.
Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyes? 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.
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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 passerby, who had
encountered her, when a very small child, running barelegged 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 Tholomyes.
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 Tholomyes 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 Tholomyes was the head. It was he who
possessed the wit.
Tholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of four thousand francs; four thousand
francs! a splendid scandal on Mount SainteGenevieve. Tholomyes 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 Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture of an oracle, and said to them:
"Fantine, Dahlia, Zephine, 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, `Tholomyes, 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, Tholomyes 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."
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A smoky taproom 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 pleasuretrip of students and grisettes to the country was
like, fortyfive 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 halfcentury; where there was the cuckoo, there
is the railway car; where there was a tenderboat, there is now the steamboat; people speak of Fecamp
nowadays as they spoke of SaintCloud 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 Tholomyes 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 SaintCloud
by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, "This must be very beautiful when there is water!"
They breakfasted at the TeteNoir, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselves to a game of
ringthrowing 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 Sevres, picked bouquets at Pateaux,
bought reedpipes 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 goodhumored 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 Eleonore, M. le
Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolled that day beneath the chestnuttrees of SaintCloud, 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
merrymaking with the spirit of a young female faun. Zephine 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. Zephine 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 singlebordered, imitation India
shawl of Ternaux's manufacture, on his arm on Sundays.
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Tholomyes 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 elephantleg 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 Tholomyes 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 barege, little reddish brown buskins, whose
ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, openworked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles
invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the fashion of the
Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have already said,
wore lownecked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath floweradorned 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
seagreen 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 AEgina, 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 exquisitesuch 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
workingwoman, 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 Tholomyes, 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,
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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. THOLOMYES 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 flowerbeds of SaintCloud 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, openwork 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 hedgeschool 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 knifegrinder, 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 apotheosiswhat 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'Urfe 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 SaintCloud. 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, Tholomyes 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 chestnuttrees celebrated by the Abbe de Bernis. As he
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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 Tholomyes, 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 ensenas, 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'Etoile. 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 Elysees.
From time to time Favourite exclaimed:
"And the surprise? I claim the surprise."
"Patience," replied Tholomyes.
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 ChampsElysees by that famous restaurantkeeper, 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 Moliere.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o'clock in the morning, had reached at halfpast
four in the afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.
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The ChampsElysees, 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 bodyguards, 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 fleurdelys suspended from the whitewatered
ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from buttonholes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of
little girls threw to the winds, amid the passersby, 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:
"Rendeznous notre pere de Gand,
Rendeznous notre pere."
"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 fleurdelys, 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. Every thing 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 Angeles 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 Angles 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 Piraeus, 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 "rosecolored" 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 Grenetat 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 Angles' report, we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we
have said, was drawing to its close.
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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. Tholomyes was drinking. Zephine was laughing, Fantine smiling,
Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he had purchased at SaintCloud.
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 selfconceit of a man who is tickled in his selflove. 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 ratridden 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 SaintJacquesduHautPas. 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 himhow 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."
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CHAPTER VII. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES
In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously all at once; it was no longer anything
but noise. Tholomyes 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
peachtrees and apricottrees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners. No zeal,
gentlemen! Grimod de la Reyniere agrees with Talleyrand."
A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.
"Leave us in peace, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier.
"Sunday exists," resumed Fameuil.
"We are sober," added Listolier.
"Tholomyes," remarked Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness [mon calme]."
"You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyes.
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 Tholomyes, 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, AEschylus 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 Amphiaraus and the baldness of Caesar. 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; selfcontrol 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
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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 quaestor 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 Felix Tholomyes; 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.
"Felix," said she, "what a pretty word! I love that name. It is Latin; it means prosper."
Tholomyes 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 nymphaeas; 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 Tholomyes; "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."
"Tholomyes!" cried Blachevelle, "you are drunk!"
"Pardieu," said Tholomyes.
"Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle.
"I agree to that," responded Tholomyes.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me ladies; that is Spanish. And the proof of it, senoras, is
this: like people, like cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen litres; the cantaro of Alicante, twelve; the
almude of the Canaries, twentyfive; the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twentysix; 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 servingmaid 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 Zephine, O Josephine, 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 GuerinBoisseau, 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.
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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 letterspatent 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 Felix, 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 Liege[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, Tholomyes, I am all 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 waistcoatmakers and the
shoestitchers 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 wellbeloved 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; Caesar 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."
[2] Liege: a corktree. Pau: a jest on peau, skin.
Tholomyes paused.
"Take breath, Tholomyes," 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 Tholomyes'
harangue:
"The father turkeycocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good ClermontTonnerre
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,
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With all their money back returned."
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyes' 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 Allee
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 Odeon.
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 Edon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed Zephine.
"I prefer Bombarda to Edon," 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 Edon's. Now, silver is more
valuable than bone."
"Except for those who have a silver chin," observed Tholomyes.
He was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible from Bombarda's windows.
A pause ensued.
"Tholomyes," exclaimed Fameuil, "Listolier and I were having a discussion just now."
"A discussion is a good thing," replied Tholomyes; "a quarrel is better."
"We were disputing about philosophy."
"Well?"
"Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"
"Desaugiers," said Tholomyes.
This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:
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"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 eatinghouse keeper, gives you those three hundred and
seventeen fathoms for four francs and fifty centimes."
Again Fameuil interrupted him:
"Tholomyes, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?"
"Ber"
"Quin?"
"No; Choux."
And Tholomyes continued:
"Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could but get me an Indian dancinggirl,
and Thygelion of Chaeronea 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 SaintCloud, 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."
Tholomyes, 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 wornout, 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, Matin (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 passersby, Tholomyes' merry auditors turned their heads, and Tholomyes
took advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a close with this melancholy strophe:
"Elle etait de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses[3]
Ont le meme destin;
Et, rosse, elle a vecu ce que vivant les rosses,
L'espace d'un matin!"
[3] She belonged to that circle where cuckoos and carriages share the same fate; and a jade herself, she lived,
as jades live, for the space of a morning (or jade).
"Poor horse!" sighed Fantine.
And Dahlia exclaimed:
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"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 Tholomyes and
said:
"Come, now! the surprise?"
"Exactly. The moment has arrived," replied Tholomyes. "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 Tholomyes.
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 windowsills, chatting, craning out their
heads, and talking from one window to the other.
They saw the young men emerge from the Cafe 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
ChampsElysees.
"Don't be long!" cried Fantine.
"What are they going to bring us?" said Zephine.
"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 mailcoaches and diligences. Nearly all the stagecoaches for the
south and west passed through the ChampsElysees. 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 pavingstones into steels. This uproar delighted the young girls.
Favourite exclaimed:
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"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. Parentsyou 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
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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.
FELIX THOLOMYES.
"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 Zephine.
"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 Tholomyes' ideas. That is evident.
"In that case," retorted Favourite, "death to Blachevelle, and long live Tholomyes!"
"Long live Tholomyes!" exclaimed Dahlia and Zephine.
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 Tholomyes 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 cookshop which no
longer exists. This cookshop was kept by some people named Thenardier, 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,
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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 cookshop 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 forecarriage 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 forecarriage was composed of a massive iron axletree
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 guncarriage 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 axletree 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 forecarriage 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 passersby 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
forecarriage, 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."
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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 carpetbag, which seemed very heavy.
This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is possible to behold. lt 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 povertystricken. She was dressed like a workingwoman
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, nunlike 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 hoarfrost
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, Zephine 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
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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 Tholomyes 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 letterwriter indite an epistle to Tholomyes, then a second, then a third. Tholomyes 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 Tholomyes, 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 twentytwo, 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. Felix Tholomyes. 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier," said the mother of the two little girls. "We keep this inn."
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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 Thenardier was a sandycomplexioned 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 cookshop 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 erectdestinies hang upon such a thing as
that.
The traveller told her story, with slight modifications.
That she was a workingwoman; 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 atwhat? 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardiers were
playing with the newcomer at making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.
The newcomer 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
gravedigger'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 Francoise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of
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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 Thenardier; "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 Thenardier's
hand, looked at her fixedly, and said:
"Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
"I will give you six francs a month."
Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cookshop:
"Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven makes fortytwo," said the Thenardier.
"I will give it," said the mother.
"And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses," added the man's voice.
"Total, fiftyseven francs," said Madame Thenardier. And she hummed vaguely, with these figures:
"It must be, said a warrior."
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"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 Thenardier.
"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
carpetbag."
"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 carpetbag 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 Thenardiers 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 tomorrow; I lacked fifty
francs. Do you know that I should have had a bailiff and a protest after me? You played the mousetrap
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 Thenardiers?
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.
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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 crablike 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 everaugmenting blackness. This man and woman possessed
such souls.
Thenardier, 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 Thenardier, 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 Clelie, was no longer
anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de
Scuderi to Madame BournonMalarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame BarthelemyHadot, was
setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent.
Madame Thenardier 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 PigaultLebrun, and "in what concerns the sex," as he said in his jargona 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 Magaera began to be developed from the
Pamela, the female Thenardier 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
Eponine; as for the younger, the poor little thing came near being called Gulnare; I know not to what
diversion, effected by a romance of DucrayDumenil, 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 vicomteif there are still any
vicomtesto 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 cookshop was in a bad way.
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Thanks to the traveller's fiftyseven francs, Thenardier 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 Thenardiers
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 castoff petticoats and
chemises of the Thenardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had lefta little
better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual
tablecompanions; 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 Thenardiers 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 Thenardier
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 Thenardier 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, illused,
beaten, and seeing beside her two little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!
Madame Thenardier was vicious with Cosette. Eponine 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 Thenardiers 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, Thenardier, 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.
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As long as Cosette was little, she was the scapegoat 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 Thenardiers 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 Thenardiers.
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 heartbreaking 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.
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 Thenardiers, 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.
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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
unheardof 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, gumlac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheetiron simply laid together,
for slides of soldered sheetiron.
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
townhall. 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 reconstructed, 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 workrooms 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
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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 Fouche, 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 newcomer
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."
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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 drawingrooms on M. sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the
artisan, opened both leaves of their foldingdoors 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 goodnatured 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 wellselected 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.
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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 guineapig 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 coloringmatter.
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 hourglasses and enlivened by crossbones 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 chimneypiece and appeared to be silver, "for they were hallmarked," 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.
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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 eightytwo.
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 sakelet 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 drawingrooms; 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 SaintGermain of the place meditated raising the quarantine against M. Madeleine,
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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 illnature, 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 mandog of the presence of the mancat, and the manfox of the presence of the
manlion.
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 irongray frockcoat, 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.
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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 Angeles, 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 dogson of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.
Javert had been born in prison, of a fortuneteller, 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 reentering 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
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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
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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 exnotary 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 jackscrew.
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 jackscrew 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.
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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.
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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 thousandfranc banknote on his nightstand, 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
SaintAntoine 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 watchdog
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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 taxpayer 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 threefourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M., and this led to this
arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by M. de Villele, 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 lookingglass,
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 worka 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 Thenardiers promptly. As she only knew how to sign her name,
she was obliged to write through a public letterwriter.
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. SoandSo never hang his key on its nail on
Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame always descend from her
hackneycoach 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 alleyway doors at night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errandporters, they will make the
drivers of hackneycoaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waitingmaid, 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
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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
drawingroom, 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 Thenardier, innkeeper 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 wineshop. 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 Thenardiers, 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 doorkeeper of
every one's virtue. Madame Victurnien was fiftysix, and reenforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of
age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been youngastonishing 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 Thenardiers, 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.
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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 secondhand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her
furnitureand 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 furnituredealer, returned to the latter threequarters 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 Thenardiers 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 Thenardiers! 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.
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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 passersby 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
brazenfaced.
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
evilminded 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 venthole. 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 Thenardiers, 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."
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"Cut it off."
She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thenardiers. This petticoat made the Thenardiers furious.
It was the money that they wanted. They gave the petticoat to Eponine. 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 Thenardiers 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 toothpuller espied the lovely, laughing girl, and suddenly
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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 Thenardiers' 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?"
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"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 Thenardiers 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
butterpot 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
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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 shoulderblade. 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 workingwomen to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and
nine sous a day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The secondhand 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, Thenardier 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 pellmell? Whither are they going? Why are they thus?
He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow.
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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 drawingroom, and who
think themselves gentlemen in the dramshop; 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 cafe, 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
PontAMousson, grow old as dullards, never work, serve no use, and do no great harm.
M. Felix Tholomyes, 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 otherthe red and blue inside; of a shortwaisted 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 elevena 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. Narrowbrimmed 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
balldress, with neck uncovered and flowers in her hair, in front of the officers' cafe. 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
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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 guardroom 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 cafe, passersby 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 stationhouse, 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,
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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 Thenardiers 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 today, 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 Thenardiers, innkeepers,
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."
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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
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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 shirtmaking, 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' cafe; 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 deliberatelytruly, 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 wewell, 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 today, 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."
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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."
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"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 sixtysix 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 eightyone 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.
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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:
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"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 heartrending 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 Prefet of
Police. As the affair in the stationhouse had been bruited about, the postmistress 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 Thenardiers. 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 Thenardier. "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 drawnup 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 Eponine 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 Thenardier wrote, Received on account, three hundred francs.
M. Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote, "Make haste to bring Cosette."
"Christi!" said Thenardier, "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
basreliefs of Rheims will recall the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins as they survey the foolish
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virgins. The ancient scorn of the vestals for the ambubajae 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:
"Tomorrow, 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 shoulderblades 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 Laennec'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 Thenardiers mean by keeping my Cosette from me! Oh!
she is coming. At last I behold happiness close beside me!"
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In the meantime Thenardier 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 THENARDIER:
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
policestation, 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 agentif any physiognomist had known his secret and
longcherished 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 armchair, 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
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an expression which was halfway 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 armchair. 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 today, 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.
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"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 exconvict."
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 certainWhat 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
adjutantguard 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."
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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 AillyleHautClocher 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 fromWell, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled,
branches of trees broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the branch of appletree 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 exconvict 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 Chanhe 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 fiftyfour,
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"
[4] An exconvict.
"Well?" interposed M. Madeleine.
Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:
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"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 stationhouse, 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 housebreakingit 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 outthe 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 SaintSaulve. 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 MontredeChampigny. He complained that there
is a gutter on the adjoining house which discharges rainwater 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 GarraudBlanc, at Madame Renee le
Bosse'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?"
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"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 tomorrow, and that I am to
set out by diligence tonight."
M. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement.
"And how long will the case last?"
"One day, at the most. The judgment will be pronounced tomorrow 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.
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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.
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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 Perpetue and Sister Simplice.
Sister Perpetue 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 Perpetue 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 Perpetue, 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 womanwho was gentle, austere, wellbred, 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 drawingroom.
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 Abbe Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deafmute 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 liedoes 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 mentioneda 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.
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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 townhall, 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 townhall 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 littlefrequented street in which was
situated the parsonage of the parish in which M. Madeleine resided. The cure 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 passerby 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?"
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"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, 8 1/2.
"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 horseyou may have seen
him pass occasionally; he is a small beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire. They wanted to make a
saddlehorse 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 saddlehorse. 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 placeis 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."
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"That is understood."
"I am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid for alsonot 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 tomorrow morning at halfpast four o'clock."
"Of course, Monsieur le Maire," replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a speck in the wood of the table with his
thumbnail, 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 halfpast four o'clock tomorrow morning," replied M.
Madeleine; and he took his departure.
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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 bankbill 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 chimneypiece. 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 SaintPol, eight and a half from SaintPol 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 halfpast 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."
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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 windowpanes 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 windowframe 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 chimeras, 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 sinisterlooking 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,
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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
secondhis 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 selfpreservation; 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.
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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.
lt 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 selfcommunion, 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, andwho knows? perhaps even his
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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 everif 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, be 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 huntingdog, 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
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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 cure, 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 oneto 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 himto shut the door on his past? But he was not shutting it! great God! he was
reopening 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
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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 pocketbook which contained several banknotes 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 pocketbook, 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 selfdevotion, and that the other was personality; that the one said, my
neighbor, 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.
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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 townhall; 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, AntoineAlbin 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.
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"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 countryside; 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 goodfornothing, evidently, a whole countryside 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 applethief 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
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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
Thenardiers; 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 selfsacrifice; 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 chimneypiece, 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 wallpaper; a secret receptacle opened, a sort of false cupboard constructed in the angle between
the wall and the chimneypiece; in this hidingplace 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 startingpoint, 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.
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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
fortysou 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 chimneypiece, 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."
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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 chimneypiece.
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
convictguard; to receive the galleysergeant's cudgellings; to wear ironbound 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?
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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 olivetrees 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
heartrending 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 passersby. 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.
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"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 vineshoot 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
dirtcolored, 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]
[5] This parenthesis is due to Jean Valjean.
"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.
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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."
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"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 mailwagons of the
time of the Empire. These mailwagons were twowheeled cabriolets, upholstered inside with fawncolored
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 postwagon 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?
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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 hoofsa 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.
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"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 mailwagon 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?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!"
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"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 today. Two new spokes and a hub must be made. Monsieur will not be able to start before
tomorrow morning."
"The matter cannot wait until tomorrow. 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 haphazard."
"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 cartwheels. 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 springcart? I am not hard to please, as you see."
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"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
thirtysixth of the monthnever, that is to say. I might let that to you, for what matters it to me? But the
bourgeois must not see it passand then, it is a calash; it would require two horses."
"I will take two posthorses."
"Where is Monsieur going?"
"To Arras."
"And Monsieur wishes to reach there today?"
"Yes, of course."
"By taking two posthorses?"
"Why not?"
"Does it make any difference whether Monsieur arrives at four o'clock tomorrow morning?"
"Certainly not."
"There is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking posthorses Monsieur has his passport?"
"Yes."
"Well, by taking posthorses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before tomorrow. We are on a crossroad. 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."
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"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 tomorrow."
"Tomorrow will be too late."
"The deuce!"
"Is there not a mailwagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?"
"Tonight. 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.
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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 springcart. The wheelwright and the stableman, 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 stagewagon; 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
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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 SaintPol; four hours for five leagues.
At SaintPol 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 innkeeper'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 servantmaid 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:
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"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 SaintPol 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, be 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 roadmender.
"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 roadmender, "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 MontSaintEloy which leads to Arras."
"But it is night, and I shall lose my way."
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"You do not belong in these parts?"
"No."
"And, besides, it is all crossroads; stop! sir," resumed the roadmender; "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 tomorrow."
"I must be there this evening."
"That is different; but go to the inn all the same, and get an extra horse; the stableboy will guide you
through the crossroads."
He followed the roadmender'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 stableboy, 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 crossroad; 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 whiffletree broke.
"There's the whiffletree 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 tomorrow
morning."
He replied, "Have you a bit of rope and a knife?"
"Yes, sir."
He cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffletree of it.
This caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again at a gallop.
The plain was gloomy; lowhanging, 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?"
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"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 MontSaintEloy 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
shoulderblades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was growing out sprinkled with gray. Alas!
how illness improvises oldage!
At midday 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 halfpast 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.
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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 today,
since I am going away tomorrow."
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, cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, cornflowers 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 newborn babe.'
"Roses are pink and cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, and cornflowers 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 windingsheet in which to bury me.'
"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, cornflowers are blue,
I love my love, cornflowers 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,
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Page No 192
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 servingmaid 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 today."
"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 heartrending:
"He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to each other there. I want to know
it."
The servantmaid 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."
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Page No 193
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
Thenardiers; 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 chimneypiece, 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
tomorrow, will he not? tomorrow will be a festival day; tomorrow 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 tomorrow with Cosette: how far
is it from here to Montfermeil?"
The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, "Oh, I think that be will be here tomorrow."
"Tomorrow! tomorrow!" said Fantine, "I shall see Cosette tomorrow! 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."
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Page No 194
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 wideopen
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 tomorrow."
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, wornout 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 tomorrow 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
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Page No 195
It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening when the cart, which we left on the road, entered the portecochere
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 billiardroom 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 tomorrow morning?"
"Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least."
He inquired:
"Is not the postingstation 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 mailwagon; the seat beside the postboy 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 passersby. 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 courthouse, 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 courthouse, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for
the courthouse 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.
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"Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of today was the bishop's palace before the Revolution. M. de
Conzie, 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 heartbreaking 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 doubleleaved 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."
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"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 courtroom, 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 attorneygeneral 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:
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"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
President, but Monsieur le President 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 landingplace, he leaned his back against the balusters and folded his arms.
All at once he opened his coat, drew out his pocketbook, 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 President."
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 flaxspinning industry at Frevent, and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at
BouberssurCanche. 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 councilchamber with the
courtroom, bent over the back of the President's armchair and handed him the paper on which was
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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 councilchamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of
yonder door, and you will find yourself in the courtroom, 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,
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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 icecold 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 reentered the councilchamber. 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 courtroom.
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; taproom 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
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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 attorneygeneral, 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, twentyseven 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, unheardof 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.
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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 exconvict, 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 today, 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 districtattorney, 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 Benigne 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;
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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 exconvict. 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 treepruner 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. Longcontinued 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 districtattorney answered the counsel for the defence. He was violent and florid, as districtattorneys
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 districtattorney 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 Theramene, 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 districtattorney 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 himJavert, 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 districtattorney was
speaking, the accused listened to him openmouthed, 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
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low voice, "That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup." The districtattorney 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'AvocatGeneral 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 districtattorney, he began to speak. It was like an eruption. It seemed, from the manner in
which the words escaped from his mouth, incoherent, impetuous, pellmell, 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 pavingstones 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 fiftythree. 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 EnfantsRouges, 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 ShroveTuesday 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
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of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added
the gesture of a woodcutter 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 masterwheelwright, 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 districtattorney, 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."
The prisoner had finally resumed his seat; he arose abruptly when the districtattorney 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'Hopital; 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
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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 districtattorney had remained standing; he addressed the President:
"Monsieur le President, 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 PoliceInspector Javert, and question them for the last
time as to the identity of the prisoner with the convict Jean Valjean."
"I would remind the districtattorney," said the President, "that PoliceInspector Javert, recalled by his duties
to the capital of a neighboring arrondissement, left the courtroom and the town as soon as he had made his
deposition; we have accorded him permission, with the consent of the districtattorney and of the counsel for
the prisoner."
"That is true, Mr. President," responded the districtattorney. "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
exconvict 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 galleyguard 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
districtattorney 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 exconvict 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,
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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, brazenfaced, 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 IdenyGod (Jenie 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 halfbear 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 JeantheScrew, 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:
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"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 halfdoor which separated the tribunal from the audience, and was
standing in the middle of the hall; the President, the districtattorney, 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 heartrending; 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 districtattorney 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.
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In the meantime, the face of the President was stamped with sympathy and sadness; he had exchanged a rapid
sign with the districtattorney and a few lowtoned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the public,
and asked in accents which all understood:
"Is there a physician present?"
The districtattorney 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 districtattorney 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. DistrictAttorney, 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 reenter 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 fortysou piece which I stole, seven years ago, from little Gervais. I have nothing farther to
add; take me. Good God! the districtattorney 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:
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"Chenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of `JenieDieu,' your whole right shoulder bears a deep
burn, because you one day laid your shoulder against the chafingdish 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
districtattorney 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 districtattorney 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. DistrictAttorney."
Then he addressed the audience:
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"All of you, all who are presentconsider 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 COUNTERBLOW
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 halflight 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!"
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"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.
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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."
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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 today and
another thing tomorrow, and thinks of nothing any longer. And did she have white linen? Did those
Thenardiers 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 Thenardiers
prosperous? There are not many travellers in their parts. That inn of theirs is a sort of a cookshop."
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.
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There was a child playing in the yardthe child of the portress or of some workwoman. It was one of those
accidents which are always occurring, and which seem to form a part of the mysterious stagesetting of
mournful scenes. The childa 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, fourshe 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 halfhour 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 mailwagon, 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.
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However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of Assizes, when the districtattorney,
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 districtattorney'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 districtattorney 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 districtattorney 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 districtattorney's, written with his own hand, on the minutes of
his report to the attorneygeneral. 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 districtattorney 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 districtattorney, 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.
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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
sicknurse or a police spy, and entered.
Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the halfopen 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.
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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 Valjeanwe 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 grapplinghook, 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.
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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!"
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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 headboard 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 thumbscrews!"
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 campbed when they were watching with the sick. Jean Valjean stepped up to this bed,
in a twinkling wrenched off the headpiece, 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 doorpost, 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
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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, Bejean, 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 "drawingrooms" 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 Perpetue and Sister Simplice, who were
watching beside the body of Fantine.
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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 bad 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 passkey which opened a little sidedoor; but he must have been searched,
and his latchkey 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 reentered 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 fortysou piece
which had been blackened by the fire.
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He took a sheet of paper, on which he wrote: "These are the two tips of my ironshod cudgel and the
fortysou 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
prisonbread 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 Cure."
The paper was not folded. She cast a glance upon it.
"You can read it," said he.
She read:
"I beg Monsieur le Cure 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."
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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 chimneypiece, 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 persona
manthis evening? He has escaped; we are in search of himthat 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.
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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 cure 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"]
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 BoisSeigneurIsaac. In the west he perceived the slateroofed tower of
Brainel'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 crossroad, 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).
Echabeau, Private Cafe.
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 Brainel'Alleud.
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On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a fourwheeled cart at the door, a large bundle of hoppoles,
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 facade rose above this door; a wall,
perpendicular to the facade, 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 cannonball 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 battlefield of Waterloo.
CHAPTER II. HOUGOMONT
Hougomont,this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle, the first resistance, which that great
woodcutter of Europe, called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of his axe.
It was a chateau; 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.
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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 manurehole, 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
belltower, a blossoming peartree trained in espalier against the wall of the chapelbehold 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 chateau; and the northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brother Jerome
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 crossbeams, 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 halfopen 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 doorposts. 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 today. 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 chateau, the only ruin now remaining of the manor of Hougomont, rises in
a crumbling state,disembowelled, one might say. The chateau served for a dungeon, the chapel for a
blockhouse. 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 airholes, through every crack in the stones, fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to
the grapeshot 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,
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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 airhole stopped
up with a bundle of hay; on the ground, in one corner, an old windowframe with the glass all broken to
piecessuch 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
SubLieutenant 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 chateau," and concealed himself in the cellar.
The English discovered him there. They tore him from his hidingplace, 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
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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 heapedup 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 crossbeam, 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 rainwater 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 lockplate,
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
chateau 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 Notre; today it is ruins and briars. The
pilasters are surmounted by globes which resemble cannonballs of stone. Fortythree 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 lightinfantry 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 currantbushes, 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. Thirtyeight 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 thirtyeight loopholes firing at once a shower of
grapeshot and balls, and Soye's brigade was broken against it. Thus Waterloo began.
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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 grapeshot.
This orchard is sentient, like others, in the month of May. It has its buttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall
there; the carthorses browse there; cords of hair, on which linen is drying, traverse the spaces between the
trees and force the passerby to bend his head; one walks over this uncultivated land, and one's foot dives
into moleholes. In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted treebole 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 appletree leans far over to one side, its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam.
Nearly all the appletrees 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.
[6] A bullet as large as an egg.
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
today 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 storyteller'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 halfpast eleven o'clock, and that gave Blucher time to come
up. Why? Because the ground was wet. The artillery had to wait until it became a little firmer before they
could manoeuvre.
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 grapeshot; 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
cannonball. 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.
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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 fiftynine 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
becomea grave matter in a generalunconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of material great
men, who may be called the giants of action, when genius grows shortsighted? 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 fortysix with a supreme madness? Was
that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more than an immense daredevil?
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 Blucher, to carry MontSaintJean, 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]
[7] Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet, Thiers.
As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a distant witness, a passerby 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 Brainel'Alleud. The top of the A is MontSaintJean, where
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Wellington is; the lower left tip is Hougomont, where Reille is stationed with Jerome Bonaparte; the right tip
is the BelleAlliance, 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
MontSaintJean. 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 MontSaintJean, 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 MontSaintJean, 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 crosspath
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 MontSaintJean, 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 threecornered 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 saddlecloth 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 Caesars 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 today 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 Caesar,
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.
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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 thirtyfive 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 HaieSainte, 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 MontSaintJean, to
turn Wellington back on Hougomont, thence on Brainel'Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing easier. With the
exception of a few incidents this attack succeeded Papelotte was taken; La HaieSainte 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 HaieSainte the battle wavered.
There is in this day an obscure interval, from midday to four o'clock; the middle portion of this battle is
almost indistinct, and participates in the sombreness of the handtohand conflict. Twilight reigns over it.
We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown today,
pendant colbacks, floating sabretaches, crossbelts, cartridgeboxes 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 lighthorse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass
hands and red horsetails, the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters of our
grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lineswhat Salvator Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of
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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 pellmell. 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 HollandoBelgians: "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 HaieSainte;
Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La HaieSainte was taken. Of the German battalion which
defended it, only fortytwo 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 drummerboy.
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 DeuxPonts. 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 lieutenantcolonels, two lay on the earth,Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby
had fallen, riddled by seven lancethrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and
the sixth, had been annihilated.
Hougomont injured, La HaieSainte taken, there now existed but one rallyingpoint, the centre. That point
still held firm. Wellington reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at MerleBraine; he summoned
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Chasse, who was at Brainel'Alleud.
The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very compact, was strongly posted. It
occupied the plateau of MontSaintJean, 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 roadsa pile of the sixteenth century, and so robust that
the cannonballs rebounded from it without injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges
here and there, made embrasures in the hawthorntrees, 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 AngloDutch 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 Chasse'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
twentysix 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 MontSaintJean, 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 aidedecamp, 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
MontSaintJean; a retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself, Wellington drew back.
"The beginning of retreat!" cried Napoleon.
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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 Caesar, Pompeius flebit, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix Legion. Pompey was not destined to
weep on that occasion, but it is certain that Caesar 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 campfires illuminating the whole horizon
from Frischemont to Brainel'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 halfpast 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 rearguard 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 GrandMarshal 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 halfpast 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
bivouacfire 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 battlefield, saying to Soult as he did so, "A
pretty checkerboard."
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 today." 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
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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 Zephyr, 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 speakingtrumpet, 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 halfpast 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 battlearray, 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 twelvepounders, detached by his orders from the corps of Erlon, Reille, and
Lobau, and destined to begin the action by taking MontSaintJean, 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 MontSaintJean 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
BelleAlliance and La HaieSainte, 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 cannonballs, old swordblades, 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 eldertwigs 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,
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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 today, 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 MontSaintJean is now
accessible by an easy slope. On the day of battle, particularly on the side of La HaieSainte, 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. Brainel'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 MontSaintJean 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
Brainel'Alleud entrance that a passerby 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 tableland of MontSaintJean 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 HaieSainte and the farm of
MontSaintJean.
[8] This is the inscription:
D. O. M.
CY A ETE ECRASE
PAR MALHEUR
SOUS UN CHARIOT,
MONSIEUR BERNARD
DE BRYE MARCHAND
A BRUXELLE LE [Illegible]
FEVRIER 1637.
On the day of battle, this hollow road whose existence was in no way indicated, bordering the crest of
MontSaintJean, 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.
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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
HaieSainte; 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 rainsoaked soil, and only
succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud, so that the canister was turned into a splash; the uselessness of
Pire's demonstration on Brainel'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 grapeshot, arranged in ranks
twentyseven deep and with a frontage of two hundred; the frightful holes made in these masses by the
cannonballs; attacking columns disorganized; the sidebattery 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
HaieSainte 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 SaxeWeimar 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 HaieSainte,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 heartrending 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 Beresina, 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 tableland of
MontSaintJean 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 destroyedthat was the definitive conquest of
England by France; it was Crecy, 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
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HaieSainte, 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
Chasse's brigade. Near this barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white, which
stands at the angle of the crossroad near Brainel'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 tableland of MontSaintJean.
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 LefebvreDesnouettes's division,the one hundred and six picked gendarmes, the light
cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninetyseven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred
and eighty lances. They wore casques without horsetails, and cuirasses of beaten iron, with horsepistols in
their holsters, and long sabreswords. 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.
Aidedecamp 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
batteringram 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 grapeshot which burst upon them, the terrible muddy slope of the tableland of MontSaintJean.
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 tableland. It traversed the battle like a prodigy.
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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, sublimegods and beasts.
Odd numerical coincidence,twentysix battalions rode to meet twentysix 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 pellmell, 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
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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 Blucher? 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, overfilled 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 MONTSAINTJEAN
The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine.
Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning pointblank 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 reentered 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.
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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 grapeshot, 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 cannonballs 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 grapeshot, 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 bagpipeplayer 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 lighthorse, 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.
[9] A heavy rifled gun.
For such Frenchmen nothing less than such Englishmen was needed. It was no longer a handtohand
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 lieutenantcolonel,
fell dead. Ney rushed up with the lancers and LefebvreDesnouettes's lighthorse. The plateau of
MontSaintJean 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.
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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,
threequarters 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
MontSaintJean, 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 MontSaintJean. 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 HaieSainte, was almost destroyed; the intrepid
Belgians of Van Kluze's brigade strewed the ryefields 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'Heritier, 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 footguards had lost five lieutenantcolonels, 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
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Brussels. The transports, ammunitionwagons, the baggagewagons, 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 VertCoucou to Groentendael, for a
distance of nearly two leagues in the direction of Brussels, according to the testimony of eyewitnesses who
are still alive, the roads were encumbered with fugitives. This panic was such that it attacked the Prince de
Conde at Mechlin, and Louis XVIII. at Ghent. With the exception of the feeble reserve echelonned behind the
ambulance established at the farm of MontSaintJean, 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 AngloDutch army
was reduced to thirtyfour 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, "Blucher, 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, Blucher 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 Bulow, Blucher'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 Bulow would
not have arrived.
Now the Prussian general, Muffling, declares that one hour's delay, and Blucher would not have found
Wellington on his feet. "The battle was lost."
It was time that Bulow should arrive, as will be seen. He had, moreover, been very much delayed. He had
bivouacked at DionleMont, 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 ammunitionwagons could not pass between two rows of burning houses, and had been obliged
to wait until the conflagration was extinguished. It was midday before Bulow's vanguard had been able to
reach ChapelleSaintLambert.
Had the action been begun two hours earlier, it would have been over at four o'clock, and Blucher 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 midday, to descry with his fieldglass, 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
ChapelleSaintLambert?" 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
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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.
Bulow 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, Blucher ordered Bulow 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
cannonballs 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; eightysix months of
fire thundering simultaneously; Pirch the first coming up with Bulow; Zieten's cavalry led by Blucher 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 grapeshot and the Prussian grapeshot 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
eveningthe 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 grapeshot 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 swordstroke 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!
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CHAPTER XIII. THE CATASTROPHE
The rout behind the Guard was melancholy.
The army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,Hougomont, La HaieSainte, 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
handtohand 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 Bulow, 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 artillerytrain 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 grapeshot can be seen today 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. Blucher ordered extermination. Roguet had set the lugubrious
example of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Blucher
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 Blucher
disgraced himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to the disaster. The desperate route traversed
Genappe, traversed QuatreBras, 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
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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 MontSaintJean. There, abandoned, vanquished, terrible, those gloomy
squares endured their deaththroes 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
MontSaintJean. 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 grapeshot 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 everdecreasing 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 guncarriages, the colossal
death'shead, 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.
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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 Blucher, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo
was Cambronne.
To thunder forth such a reply at the lightningflash 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 Blucher'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 Caesars 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 thundercloud might hurl! It reaches the grandeur of AEschylus!
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
Blucher, he was lost. Was it Blucher? No! If Wellington had not begun, Blucher 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: "Excrement!" 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! Kleber 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 grapeshot; 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
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that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on MontSaintJean, on the soil watered
with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the postwagon
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] Blucher 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 itthe fall of force, the defeat of war.
[10] "A battle terminated, a day finished, false measures repaired, greater successes assured for the
morrow,all was lost by a moment of panic, terror."Napoleon, Dictees de Sainte Helene.
In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by men amounts to nothing.
If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, 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
Blucher, 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.
[11] Five winning numbers in a lottery.
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
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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 Bareme 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 Blucher; 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, Melas on Wurmser, Mack on Melas? 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 Caesarism 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 grapeshot, 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 footsoldiers 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
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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, Bulow'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 threequarters of a league; Wellington, half a league; seventytwo 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, fortyfour per cent. At Wagram,
French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French, thirtyseven per cent; Russians,
fortyfour. At Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, French,
fiftysix per cent; the Allies, thirtyone. Total for Waterloo, fortyone per cent; one hundred and fortyfour
thousand combatants; sixty thousand dead.
Today 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 battlefield 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, MontSaintJean, 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
counterrevolutionary 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 twentysix yearssuch was the dream. The solidarity of the
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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 SaintOuen 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 Tomorrow. Tomorrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it
today. 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 Elysee. 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 Blucher, as he put the flying army
to the sword; that which, from the heights of the plateau of MontSaintJean, hovered over France as over its
prey, was the counterrevolution. It was the counterrevolution 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
counterrevolution 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 counterrevolution, 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. reentered 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 fleurdelysstrewn 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
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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
reappeared 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'Angouleme. 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 passerby 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; BelleAlliance, 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.
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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 BATTLEFIELD AT NIGHT
Let us returnit is a necessity in this bookto that fatal battlefield.
On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Blucher'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 cannonshot had been fired, the plain of MontSaintJean 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. MontSaintJean was cannonaded, Hougomont was burned,
La HaieSainte was taken by assault, Papelotte was burned, Plancenoit was burned, La BelleAlliance
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
philosophersVoltaire among the numberaffirm 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 rearguard, and it is that which must be blamed. Batlike 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 battlefield 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
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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 larvae 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 MontSaintJean 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 grapeshot, 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 HaieSainte 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
lightand all at once, in the space of a shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss; to fall, to roll, to
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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 deathrattle, 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
wellfilled bushel of barley. A heap of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower partsuch
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."
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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 swordcut 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.
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"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?"
"Thenardier."
"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 exconvict 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
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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 (SeineetOise). 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 Villele called
attention to the fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.
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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 hidingplace 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 woodchopper, 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 dungfork
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 SaintGeorges 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 crownpiece, 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 powderhorn 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.
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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 roadlaborer, 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 roadmender on the crossroad 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 stonebreaking 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 manoeuvres 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 bankbills, and that
the roadmender had half discovered the secret. The most "puzzled" were the schoolmaster and Thenardier,
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 Thenardier. "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 Thenardier.
They made an effort, and got the old roadmender 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 Thenardier and the
schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:
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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 SixFours, the
watercarrier, 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
Thenardier: A comrade of the galleys. Boulatruelle obstinately refused to reveal his name. This person carried
a packagesomething 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 ANKLECHAIN 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 schoolship, 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, twentytwo. 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
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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'Angouleme, 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 Trocadero, 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 reestablished elrey
netto in Spain, might well have reestablished 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.
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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 antennae 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 sixstory covered construction stocks, in the ports of Brest or
Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a bellglass 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 mainmast.
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 mainmast rises to a height of two hundred and seventeen feet above the
waterline. 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 sailingvessel; 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
horsepower.
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 sixtyfoot 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
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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 foretopgallantshrouds; 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.
The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take the upper corner of the maintopsail 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 footrope 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 reascend served but to augment
the oscillations of the footrope; 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 tigercat; 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
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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 maintop, where he left him in the hands of his
comrades.
At that moment the crowd broke into applause: old convictsergeants 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 Algesiras 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 tableland 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 wellsatisfied citizens: it was only a village in the forest. Some
pleasurehouses 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
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shades of green on the white of the closed shutters; but Montfermeil was none the less a village. Retired
clothmerchants 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 drinkingwater only at a little spring halfway 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardiers 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 Thenardiers 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 Thenardiers'
hostelry was situated. These people filled the inns and drinkingshops, 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 Thenardier's hostelry. This room resembled all
drinkingshop 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 Thenardier 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'Angouleme, strictly local parentheses, like the following, were audible amid the uproar:
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"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 millstones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed,
foxtail, 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 longsawyers 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 crossbar 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 Thenardiers. 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 Eponine
and Azelma.
In the chimneycorner a cato'ninetails 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
dramshop. It was a little boy who had been born to the Thenardiers 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," Thenardier 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 Thenardiers have been viewed only in profile; the moment has arrived for making the
circuit of this couple, and considering it under all its aspects.
Thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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 pavingstones 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 marketporter 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
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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 Thenardier 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.
Thenardier 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 polecat and the
bearing of a man of letters. He greatly resembled the portraits of the Abbe 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 deathdealing hussars, covered with his body and saved from death, in the midst of
the grapeshot, "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 innkeeper. 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, Thenardier 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 harvesttime in
furrows sown with corpses, did not amount to a large total, and did not carry this sutler turned
eatinghousekeeper very far.
Thenardier 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]
[12] Literally "made cuirs"; i. e., pronounced a t or an s at the end of words where the opposite letter should
occur, or used either one of them where neither exists.
He composed the travellers' tariff card in a superior manner, but practised eyes sometimes spied out
orthographical errors in it. Thenardier 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.
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Thenardier, who was, above all, an astute and wellbalanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort. This is
the worst species; hypocrisy enters into it.
It is not that Thenardier 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, Thenardier 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. Thenardier was a statesman.
Every newcomer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "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. Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign
being in Madame Thenardier'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 Thenardier,"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 Thenardier'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 Thenardier;
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. Thenardier 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 innkeeper must browse where fate has hitched him.
It will be understood that the word innkeeper is here employed in a restricted sense, and does not extend to
an entire class.
In this same year, 1823, Thenardier 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, Thenardier 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
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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 innkeeper," 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
passersby, 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 chimneycorner, the armchair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the featherbed, 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 weddeda hideous and terrible team.
While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no
heed of yesterday nor of tomorrow, 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 blowsthis was the woman's; she went
barefooted in winter that was the man's doing.
Cosette ran up stairs 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier's fist, which caused the latter to remark from time to time, "How ugly she is with her
fistblow 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier raised the
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cover of a stewpan 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 Thenardier, examining the halffilled 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 snowflake.
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 Thenardier.
"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 Thenardier, "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 Thenardier.
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Cosette crawled out of the sort of hole in which she had hidden herself. The Thenardier resumed:
"Mademoiselle Doglackname, go and water that horse."
"But, Madame," said Cosette, feebly, "there is no water."
The Thenardier 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 chimneycorner.
This bucket was bigger than she was, and the child could have set down in it at her ease.
The Thenardier 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
fifteensou 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 Thenardier.
Cosette went out. The door closed behind her.
CHAPTER IV. ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL
The line of openair booths starting at the church, extended, as the reader will remember, as far as the
hostelry of the Thenardiers. 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 Thenardiers' observed, produced "a magical effect." In compensation, not a star was visible in
the sky.
The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toyshop 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 wheatears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this marvel had
been displayed to the wonderment of all passersby under ten years of age, without a mother being found in
Montfermeil sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child. Eponine 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.
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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 Thenardier'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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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 shutterthis 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 reentered Montfermeil.
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Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began to scratch her head again. Now it was the
Thenardier 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 Thenardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and
of the forest. It was before the Thenardier 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 fifteensou 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
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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 treestwo 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 Thenardier 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.
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She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she
of the Thenardier, even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thenardier 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
Thenardier 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 chestnuttree
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'Hopital 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
SaintMarceau.
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 wellbred
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 corallike head, made from red wax: it was a cudgel, and it seemed to
be a cane.
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There are but few passersby 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 ChoisyleRoi: 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'Hopital.
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 a
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 SaintEsprit, 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
reentered 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 SaintMarceau 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'Hopital.
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 bodyguard all covered with silver lace, debouched on the boulevard, after having made the turn of the
Salpetriere, he appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but himself in this crosslane. He
drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le Duc de Havre
from spying him out.
M. le Duc de Havre, 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 evillooking 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'Angles, 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 quarterpast four, that is to
say, when night was fully come, he passed in front of the theatre of the Porte SaintMartin, 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 halfpast four. The horses were harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman,
were hastily climbing the lofty iron ladder of the vehicle.
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The man inquired:
"Have you a place?"
"Only onebeside 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 NeuillysurMarne.
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 crossroad
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 treebordered road which
runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard people coming. He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there
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waited until the passersby 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 chestnuttree, 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 buckethandle. The man walked along beside her.
"It really is very heavy," he muttered between his teeth. Then he added:
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"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?"
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"It was Madame Thenardier."
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 Thenardier do?"
"She is my mistress," said the child. "She keeps the inn."
"The inn?" said the man. "Well, I am going to lodge there tonight. 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 Thenardier'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 Thenardier.
"Who are Ponine and Zelma?"
"They are Madame Thenardier'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."
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"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 openair 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."
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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
toymerchant's; then she knocked. The door opened. The Thenardier 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 Thenardier speedily replaced her gruff air by her amiable grimace, a change of aspect common to
tavernkeepers, and eagerly sought the newcomer 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier cast a second glance at him, paid particular attention to his
frockcoat, 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier woman; "why, the charge is only twenty sous!"
"It is forty in his case," retorted the Thenardier, 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
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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 holeridden 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
The man in the yellow coat never took his eyes from Cosette.
All at once, the Thenardier exclaimed:
"By the way, where's that bread?"
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thenardier 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."
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"I did knock, Madame."
"Well?"
"He did not open the door."
"I'll find out tomorrow whether that is true," said the Thenardier; "and if you are telling me a lie, I'll lead
you a pretty dance. In the meantime, give me back my fifteensou piece."
Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron, and turned green. The fifteensou piece was not there.
"Ah, come now," said Madame Thenardier, "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 fifteensou piece?" screamed the Thenardier, hoarsely, "or do you want to rob me of it?"
At the same time, she stretched out her arm towards the cato'ninetails which hung on a nail in the
chimneycorner.
This formidable gesture restored to Cosette sufficient strength to shriek:
"Mercy, Madame, Madame! I will not do so any more!"
The Thenardier 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 halfnude limbs. The Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
"Yes, that's it," said she.
It was not it, for it was a twentysou piece; but the Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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
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amazement, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with it.
"By the way, would you like some supper?" the Thenardier 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 Eponine 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 Thenardier 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 chimneycorner. 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.
Eponine 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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 Thenardier, 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 Thenardier did not intend to tolerate.
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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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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!"
Thenardier 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 Thenardier, in her curt and peremptory fashion.
"I will buy that pair of stockings," replied the man, "and," he added, drawing a fivefranc 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 fivefranc piece, that he abandoned his glass and hastened up.
"But it's true!" he cried, examining it. "A real hind wheel! and not counterfeit!"
Thenardier approached and silently put the coin in his pocket.
The Thenardier had no reply to make. She bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred.
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In the meantime, Cosette was trembling. She ventured to ask:
"Is it true, Madame? May I play?"
"Play!" said the Thenardier, in a terrible voice.
"Thanks, Madame," said Cosette.
And while her mouth thanked the Thenardier, her whole little soul thanked the traveller.
Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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.
Eponine 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 Eponine, 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 Eponine.
In the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene song, and to laugh at it until the ceiling shook.
Thenardier accompanied and encouraged them.
As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything which comes to hand. While
Eponine 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.
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Madame Thenardier 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 Thenardier had addressed
him only as brave homme 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 Thenardier; "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 Thenardier's face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words
here and there.
Meanwhile, the drinkers, all threequarters 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
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 Thenardiers' 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 Thenardier 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
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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 Eponine, "Look! sister."
The two little girls paused in stupefaction; Cosette had dared to take their doll!
Eponine 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 Thenardier'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 Thenardier.
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; thennot 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
"Don't you see?" said the Thenardier, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette's feet.
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"Well, what of it?" resumed the man.
"That beggar," replied the Thenardier, "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 Thenardier, "with her frightful hands!"
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
"Will you stop your noise?" screamed the Thenardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thenardier 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 reappeared; 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 firepots and candles so splendidly that it was visible
like an illumination through the window of the drinkingshop.
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 Thenardier, Eponine, and Azelma were like statues also; the very drinkers had paused; a solemn silence
reigned through the whole room.
Madame Thenardier, 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 Thenardier presented that expressive fold which accentuates the human countenance
whenever the dominant instinct appears there in all its bestial force. The tavernkeeper 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 naive natures, that they possess no transition state.
"Well, Cosette," said the Thenardier, 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?"
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Cosette ventured to emerge from her hole.
"The gentleman has given you a doll, my little Cosette," said Thenardier, 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 Thenardier would scold and beat her.
Nevertheless, the attraction carried the day. She ended by drawing near and murmuring timidly as she turned
towards Madame Thenardier:
"May I, Madame?"
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and ecstatic.
"Pardi!" cried the Thenardier, "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 Thenardier.
It was now the turn of Eponine 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 Thenardier hated worse than any one in the world at that moment. However, it was
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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 Thenardier 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 fortyfranc 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 Thenardier, "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 "hindwheels" 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 drinkingshop 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 Thenardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had remained in the room.
"Is he going to pass the night in that fashion?" grumbled the Thenardier. 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 Francais.
A good hour passed thus. The worthy innkeeper had perused the Courrier Francais at least three times, from
the date of the number to the printer's name. The stranger did not stir.
Thenardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his chair. Not a movement on the man's part.
"Is he asleep?" thought Thenardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
At last Thenardier 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.
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"Well!" said the stranger, "you are right. Where is your stable?"
"Sir!" exclaimed Thenardier, with a smile, "I will conduct you, sir."
He took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel, and Thenardier 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 tavernkeeper. "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.
Thenardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark.
He lighted two perfectly fresh wax candles which figured on the chimneypiece. A very good fire was
flickering on the hearth.
On the chimneypiece, under a glass globe, stood a woman's headdress in silver wire and orange flowers.
"And what is this?" resumed the stranger.
"That, sir," said Thenardier, "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?"
Thenardier 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. Thenardier 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 innkeeper 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 tomorrow."
Thenardier 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 armchair and remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes, took
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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 bedif 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 Eponine 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 Thenardier pair. He was on the point of
retreating when his eye fell upon the fireplaceone 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. Eponine 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 brandnew and shining
tensou 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 hearthstone 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.
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CHAPTER IX. THENARDIER AND HIS MANOEUVRES
On the following morning, two hours at least before daybreak, Thenardier, 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, Thenardier 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.
"Twentythree francs!" cried the woman, with an enthusiasm which was mingled with some hesitation.
Like all great artists, Thenardier was dissatisfied.
"Peuh!" he exclaimed.
It was the accent of Castlereagh auditing France's bill at the Congress of Vienna.
"Monsieur Thenardier, 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."
Thenardier 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 chimneycorner, 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 today? The
monster! She breaks my heart with that doll of hers! I'd rather marry Louis XVIII. than keep her another day
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in the house!"
Thenardier 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.
Thenardier instantly reappeared behind him and remained motionless in the halfopen door, visible only to
his wife.
The yellow man carried his bundle and his cudgel in his hand.
"Up so early?" said Madame Thenardier; "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 absentminded. 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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! Cosettethe Lark, as she is called hereabouts!"
"Ah!" said the man.
She went on:
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"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 Thenardier.
"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:
"Twentythree francs!"
He looked at the landlady, and repeated:
"Twentythree francs?"
There was in the enunciation of these words, thus repeated, an accent between an exclamation and an
interrogation point.
The Thenardier had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She replied, with assurance:
"Good gracious, yes, sir, it is twentythree francs."
The stranger laid five fivefranc pieces on the table.
"Go and get the child," said he.
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At that moment Thenardier advanced to the middle of the room, and said:
"Monsieur owes twentysix sous."
"Twentysix sous!" exclaimed his wife.
"Twenty sous for the chamber," resumed Thenardier, 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 Thenardier 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, Thenardier offered the traveller a chair. The traveller seated himself; Thenardier
remained standing, and his face assumed a singular expression of goodfellowship 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?"
Thenardier continued:
"How strange it is, one grows attached. What money is that? Take back your hundredsou 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 quicktempered,
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 Thenardier. The latter continued:
"Excuse me, sir, but one does not give away one's child to a passerby, 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 fosterfather 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!"
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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 Thenardier, 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, Thenardier
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 greatcoat had escaped him. Even before the
stranger had so clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thenardier 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? Thenardier 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. Thenardier 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
bankbills, which he laid on the table. Then he placed his large thumb on the notes and said to the
innkeeper:
"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 twentyfranc 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
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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 Thenardier. 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 fifteensou 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 Thenardier 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, shoesa 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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, Thenardier allowed a full quarter of an hour to
elapse; then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred francs.
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"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 bankbills, 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 passersby 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.
Thenardier 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, Thenardier
possessed all that is required to makewe 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 undernature 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 Thenardier dwelt, and have fallen adreaming 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.
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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. Thenardier 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.
Thenardier was not mistaken. The man was sitting there, and letting Cosette get somewhat rested. The
innkeeper 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 bankbills.
The man raised his eyes.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Thenardier 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 Thenardier's eyes the while, and enunciating every syllable
distinctly:
"You are going to take back Cosette?"
"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 Thenardier beheld the pocketbook of
bankbills make its appearance once more.
The tavernkeeper shivered with joy.
"Good!" thought he; "let us hold firm; he is going to bribe me!"
Before opening the pocketbook, 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 pocketbook once more and
drew from it, not the handful of bills which Thenardier expected, but a simple little paper, which he unfolded
and presented fully open to the innkeeper, saying:
"You are right; read!"
Thenardier took the paper and read:
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"M. SUR M., March 25, 1823.
"MONSIEUR THENARDIER:
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; Thenardier 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."
Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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 thirtyfive francs. You had received
one hundred francs too much; that makes thirtyfive still owing you. I have just given you fifteen hundred
francs."
Thenardier'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.
"MonsieurIdon'tknowyourname," 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.
Thenardier noted the enormous size of the cudgel and the solitude of the spot.
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The man plunged into the forest with the child, leaving the innkeeper motionless and speechless.
While they were walking away, Thenardier 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 innkeeper 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier. He plunged suddenly into the brushwood
with Cosette, where they could both hide themselves. "The deuce!" said Thenardier, 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 Thenardier 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 innkeeper 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 innkeeper. This time he gazed
at him with so sombre an air that Thenardier decided that it was "useless" to proceed further. Thenardier
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 countryhouse in the neighborhood of
Balaguier was at that time the dressingroom 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 GrandVillard, near Briancon, in the HautesAlpes. 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 GrangedeDoumec, near the
market of Chavailles, and in the environs of Perigueux at Brunies, canton of La ChapelleGonaguet. 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
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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 Thenardiers, he returned
to Paris. He reentered 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 Glaciere, towards the Boulevard de l'Hopital.
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
CHAPTER I. MASTER GORBEAU
Forty years ago, a rambler who had ventured into that unknown country of the Salpetriere, and who had
mounted to the Barriere 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 passersby; 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 MarcheauxChevaux.
The rambler, if he risked himself outside the four decrepit walls of this MarcheauxChevaux; if he
consented even to pass beyond the Rue du PetitBanquier, after leaving on his right a garden protected by
high walls; then a field in which tanbark 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 VignesSaintMarcel. 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.
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The door was nothing but a collection of wormeaten planks roughly bound together by crossbeams which
resembled roughly hewn logs. It opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky,
plasterstained, 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 airhole 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 dustcolored 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 passersby
rather than screened the occupants. The horizontal slats were missing here and there and had been naively
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 5052; 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 Chatelet
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 courthouse, in verses that limped a little:
Maitre Corbeau, sur un dossier perche,[13]
Tenait dans son bee une saisie executoire;
Maitre Renard, par l'odeur alleche,
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Lui fit a peu pres cette histoire:
He! bonjour. Etc.
[13] Lawyer Corbeau, perched on a docket, held in his beak a writ of execution; Lawyer Renard, attracted by
the smell, addressed him nearly as follows, etc.
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 RocheAymon 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, Maitre Corbeau was
permitted to add a tail to his initial letter and to call himself Gorbeau. Maitre 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 Maitre Gorbeau had been the proprietor of the building numbered
5052 on the Boulevard de l'Hopital. 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 threequarters dead;
almost directly facing it opens the Rue de la Barriere 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 Bicetre. It was through it that, under
the Empire and the Restoration, prisoners condemned to death reentered 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 goatgirl 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 Barriere
SaintJacques, that expedient of the philanthropist to conceal the scaffold, that miserable and shameful Place
de Grove of a shopkeeping 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 SaintJacques, 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 today is so unattractive, where stood the building Number 5052.
Bourgeois houses only began to spring up there twentyfive years later. The place was unpleasant. In
addition to the gloomy thoughts which assailed one there, one was conscious of being between the
Salpetriere, a glimpse of whose dome could be seen, and Bicetre, 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
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monasteries; everywhere about stood hovels, rubbish, ancient walls blackened like cerecloths, new white
walls like windingsheets; 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'Hopital 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 passerby 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 today. 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 Salpetriere, the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin
the moats SaintVictor 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 SaintMarceau.
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 passkey, opened the door, entered, closed it again
carefully, and ascended the staircase, still carrying Cosette.
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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 dressingroom 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 Thenardier
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.
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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 twentyfive 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 exconvict was full of virginity. His sister and his sister's children had left him only a vague and
faroff 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 Thenardiers, 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 beforea 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.
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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 dressingroom, 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 groundfloor of Number 5052, a sort of dilapidated penthouse, served as a wagonhouse for
marketgardeners, 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 dressingroom, 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 exconvict 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.
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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 welldoing. 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 SaintMedard, 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 teteatetes 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 dressingroom 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 kindhearted 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 crosslooking 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,
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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 bankbill
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 thousandfranc 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 thousandfranc
note, commented on and multiplied, produced a vast amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the
Rue des Vignes SaintMarcel.
A few days later, it chanced that Jean Valjean was sawing some wood, in his shirtsleeves, 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 thousandfranc bankbills, 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 pocketbook, a very large knife, anda 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 FIVEFRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND
PRODUCES A TUMULT
Near SaintMedard'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 exbeadle of seventyfive, 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 wellknown 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
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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 selfpreservation,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 exbeadle.
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
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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
frockcoat, 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 hundredsou 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 up stairs again.
"Come." he said to Cosette.
He took her by the hand, and they both went out.
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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.
This manoeuvre is peculiar to the hunted stag. On soil where an imprint of the track may be left, this
manoeuvre 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 reimbushment.
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
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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 BattoirSaintVictor 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 SaintEtienneduMont, 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'EpeedeBois and the Rue de l'Arbalete, 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 today,
and where the Rue NeuveSainteGenevieve turns off.
It is understood, of course, that the Rue NeuveSainteGenevieve is an old street, and that a postingchaise
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.
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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 passersby, 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;[14]
Venez choisir des cruches et des broos,
Des pots a fleurs, des tuyaux, de la brique.
A tout venant le Coeur vend des Carreaux.
[14] This is the factory of Goblet Junior:
Come choose your jugs and crocks,
Flowerpots, pipes, bricks.
The Heart sells Diamonds to every comer.
He left behind him the Rue de la Clef, then the Fountain SaintVictor, 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 timberyards 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.
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A little street, the Rue du CheminVertSaintAntoine, opened out between two timberyards 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 timberyards,
the marshes, the marketgardens, 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 sidestreet, to make his escape
through it, and thus to break his scent once more.
He arrived at a wall.
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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 culdesac 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 SaintAntoine and la
Rapee, 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 marketgardens, the
timberyards, and the old buildings have been effaced. Today, there are brandnew, 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 QuatreNations, and the OperaComique Feydeau, the precise spot whither Jean
Valjean had arrived was called le Petit Picpus. The Porte SaintJacques, the Porte Paris, the Barriere des
Sergents, the Porcherons, la Galiote, les Celestins, les Capucins, le Mail, la Bourbe, l'Arbre de Cracovie, la
PetitePolognethese are the names of old Paris which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace
hovers over these relics of the past.
Le PetitPicpus, 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, timberyards, 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. Today, it has been utterly blotted out. The
PetitPicpus, 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 SaintJacques, opposite the Rue du Platre; and at Lyons,
by Jean Girin, Rue Merciere, at the sign of Prudence. PetitPicpus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of
streets, formed by the Rue du CheminVertSaintAntoine, 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 DroitMur. The Rue Polonceau ended there;
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Rue PetitPicpus 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 DroitMur, 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
DroitMur, which had no issue and was called the CuldeSac 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
DroitMur and the Rue PetitPicpus, 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 CuldeSac Genrot; there he was cut off. He examined the
Rue PetitPicpus; 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 DroitMur lane, and, in
particular, of the angle which one leaves on the left when one emerges from the Rue Polonceau into this lane.
DroitMur lane was almost entirely bordered on the right, as far as the Rue PetitPicpus, 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 PetitPicpus side; so that this building, which
was very lofty on the Rue PetitPicpus 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 DroitMur.
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 DroitMur, 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.
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A lindentree 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 DroitMur 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 vinestocks which writhe over the fronts of old farmhouses.
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 facade, 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 threestory house?
He gave up all idea of climbing by means of the drainpipe, 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 lindentree 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 bandsthere were only three of themwere rusted. It seemed as
though it might be possible to pierce this wormeaten barrier.
On examining it he found that the door was not a door; it had neither hinges, crossbars, 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 passersby 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
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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 encounteredthere could be no mistake as to this surmiseand 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 climbingirons, 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 passersby. 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 lanternpost of the blind alley Genrot.
At that epoch there were no gasjets 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
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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 lamplighter, 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 CuldeSac
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 Thenardier."
Cosette shuddered. He added:
"Say nothing. Don't interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Thenardier 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 Thenardier, 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.
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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 lindentree. 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 DroitMur is guarded! so is the Rue PetitPicpus. 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 lindentree, 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 fruittrees, 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 DroitMur, which had a wing on the Rue PetitPicpus, turned two facades, at
right angles, towards this garden. These interior facades 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 facades 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.
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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 Thenardier, 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 gunstocks 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.
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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 Thenardier."
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 windingsheet, 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 bloodcurdling 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
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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 bellglasses 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
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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 pellmell 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!"
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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 kneecap, 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? DieuJesus! 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 naive 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:
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"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 roles 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 housemany 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 PetitPicpus convent."
Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had cast him into precisely that
convent in the Quartier SaintAntoine 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 PetitPicpus 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."
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"I was the first to recall it," returned Fauchelevent.
"Well, you can do today 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!"
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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 deathbed,
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 exmayor 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 Angles. 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 today 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
SeineetOise 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 innkeeper 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, CuldeSac 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 Thenardiers 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, Thenardier, with his
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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 Thenardier's history. "Who was that
grandfather? and what was his name?" Thenardier 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 SaintMedard 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 exbeadle, 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
frockcoat, which was worth many millions, being all wadded with bankbills. 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 thousandfranc 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 keyhole, and foiled the spy by keeping silent.
On the following day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise made by the fall of the fivefranc 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.
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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 exconvict 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 newcomer 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
wellheralded 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 welltodo 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
childall 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 emigre preceptor, the declaration of
Thenardier 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 dramshop, he
decidedly recognized Jean Valjean.
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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 bloodhound 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 tollkeeper 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 tollkeeper. 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 CheminVertSaintAntoine; he remembered the CuldeSac
Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the sole exit of the Rue DroitMur into the Rue PetitPicpus. 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.
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 DroitMur and PetitPicpus; 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.
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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 Caesar 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 ArcissurAube.
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 CuldeSac 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 CuldeSac 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 PETITPICPUS
CHAPTER I. NUMBER 62 RUE PETITPICPUS
Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage gate of Number 62
Rue PetitPicpus. 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
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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
chocolatehued 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, wellscrubbed, 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 meshesof
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
reenforced 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 bellwire 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 theatrebox, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a muchfrayed 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
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wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.
The first minutes passed; when one's eyes began to grow used to this cellarlike halftwilight, one tried to
pass the grating, but got no further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of black shutters,
reenforced 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 storytellers 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 PetitPicpus, 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
Citeaux, like the Benedictine monks. In other words, they were the subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of
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Saint Benoit.
Any one who has turned over old folios to any extent knows that Martin Verga founded in 1425 a
congregation of BernardinesBenedictines, 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 SaintBenoit, which is here in question: there are attached to this order, without counting the
obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations, two in Italy, MontCassin and SainteJustine of Padua;
two in France, Cluny and SaintMaur; and nine orders,Vallombrosa, Granmont, the Celestins, the
Camaldules, the Carthusians, the Humilies, the Olivateurs, the Silvestrins, and lastly, Citeaux; for Citeaux
itself, a trunk for other orders, is only an offshoot of SaintBenoit. Citeaux dates from Saint Robert, Abbe de
Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was in 529 that the devil, having retired to the desert of
Subiacohe was oldhad he turned hermit? was chased from the ancient temple of Apollo, where he
dwelt, by SaintBenoit, 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 BernardinesBenedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black, with a
guimpe, which, in accordance with the express command of SaintBenoit, 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 BernardinesBenedictines 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 NeuveSainteGenevieve. However, the BernardinesBenedictines of the
PetitPicpus, of whom we are speaking, were a totally different order from the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament,
cloistered in the Rue NeuveSainteGenevieve and at the Temple. There were numerous differences in their
rule; there were some in their costume. The BernardinesBenedictines of the PetitPicpus wore the black
guimpe, and the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament and of the Rue NeuveSainteGenevieve 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 PetitPicpus did not wear this Holy Sacrament. The Perpetual Adoration, which was
common to the house of the PetitPicpus 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 Berulle. The Oratory of France claimed the
precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint, while Berulle was a cardinal.
Let us return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga.
The BernardinesBenedictines 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
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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 meres vocales because they have a
voice in the chapter. A prioress can only be reelected 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 caeca 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.
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All their teeth are yellow. No toothbrush 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 Therese, 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, laysisters, 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 BernardinesBenedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty
years ago at PetitPicpus, 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, "JesusMarieJoseph." 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 PetitPicpus 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."
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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 mattera 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 readingdesk 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 absentmindedness 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 SaintBenoit, 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 twentythree or twentyfour years. The BernardinesBenedictines 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 boardingschool was attached to the conventa boardingschool
for young girls of noble and mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de
SaintAulaire and de Belissen, 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
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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 SaintBenoit 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
readingdesk.
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 fairytale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba to la
MereGrand.
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:
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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.
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"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 heartbreaking 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 girlsthose 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, Woodlouse 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 boardingschool, 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 classroom 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 woodlouse, Monseigneur."
Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of this century Ecouen was one of those
strict and graceful places where young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august. At
Ecouen, 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?"
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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 fishsuch 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 roseleaves
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 SaintBenoit. 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 fruittrees. 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
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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 up stairs 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.
Onceit 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 absencean 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 Quelen 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'OEil de Boeuf. It was in this gallery, which had only a circular bay, an
oeil de boeuf, 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 Leon, and who died afterward,
in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of Besancon. It was the first time that M. de Rohan had preached at the
PetitPicpus 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
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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 Serent, often visited the community, whither they
penetrated, no doubt, in virtue of the privilege Magnates mulieres, and caused great consternation in the
boardingschool. 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 schoolgirls. At that
epoch he had just been made, while waiting for the episcopate, vicargeneral 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
PetitPicpus. 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 Zetulbe, 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 Zetulbe. The sound of the flute proceeded from
the direction of the Rue DroitMur; 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 DroitMur 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 emigre
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 PetitPicpus there were three perfectly distinct buildings,the Great Convent,
inhabited by the nuns, the Boardingschool, 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 BernardinesBenedictines. The government paid
them a small pension, the ladies of the PetitPicpus received them cordially. It was a singular pellmell. Each
followed her own rule, Sometimes the pupils of the boardingschool 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 SainteBazile, Mother SainteScolastique, and Mother Jacob.
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One of these refugees found herself almost at home. She was a nun of SainteAure, the only one of her order
who had survived. The ancient convent of the ladies of SainteAure occupied, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, this very house of the PetitPicpus, 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; today, 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'Intrepide, asked to be allowed to enter the convent of the PetitPicpus as lady resident. The Duc d'Orleans
recommended her. Uproar in the hive; the vocalmothers 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:[15]
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] On the boughs hang three bodies of unequal merits: Dismas and Gesmas, between is the divine power.
Dismas seeks the heights, Gesmas, unhappy man, the lowest regions; the highest power will preserve us and
our effects. If you repeat this verse, you will not lose your things by theft.
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
Boardingschool like a veritable intrenchment, was, of course, common to the Boardingschool, 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
schoolgirls on the right, the laysisters and the novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the
nuns of the PetitPicpus assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was called the choir, communicated
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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 PetitPicpus 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 SaintBenoit. She had been reelected. 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 subprioress was an old Spanish nun, Mother Cineres, who was almost blind.
The most esteemed among the vocal mothers were Mother SainteHonorine; the treasurer, Mother
SainteGertrude, the chief mistress of the novices; MotherSaintAnge, the assistant mistress; Mother
Annonciation, the sacristan; Mother SaintAugustin, the nurse, the only one in the convent who was
malicious; then Mother SainteMechtilde (Mademoiselle Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful voice;
Mother des Anges (Mademoiselle Drouet), who had been in the convent of the FillesDieu, and in the
convent du Tresor, between Gisors and Magny; Mother SaintJoseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother
SainteAdelaide (Mademoiselle d'Auverney), Mother Misericorde (Mademoiselle de Cifuentes, who could
not resist austerities), Mother Compassion (Mademoiselle de la Miltiere, received at the age of sixty in
defiance of the rule, and very wealthy); Mother Providence (Mademoiselle de Laudiniere), Mother
Presentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was prioress in 1847; and finally, Mother SainteCeligne
(sister of the sculptor Ceracchi), who went mad; Mother SainteChantal (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 SainteMechtilde, 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
reedpipe of young girls, a sort of living Panpipe made of angels.
Those of the laysisters whom the scholars loved most were Sister Euphrasie, Sister SainteMarguerite,
Sister SainteMarthe, who was in her dotage, and Sister SainteMichel, 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 churchbell 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
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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 subprioress one and
two. Sixfive announced lessons, so that the pupils never said "to go to lessons," but "to go to sixfive."
Fourfour was Madame de Genlis's signal. It was very often heard. "C'est le diable a quatre,it's the very
deucesaid 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 Abbe Banes, old and ugly, whom they were permitted
to contemplate in the choir, through a grating; the other the drawingmaster, 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 PetitPicpusSainteAntoine filled almost the whole of the vast trapezium which resulted
from the intersection of the Rue Polonceau, the Rue DroitMur, the Rue PetitPicpus, 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'seye 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 DroitMur
comprised between the Rue PetitPicpus and the Rue Polonceau; the lesser arm was a lofty, gray, severe
grated facade which faced the Rue PetitPicpus; the carriage entrance No. 62 marked its extremity. Towards
the centre of this facade 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 firtree, 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
DroitMur 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 PetitPicpus was forty years ago. This
holy house had been built on the precise site of a famous tennisground of the fourteenth to the sixteenth
century, which was called the "tennisground of the eleven thousand devils."
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All these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names, DroitMur and Aumarais, are very
ancient; the streets which bear them are very much more ancient still. Aumarais Lane was called Maugout
Lane; the Rue DroitMur was called the Rue des Eglantiers, 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 PetitPicpus 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 SaintFrancois gave it to Monseigneur
SaintJulien, Monseigneur SaintJulien gave it to Monseigneur SaintEusebius, Monseigneur
SaintEusebius gave it to Monseigneur SaintProcopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father." And the
schoolgirls 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 Moliere with an idea, was still in existence in
September, 1845; it was for sale by a bricabrac merchant in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
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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 chestnuttree 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 Citeaux. 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 SaintSulpice and at SaintJean en
Greve, a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole town in an uproar. M. the Prior and VicarGeneral
of SaintGermain des Pres 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 Chateauvieux. 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 SaintBenoit; the first permission for
this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbe of SaintGermain, "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 Abbe of SaintGermain, the king accorded letterspatent; 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 Chateauvieux.
This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the Benedictine nuns of Citeaux. It mounted
back to the Abbe of SaintGermain des Pres, 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 PetitPicpus, whose interior we have just shown. In
1657, Pope Alexander VII. had authorized, by a special brief, the Bernardines of the Rue PetitPicpus, 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 PETITPICPUS
At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the PetitPicpus 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
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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 PetitPicpus 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 laysisters 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
twentyeight of them. How many are there today? 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 SaintBenoit. 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 twentyfive years old, the other
twentythree. 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 today. 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
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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 conventthe ancient female convent in particular, such as it still presents itself on the threshold of this
century, in Italy, in Austria, in Spainis 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
kneepans 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 irontipped scourges, their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with prayer;
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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 kislaraga 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.
Today 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. JeanJacques 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 peephole 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 firstborn pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of
which we have just spoken, the in pace, the closed mouths, the walledup 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 windingsheets 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth, is a fine blind man's selfsufficiency.
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
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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 a
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
Highpriest, 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 goodwill, 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.
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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 Abbe 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
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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
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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
selfdevotion, 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
SaintBenoit. 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
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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 demibourgeois, demilout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage
ticketed in the pigeonhole 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 today; but I will
not answer for tomorrow."
"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."
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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 twentyfour 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
today. 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
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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 deaddoctor 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 basketthat 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
fruitseller whom I know in the Rue CheminVert, who is deaf, and who has a little bed. I will shout in the
fruitseller's ear, that she is a niece of mine, and that she is to keep her for me until tomorrow. Then the
little one will reenter with you; for I will contrive to have you reenter. 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 deaddoctor 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 gravedigger. 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
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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 gravedigger.
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 kneecap 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:
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"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 exnotary, 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
welldemonstrated 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 gravedigger, 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
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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."
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"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
sixtyseven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius."
"Neither do I."
"Merit consists in working according to one's strength. A cloister is not a dockyard."
"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?"
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"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 Bethune, 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 deadroom, 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 deadroom!"
"More often!"
"Hey?"
"More often!"
"What do you say?"
"I say more often."
"More often than what?"
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"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 Berulle, 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."
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"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 EmpBuonaparte."
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 passersby
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 RocheAbeille, 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?"
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"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
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community! And miracles issue from tombs."
"But, reverend Mother, if the agent of the sanitary commission"
"Saint Benoit 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 Benoit 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 Tecelin, and
his mother Alethe. He began at Citeaux, to end in Clairvaux; he was ordained abbot by the bishop of
ChalonsurSaone, 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 Porea, Bishop of Poitiers, caused the condemnation of Eon de l'Etoile,
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
thirtynine in one day. Who was Benoit? He was the patriarch of MontCassin; he was the second founder of
the Saintete 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, fortysix kings, fortyone 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 Benoit, 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 passerby 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
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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 Cesar de Bus. Nevertheless, Cesar de Bus is a
man of blessed memory, and Voltaire one of unblessed memory. The last archbishop, the Cardinal de
Perigord, did not even know that Charles de Gondren succeeded to Berulle, and Francois Bourgoin to
Gondren, and JeanFrancois Senault to Bourgoin, and Father SainteMarthe to JeanFrancois 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 Francois 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 today, 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 Chalons, 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 Citeaux, 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 Benoit himself in France, in the abbey of Fleury,
called Saint BenoitsurLoire, although he died in Italy at MontCassin, on Saturday, the 21st of the month
of March, of the year 543? All this is incontestable. I abhor psalmsingers, 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."
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"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 today. 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 threequarters 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
reestablished Benoit 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
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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 tomorrow, 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
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The strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a oneeyed 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 Thenardier 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 deuce are you going to get out? It must all be done by tomorrow morning. It is tomorrow 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 gravedigger 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
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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."
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"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
SaintDenis would inspire in a passerby.
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 deadroom. It stands on two trestles, under the pall."
"How long is the coffin?"
"Six feet."
"What is this deadroom?"
"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."
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"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 deadroom. That is even written on the wall."
"Could you hide me in that room tonight when every one is asleep?"
"No. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the deadroom, 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 tomorrow?"
"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 toolcloset 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 fingerjoints.
"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 SaintYuste in this manner.
Fauchelevent, who had recovered himself a little, exclaimed:
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"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
halfshut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, "Do come in!" There are men who, when an incident
stands halfopen 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 overprudent, 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 gravedigger is a drunkard, and a friend of
mine. He is Father Mestienne. An old fellow of the old school. The gravedigger puts the corpses in the
grave, and I put the gravedigger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. They will arrive a little
before dusk, threequarters 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."
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"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 passersby on the Boulevard du Maine pulled
off their hats to an oldfashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, crossbones, 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 mourningcoach, 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 antennae 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 cavaliere and the porte pietonne.[16] The BernardinesBenedictines of
the Rue PetitPicpus 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 gravediggers 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 doorkeeper 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 gravedigger were delayed after that moment in
the cemetery, there was but one way for him to get out his gravedigger's card furnished by the department
of public funerals. A sort of letterbox was constructed in the porter's window. The gravedigger 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 gravedigger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen
francs.
[16] Instead of porte cochere and porte batarde.
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 MontParnasse, called the Eastern cemetery,
succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dramshop 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. PereLachaise if you please! to be buried in PereLachaise is equivalent to
having furniture of mahogany. It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable
enclosure, planted like an oldfashioned French garden. Straight alleys, box, thuyatrees, holly, ancient
tombs beneath aged cypresstrees, and very tall grass. In the evening it was tragic there. There were very
lugubrious lines about it.
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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 deadroom, 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 Caesar 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 chubbycheeked 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 gravedigger."
If a man could survive the blow of a cannonball full in the breast, he would make the same face that
Fauchelevent made.
"The gravedigger?"
"Yes."
"You?"
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"I."
"Father Mestienne is the gravedigger."
"He was."
"What! He was?"
"He is dead."
Fauchelevent had expected anything but this, that a gravedigger could die. It is true, nevertheless, that
gravediggers 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 gravedigger."
"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
gravedigger.
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 Surene, morbigou! of real Paris
Surene? 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 gravedigger 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.
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The man turned round.
"I am the convent gravedigger."
"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 notebook 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 gravedigger 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 cypresstrees, 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 gravedigger.
"They have such a nice little Argenteuil wine," murmured Fauchelevent.
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"Villager," retorted the man, "I ought not be a gravedigger. My father was a porter at the Prytaneum
[TownHall]. 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 gravedigger, 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 gravedigger, 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 gravedigger 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 Sevres. 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 gravedigger, "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 mourningcoach, 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.
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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 gravedigger 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 terrae pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam aeternam, et alii in approbrium, ut videant semper."
A child's voice said:
"De profundis."
The grave voice began again:
"Requiem aeternam 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."
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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 gravedigger, 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 gravedigger, crossed his arms and said:
"I am the one to pay!"
The gravedigger 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?"
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"That Argenteuil wine."
"Where is the Argenteuil?"
"At the Bon Coing."
"Go to the devil!" said the gravedigger.
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 gravedigger 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 gravedigger, 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 gravedigger, "you are a bellringer. 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 gravedigger.
He flung in a third shovelful.
Then he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:
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"It's cold tonight, 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 gravedigger 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 gravedigger, 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 gravedigger 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 gravedigger.
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 gravedigger turned green. Green is the pallor of livid people.
"Ah! JesusmonDieubancrocheabaslalune!"[17] he exclaimed. "Fifteen francs fine!"
[17] JesusmyGodbandylegdown with the moon!
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"Three pieces of a hundred sous," said Fauchelevent.
The gravedigger 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 gravedigger, 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:
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"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 fruitseller 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.
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"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 Bicetre. What do you suppose I should have done if you had been dead? And
your little girl? There's that fruitseller,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 gravedigger 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 pickaxe, and together they buried the empty coffin.
When the grave was full, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean:
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"Let us go. I will keep the shovel; do you carry off the mattock."
Night was falling.
Jean Valjean experienced rome 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 gravedigger'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 gravedigger's dwelling was, like all such wretched habitations, an
unfurnished and encumbered garret. A packingcasea coffin, perhapstook the place of a commode, a
butterpot served for a drinkingfountain, 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 povertystricken 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 illtempered search. It was plain that the gravedigger 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.
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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 tomorrow 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 PetitPicpus.
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 CheminVert, where
Fauchelevent had deposited her on the preceding day. Cosette had passed these twentyfour hours trembling
silently and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree that she wept. She had neither eaten nor
slept. The worthy fruitseller 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 twentyfour 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 passwords. 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
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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?"
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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 kneecap 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 kneecap; 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 gravedigger 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 Caesar and satisfied God. There was a coffin containing a body
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in the PetitPicpus, 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 Thenardiers' 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.
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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 kneecap and the basket, a
Royalist banknote of '93, applied to the wall over the chimneypiece, and of which the following is an exact
facsimile:
{GRAPHIC HERE}
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
classroom, 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 PetitPicpus; 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.
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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 icecold 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!
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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 plaguestricken 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 barsto guard whom? Angels.
These lofty walls which he had seen around tigers, he now beheld once more around lambs.
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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"]
VOLUME III. MARIUS.
BOOK FIRST.PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
CHAPTER I. PARVULUS
Paris has a child, and the forest has a bird; the bird is called the sparrow; the child is called the gamin.
Couple these two ideas which contain, the one all the furnace, the other all the dawn; strike these two sparks
together, Paris, childhood; there leaps out from them a little being. Homuncio, Plautus would say.
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Page No 410
This little being is joyous. He has not food every day, and he goes to the play every evening, if he sees good.
He has no shirt on his body, no shoes on his feet, no roof over his head; he is like the flies of heaven, who
have none of these things. He is from seven to thirteen years of age, he lives in bands, roams the streets,
lodges in the open air, wears an old pair of trousers of his father's, which descend below his heels, an old hat
of some other father, which descends below his ears, a single suspender of yellow listing; he runs, lies in
wait, rummages about, wastes time, blackens pipes, swears like a convict, haunts the wineshop, knows
thieves, calls gay women thou, talks slang, sings obscene songs, and has no evil in his heart. This is because
he has in his heart a pearl, innocence; and pearls are not to be dissolved in mud. So long as man is in his
childhood, God wills that he shall be innocent.
If one were to ask that enormous city: "What is this?" she would reply: "It is my little one."
CHAPTER II. SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS
The gaminthe street Arabof Paris is the dwarf of the giant.
Let us not exaggerate, this cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but, in that case, he owns but one; he
sometimes has shoes, but then they have no soles; he sometimes has a lodging, and he loves it, for he finds
his mother there; but he prefers the street, because there he finds liberty. He has his own games, his own bits
of mischief, whose foundation consists of hatred for the bourgeois; his peculiar metaphors: to be dead is to
eat dandelions by the root; his own occupations, calling hackneycoaches, letting down carriagesteps,
establishing means of transit between the two sides of a street in heavy rains, which he calls making the
bridge of arts, crying discourses pronounced by the authorities in favor of the French people, cleaning out the
cracks in the pavement; he has his own coinage, which is composed of all the little morsels of worked copper
which are found on the public streets. This curious money, which receives the name of loquesragshas an
invariable and wellregulated currency in this little Bohemia of children.
Lastly, he has his own fauna, which he observes attentively in the corners; the ladybird, the death'shead
plantlouse, the daddylonglegs, "the devil," a black insect, which menaces by twisting about its tail armed
with two horns. He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has
pustules on its back, but is not a toad, which inhabits the nooks of old limekilns and wells that have run dry,
which is black, hairy, sticky, which crawls sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, which has no cry, but
which has a look, and is so terrible that no one has ever beheld it; he calls this monster "the deaf thing." The
search for these "deaf things" among the stones is a joy of formidable nature. Another pleasure consists in
suddenly prying up a pavingstone, and taking a look at the woodlice. Each region of Paris is celebrated for
the interesting treasures which are to be found there. There are earwigs in the timberyards of the Ursulines,
there are millepeds in the Pantheon, there are tadpoles in the ditches of the ChampsdeMars.
As far as sayings are concerned, this child has as many of them as Talleyrand. He is no less cynical, but he is
more honest. He is endowed with a certain indescribable, unexpected joviality; he upsets the composure of
the shopkeeper with his wild laughter. He ranges boldly from high comedy to farce.
A funeral passes by. Among those who accompany the dead there is a doctor. "Hey there!" shouts some street
Arab, "how long has it been customary for doctors to carry home their own work?"
Another is in a crowd. A grave man, adorned with spectacles and trinkets, turns round indignantly: "You
goodfornothing, you have seized my wife's waist!""I, sir? Search me!"
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Page No 411
CHAPTER III. HE IS AGREEABLE
In the evening, thanks to a few sous, which he always finds means to procure, the homuncio enters a theatre.
On crossing that magic threshold, he becomes transfigured; he was the street Arab, he becomes the titi.[18]
Theatres are a sort of ship turned upside down with the keel in the air. It is in that keel that the titi huddle
together. The titi is to the gamin what the moth is to the larva; the same being endowed with wings and
soaring. It suffices for him to be there, with his radiance of happiness, with his power of enthusiasm and joy,
with his handclapping, which resembles a clapping of wings, to confer on that narrow, dark, fetid, sordid,
unhealthy, hideous, abominable keel, the name of Paradise.
[18] Chicken: slang allusion to the noise made in calling poultry.
Bestow on an individual the useless and deprive him of the necessary, and you have the gamin.
The gamin is not devoid of literary intuition. His tendency, and we say it with the proper amount of regret,
would not constitute classic taste. He is not very academic by nature. Thus, to give an example, the popularity
of Mademoiselle Mars among that little audience of stormy children was seasoned with a touch of irony. The
gamin called her Mademoiselle Muche"hide yourself."
This being bawls and scoffs and ridicules and fights, has rags like a baby and tatters like a philosopher, fishes
in the sewer, hunts in the cesspool, extracts mirth from foulness, whips up the squares with his wit, grins and
bites, whistles and sings, shouts, and shrieks, tempers Alleluia with Matanturlurette, chants every rhythm
from the De Profundis to the Jackpudding, finds without seeking, knows what he is ignorant of, is a Spartan
to the point of thieving, is mad to wisdom, is lyrical to filth, would crouch down on Olympus, wallows in the
dunghill and emerges from it covered with stars. The gamin of Paris is Rabelais in this youth.
He is not content with his trousers unless they have a watchpocket.
He is not easily astonished, he is still less easily terrified, he makes songs on superstitions, he takes the wind
out of exaggerations, he twits mysteries, he thrusts out his tongue at ghosts, he takes the poetry out of stilted
things, he introduces caricature into epic extravaganzas. It is not that he is prosaic; far from that; but he
replaces the solemn vision by the farcical phantasmagoria. If Adamastor were to appear to him, the street
Arab would say: "Hi there! The bugaboo!"
CHAPTER IV. HE MAY BE OF USE
Paris begins with the lounger and ends with the street Arab, two beings of which no other city is capable; the
passive acceptance, which contents itself with gazing, and the inexhaustible initiative; Prudhomme and
Fouillou. Paris alone has this in its natural history. The whole of the monarchy is contained in the lounger;
the whole of anarchy in the gamin.
This pale child of the Parisian faubourgs lives and develops, makes connections, "grows supple" in suffering,
in the presence of social realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness. He thinks himself heedless; and
he is not. He looks and is on the verge of laughter; he is on the verge of something else also. Whoever you
may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism,
Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.
The little fellow will grow up.
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Of what clay is he made? Of the first mud that comes to hand. A handful of dirt, a breath, and behold Adam.
It suffices for a God to pass by. A God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny
being. By the word "fortune" we mean chance, to some extent. That pigmy kneaded out of common earth,
ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. Will that become an Ionian or a Boeotian? Wait, currit rota, the Spirit
of Paris, that demon which creates the children of chance and the men of destiny, reversing the process of the
Latin potter, makes of a jug an amphora.
CHAPTER V. HIS FRONTIERS
The gamin loves the city, he also loves solitude, since he has something of the sage in him. Urbis amator, like
Fuscus; ruris amator, like Flaccus.
To roam thoughtfully about, that is to say, to lounge, is a fine employment of time in the eyes of the
philosopher; particularly in that rather illegitimate species of campaign, which is tolerably ugly but odd and
composed of two natures, which surrounds certain great cities, notably Paris. To study the suburbs is to study
the amphibious animal. End of the trees, beginning of the roofs; end of the grass, beginning of the pavements;
end of the furrows, beginning of the shops, end of the wheelruts, beginning of the passions; end of the
divine murmur, beginning of the human uproar; hence an extraordinary interest.
Hence, in these not very attractive places, indelibly stamped by the passing stroller with the epithet:
melancholy, the apparently objectless promenades of the dreamer.
He who writes these lines has long been a prowler about the barriers of Paris, and it is for him a source of
profound souvenirs. That closeshaven turf, those pebbly paths, that chalk, those pools, those harsh
monotonies of waste and fallow lands, the plants of early marketgarden suddenly springing into sight in a
bottom, that mixture of the savage and the citizen, those vast desert nooks where the garrison drums practise
noisily, and produce a sort of lisping of battle, those hermits by day and cutthroats by night, that clumsy mill
which turns in the wind, the hoistingwheels of the quarries, the teagardens at the corners of the cemeteries;
the mysterious charm of great, sombre walls squarely intersecting immense, vague stretches of land
inundated with sunshine and full of butterflies,all this attracted him.
There is hardly any one on earth who is not acquainted with those singular spots, the Glaciere, the Cunette,
the hideous wall of Grenelle all speckled with balls, MontParnasse, the FosseauxLoups, Aubiers on the
bank of the Marne, MontSouris, the TombeIssoire, the PierrePlate de Chatillon, where there is an old,
exhausted quarry which no longer serves any purpose except to raise mushrooms, and which is closed, on a
level with the ground, by a trapdoor of rotten planks. The campagna of Rome is one idea, the banlieue of
Paris is another; to behold nothing but fields, houses, or trees in what a stretch of country offers us, is to
remain on the surface; all aspects of things are thoughts of God. The spot where a plain effects its junction
with a city is always stamped with a certain piercing melancholy. Nature and humanity both appeal to you at
the same time there. Local originalities there make their appearance.
Any one who, like ourselves, has wandered about in these solitudes contiguous to our faubourgs, which may
be designated as the limbos of Paris, has seen here and there, in the most desert spot, at the most unexpected
moment, behind a meagre hedge, or in the corner of a lugubrious wall, children grouped tumultuously, fetid,
muddy, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hideandseek, and crowned with cornflowers. All of them are
little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the
suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of
dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June,
kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling over halffarthings,
irresponsible, volatile, free and happy; and, no sooner do they catch sight of you than they recollect that they
have an industry, and that they must earn their living, and they offer to sell you an old woollen stocking filled
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with cockchafers, or a bunch of lilacs. These encounters with strange children are one of the charming and at
the same time poignant graces of the environs of Paris.
Sometimes there are little girls among the throng of boys, are they their sisters?who are almost young
maidens, thin, feverish, with sunburnt hands, covered with freckles, crowned with poppies and ears of rye,
gay, haggard, barefooted. They can be seen devouring cherries among the wheat. In the evening they can be
heard laughing. These groups, warmly illuminated by the full glow of midday, or indistinctly seen in the
twilight, occupy the thoughtful man for a very long time, and these visions mingle with his dreams.
Paris, centre, banlieue, circumference; this constitutes all the earth to those children. They never venture
beyond this. They can no more escape from the Parisian atmosphere than fish can escape from the water. For
them, nothing exists two leagues beyond the barriers: Ivry, Gentilly, Arcueil, Belleville, Aubervilliers,
Menilmontant, ChoisyleRoi, Billancourt, Mendon, Issy, Vanvre, Sevres, Puteaux, Neuilly, Gennevilliers,
Colombes, Romainville, Chatou, Asnieres, Bougival, Nanterre, Enghien, NoisyleSec, Nogent, Gournay,
Drancy, Gonesse; the universe ends there.
CHAPTER VI. A BIT OF HISTORY
At the epoch, nearly contemporary by the way, when the action of this book takes place, there was not, as
there is today, a policeman at the corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss here);
stray children abounded in Paris. The statistics give an average of two hundred and sixty homeless children
picked up annually at that period, by the police patrols, in unenclosed lands, in houses in process of
construction, and under the arches of the bridges. One of these nests, which has become famous, produced
"the swallows of the bridge of Arcola." This is, moreover, the most disastrous of social symptoms. All crimes
of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child.
Let us make an exception in favor of Paris, nevertheless. In a relative measure, and in spite of the souvenir
which we have just recalled, the exception is just. While in any other great city the vagabond child is a lost
man, while nearly everywhere the child left to itself is, in some sort, sacrificed and abandoned to a kind of
fatal immersion in the public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy of Paris, we
insist on this point, however defaced and injured on the surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a
magnificent thing to put on record, and one which shines forth in the splendid probity of our popular
revolutions, that a certain incorruptibility results from the idea which exists in the air of Paris, as salt exists in
the water of the ocean. To breathe Paris preserves the soul.
What we have just said takes away nothing of the anguish of heart which one experiences every time that one
meets one of these children around whom one fancies that he beholds floating the threads of a broken family.
In the civilization of the present day, incomplete as it still is, it is not a very abnormal thing to behold these
fractured families pouring themselves out into the darkness, not knowing clearly what has become of their
children, and allowing their own entrails to fall on the public highway. Hence these obscure destinies. This is
called, for this sad thing has given rise to an expression, "to be cast on the pavements of Paris."
Let it be said by the way, that this abandonment of children was not discouraged by the ancient monarchy. A
little of Egypt and Bohemia in the lower regions suited the upper spheres, and compassed the aims of the
powerful. The hatred of instruction for the children of the people was a dogma. What is the use of
"halflights"? Such was the countersign. Now, the erring child is the corollary of the ignorant child.
Besides this, the monarchy sometimes was in need of children, and in that case it skimmed the streets.
Under Louis XIV., not to go any further back, the king rightly desired to create a fleet. The idea was a good
one. But let us consider the means. There can be no fleet, if, beside the sailing ship, that plaything of the
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winds, and for the purpose of towing it, in case of necessity, there is not the vessel which goes where it
pleases, either by means of oars or of steam; the galleys were then to the marine what steamers are today.
Therefore, galleys were necessary; but the galley is moved only by the galleyslave; hence, galleyslaves
were required. Colbert had the commissioners of provinces and the parliaments make as many convicts as
possible. The magistracy showed a great deal of complaisance in the matter. A man kept his hat on in the
presence of a processionit was a Huguenot attitude; he was sent to the galleys. A child was encountered in
the streets; provided that he was fifteen years of age and did not know where he was to sleep, he was sent to
the galleys. Grand reign; grand century.
Under Louis XV. children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them off, for what mysterious purpose no
one knew. People whispered with terror monstrous conjectures as to the king's baths of purple. Barbier speaks
ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the exempts of the guard, when they ran short of
children, took those who had fathers. The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts. In that case, the
parliament intervened and had some one hung. Who? The exempts? No, the fathers.
CHAPTER VII. THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE
CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA
The body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might almost say: Not every one who wishes
to belong to it can do so.
This word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in
1834. It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance. The horror was lively.
The word passed into circulation.
The elements which constitute the consideration of the gamins for each other are very various. We have
known and associated with one who was greatly respected and vastly admired because he had seen a man fall
from the top of the tower of NotreDame; another, because he had succeeded in making his way into the rear
courtyard where the statues of the dome of the Invalides had been temporarily deposited, and had "prigged"
some lead from them; a third, because he had seen a diligence tip over; still another, because he "knew" a
soldier who came near putting out the eye of a citizen.
This explains that famous exclamation of a Parisian gamin, a profound epiphonema, which the vulgar herd
laughs at without comprehending,Dieu de Dieu! What illluck I do have! to think that I have never yet
seen anybody tumble from a fifthstory window! (I have pronounced I'ave and fifth pronounced fift'.)
Surely, this saying of a peasant is a fine one: "Father SoandSo, your wife has died of her malady; why did
you not send for the doctor?" "What would you have, sir, we poor folks die of ourselves." But if the peasant's
whole passivity lies in this saying, the whole of the freethinking anarchy of the brat of the faubourgs is,
assuredly, contained in this other saying. A man condemned to death is listening to his confessor in the
tumbrel. The child of Paris exclaims: "He is talking to his black cap! Oh, the sneak!"
A certain audacity on matters of religion sets off the gamin. To be strongminded is an important item.
To be present at executions constitutes a duty. He shows himself at the guillotine, and he laughs. He calls it
by all sorts of pet names: The End of the Soup, The Growler, The Mother in the Blue (the sky), The Last
Mouthful, etc., etc. In order not to lose anything of the affair, he scales the walls, he hoists himself to
balconies, he ascends trees, he suspends himself to gratings, he clings fast to chimneys. The gamin is born a
tiler as he is born a mariner. A roof inspires him with no more fear than a mast. There is no festival which
comes up to an execution on the Place de Greve. Samson and the Abbe Montes are the truly popular names.
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They hoot at the victim in order to encourage him. They sometimes admire him. Lacenaire, when a gamin, on
seeing the hideous Dautin die bravely, uttered these words which contain a future: "I was jealous of him." In
the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not known, but Papavoine is. "Politicians" are confused with assassins
in the same legend. They have a tradition as to everybody's last garment. It is known that Tolleron had a
fireman's cap, Avril an otter cap, Losvel a round hat, that old Delaporte was bald and bareheaded, that
Castaing was all ruddy and very handsome, that Bories had a romantic small beard, that Jean Martin kept on
his suspenders, that Lecouffe and his mother quarrelled. "Don't reproach each other for your basket," shouted
a gamin to them. Another, in order to get a look at Debacker as he passed, and being too small in the crowd,
caught sight of the lantern on the quay and climbed it. A gendarme stationed opposite frowned. "Let me
climb up, m'sieu le gendarme," said the gamin. And, to soften the heart of the authorities he added: "I will not
fall." "I don't care if you do," retorted the gendarme.
In the brotherhood of gamins, a memorable accident counts for a great deal. One reaches the height of
consideration if one chances to cut one's self very deeply, "to the very bone."
The fist is no mediocre element of respect. One of the things that the gamin is fondest of saying is: "I am fine
and strong, come now!" To be lefthanded renders you very enviable. A squint is highly esteemed.
CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING
SAYING OF THE LAST KING
In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening, when night is falling, in front of the
bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen's boats, he hurls himself
headlong into the Seine, and into all possible infractions of the laws of modesty and of the police.
Nevertheless the police keep an eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation which once gave rise
to a fraternal and memorable cry; that cry which was celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warning from
gamin to gamin; it scans like a verse from Homer, with a notation as inexpressible as the eleusiac chant of the
Panathenaea, and in it one encounters again the ancient Evohe. Here it is: "Ohe, Titi, oheee! Here comes the
bobby, here comes the p'lice, pick up your duds and be off, through the sewer with you!"
Sometimes this gnatthat is what he calls himselfknows how to read; sometimes he knows how to write;
he always knows how to daub. He does not hesitate to acquire, by no one knows what mysterious mutual
instruction, all the talents which can be of use to the public; from 1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the
turkey; from 1830 to 1848, he scrawled pears on the walls. One summer evening, when Louis Philippe was
returning home on foot, he saw a little fellow, no higher than his knee, perspiring and climbing up to draw a
gigantic pear in charcoal on one of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly; the King, with that goodnature which
came to him from Henry IV., helped the gamin, finished the pear, and gave the child a louis, saying: "The
pear is on that also."[19] The gamin loves uproar. A certain state of violence pleases him. He execrates "the
cures." One day, in the Rue de l'Universite, one of these scamps was putting his thumb to his nose at the
carriage gate of No. 69. "Why are you doing that at the gate?" a passerby asked. The boy replied: "There is a
cure there." It was there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.
[19] Louis XVIII. is represented in comic pictures of that day as having a pearshaped head.
Nevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairianism of the small gamin, if the occasion to become a chorister
presents itself, it is quite possible that he will accept, and in that case he serves the mass civilly. There are
two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow
the government, and to get his trousers sewed up again.
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The gamin in his perfect state possesses all the policemen of Paris, and can always put the name to the face of
any one which he chances to meet. He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their habits, and
he has special notes on each one of them. He reads the souls of the police like an open book. He will tell you
fluently and without flinching: "Such an one is a traitor; such another is very malicious; such another is great;
such another is ridiculous." (All these words: traitor, malicious, great, ridiculous, have a particular meaning in
his mouth.) That one imagines that he owns the PontNeuf, and he prevents people from walking on the
cornice outside the parapet; that other has a mania for pulling person's ears; etc., etc.
CHAPTER IX. THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL
There was something of that boy in Poquelin, the son of the fishmarket; Beaumarchais had something of it.
Gaminerie is a shade of the Gallic spirit. Mingled with good sense, it sometimes adds force to the latter, as
alcohol does to wine. Sometimes it is a defect. Homer repeats himself eternally, granted; one may say that
Voltaire plays the gamin. Camille Desmoulins was a native of the faubourgs. Championnet, who treated
miracles brutally, rose from the pavements of Paris; he had, when a small lad, inundated the porticos of
SaintJean de Beauvais, and of SaintEtienne du Mont; he had addressed the shrine of SainteGenevieve
familiarly to give orders to the phial of Saint Januarius.
The gamin of Paris is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has villainous teeth, because he is badly fed and
his stomach suffers, and handsome eyes because he has wit. If Jehovah himself were present, he would go
hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on boxing. All beliefs are possible to him. He plays
in the gutter, and straightens himself up with a revolt; his effrontery persists even in the presence of
grapeshot; he was a scapegrace, he is a hero; like the little Theban, he shakes the skin from the lion; Barra
the drummerboy was a gamin of Paris; he Shouts: "Forward!" as the horse of Scripture says "Vah!" and in a
moment he has passed from the small brat to the giant.
This child of the puddle is also the child of the ideal. Measure that spread of wings which reaches from
Moliere to Barra.
To sum up the whole, and in one word, the gamin is a being who amuses himself, because he is unhappy.
CHAPTER X. ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO
To sum it all up once more, the Paris gamin of today, like the graeculus of Rome in days gone by, is the
infant populace with the wrinkle of the old world on his brow.
The gamin is a grace to the nation, and at the same time a disease; a disease which must be cured, how? By
light.
Light renders healthy.
Light kindles.
All generous social irradiations spring from science, letters, arts, education. Make men, make men. Give them
light that they may warm you. Sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will present itself
with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth; and then, those who govern under the superintendence of
the French idea will have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins of Paris; flames in the
light or willo'thewisps in the gloom.
The gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the world.
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For Paris is a total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. The whole of this prodigious city is a
foreshortening of dead manners and living manners. He who sees Paris thinks he sees the bottom of all
history with heaven and constellations in the intervals. Paris has a capital, the TownHall, a Parthenon,
NotreDame, a Mount Aventine, the Faubourg SaintAntoine, an Asinarium, the Sorbonne, a Pantheon, the
Pantheon, a Via Sacra, the Boulevard des Italiens, a temple of the winds, opinion; and it replaces the
Gemoniae by ridicule. Its majo is called "faraud," its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its hammal is
the marketporter, its lazzarone is the pegre, its cockney is the native of Ghent. Everything that exists
elsewhere exists at Paris. The fishwoman of Dumarsais can retort on the herbseller of Euripides, the
discobols Vejanus lives again in the Forioso, the tightrope dancer. Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm
in arm with Vadeboncoeur the grenadier, Damasippus the secondhand dealer would be happy among
bricabrac merchants, Vincennes could grasp Socrates in its fist as just as Agora could imprison Diderot,
Grimod de la Reyniere discovered larded roast beef, as Curtillus invented roast hedgehog, we see the trapeze
which figures in Plautus reappear under the vault of the Arc of l'Etoile, the swordeater of Poecilus
encountered by Apuleius is a swordswallower on the PontNeuf, the nephew of Rameau and Curculio the
parasite make a pair, Ergasilus could get himself presented to Cambaceres by d'Aigrefeuille; the four dandies
of Rome: Alcesimarchus, Phoedromus, Diabolus, and Argyrippus, descend from Courtille in Labatut's
postingchaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front of
Punchinello; Marto is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not a dragon; Pantolabus the wag jeers in the Cafe
Anglais at Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a tenor in the ChampsElysees, and round him,
Thracius the beggar, clad like Bobeche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you by the button of your
coat in the Tuileries makes you repeat after a lapse of two thousand years Thesprion's apostrophe: Quis
properantem me prehendit pallio? The wine on Surene is a parody of the wine of Alba, the red border of
Desaugiers forms a balance to the great cutting of Balatro, Pere Lachaise exhales beneath nocturnal rains
same gleams as the Esquiliae, and the grave of the poor bought for five years, is certainly the equivalent of
the slave's hived coffin.
Seek something that Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius contains nothing that is not in Mesmer's tub;
Ergaphilas lives again in Cagliostro; the Brahmin Vasaphanta become incarnate in the Comte de
SaintGermain; the cemetery of SaintMedard works quite as good miracles as the Mosque of Oumoumie at
Damascus.
Paris has an AEsopMayeux, and a Canidia, Mademoiselle Lenormand. It is terrified, like Delphos at the
fulgurating realities of the vision; it makes tables turn as Dodona did tripods. It places the grisette on the
throne, as Rome placed the courtesan there; and, taking it altogether, if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian,
Madame Dubarry is better than Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed and
which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job,
and Jackpudding, dresses up a spectre in old numbers of the Constitutional, and makes Chodruc Duclos.
Although Plutarch says: the tyrant never grows old, Rome, under Sylla as under Domitian, resigned itself and
willingly put water in its wine. The Tiber was a Lethe, if the rather doctrinary eulogium made of it by Varus
Vibiscus is to be credited: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, Bibere Tiberim, id est seditionem oblivisci.
Paris drinks a million litres of water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally beating the general
alarm and ringing the tocsin.
With that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts everything royally; it is not too particular about its Venus; its
Callipyge is Hottentot; provided that it is made to laugh, it condones; ugliness cheers it, deformity provokes it
to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism,
does not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before Basile, and is no more scandalized by
the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace was repelled by the "hiccup" of Priapus. No trait of the universal face is
lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in
ladies' wearing apparel there devours the lorette with her eyes, exactly as the procuress Staphyla lay in wait
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for the virgin Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not the Coliseum, but people are as ferocious there as
though Caesar were looking on. The Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Saguet, but, if Virgil haunted
the Roman wineshop, David d'Angers, Balzac and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian taverns. Paris
reigns. Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails prosper there. Adonai passes on his chariot with its twelve
wheels of thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry there on his ass. For Silenus read Ramponneau.
Paris is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris, Jerusalem, Pantin. All civilizations are there in an
abridged form, all barbarisms also. Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guillotine.
A little of the Place de Greve is a good thing. What would all that eternal festival be without this seasoning?
Our laws are wisely provided, and thanks to them, this blade drips on this Shrove Tuesday.
CHAPTER XI. TO SCOFF, TO REIGN
There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination which sometimes derides those whom it
subjugates. To please you, O Athenians! exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes more than the law, it makes the
fashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes
allows itself this luxury; then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs its eyes, says:
"How stupid I am!" and bursts out laughing in the face of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a
strange thing that this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable neighbors, that all this majesty
should not be thrown into disorder by all this parody, and that the same mouth can today blow into the
trump of the Judgment Day, and tomorrow into the reedflute! Paris has a sovereign joviality. Its gayety is
of the thunder and its farce holds a sceptre.
Its tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its explosions, its days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its
epics, go forth to the bounds of the universe, and so also do its cockandbull stories. Its laugh is the mouth
of a volcano which spatters the whole earth. Its jests are sparks. It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal
on people; the highest monuments of human civilization accept its ironies and lend their eternity to its
mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has a prodigious 14th of July, which delivers the globe; it forces all
nations to take the oath of tennis; its night of the 4th of August dissolves in three hours a thousand years of
feudalism; it makes of its logic the muscle of unanimous will; it multiplies itself under all sorts of forms of
the sublime; it fills with its light Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Bozzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John
Brown, Garibaldi; it is everywhere where the future is being lighted up, at Boston in 1779, at the Isle de Leon
in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at Palermo in 1860, it whispers the mighty countersign: Liberty, in the ear of the
American abolitionists grouped about the boat at Harper's Ferry, and in the ear of the patriots of Ancona
assembled in the shadow, to the Archi before the Gozzi inn on the seashore; it creates Canaris; it creates
Quiroga; it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the great on earth; it was while proceeding whither its breath urge
them, that Byron perished at Missolonghi, and that Mazet died at Barcelona; it is the tribune under the feet of
Mirabeau, and a crater under the feet of Robespierre; its books, its theatre, its art, its science, its literature, its
philosophy, are the manuals of the human race; it has Pascal, Regnier, Corneille, Descartes, JeanJacques:
Voltaire for all moments, Moliere for all centuries; it makes its language to be talked by the universal mouth,
and that language becomes the word; it constructs in all minds the idea of progress, the liberating dogmas
which it forges are for the generations trusty friends, and it is with the soul of its thinkers and its poets that all
heroes of all nations have been made since 1789; this does not prevent vagabondism, and that enormous
genius which is called Paris, while transfiguring the world by its light, sketches in charcoal Bouginier's nose
on the wall of the temple of Theseus and writes Credeville the thief on the Pyramids.
Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is laughing.
Such is Paris. The smoke of its roofs forms the ideas of the universe. A heap of mud and stone, if you will,
but, above all, a moral being. It is more than great, it is immense. Why? Because it is daring.
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To dare; that is the price of progress.
All sublime conquests are, more or less, the prizes of daring. In order that the Revolution should take place, it
does not suffice that Montesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot should preach it, that Beaumarchais should
announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it, that Arouet should prepare it, that Rousseau should
premeditate it; it is necessary that Danton should dare it.
The cry: Audacity! is a Fiat lux. It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that
there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one
of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to
be faithful to one's self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it
occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand
one's ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them. The same
formidable lightning proceeds from the torch of Prometheus to Cambronne's short pipe.
CHAPTER XII. THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE
As for the Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the street Arab; to paint the child is to
paint the city; and it is for that reason that we have studied this eagle in this arrant sparrow. It is in the
faubourgs, above all, we maintain, that the Parisian race appears; there is the pure blood; there is the true
physiognomy; there this people toils and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces of man. There exist
there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom swarm types of the strangest, from the porter of la
Rapee to the knacker of Montfaucon. Fex urbis, exclaims Cicero; mob, adds Burke, indignantly; rabble,
multitude, populace. These are words and quickly uttered. But so be it. What does it matter? What is it to me
if they do go barefoot! They do not know how to read; so much the worse. Would you abandon them for that?
Would you turn their distress into a malediction? Cannot the light penetrate these masses? Let us return to
that cry: Light! and let us obstinately persist therein! Light! Light! Who knows whether these opacities will
not become transparent? Are not revolutions transfigurations? Come, philosophers, teach, enlighten, light up,
think aloud, speak aloud, hasten joyously to the great sun, fraternize with the public place, announce the good
news, spend your alphabets lavishly, proclaim rights, sing the Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear green
boughs from the oaks. Make a whirlwind of the idea. This crowd may be rendered sublime. Let us learn how
to make use of that vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which sparkles, bursts forth and quivers at
certain hours. These bare feet, these bare arms, these rags, these ignorances, these abjectnesses, these
darknesses, may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the people, and you will perceive truth.
Let that vile sand which you trample under foot be cast into the furnace, let it melt and seethe there, it will
become a splendid crystal, and it is thanks to it that Galileo and Newton will discover stars.
CHAPTER XIII. LITTLE GAVROCHE
Eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of this story, people noticed on the Boulevard
du Temple, and in the regions of the Chateaud'Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of age, who would
have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the gamin sketched out above, if, with the laugh of his age
on his lips, he had not had a heart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well muffled up in a pair of
man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his
mother. Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and a mother. But
his father did not think of him, and his mother did not love him.
He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father and mother,
and who are orphans nevertheless.
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This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his
mother's heart.
His parents had despatched him into life with a kick.
He simply took flight.
He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering, lad, with a vivacious but sickly air. He went and
came, sang, played at hopscotch, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gayly laughed
when he was called a rogue, and got angry when called a thief. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love;
but he was merry because he was free.
When these poor creatures grow to be men, the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but
so long as they are children, they escape because of their smallness. The tiniest hole saves them.
Nevertheless, abandoned as this child was, it sometimes happened, every two or three months, that he said,
"Come, I'll go and see mamma!" Then he quitted the boulevard, the Cirque, the Porte SaintMartin,
descended to the quays, crossed the bridges, reached the suburbs, arrived at the Salpetriere, and came to a
halt, where? Precisely at that double number 5052 with which the reader is acquainted at the Gorbeau
hovel.
At that epoch, the hovel 5052 generally deserted and eternally decorated with the placard: "Chambers to
let," chanced to be, a rare thing, inhabited by numerous individuals who, however, as is always the case in
Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged to that indigent class which begins to separate from
the lowest of petty bourgeoisie in straitened circumstances, and which extends from misery to misery into the
lowest depths of society down to those two beings in whom all the material things of civilization end, the
sewerman who sweeps up the mud, and the ragpicker who collects scraps.
The "principal lodger" of Jean Valjean's day was dead and had been replaced by another exactly like her. I
know not what philosopher has said: "Old women are never lacking."
This new old woman was named Madame Bourgon, and had nothing remarkable about her life except a
dynasty of three paroquets, who had reigned in succession over her soul.
The most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family of four persons, consisting of father,
mother, and two daughters, already well grown, all four of whom were lodged in the same attic, one of the
cells which we have already mentioned.
At first sight, this family presented no very special feature except its extreme destitution; the father, when he
hired the chamber, had stated that his name was Jondrette. Some time after his moving in, which had borne a
singular resemblance to the entrance of nothing at all, to borrow the memorable expression of the principal
tenant, this Jondrette had said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the same time portress and
stairsweeper: "Mother SoandSo, if any one should chance to come and inquire for a Pole or an Italian, or
even a Spaniard, perchance, it is I."
This family was that of the merry barefoot boy. He arrived there and found distress, and, what is still sadder,
no smile; a cold hearth and cold hearts. When he entered, he was asked: "Whence come you?" He replied:
"From the street." When he went away, they asked him: "Whither are you going?" He replied: "Into the
streets." His mother said to him: "What did you come here for?"
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This child lived, in this absence of affection, like the pale plants which spring up in cellars. It did not cause
him suffering, and he blamed no one. He did not know exactly how a father and mother should be.
Nevertheless, his mother loved his sisters.
We have forgotten to mention, that on the Boulevard du Temple this child was called Little Gavroche. Why
was he called Little Gavroche?
Probably because his father's name was Jondrette.
It seems to be the instinct of certain wretched families to break the thread.
The chamber which the Jondrettes inhabited in the Gorbeau hovel was the last at the end of the corridor. The
cell next to it was occupied by a very poor young man who was called M. Marius.
Let us explain who this M. Marius was.
BOOK SECOND.THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
CHAPTER I. NINETY YEARS AND THIRTYTWO TEETH
In the Rue Boucherat, Rue de Normandie and the Rue de Saintonge there still exist a few ancient inhabitants
who have preserved the memory of a worthy man named M. Gillenormand, and who mention him with
complaisance. This good man was old when they were young. This silhouette has not yet entirely
disappearedfor those who regard with melancholy that vague swarm of shadows which is called the past
from the labyrinth of streets in the vicinity of the Temple to which, under Louis XIV., the names of all the
provinces of France were appended exactly as in our day, the streets of the new Tivoli quarter have received
the names of all the capitals of Europe; a progression, by the way, in which progress is visible.
M.Gillenormand, who was as much alive as possible in 1831, was one of those men who had become
curiosities to be viewed, simply because they have lived a long time, and who are strange because they
formerly resembled everybody, and now resemble nobody. He was a peculiar old man, and in very truth, a
man of another age, the real, complete and rather haughty bourgeois of the eighteenth century, who wore his
good, old bourgeoisie with the air with which marquises wear their marquisates. He was over ninety years of
age, his walk was erect, he talked loudly, saw clearly, drank neat, ate, slept, and snored. He had all thirtytwo
of his teeth. He only wore spectacles when he read. He was of an amorous disposition, but declared that, for
the last ten years, he had wholly and decidedly renounced women. He could no longer please, he said; he did
not add: "I am too old," but: "I am too poor." He said: "If I were not ruinedHeee!" All he had left, in fact,
was an income of about fifteen thousand francs. His dream was to come into an inheritance and to have a
hundred thousand livres income for mistresses. He did not belong, as the reader will perceive, to that puny
variety of octogenaries who, like M. de Voltaire, have been dying all their life; his was no longevity of a
cracked pot; this jovial old man had always had good health. He was superficial, rapid, easily angered. He
flew into a passion at everything, generally quite contrary to all reason. When contradicted, he raised his
cane; he beat people as he had done in the great century. He had a daughter over fifty years of age, and
unmarried, whom he chastised severely with his tongue, when in a rage, and whom he would have liked to
whip. She seemed to him to be eight years old. He boxed his servants' ears soundly, and said: "Ah! carogne!"
One of his oaths was: "By the pantoufloche of the pantouflochade!" He had singular freaks of tranquillity; he
had himself shaved every day by a barber who had been mad and who detested him, being jealous of M.
Gillenormand on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own
discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in
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truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from what woman it came."
The words which he uttered the most frequently were: the sensible man, and nature. He did not give to this
last word the grand acceptation which our epoch has accorded to it, but he made it enter, after his own
fashion, into his little chimneycorner satires: "Nature," he said, "in order that civilization may have a little of
everything, gives it even specimens of its amusing barbarism. Europe possesses specimens of Asia and Africa
on a small scale. The cat is a drawingroom tiger, the lizard is a pocket crocodile. The dancers at the opera
are pink female savages. They do not eat men, they crunch them; or, magicians that they are, they transform
them into oysters and swallow them. The Caribbeans leave only the bones, they leave only the shell. Such are
our morals. We do not devour, we gnaw; we do not exterminate, we claw."
CHAPTER II. LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE
He lived in the Marais, Rue des FillesduCalvaire, No. 6. He owned the house. This house has since been
demolished and rebuilt, and the number has probably been changed in those revolutions of numeration which
the streets of Paris undergo. He occupied an ancient and vast apartment on the first floor, between street and
gardens, furnished to the very ceilings with great Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries representing pastoral
scenes; the subjects of the ceilings and the panels were repeated in miniature on the armchairs. He
enveloped his bed in a vast, nineleaved screen of Coromandel lacquer. Long, full curtains hung from the
windows, and formed great, broken folds that were very magnificent. The garden situated immediately under
his windows was attached to that one of them which formed the angle, by means of a staircase twelve or
fifteen steps long, which the old gentleman ascended and descended with great agility. In addition to a library
adjoining his chamber, he had a boudoir of which he thought a great deal, a gallant and elegant retreat, with
magnificent hangings of straw, with a pattern of flowers and fleursdelys made on the galleys of Louis
XIV. and ordered of his convicts by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. M. Gillenormand had inherited it from a
grim maternal greataunt, who had died a centenarian. He had had two wives. His manners were something
between those of the courtier, which he had never been, and the lawyer, which he might have been. He was
gay, and caressing when he had a mind. In his youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived
by their wives and never by their mistresses, because they are, at the same time, the most sullen of husbands
and the most charming of lovers in existence. He was a connoisseur of painting. He had in his chamber a
marvellous portrait of no one knows whom, painted by Jordaens, executed with great dashes of the brush,
with millions of details, in a confused and haphazard manner. M. Gillenormand's attire was not the habit of
Louis XIV. nor yet that of Louis XVI.; it was that of the Incroyables of the Directory. He had thought himself
young up to that period and had followed the fashions. His coat was of lightweight cloth with voluminous
revers, a long swallowtail and large steel buttons. With this he wore kneebreeches and buckle shoes. He
always thrust his hands into his fobs. He said authoritatively: "The French Revolution is a heap of
blackguards."
CHAPTER III. LUCESPRIT
At the age of sixteen, one evening at the opera, he had had the honor to be stared at through operaglasses by
two beauties at the same timeripe and celebrated beauties then, and sung by Voltaire, the Camargo and the
Salle. Caught between two fires, he had beaten a heroic retreat towards a little dancer, a young girl named
Nahenry, who was sixteen like himself, obscure as a cat, and with whom he was in love. He abounded in
memories. He was accustomed to exclaim: "How pretty she wasthat GuimardGuimardiniGuimardinette,
the last time I saw her at Longchamps, her hair curled in sustained sentiments, with her comeandsee of
turquoises, her gown of the color of persons newly arrived, and her little agitation muff!" He had worn in his
young manhood a waistcoat of NainLondrin, which he was fond of talking about effusively. "I was dressed
like a Turk of the Levant Levantin," said he. Madame de Boufflers, having seen him by chance when he was
twenty, had described him as "a charming fool." He was horrified by all the names which he saw in politics
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and in power, regarding them as vulgar and bourgeois. He read the journals, the newspapers, the gazettes as
he said, stifling outbursts of laughter the while. "Oh!" he said, "what people these are! Corbiere! Humann!
Casimir Perier! There's a minister for you! I can imagine this in a journal: `M. Gillenorman, minister!' that
would be a farce. Well! They are so stupid that it would pass"; he merrily called everything by its name,
whether decent or indecent, and did not restrain himself in the least before ladies. He uttered coarse speeches,
obscenities, and filth with a certain tranquillity and lack of astonishment which was elegant. It was in keeping
with the unceremoniousness of his century. It is to be noted that the age of periphrase in verse was the age of
crudities in prose. His godfather had predicted that he would turn out a man of genius, and had bestowed on
him these two significant names: LucEsprit.
CHAPTER IV. A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT
He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where he was born, and he had been crowned
by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais, whom he called the Duc de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the
death of Louis XVI., nor the Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, nor anything else had been able to
efface the memory of this crowning. The Duc de Nevers was, in his eyes, the great figure of the century.
"What a charming grand seigneur," he said, "and what a fine air he had with his blue ribbon!"
In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine the Second had made reparation for the crime of the partition of
Poland by purchasing, for three thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. He grew
animated on this subject: "The elixir of gold," he exclaimed, "the yellow dye of Bestucheff, General
Lamotte's drops, in the eighteenth century,this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the
panacea against Venus, at one louis the halfounce phial. Louis XV. sent two hundred phials of it to the
Pope." He would have been greatly irritated and thrown off his balance, had any one told him that the elixir
of gold is nothing but the perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormand adored the Bourbons, and had a horror of
1789; he was forever narrating in what manner he had saved himself during the Terror, and how he had been
obliged to display a vast deal of gayety and cleverness in order to escape having his head cut off. If any
young man ventured to pronounce an eulogium on the Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grew so
angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded to his ninety years, and said, "I hope that I
shall not see ninetythree twice." On these occasions, he hinted to people that he meant to live to be a
hundred.
CHAPTER V. BASQUE AND NICOLETTE
He had theories. Here is one of them: "When a man is passionately fond of women, and when he has himself
a wife for whom he cares but little, who is homely, cross, legitimate, with plenty of rights, perched on the
code, and jealous at need, there is but one way of extricating himself from the quandry and of procuring
peace, and that is to let his wife control the pursestrings. This abdication sets him free. Then his wife busies
herself, grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her fingers covered with verdigris in the process,
undertakes the education of halfshare tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers, presides over
notaries, harangues scriveners, visits limbs of the law, follows lawsuits, draws up leases, dictates contracts,
feels herself the sovereign, sells, buys, regulates, promises and compromises, binds fast and annuls, yields,
concedes and retrocedes, arranges, disarranges, hoards, lavishes; she commits follies, a supreme and personal
delight, and that consoles her. While her husband disdains her, she has the satisfaction of ruining her
husband." This theory M. Gillenormand had himself applied, and it had become his history. His wifethe
second onehad administered his fortune in such a manner that, one fine day, when M. Gillenormand found
himself a widower, there remained to him just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole of it in an
annuity of fifteen thousand francs, threequarters of which would expire with him. He had not hesitated on
this point, not being anxious to leave a property behind him. Besides, he had noticed that patrimonies are
subject to adventures, and, for instance, become national property; he had been present at the avatars of
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consolidated three per cents, and he had no great faith in the Great Book of the Public Debt. "All that's the
Rue Quincampois!" he said. His house in the Rue FillesduClavaire belonged to him, as we have already
stated. He had two servants, "a male and a female." When a servant entered his establishment, M.
Gillenormand rebaptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province: Nimois, Comtois,
Poitevin, Picard. His last valet was a big, foundered, shortwinded fellow of fiftyfive, who was incapable of
running twenty paces; but, as he had been born at Bayonne, M. Gillenormand called him Basque. All the
female servants in his house were called Nicolette (even the Magnon, of whom we shall hear more farther
on). One day, a haughty cook, a cordon bleu, of the lofty race of porters, presented herself. "How much
wages do you want a month?" asked M. Gillenormand. "Thirty francs." "What is your name?" "Olympie."
"You shall have fifty francs, and you shall be called Nicolette."
CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN
With M. Gillenormand, sorrow was converted into wrath; he was furious at being in despair. He had all sorts
of prejudices and took all sorts of liberties. One of the facts of which his exterior relief and his internal
satisfaction was composed, was, as we have just hinted, that he had remained a brisk spark, and that he
passed energetically for such. This he called having "royal renown." This royal renown sometimes drew
down upon him singular windfalls. One day, there was brought to him in a basket, as though it had been a
basket of oysters, a stout, newly born boy, who was yelling like the deuce, and duly wrapped in
swaddlingclothes, which a servantmaid, dismissed six months previously, attributed to him. M.
Gillenormand had, at that time, fully completed his eightyfourth year. Indignation and uproar in the
establishment. And whom did that bold hussy think she could persuade to believe that? What audacity! What
an abominable calumny! M. Gillenormand himself was not at all enraged. He gazed at the brat with the
amiable smile of a good man who is flattered by the calumny, and said in an aside: "Well, what now? What's
the matter? You are finely taken aback, and really, you are excessively ignorant. M. le Duc d'Angouleme, the
bastard of his Majesty Charles IX., married a silly jade of fifteen when he was eightyfive; M. Virginal,
Marquis d'Alluye, brother to the Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux, had, at the age of
eightythree, by the maid of Madame la Presidente Jacquin, a son, a real child of love, who became a
Chevalier of Malta and a counsellor of state; one of the great men of this century, the Abbe Tabaraud, is the
son of a man of eightyseven. There is nothing out of the ordinary in these things. And then, the Bible! Upon
that I declare that this little gentleman is none of mine. Let him be taken care of. It is not his fault." This
manner of procedure was goodtempered. The woman, whose name was Magnon, sent him another parcel in
the following year. It was a boy again. Thereupon, M. Gillenormand capitulated. He sent the two brats back
to their mother, promising to pay eighty francs a month for their maintenance, on the condition that the said
mother would not do so any more. He added: "I insist upon it that the mother shall treat them well. I shall go
to see them from time to time." And this he did. He had had a brother who was a priest, and who had been
rector of the Academy of Poitiers for three and thirty years, and had died at seventynine. "I lost him young,"
said he. This brother, of whom but little memory remains, was a peaceable miser, who, being a priest, thought
himself bound to bestow alms on the poor whom he met, but he never gave them anything except bad or
demonetized sous, thereby discovering a means of going to hell by way of paradise. As for M. Gillenormand
the elder, he never haggled over his almsgiving, but gave gladly and nobly. He was kindly, abrupt,
charitable, and if he had been rich, his turn of mind would have been magnificent. He desired that all which
concerned him should be done in a grand manner, even his rogueries. One day, having been cheated by a
business man in a matter of inheritance, in a gross and apparent manner, he uttered this solemn exclamation:
"That was indecently done! I am really ashamed of this pilfering. Everything has degenerated in this century,
even the rascals. Morbleu! this is not the way to rob a man of my standing. I am robbed as though in a forest,
but badly robbed. Silva, sint consule dignae!" He had had two wives, as we have already mentioned; by the
first he had had a daughter, who had remained unmarried, and by the second another daughter, who had died
at about the age of thirty, who had wedded, through love, or chance, or otherwise, a soldier of fortune who
had served in the armies of the Republic and of the Empire, who had won the cross at Austerlitz and had been
made colonel at Waterloo. "He is the disgrace of my family," said the old bourgeois. He took an immense
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amount of snuff, and had a particularly graceful manner of plucking at his lace ruffle with the back of one
hand. He believed very little in God.
CHAPTER VII. RULE: RECEIVE NO ONE EXCEPT IN THE EVENING
Such was M. LucEsprit Gillenormand, who had not lost his hair, which was gray rather than white,and
which was always dressed in "dog's ears." To sum up, he was venerable in spite of all this.
He had something of the eighteenth century about him; frivolous and great.
In 1814 and during the early years of the Restoration, M. Gillenormand, who was still young,he was only
seventyfour,lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain, Rue Servandoni, near SaintSulpice. He had only
retired to the Marais when he quitted society, long after attaining the age of eighty.
And, on abandoning society, he had immured himself in his habits. The principal one, and that which was
invariable, was to keep his door absolutely closed during the day, and never to receive any one whatever
except in the evening. He dined at five o'clock, and after that his door was open. That had been the fashion of
his century, and he would not swerve from it. "The day is vulgar," said he, "and deserves only a closed
shutter. Fashionable people only light up their minds when the zenith lights up its stars." And he barricaded
himself against every one, even had it been the king himself. This was the antiquated elegance of his day.
CHAPTER VIII. TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR
We have just spoken of M. Gillenormand's two daughters. They had come into the world ten years apart. In
their youth they had borne very little resemblance to each other, either in character or countenance, and had
also been as little like sisters to each other as possible. The youngest had a charming soul, which turned
towards all that belongs to the light, was occupied with flowers, with verses, with music, which fluttered
away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was wedded from her very youth, in ideal, to a vague and
heroic figure. The elder had also her chimera; she espied in the azure some very wealthy purveyor, a
contractor, a splendidly stupid husband, a million made man, or even a prefect; the receptions of the
Prefecture, an usher in the antechamber with a chain on his neck, official balls, the harangues of the
townhall, to be "Madame la Prefete,"all this had created a whirlwind in her imagination. Thus the two
sisters strayed, each in her own dream, at the epoch when they were young girls. Both had wings, the one like
an angel, the other like a goose.
No ambition is ever fully realized, here below at least. No paradise becomes terrestrial in our day. The
younger wedded the man of her dreams, but she died. The elder did not marry at all.
At the moment when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique
virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is
possible to see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, no one had ever known her first
name. She was called Mademoiselle Gillenormand, the elder.
In the matter of cant, Mademoiselle Gillenormand could have given points to a miss. Her modesty was
carried to the other extreme of blackness. She cherished a frightful memory of her life; one day, a man had
beheld her garter.
Age had only served to accentuate this pitiless modesty. Her guimpe was never sufficiently opaque, and
never ascended sufficiently high. She multiplied clasps and pins where no one would have dreamed of
looking. The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels in proportion as the fortress is the less
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menaced.
Nevertheless, let him who can explain these antique mysteries of innocence, she allowed an officer of the
Lancers, her grand nephew, named Theodule, to embrace her without displeasure.
In spite of this favored Lancer, the label: Prude, under which we have classed her, suited her to absolute
perfection. Mademoiselle Gillenormand was a sort of twilight soul. Prudery is a demivirtue and a
demivice.
To prudery she added bigotry, a wellassorted lining. She belonged to the society of the Virgin, wore a white
veil on certain festivals, mumbled special orisons, revered "the holy blood," venerated "the sacred heart,"
remained for hours in contemplation before a rococojesuit altar in a chapel which was inaccessible to the
rank and file of the faithful, and there allowed her soul to soar among little clouds of marble, and through
great rays of gilded wood.
She had a chapel friend, an ancient virgin like herself, named Mademoiselle Vaubois, who was a positive
blockhead, and beside whom Mademoiselle Gillenormand had the pleasure of being an eagle. Beyond the
Agnus Dei and Ave Maria, Mademoiselle Vaubois had no knowledge of anything except of the different
ways of making preserves. Mademoiselle Vaubois, perfect in her style, was the ermine of stupidity without a
single spot of intelligence.
Let us say it plainly, Mademoiselle Gillenormand had gained rather than lost as she grew older. This is the
case with passive natures. She had never been malicious, which is relative kindness; and then, years wear
away the angles, and the softening which comes with time had come to her. She was melancholy with an
obscure sadness of which she did not herself know the secret. There breathed from her whole person the
stupor of a life that was finished, and which had never had a beginning.
She kept house for her father. M. Gillenormand had his daughter near him, as we have seen that Monseigneur
Bienvenu had his sister with him. These households comprised of an old man and an old spinster are not rare,
and always have the touching aspect of two weaknesses leaning on each other for support.
There was also in this house, between this elderly spinster and this old man, a child, a little boy, who was
always trembling and mute in the presence of M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand never addressed this child
except in a severe voice, and sometimes, with uplifted cane: "Here, sir! rascal, scoundrel, come here!
Answer me, you scamp! Just let me see you, you goodfornothing!" etc., etc. He idolized him.
This was his grandson. We shall meet with this child again later on.
BOOK THIRD.THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
CHAPTER I. AN ANCIENT SALON
When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he had frequented many very good and very aristocratic
salons. Although a bourgeois, M. Gillenormand was received in society. As he had a double measure of wit,
in the first place, that which was born with him, and secondly, that which was attributed to him, he was even
sought out and made much of. He never went anywhere except on condition of being the chief person there.
There are people who will have influence at any price, and who will have other people busy themselves over
them; when they cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination
in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his selfrespect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had
happened to him to hold his own against M. de Bonald, and even against M. BengyPuyVallee.
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About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house in his own neighborhood, in the Rue
Ferou, with Madame la Baronne de T., a worthy and respectable person, whose husband had been
Ambassador of France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime, had gone very
passionately into ecstasies and magnetic visions, had died bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his
entire fortune, some very curious Memoirs about Mesmer and his tub, in ten manuscript volumes, bound in
red morocco and gilded on the edges. Madame de T. had not published the memoirs, out of pride, and
maintained herself on a meagre income which had survived no one knew how.
Madame de T. lived far from the Court; "a very mixed society," as she said, in a noble isolation, proud and
poor. A few friends assembled twice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purely
Royalist salon. They sipped tea there, and uttered groans or cries of horror at the century, the charter, the
Bonapartists, the prostitution of the blue ribbon, or the Jacobinism of Louis XVIII., according as the wind
veered towards elegy or dithyrambs; and they spoke in low tones of the hopes which were presented by
Monsieur, afterwards Charles X.
The songs of the fishwomen, in which Napoleon was called Nicolas, were received there with transports of
joy. Duchesses, the most delicate and charming women in the world, went into ecstasies over couplets like
the following, addressed to "the federates":
Refoncez dans vos culottes[20]
Le bout d' chemis' qui vous pend.
Qu'on n' dis' pas qu' les patriotes
Ont arbore l' drapeau blanc?
[20] Tuck into your trousers the shirttail that is hanging out. Let it not be said that patriots have hoisted the
white flag.
There they amused themselves with puns which were considered terrible, with innocent plays upon words
which they supposed to be venomous, with quatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry,
a moderate cabinet, of which MM. Decazes and Deserre were members:
Pour raffermir le trone ebranle sur sa base,[21]
Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case.
[21] In order to reestablish the shaken throne firmly on its base, soil (Des solles), greenhouse and house
(Decazes) must be changed.
Or they drew up a list of the chamber of peers, "an abominably Jacobin chamber," and from this list they
combined alliances of names, in such a manner as to form, for example, phrases like the following: Damas.
Sabran. GouvionSaintCyr.All this was done merrily. In that society, they parodied the Revolution. They
used I know not what desires to give point to the same wrath in inverse sense. They sang their little Ca ira:
Ah! ca ira ca ira ca ira!
Les Bonapartistes a la lanterne!
Songs are like the guillotine; they chop away indifferently, today this head, tomorrow that. It is only a
variation.
In the Fualdes affair, which belongs to this epoch, 1816, they took part for Bastide and Jausion, because
Fualdes was "a Buonapartist." They designated the liberals as friends and brothers; this constituted the most
deadly insult.
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Like certain church towers, Madame de T.'s salon had two cocks. One of them was M. Gillenormand, the
other was Comte de LamotheValois, of whom it was whispered about, with a sort of respect: "Do you
know? That is the Lamothe of the affair of the necklace." These singular amnesties do occur in parties.
Let us add the following: in the bourgeoisie, honored situations decay through too easy relations; one must
beware whom one admits; in the same way that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who are cold,
there is a diminution of consideration in the approach of despised persons. The ancient society of the upper
classes held themselves above this law, as above every other. Marigny, the brother of the Pompadour, had his
entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite of? No, because. Du Barry, the godfather of the Vaubernier, was
very welcome at the house of M. le Marechal de Richelieu. This society is Olympus. Mercury and the Prince
de Guemenee are at home there. A thief is admitted there, provided he be a god.
The Comte de Lamothe, who, in 1815, was an old man seventyfive years of age, had nothing remarkable
about him except his silent and sententious air, his cold and angular face, his perfectly polished manners, his
coat buttoned up to his cravat, and his long legs always crossed in long, flabby trousers of the hue of burnt
sienna. His face was the same color as his trousers.
This M. de Lamothe was "held in consideration" in this salon on account of his "celebrity" and, strange to
say, though true, because of his name of Valois.
As for M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely firstrate quality. He had, in spite of his levity,
and without its interfering in any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing,
dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his great age added to it. One is not a century with
impunity. The years finally produce around a head a venerable dishevelment.
In addition to this, he said things which had the genuine sparkle of the old rock. Thus, when the King of
Prussia, after having restored Louis XVIII., came to pay the latter a visit under the name of the Count de
Ruppin, he was received by the descendant of Louis XIV. somewhat as though he had been the Marquis de
Brandebourg, and with the most delicate impertinence. M. Gillenormand approved: "All kings who are not
the King of France," said he, "are provincial kings." One day, the following question was put and the
following answer returned in his presence: "To what was the editor of the Courrier Francais condemned?"
"To be suspended." "Sus is superfluous," observed M. Gillenormand.[22] Remarks of this nature found a
situation.
[22] Suspendu, suspended; pendu, hung.
At the Te Deum on the anniversary of the return of the Bourbons, he said, on seeing M. de Talleyrand pass
by: "There goes his Excellency the Evil One."
M. Gillenormand was always accompanied by his daughter, that tall mademoiselle, who was over forty and
looked fifty, and by a handsome little boy of seven years, white, rosy, fresh, with happy and trusting eyes,
who never appeared in that salon without hearing voices murmur around him: "How handsome he is! What a
pity! Poor child!" This child was the one of whom we dropped a word a while ago. He was called "poor
child," because he had for a father "a brigand of the Loire."
This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand's soninlaw, who has already been mentioned, and whom
M. Gillenormand called "the disgrace of his family."
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CHAPTER II. ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT EPOCH
Any one who had chanced to pass through the little town of Vernon at this epoch, and who had happened to
walk across that fine monumental bridge, which will soon be succeeded, let us hope, by some hideous iron
cable bridge, might have observed, had he dropped his eyes over the parapet, a man about fifty years of age
wearing a leather cap, and trousers and a waistcoat of coarse gray cloth, to which something yellow which
had been a red ribbon, was sewn, shod with wooden sabots, tanned by the sun, his face nearly black and his
hair nearly white, a large scar on his forehead which ran down upon his cheek, bowed, bent, prematurely
aged, who walked nearly every day, hoe and sickle in hand, in one of those compartments surrounded by
walls which abut on the bridge, and border the left bank of the Seine like a chain of terraces, charming
enclosures full of flowers of which one could say, were they much larger: "these are gardens," and were they
a little smaller: "these are bouquets." All these enclosures abut upon the river at one end, and on a house at
the other. The man in the waistcoat and the wooden shoes of whom we have just spoken, inhabited the
smallest of these enclosures and the most humble of these houses about 1817. He lived there alone and
solitary, silently and poorly, with a woman who was neither young nor old, neither homely nor pretty, neither
a peasant nor a bourgeoise, who served him. The plot of earth which he called his garden was celebrated in
the town for the beauty of the flowers which he cultivated there. These flowers were his occupation.
By dint of labor, of perseverance, of attention, and of buckets of water, he had succeeded in creating after the
Creator, and he had invented certain tulips and certain dahlias which seemed to have been forgotten by
nature. He was ingenious; he had forestalled Soulange Bodin in the formation of little clumps of earth of
heath mould, for the cultivation of rare and precious shrubs from America and China. He was in his alleys
from the break of day, in summer, planting, cutting, hoeing, watering, walking amid his flowers with an air of
kindness, sadness, and sweetness, sometimes standing motionless and thoughtful for hours, listening to the
song of a bird in the trees, the babble of a child in a house, or with his eyes fixed on a drop of dew at the tip
of a spear of grass, of which the sun made a carbuncle. His table was very plain, and he drank more milk than
wine. A child could make him give way, and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that be seemed shy, he
rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who tapped at his pane and his cure, the Abbe
Mabeuf, a good old man. Nevertheless, if the inhabitants of the town, or strangers, or any chance comers,
curious to see his tulips, rang at his little cottage, he opened his door with a smile. He was the "brigand of the
Loire."
Any one who had, at the same time, read military memoirs, biographies, the Moniteur, and the bulletins of
the grand army, would have been struck by a name which occurs there with tolerable frequency, the name of
Georges Pontmercy. When very young, this Georges Pontmercy had been a soldier in Saintonge's regiment.
The revolution broke out. Saintonge's regiment formed a part of the army of the Rhine; for the old regiments
of the monarchy preserved their names of provinces even after the fall of the monarchy, and were only
divided into brigades in 1794. Pontmercy fought at Spire, at Worms, at Neustadt, at Turkheim, at Alzey, at
Mayence, where he was one of the two hundred who formed Houchard's rearguard. It was the twelfth to hold
its ground against the corps of the Prince of Hesse, behind the old rampart of Andernach, and only rejoined
the main body of the army when the enemy's cannon had opened a breach from the cord of the parapet to the
foot of the glacis. He was under Kleber at Marchiennes and at the battle of MontPalissel, where a ball from
a biscaien broke his arm. Then he passed to the frontier of Italy, and was one of the thirty grenadiers who
defended the Col de Tende with Joubert. Joubert was appointed its adjutantgeneral, and Pontmercy
sublieutenant. Pontmercy was by Berthier's side in the midst of the grapeshot of that day at Lodi which
caused Bonaparte to say: "Berthier has been cannoneer, cavalier, and grenadier." He beheld his old general,
Joubert, fall at Novi, at the moment when, with uplifted sabre, he was shouting: "Forward!" Having been
embarked with his company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was proceeding
from Genoa to some obscure port on the coast, he fell into a wasps'nest of seven or eight English vessels.
The Genoese commander wanted to throw his cannon into the sea, to hide the soldiers between decks, and to
slip along in the dark as a merchant vessel. Pontmercy had the colors hoisted to the peak, and sailed proudly
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past under the guns of the British frigates. Twenty leagues further on, his audacity having increased, he
attacked with his pinnace, and captured a large English transport which was carrying troops to Sicily, and
which was so loaded down with men and horses that the vessel was sunk to the level of the sea. In 1805 he
was in that Malher division which took Gunzberg from the Archduke Ferdinand. At Weltingen he received
into his arms, beneath a storm of bullets, Colonel Maupetit, mortally wounded at the head of the 9th
Dragoons. He distinguished himself at Austerlitz in that admirable march in echelons effected under the
enemy's fire. When the cavalry of the Imperial Russian Guard crushed a battalion of the 4th of the line,
Pontmercy was one of those who took their revenge and overthrew the Guard. The Emperor gave him the
cross. Pontmercy saw Wurmser at Mantua, Melas, and Alexandria, Mack at Ulm, made prisoners in
succession. He formed a part of the eighth corps of the grand army which Mortier commanded, and which
captured Hamburg. Then he was transferred to the 55th of the line, which was the old regiment of Flanders.
At Eylau he was in the cemetery where, for the space of two hours, the heroic Captain Louis Hugo, the uncle
of the author of this book, sustained alone with his company of eightythree men every effort of the hostile
army. Pontmercy was one of the three who emerged alive from that cemetery. He was at Friedland. Then he
saw Moscow. Then La Beresina, then Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Wachau, Leipzig, and the defiles of
Gelenhausen; then Montmirail, ChateauThierry, Craon, the banks of the Marne, the banks of the Aisne, and
the redoubtable position of Laon. At ArnayLeDuc, being then a captain, he put ten Cossacks to the sword,
and saved, not his general, but his corporal. He was well slashed up on this occasion, and twentyseven
splinters were extracted from his left arm alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he had just
exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was called under the old regime, the double
hand, that is to say, an equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket as a soldier, or a squadron or a
battalion as an officer. It is from this aptitude, perfected by a military education, which certain special
branches of the service arise, the dragoons, for example, who are both cavalrymen and infantry at one and
the same time. He accompanied Napoleon to the Island of Elba. At Waterloo, he was chief of a squadron of
cuirassiers, in Dubois' brigade. It was he who captured the standard of the Lunenburg battalion. He came and
cast the flag at the Emperor's feet. He was covered with blood. While tearing down the banner he had
received a swordcut across his face. The Emperor, greatly pleased, shouted to him: "You are a colonel, you
are a baron, you are an officer of the Legion of Honor!" Pontmercy replied: "Sire, I thank you for my
widow." An hour later, he fell in the ravine of Ohain. Now, who was this Georges Pontmercy? He was this
same "brigand of the Loire."
We have already seen something of his history. After Waterloo, Pontmercy, who had been pulled out of the
hollow road of Ohain, as it will be remembered, had succeeded in joining the army, and had dragged himself
from ambulance to ambulance as far as the cantonments of the Loire.
The Restoration had placed him on halfpay, then had sent him into residence, that is to say, under
surveillance, at Vernon. King Louis XVIII., regarding all that which had taken place during the Hundred
Days as not having occurred at all, did not recognize his quality as an officer of the Legion of Honor, nor his
grade of colonel, nor his title of baron. He, on his side, neglected no occasion of signing himself "Colonel
Baron Pontmercy." He had only an old blue coat, and he never went out without fastening to it his rosette as
an officer of the Legion of Honor. The Attorney for the Crown had him warned that the authorities would
prosecute him for "illegal" wearing of this decoration. When this notice was conveyed to him through an
officious intermediary, Pontmercy retorted with a bitter smile: "I do not know whether I no longer understand
French, or whether you no longer speak it; but the fact is that I do not understand." Then he went out for eight
successive days with his rosette. They dared not interfere with him. Two or three times the Minister of War
and the general in command of the department wrote to him with the following address: A Monsieur le
Commandant Pontmercy." He sent back the letters with the seals unbroken. At the same moment, Napoleon
at Saint Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives of Sir Hudson Lowe addressed to General
Bonaparte. Pontmercy had ended, may we be pardoned the expression, by having in his mouth the same
saliva as his Emperor.
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In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused to salute Flaminius, and who had a
little of Hannibal's spirit.
One day he encountered the districtattorney in one of the streets of Vernon, stepped up to him, and said:
"Mr. Crown Attorney, am I permitted to wear my scar?"
He had nothing save his meagre halfpay as chief of squadron. He had hired the smallest house which he
could find at Vernon. He lived there alone, we have just seen how. Under the Empire, between two wars, he
had found time to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The old bourgeois, thoroughly indignant at bottom,
had given his consent with a sigh, saying: "The greatest families are forced into it." In 1815, Madame
Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every sense, by the way, lofty in sentiment and rare, and worthy of her
husband, died, leaving a child. This child had been the colonel's joy in his solitude; but the grandfather had
imperatively claimed his grandson, declaring that if the child were not given to him he would disinherit him.
The father had yielded in the little one's interest, and had transferred his love to flowers.
Moreover, he had renounced everything, and neither stirred up mischief nor conspired. He shared his
thoughts between the innocent things which he was then doing and the great things which he had done. He
passed his time in expecting a pink or in recalling Austerlitz.
M. Gillenormand kept up no relations with his soninlaw. The colonel was "a bandit" to him. M.
Gillenormand never mentioned the colonel, except when he occasionally made mocking allusions to "his
Baronship." It had been expressly agreed that Pontmercy should never attempt to see his son nor to speak to
him, under penalty of having the latter handed over to him disowned and disinherited. For the Gillenormands,
Pontmercy was a man afflicted with the plague. They intended to bring up the child in their own way.
Perhaps the colonel was wrong to accept these conditions, but he submitted to them, thinking that he was
doing right and sacrificing no one but himself.
The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount to much; but the inheritance of Mademoiselle
Gillenormand the elder was considerable. This aunt, who had remained unmarried, was very rich on the
maternal side, and her sister's son was her natural heir. The boy, whose name was Marius, knew that he had a
father, but nothing more. No one opened his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society into which
his grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks, had eventually enlightened the little boy's mind;
he had finally understood something of the case, and as he naturally took in the ideas and opinions which
were, so to speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and slow penetration, he gradually came to
think of his father only with shame and with a pain at his heart.
While he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away every two or three months, came to Paris
on the sly, like a criminal breaking his ban, and went and posted himself at SaintSulpice, at the hour when
Aunt Gillenormand led Marius to the mass. There, trembling lest the aunt should turn round, concealed
behind a pillar, motionless, not daring to breathe, he gazed at his child. The scarred veteran was afraid of that
old spinster.
From this had arisen his connection with the cure of Vernon, M. l'Abbe Mabeuf.
That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of SaintSulpice, who had often observed this man gazing at
his child, and the scar on his cheek, and the large tears in his eyes. That man, who had so manly an air, yet
who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden. That face had clung to his mind. One day, having
gone to Vernon to see his brother, he had encountered Colonel Pontmercy on the bridge, and had recognized
the man of SaintSulpice. The warden had mentioned the circumstance to the cure, and both had paid the
colonel a visit, on some pretext or other. This visit led to others. The colonel, who had been extremely
reserved at first, ended by opening his heart, and the cure and the warden finally came to know the whole
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history, and how Pontmercy was sacrificing his happiness to his child's future. This caused the cure to regard
him with veneration and tenderness, and the colonel, on his side, became fond of the cure. And moreover,
when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an
old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here
below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.
Twice a year, on the first of January and on St. George's day, Marius wrote duty letters to his father, which
were dictated by his aunt, and which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula; this was
all that M. Gillenormand tolerated; and the father answered them with very tender letters which the
grandfather thrust into his pocket unread.
CHAPTER III. REQUIESCANT
Madame de T.'s salon was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world. It was the only opening through
which he could get a glimpse of life. This opening was sombre, and more cold than warmth, more night than
day, came to him through this skylight. This child, who had been all joy and light on entering this strange
world, soon became melancholy, and, what is still more contrary to his age, grave. Surrounded by all those
singular and imposing personages, he gazed about him with serious amazement. Everything conspired to
increase this astonishment in him. There were in Madame de T.'s salon some very noble ladies named
Mathan, Noe, Levis,which was pronounced Levi,Cambis, pronounced Cambyse. These antique visages
and these Biblical names mingled in the child's mind with the Old Testament which he was learning by heart,
and when they were all there, seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely lighted by a lamp shaded with
green, with their severe profiles, their gray or white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose lugubrious
colors could not be distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words which were both majestic and severe,
little Marius stared at them with frightened eyes, in the conviction that he beheld not women, but patriarchs
and magi, not real beings, but phantoms.
With these phantoms, priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of this ancient salon, and some
gentlemen; the Marquis de Sass****, private secretary to Madame de Berry, the Vicomte de Val***, who
published, under the pseudonyme of CharlesAntoine, monorhymed odes, the Prince de Beauff*******,
who, though very young, had a gray head and a pretty and witty wife, whose very lownecked toilettes of
scarlet velvet with gold torsades alarmed these shadows, the Marquis de C*****d'E******, the man in all
France who best understood "proportioned politeness," the Comte d'Am*****, the kindly man with the
amiable chin, and the Chevalier de PortdeGuy, a pillar of the library of the Louvre, called the King's
cabinet, M. de PortdeGuy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793, at the age of
sixteen, he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an octogenarian, the Bishop of
Mirepoix, also refractory, but as a priest, while he was so in the capacity of a soldier. This was at Toulon.
Their business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and bodies of the persons who had
been guillotined during the day; they bore away on their backs these dripping corpses, and their red
galleyslave blouses had a clot of blood at the back of the neck, which was dry in the morning and wet at
night. These tragic tales abounded in Madame de T.'s salon, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded
Trestaillon. Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their whist there; M. Thibord du Chalard, M.
Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. CornetDincourt. The bailiff de
Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de
Talleyrand. He had been M. le Comte d'Artois' companion in pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching under
Campaspe, he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that way he had exhibited to the ages a
philosopher avenged by a bailiff. As for the priests, there was the Abbe Halma, the same to whom M. Larose,
his collaborator on la Foudre, said: "Bah! Who is there who is not fifty years old? a few greenhorns perhaps?"
The Abbe Letourneur, preacher to the King, the Abbe Frayssinous, who was not, as yet, either count, or
bishop, or minister, or peer, and who wore an old cassock whose buttons were missing, and the Abbe
Keravenant, Cure of SaintGermaindesPres; also the Pope's Nuncio, then Monsignor Macchi, Archbishop
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Page No 433
of Nisibi, later on Cardinal, remarkable for his long, pensive nose, and another Monsignor, entitled thus:
Abbate Palmieri, domestic prelate, one of the seven participant prothonotaries of the Holy See, Canon of the
illustrious Liberian basilica, Advocate of the saints, Postulatore dei Santi, which refers to matters of
canonization, and signifies very nearly: Master of Requests of the section of Paradise. Lastly, two cardinals,
M. de la Luzerne, and M. de Cl****** T*******. The Cardinal of Luzerne was a writer and was destined to
have, a few years later, the honor of signing in the Conservateur articles side by side with Chateaubriand; M.
de Cl****** T******* was Archbishop of Toul****, and often made trips to Paris, to his nephew, the
Marquis de T*******, who was Minister of Marine and War. The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a
merry little man, who displayed his red stockings beneath his tuckedup cassock; his specialty was a hatred
of the Encyclopaedia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the
Rue M***** on summer evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then stood, halted to listen to the
shock of the balls and the piercing voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monseigneur Cotiret,
Bishop in partibus of Caryste: "Mark, Abbe, I make a cannon." The Cardinal de Cl****** T******* had
been brought to Madame de T.'s by his most intimate friend, M. de Roquelaure, former Bishop of Senlis, and
one of the Forty. M. de Roquelaure was notable for his lofty figure and his assiduity at the Academy; through
the glass door of the neighboring hall of the library where the French Academy then held its meetings, the
curious could, on every Tuesday, contemplate the ExBishop of Senlis, usually standing erect, freshly
powdered, in violet hose, with his back turned to the door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a better
view of his little collar. All these ecclesiastics, though for the most part as much courtiers as churchmen,
added to the gravity of the T. salon, whose seigniorial aspect was accentuated by five peers of France, the
Marquis de Vib****, the Marquis de Tal***, the Marquis de Herb*******, the Vicomte Damb***, and the
Duc de Val********. This Duc de Val********, although Prince de Mon***, that is to say a reigning prince
abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage, that he viewed everything through their medium. It was
he who said: "The Cardinals are the peers of France of Rome; the lords are the peers of France of England."
Moreover, as it is indispensable that the Revolution should be everywhere in this century, this feudal salon
was, as we have said, dominated by a bourgeois. M. Gillenormand reigned there.
There lay the essence and quintessence of the Parisian white society. There reputations, even Royalist
reputations, were held in quarantine. There is always a trace of anarchy in renown. Chateaubriand, had he
entered there, would have produced the effect of Pere Duchene. Some of the scoffedat did, nevertheless,
penetrate thither on sufferance. Comte Beug*** was received there, subject to correction.
The "noble" salons of the present day no longer resemble those salons. The Faubourg SaintGermain reeks of
the fagot even now. The Royalists of today are demagogues, let us record it to their credit.
At Madame de T.'s the society was superior, taste was exquisite and haughty, under the cover of a great show
of politeness. Manners there admitted of all sorts of involuntary refinements which were the old regime itself,
buried but still alive. Some of these habits, especially in the matter of language, seem eccentric. Persons but
superficially acquainted with them would have taken for provincial that which was only antique. A woman
was called Madame la Generale. Madame la Colonelle was not entirely disused. The charming Madame de
Leon, in memory, no doubt, of the Duchesses de Longueville and de Chevreuse, preferred this appellation to
her title of Princesse. The Marquise de Crequy was also called Madame la Colonelle.
It was this little high society which invented at the Tuileries the refinement of speaking to the King in private
as the King, in the third person, and never as Your Majesty, the designation of Your Majesty having been
"soiled by the usurper."
Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age, which released them from the
necessity of understanding it. They abetted each other in amazement. They communicated to each other that
modicum of light which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information on Epimenides. The deaf man
made the blind man acquainted with the course of things. They declared that the time which had elasped since
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Coblentz had not existed. In the same manner that Louis XVIII. was by the grace of God, in the five and
twentieth year of his reign, the emigrants were, by rights, in the five and twentieth year of their adolescence.
All was harmonious; nothing was too much alive; speech hardly amounted to a breath; the newspapers,
agreeing with the salons, seemed a papyrus. There were some young people, but they were rather dead. The
liveries in the antechamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete personages were served by domestics of
the same stamp.
They all had the air of having lived a long time ago, and of obstinately resisting the sepulchre. Nearly the
whole dictionary consisted of Conserver, Conservation, Conservateur; to be in good odor, that was the
point. There are, in fact, aromatics in the opinions of these venerable groups, and their ideas smelled of it. It
was a mummified society. The masters were embalmed, the servants were stuffed with straw.
A worthy old marquise, an emigree and ruined, who had but a solitary maid, continued to say: "My people."
What did they do in Madame de T.'s salon? They were ultra.
To be ultra; this word, although what it represents may not have disappeared, has no longer any meaning at
the present day. Let us explain it.
To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of
the attar; it is to illtreat the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot
on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of
idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that
the King is not sufficiently royal, and that the night has too much light; it is to be discontented with alabaster,
with snow, with the swan and the lily in the name of whiteness; it is to be a partisan of things to the point of
becoming their enemy; it is to be so strongly for, as to be against.
The ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of the Restoration.
Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in 1814 and terminates about 1820, with
the advent of M. de Villele, the practical man of the Right. These six years were an extraordinary moment; at
one and the same time brilliant and gloomy, smiling and sombre, illuminated as by the radiance of dawn and
entirely covered, at the same time, with the shadows of the great catastrophes which still filled the horizon
and were slowly sinking into the past. There existed in that light and that shadow, a complete little new and
old world, comic and sad, juvenile and senile, which was rubbing its eyes; nothing resembles an awakening
like a return; a group which regarded France with illtemper, and which France regarded with irony; good
old owls of marquises by the streetful, who had returned, and of ghosts, the "former" subjects of amazement
at everything, brave and noble gentlemen who smiled at being in France but wept also, delighted to behold
their country once more, in despair at not finding their monarchy; the nobility of the Crusades treating the
nobility of the Empire, that is to say, the nobility of the sword, with scorn; historic races who had lost the
sense of history; the sons of the companions of Charlemagne disdaining the companions of Napoleon. The
swords, as we have just remarked, returned the insult; the sword of Fontenoy was laughable and nothing but a
scrap of rusty iron; the sword of Marengo was odious and was only a sabre. Former days did not recognize
Yesterday. People no longer had the feeling for what was grand. There was some one who called Bonaparte
Scapin. This Society no longer exists. Nothing of it, we repeat, exists today. When we select from it some
one figure at random, and attempt to make it live again in thought, it seems as strange to us as the world
before the Deluge. It is because it, too, as a matter of fact, has been engulfed in a deluge. It has disappeared
beneath two Revolutions. What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover all that it is their mission to
destroy and to bury, and how promptly they create frightful gulfs!
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Such was the physiognomy of the salons of those distant and candid times when M. Martainville had more
wit than Voltaire.
These salons had a literature and politics of their own. They believed in Fievee. M. Agier laid down the law
in them. They commentated M. Colnet, the old bookseller and publicist of the Quay Malaquais. Napoleon
was to them thoroughly the Corsican Ogre. Later on the introduction into history of M. le Marquis de
Bonaparte, LieutenantGeneral of the King's armies, was a concession to the spirit of the age.
These salons did not long preserve their purity. Beginning with 1818, doctrinarians began to spring up in
them, a disturbing shade. Their way was to be Royalists and to excuse themselves for being so. Where the
ultras were very proud, the doctrinarians were rather ashamed. They had wit; they had silence; their political
dogma was suitably impregnated with arrogance; they should have succeeded. They indulged, and usefully
too, in excesses in the matter of white neckties and tightly buttoned coats. The mistake or the misfortune of
the doctrinarian party was to create aged youth. They assumed the poses of wise men. They dreamed of
engrafting a temperate power on the absolute and excessive principle. They opposed, and sometimes with
rare intelligence, conservative liberalism to the liberalism which demolishes. They were heard to say:
"Thanks for Royalism! It has rendered more than one service. It has brought back tradition, worship, religion,
respect. It is faithful, brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret, the secular
grandeurs of the monarchy with the new grandeurs of the nation. Its mistake is not to understand the
Revolution, the Empire, glory, liberty, young ideas, young generations, the age. But this mistake which it
makes with regard to us, have we not sometimes been guilty of it towards them? The Revolution, whose
heirs we are, ought to be intelligent on all points. To attack Royalism is a misconstruction of liberalism. What
an error! And what blindness! Revolutionary France is wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to
say, towards its mother, that is to say, towards itself. After the 5th of September, the nobility of the monarchy
is treated as the nobility of the Empire was treated after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle, we are
unjust to the fleurdelys. It seems that we must always have something to proscribe! Does it serve any
purpose to ungild the crown of Louis XIV., to scrape the coat of arms of Henry IV.? We scoff at M. de
Vaublanc for erasing the N's from the bridge of Jena! What was it that he did? What are we doing? Bouvines
belongs to us as well as Marengo. The fleursdelys are ours as well as the N's. That is our patrimony. To
what purpose shall we diminish it? We must not deny our country in the past any more than in the present.
Why not accept the whole of history? Why not love the whole of France?
It is thus that doctrinarians criticised and protected Royalism, which was displeased at criticism and furious at
protection.
The ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congregation characterized the second. Skill follows ardor.
Let us confine ourselves here to this sketch.
In the course of this narrative, the author of this book has encountered in his path this curious moment of
contemporary history; he has been forced to cast a passing glance upon it, and to trace once more some of the
singular features of this society which is unknown today. But he does it rapidly and without any bitter or
derisive idea. Souvenirs both respectful and affectionate, for they touch his mother, attach him to this past.
Moreover, let us remark, this same petty world had a grandeur of its own. One may smile at it, but one can
neither despise nor hate it. It was the France of former days.
Marius Pontmercy pursued some studies, as all children do. When he emerged from the hands of Aunt
Gillenormand, his grandfather confided him to a worthy professor of the most purely classic innocence. This
young soul which was expanding passed from a prude to a vulgar pedant.
Marius went through his years of college, then he entered the law school. He was a Royalist, fanatical and
severe. He did not love his grandfather much, as the latter's gayety and cynicism repelled him, and his
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feelings towards his father were gloomy.
He was, on the whole, a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud, religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to
harshness, pure to shyness.
CHAPTER IV. END OF THE BRIGAND
The conclusion of Marius' classical studies coincided with M. Gillenormand's departure from society. The old
man bade farewell to the Faubourg SaintGermain and to Madame de T.'s salon, and established himself in
the Mardis, in his house of the Rue des FillesduCalvaire. There he had for servants, in addition to the
porter, that chambermaid, Nicolette, who had succeeded to Magnon, and that shortbreathed and pursy
Basque, who have been mentioned above.
In 1827, Marius had just attained his seventeenth year. One evening, on his return home, he saw his
grandfather holding a letter in his hand.
"Marius," said M. Gillenormand, "you will set out for Vernon tomorrow."
"Why?" said Marius.
"To see your father."
Marius was seized with a trembling fit. He had thought of everything except thisthat he should one day be
called upon to see his father. Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us admit it, more
disagreeable to him. It was forcing estrangement into reconciliation. It was not an affliction, but it was an
unpleasant duty.
Marius, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the slasher, as M.
Gillenormand called him on his amiable days, did not love him; this was evident, since he had abandoned
him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. "Nothing is more simple," he said to himself.
He was so astounded that he did not question M. Gillenormand. The grandfather resumed:
"It appears that he is ill. He demands your presence."
And after a pause, he added:
"Set out tomorrow morning. I think there is a coach which leaves the Cour des Fontaines at six o'clock, and
which arrives in the evening. Take it. He says that here is haste."
Then he crushed the letter in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Marius might have set out that very
evening and have been with his father on the following morning. A diligence from the Rue du Bouloi took
the trip to Rouen by night at that date, and passed through Vernon. Neither Marius nor M.Gillenormand
thought of making inquiries about it.
The next day, at twilight, Marius reached Vernon. People were just beginning to light their candles. He asked
the first person whom be met for "M. Pontmercy's house." For in his own mind, he agreed with the
Restoration, and like it, did not recognize his father's claim to the title of either colonel or baron.
The house was pointed out to him. He rang; a woman with a little lamp in her hand opened the door.
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"M. Pontmercy?" said Marius.
The woman remained motionless.
"Is this his house?" demanded Marius.
The woman nodded affirmatively.
"Can I speak with him?"
The woman shook her head.
"But I am his son!" persisted Marius. "He is expecting me."
"He no longer expects you," said the woman.
Then he perceived that she was weeping.
She pointed to the door of a room on the groundfloor; he entered.
In that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the chimneypiece, there were three men, one
standing erect, another kneeling, and one lying at full length, on the floor in his shirt. The one on the floor
was the colonel.
The other two were the doctor, and the priest, who was engaged in prayer.
The colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously. As he had a foreboding of evil at the very
beginning of his illness, he had written to M. Gillenormand to demand his son. The malady had grown worse.
On the very evening of Marius' arrival at Vernon, the colonel had had an attack of delirium; he had risen from
his bed, in spite of the servant's efforts to prevent him, crying: "My son is not coming! I shall go to meet
him!" Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber. He had just expired.
The doctor had been summoned, and the cure. The doctor had arrived too late. The son had also arrived too
late.
By the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be distinguished on the pale and prostrate colonel's cheek,
where it had trickled from his dead eye. The eye was extinguished, but the tear was not yet dry. That tear was
his son's delay.
Marius gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first time, on that venerable and manly face, on those
open eyes which saw not, on those white locks, those robust limbs, on which, here and there, brown lines,
marking swordthrusts, and a sort of red stars, which indicated bulletholes, were visible. He contemplated
that gigantic sear which stamped heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprinted goodness. He
reflected that this man was his father, and that this man was dead, and a chill ran over him.
The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the presence of any other man whom he
had chanced to behold stretched out in death.
Anguish, poignant anguish, was in that chamber. The servantwoman was lamenting in a corner, the cure
was praying, and his sobs were audible, the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping.
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The doctor, the priest, and the woman gazed at Marius in the midst of their affliction without uttering a word;
he was the stranger there. Marius, who was far too little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his own
attitude; he held his hat in his hand; and he dropped it on the floor, in order to produce the impression that
grief had deprived him of the strength to hold it.
At the same time, he experienced remorse, and he despised himself for behaving in this manner. But was it
his fault? He did not love his father? Why should he!
The colonel had left nothing. The sale of big furniture barely paid the expenses of his burial.
The servant found a scrap of paper, which she handed to Marius. It contained the following, in the colonel's
handwriting:
"For my son.The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the Restoration
disputes my right to this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will
be worthy of it is a matter of course." Below, the colonel had added: "At that same battle of Waterloo, a
sergeant saved my life. The man's name was Thenardier. I think that he has recently been keeping a little inn,
in a village in the neighborhood of Paris, at Chelles or Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do all the
good he can to Thenardier."
Marius took this paper and preserved it, not out of duty to his father, but because of that vague respect for
death which is always imperious in the heart of man.
Nothing remained of the colonel. M. Gillenormand had his sword and uniform sold to an oldclothes dealer.
The neighbors devastated the garden and pillaged the rare flowers. The other plants turned to nettles and
weeds, and died.
Marius remained only fortyeight hours at Vernon. After the interment he returned to Paris, and applied
himself again to his law studies, with no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two
days the colonel was buried, and in three forgotten.
Marius wore crape on his hat. That was all.
CHAPTER V. THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME
A REVOLUTIONIST
Marius had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday, when he went to hear mass at
SaintSulpice, at that same chapel of the Virgin whither his aunt had led him when a small lad, he placed
himself behind a pillar, being more absentminded and thoughtful than usual on that occasion, and knelt
down, without paying any special heed, upon a chair of Utrecht velvet, on the back of which was inscribed
this name: Monsieur Mabeuf, warden. Mass had hardly begun when an old man presented himself and said to
Marius:
"This is my place, sir."
Marius stepped aside promptly, and the old man took possession of his chair.
The mass concluded, Marius still stood thoughtfully a few paces distant; the old man approached him again
and said:
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"I beg your pardon, sir, for having disturbed you a while ago, and for again disturbing you at this moment;
you must have thought me intrusive, and I will explain myself."
"There is no need of that, Sir," said Marius.
"Yes!" went on the old man, "I do not wish you to have a bad opinion of me. You see, I am attached to this
place. It seems to me that the mass is better from here. Why? I will tell you. It is from this place, that I have
watched a poor, brave father come regularly, every two or three months, for the last ten years, since he had no
other opportunity and no other way of seeing his child, because he was prevented by family arrangements. He
came at the hour when he knew that his son would be brought to mass. The little one never suspected that his
father was there. Perhaps he did not even know that he had a father, poor innocent! The father kept behind a
pillar, so that he might not be seen. He gazed at his child and he wept. He adored that little fellow, poor man!
I could see that. This spot has become sanctified in my sight, and I have contracted a habit of coming hither
to listen to the mass. I prefer it to the stall to which I have a right, in my capacity of warden. I knew that
unhappy gentleman a little, too. He had a fatherinlaw, a wealthy aunt, relatives, I don't know exactly what
all, who threatened to disinherit the child if he, the father, saw him. He sacrificed himself in order that his son
might be rich and happy some day. He was separated from him because of political opinions. Certainly, I
approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop. Mon Dieu! a man is not a
monster because he was at Waterloo; a father is not separated from his child for such a reason as that. He was
one of Bonaparte's colonels. He is dead, I believe. He lived at Vernon, where I have a brother who is a cure,
and his name was something like Pontmarie or Montpercy. He had a fine swordcut, on my honor."
"Pontmercy," suggested Marius, turning pale.
"Precisely, Pontmercy. Did you know him?"
"Sir," said Marius, "he was my father."
The old warden clasped his hands and exclaimed:
"Ah! you are the child! Yes, that's true, he must be a man by this time. Well! poor child, you may say that
you had a father who loved you dearly!"
Marius offered his arm to the old man and conducted him to his lodgings.
On the following day, he said to M. Gillenormand:
"I have arranged a huntingparty with some friends. Will you permit me to be absent for three days?"
"Four!" replied his grandfather. "Go and amuse yourself."
And he said to his daughter in a low tone, and with a wink, "Some love affair!"
CHAPTER VI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN
Where it was that Marius went will be disclosed a little further on.
Marius was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the lawschool and
asked for the files of the Moniteur.
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He read the Moniteur, he read all the histories of the Republic and the Empire, the Memorial de
SainteHelene, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations; he devoured everything.
The first time that he came across his father's name in the bulletins of the grand army, he had a fever for a
week. He went to see the generals under whom Georges Pontmercy had served, among others, Comte H.
Churchwarden Mabeuf, whom he went to see again, told him about the life at Vernon, the colonel's retreat,
his flowers, his solitude. Marius came to a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that species
of lionlamb who had been his father.
In the meanwhile, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed all his moments as well as his thoughts,
he hardly saw the Gillenormands at all. He made his appearance at meals; then they searched for him, and he
was not to be found. Father Gillenormand smiled. "Bah! bah! He is just of the age for the girls!" Sometimes
the old man added: "The deuce! I thought it was only an affair of gallantry, It seems that it is an affair of
passion!"
It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring his father.
At the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. The phases of this change were numerous
and successive. As this is the history of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful to follow these
phases step by step and to indicate them all.
That history upon which he had just cast his eyes appalled him.
The first effect was to dazzle him.
Up to that time, the Republic, the Empire, had been to him only monstrous words. The Republic, a guillotine
in the twilight; the Empire, a sword in the night. He had just taken a look at it, and where he had expected to
find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sort of unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and
joy, stars sparkling, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, SaintJust, Robespierre, Camille, Desmoulins, Danton, and a sun
arise, Napoleon. He did not know where he stood. He recoiled, blinded by the brilliant lights. Little by little,
when his astonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance, he contemplated these deeds
without dizziness, he examined these personages without terror; the Revolution and the Empire presented
themselves luminously, in perspective, before his mind's eye; he beheld each of these groups of events and of
men summed up in two tremendous facts: the Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the
masses, the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe; he beheld the grand figure of
the people emerge from the Revolution, and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire. He
asserted in his conscience, that all this had been good. What his dazzled state neglected in this, his first far too
synthetic estimation, we do not think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the march that
we are recording. Progress is not accomplished in one stage. That stated, once for all, in connection with what
precedes as well as with what is to follow, we continue.
He then perceived that, up to that moment, he had comprehended his country no more than he had
comprehended his father. He had not known either the one or the other, and a sort of voluntary night had
obscured his eyes. Now he saw, and on the one hand he admired, while on the other he adored.
He was filled with regret and remorse, and he reflected in despair that all he had in his soul could now be said
only to the tomb. Oh! if his father had still been in existence, if he had still had him, if God, in his
compassion and his goodness, had permitted his father to be still among the living, how he would have run,
how he would have precipitated himself, how he would have cried to his father: "Father! Here I am! It is I! I
have the same heart as thou! I am thy son!" How he would have embraced that white head, bathed his hair in
tears, gazed upon his scar, pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet! Oh! Why had his father
died so early, before his time, before the justice, the love of his son had come to him? Marius had a continual
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sob in his heart, which said to him every moment: "Alas!" At the same time, he became more truly serious,
more truly grave, more sure of his thought and his faith. At each instant, gleams of the true came to complete
his reason. An inward growth seemed to be in progress within him. He was conscious of a sort of natural
enlargement, which gave him two things that were new to himhis father and his country.
As everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself that which he had hated, he penetrated
that which he had abhorred; henceforth he plainly perceived the providential, divine and human sense of the
great things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great men whom he had been instructed to curse.
When he reflected on his former opinions, which were but those of yesterday, and which, nevertheless,
seemed to him already so very ancient, he grew indignant, yet he smiled.
From the rehabilitation of his father, he naturally passed to the rehabilitation of Napoleon.
But the latter, we will confess, was not effected without labor.
From his infancy, he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of 1814, on Bonaparte. Now, all the
prejudices of the Restoration, all its interests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It execrated him
even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned to sufficiently good account the fatigue of the
nation, and the hatred of mothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in order to paint
him to the imagination of the people, which, as we lately pointed out, resembles the imagination of children,
the party of 1814 made him appear under all sorts of terrifying masks in succession, from that which is
terrible though it remains grandiose to that which is terrible and becomes grotesque, from Tiberius to the
bugaboo. Thus, in speaking of Bonaparte, one was free to sob or to puff up with laughter, provided that
hatred lay at the bottom. Marius had never entertained about that man, as he was calledany other ideas
in his mind. They had combined with the tenacity which existed in his nature. There was in him a headstrong
little man who hated Napoleon.
On reading history, on studying him, especially in the documents and materials for history, the veil which
concealed Napoleon from the eyes of Marius was gradually rent. He caught a glimpse of something immense,
and he suspected that he had been deceived up to that moment, on the score of Bonaparte as about all the rest;
each day he saw more distinctly; and he set about mounting, slowly, step by step, almost regretfully in the
beginning, then with intoxication and as though attracted by an irresistible fascination, first the sombre steps,
then the vaguely illuminated steps, at last the luminous and splendid steps of enthusiasm.
One night, he was alone in his little chamber near the roof. His candle was burning; he was reading, with his
elbows resting on his table close to the open window. All sorts of reveries reached him from space, and
mingled with his thoughts. What a spectacle is the night! One hears dull sounds, without knowing whence
they proceed; one beholds Jupiter, which is twelve hundred times larger than the earth, glowing like a
firebrand, the azure is black, the stars shine; it is formidable.
He was perusing the bulletins of the grand army, those heroic strophes penned on the field of battle; there, at
intervals, he beheld his father's name, always the name of the Emperor; the whole of that great Empire
presented itself to him; he felt a flood swelling and rising within him; it seemed to him at moments that his
father passed close to him like a breath, and whispered in his ear; he gradually got into a singular state; he
thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets, the measured tread of battalions, the dull and distant gallop of
the cavalry; from time to time, his eyes were raised heavenward, and gazed upon the colossal constellations
as they gleamed in the measureless depths of space, then they fell upon his book once more, and there they
beheld other colossal things moving confusedly. His heart contracted within him. He was in a transport,
trembling, panting. All at once, without himself knowing what was in him, and what impulse he was obeying,
he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window, gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the
infinite darkness, the eternal immensity, and exclaimed: "Long live the Emperor!"
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From that moment forth, all was over; the Ogre of Corsica, the usurper,the tyrant,the monster who
was the lover of his own sisters,the actor who took lessons of Talma,the poisoner of Jaffa,the
tiger,Buonaparte,all this vanished, and gave place in his mind to a vague and brilliant radiance in which
shone, at an inaccessible height, the pale marble phantom of Caesar. The Emperor had been for his father
only the wellbeloved captain whom one admires, for whom one sacrifices one's self; he was something
more to Marius. He was the predestined constructor of the French group, succeeding the Roman group in the
domination of the universe. He was a prodigious architect, of a destruction, the continuer of Charlemagne, of
Louis XI., of Henry IV., of Richelieu, of Louis XIV., and of the Committee of Public Safety, having his
spots, no doubt, his faults, his crimes even, being a man, that is to say; but august in his faults, brilliant in his
spots, powerful in his crime.
He was the predestined man, who had forced all nations to say: "The great nation!" He was better than that,
he was the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword which he grasped, and the world by
the light which he shed. Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the
frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing
up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the manpeople as Jesus Christ is the manGod.
It will be perceived, that like all new converts to a religion, his conversion intoxicated him, he hurled himself
headlong into adhesion and he went too far. His nature was so constructed; once on the downward slope, it
was almost impossible for him to put on the drag. Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him, and
complicated in his mind his enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that, along with genius, and
pellmell, he was admitting force, that is to say, that he was installing in two compartments of his idolatry,
on the one hand that which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, he had set about
deceiving himself otherwise. He admitted everything. There is a way of encountering error while on one's
way to the truth. He had a violent sort of good faith which took everything in the lump. In the new path which
he had entered on, in judging the mistakes of the old regime, as in measuring the glory of Napoleon, he
neglected the attenuating circumstances.
At all events, a tremendous step had been taken. Where he had formerly beheld the fall of the monarchy, he
now saw the advent of France. His orientation had changed. What had been his East became the West. He
had turned squarely round.
All these revolutions were accomplished within him, without his family obtaining an inkling of the case.
When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbon and ultra skin, when he had cast off
the aristocrat, the Jacobite and the Royalist, when he had become thoroughly a revolutionist, profoundly
democratic and republican, he went to an engraver on the Quai des Orfevres and ordered a hundred cards
bearing this name: Le Baron Marius Pontmercy.
This was only the strictly logical consequence of the change which had taken place in him, a change in which
everything gravitated round his father.
Only, as he did not know any one and could not sow his cards with any porter, he put them in his pocket.
By another natural consequence, in proportion as he drew nearer to his father, to the latter's memory, and to
the things for which the colonel had fought five and twenty years before, he receded from his grandfather.
We have long ago said, that M. Gillenormand's temper did not please him. There already existed between
them all the dissonances of the grave young man and the frivolous old man. The gayety of Geronte shocks
and exasperates the melancholy of Werther. So long as the same political opinions and the same ideas had
been common to them both, Marius had met M. Gillenormand there as on a bridge. When the bridge fell, an
abyss was formed. And then, over and above all, Marius experienced unutterable impulses to revolt, when he
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reflected that it was M. Gillenormand who had, from stupid motives, torn him ruthlessly from the colonel,
thus depriving the father of the child, and the child of the father.
By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversion for his grandfather.
Nothing of this sort, however, was betrayed on the exterior, as we have already said. Only he grew colder and
colder; laconic at meals, and rare in the house. When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and
alleged his studies, his lectures, the examinations, etc., as a pretext. His grandfather never departed from his
infallible diagnosis: "In love! I know all about it."
From time to time Marius absented himself.
"Where is it that he goes off like this?" said his aunt.
On one of these trips, which were always very brief, he went to Montfermeil, in order to obey the injunction
which his father had left him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the innkeeper Thenardier.
Thenardier had failed, the inn was closed, and no one knew what had become of him. Marius was away from
the house for four days on this quest.
"He is getting decidedly wild," said his grandfather.
They thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast, under his shirt, which was attached to
his neck by a black ribbon.
CHAPTER VII. SOME PETTICOAT
We have mentioned a lancer.
He was a greatgrandnephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the
family and far from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Theodule Gillenormand fulfilled all the conditions
required to make what is called a fine officer. He had "a lady's waist," a victorious manner of trailing his
sword and of twirling his mustache in a hook. He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely that Marius had
never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name. We think we have said that Theodule was the
favorite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him. Not seeing people permits
one to attribute to them all possible perfections.
One morning, Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder returned to her apartment as much disturbed as her
placidity was capable of allowing. Marius had just asked his grandfather's permission to take a little trip,
adding that he meant to set out that very evening. "Go!" had been his grandfather's reply, and M.
Gillenormand had added in an aside, as he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead: "Here he is passing
the night out again." Mademoiselle Gillenormand had ascended to her chamber greatly puzzled, and on the
staircase had dropped this exclamation: "This is too much!"and this interrogation: "But where is it that he
goes?" She espied some adventure of the heart, more or less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a
mystery, and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair. Tasting a mystery
resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal; sainted souls do not detest this. There is some curiosity about
scandal in the secret compartments of bigotry.
So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history.
In order to get rid of this curiosity which agitated her a little beyond her wont, she took refuge in her talents,
and set about scalloping, with one layer of cotton after another, one of those embroideries of the Empire and
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the Restoration, in which there are numerous cartwheels. The work was clumsy, the worker cross. She had
been seated at this for several hours when the door opened. Mademoiselle Gillenormand raised her nose.
Lieutenant Theodule stood before her, making the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight. One may be
old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may be an aunt, but it is always agreeable to see a lancer
enter one's chamber.
"You here, Theodule!" she exclaimed.
"On my way through town, aunt."
"Embrace me."
"Here goes!" said Theodule.
And he kissed her. Aunt Gillenormand went to her writingdesk and opened it.
"You will remain with us a week at least?"
"I leave this very evening, aunt."
"It is not possible!"
"Mathematically!"
"Remain, my little Theodule, I beseech you."
"My heart says `yes,' but my orders say `no.' The matter is simple. They are changing our garrison; we have
been at Melun, we are being transferred to Gaillon. It is necessary to pass through Paris in order to get from
the old post to the new one. I said: `I am going to see my aunt.'"
"Here is something for your trouble."
And she put ten louis into his hand.
"For my pleasure, you mean to say, my dear aunt."
Theodule kissed her again, and she experienced the joy of having some of the skin scratched from her neck
by the braidings on his uniform.
"Are you making the journey on horseback, with your regiment?" she asked him.
"No, aunt. I wanted to see you. I have special permission. My servant is taking my horse; I am travelling by
diligence. And, by the way, I want to ask you something."
"What is it?"
"Is my cousin Marius Pontmercy travelling so, too?"
"How do you know that?" said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick with a lively curiosity.
"On my arrival, I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the coupe."
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"Well?"
"A traveller had already come to engage a seat in the imperial. I saw his name on the card."
"What name?"
"Marius Pontmercy."
"The wicked fellow!" exclaimed his aunt. "Ah! your cousin is not a steady lad like yourself. To think that he
is to pass the night in a diligence!"
"Just as I am going to do."
"But youit is your duty; in his case, it is wildness."
"Bosh!" said Theodule.
Here an event occurred to Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder, an idea struck her. If she had been a man,
she would have slapped her brow. She apostrophized Theodule:
"Are you aware whether your cousin knows you?"
"No. I have seen him; but he has never deigned to notice me."
"So you are going to travel together?"
"He in the imperial, I in the coupe."
"Where does this diligence run?"
"To Andelys."
"Then that is where Marius is going?"
"Unless, like myself, he should stop on the way. I get down at Vernon, in order to take the branch coach for
Gaillon. I know nothing of Marius' plan of travel."
"Marius! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Marius? While you, at least, are called
Theodule."
"I would rather be called Alfred," said the officer.
"Listen, Theodule."
"I am listening, aunt."
"Pay attention."
"I am paying attention."
"You understand?"
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"Yes."
"Well, Marius absents himself!"
"Eh! eh!"
"He travels."
"Ah! ah!"
"He spends the night out."
"Oh! oh!"
"We should like to know what there is behind all this."
Theodule replied with the composure of a man of bronze:
"Some petticoat or other."
And with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added:
"A lass."
"That is evident," exclaimed his aunt, who thought she heard M. Gillenormand speaking, and who felt her
conviction become irresistible at that word fillette, accentuated in almost the very same fashion by the
granduncle and the grandnephew. She resumed:
"Do us a favor. Follow Marius a little. He does not know you, it will be easy. Since a lass there is, try to get a
sight of her. You must write us the tale. It will amuse his grandfather."
Theodule had no excessive taste for this sort of spying; but he was much touched by the ten louis, and he
thought he saw a chance for a possible sequel. He accepted the commission and said: "As you please, aunt."
And he added in an aside, to himself: "Here I am a duenna."
Mademoiselle Gillenormand embraced him.
"You are not the man to play such pranks, Theodule. You obey discipline, you are the slave of orders, you are
a man of scruples and duty, and you would not quit your family to go and see a creature."
The lancer made the pleased grimace of Cartouche when praised for his probity.
Marius, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence without suspecting that he was
watched. As for the watcher, the first thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and
conscientious. Argus snored all night long.
At daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted: "Vernon! relay of Vernon! Travellers for Vernon!" And
Lieutenant Theodule woke.
"Good," he growled, still half asleep, "this is where I get out."
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Then, as his memory cleared by degrees, the effect of waking, he recalled his aunt, the ten louis, and the
account which he had undertaken to render of the deeds and proceedings of Marius. This set him to laughing.
"Perhaps he is no longer in the coach," he thought, as he rebuttoned the waistcoat of his undress uniform. "He
may have stopped at Poissy; he may have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may have got
out at Mantes, unless he got out at Rolleboise, or if he did not go on as far as Pacy, with the choice of turning
to the left at Evreus, or to the right at LarocheGuyon. Run after him, aunty. What the devil am I to write to
that good old soul?"
At that moment a pair of black trousers descending from the imperial, made its appearance at the window of
the coupe.
"Can that be Marius?" said the lieutenant.
It was Marius.
A little peasant girl, all entangled with the horses and the postilions at the end of the vehicle, was offering
flowers to the travellers. "Give your ladies flowers!" she cried.
Marius approached her and purchased the finest flowers in her flat basket.
"Come now," said Theodule, leaping down from the coupe, "this piques my curiosity. Who the deuce is he
going to carry those flowers to? She must be a splendidly handsome woman for so fine a bouquet. I want to
see her."
And no longer in pursuance of orders, but from personal curiosity, like dogs who hunt on their own account,
he set out to follow Marius.
Marius paid no attention to Theodule. Elegant women descended from the diligence; he did not glance at
them. He seemed to see nothing around him.
"He is pretty deeply in love!" thought Theodule.
Marius directed his steps towards the church.
"Capital," said Theodule to himself. "Rendezvous seasoned with a bit of mass are the best sort. Nothing is so
exquisite as an ogle which passes over the good God's head."
On arriving at the church, Marius did not enter it, but skirted the apse. He disappeared behind one of the
angles of the apse.
"The rendezvous is appointed outside," said Theodule. "Let's have a look at the lass."
And he advanced on the tips of his boots towards the corner which Marius had turned.
On arriving there, he halted in amazement.
Marius, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the grass on a grave. He had strewn his
bouquet there. At the extremity of the grave, on a little swelling which marked the head, there stood a cross of
black wood with this name in white letters: COLONEL BARON PONTMERCY. Marius' sobs were audible.
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The "lass" was a grave.
CHAPTER VIII. MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE
It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of his absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that
he had come every time that M. Gillenormand had said: "He is sleeping out."
Lieutenant Theodule was absolutely put out of countenance by this unexpected encounter with a sepulchre;
he experienced a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of analyzing, and which was
composed of respect for the tomb, mingled with respect for the colonel. He retreated, leaving Marius alone in
the cemetery, and there was discipline in this retreat. Death appeared to him with large epaulets, and he
almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all;
and it is probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made by Theodule as to the love
affairs of Marius, if, by one of those mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in chance, the scene at
Vernon had not had an almost immediate countershock at Paris.
Marius returned from Vernon on the third day, in the middle of the morning, descended at his grandfather's
door, and, wearied by the two nights spent in the diligence, and feeling the need of repairing his loss of sleep
by an hour at the swimmingschool, he mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely time enough to throw
off his travellingcoat, and the black ribbon which he wore round his neck, and went off to the bath.
M.Gillenormand, who had risen betimes like all old men in good health, had heard his entrance, and had
made haste to climb, as quickly as his old legs permitted, the stairs to the upper story where Marius lived, in
order to embrace him, and to question him while so doing, and to find out where he had been.
But the youth had taken less time to descend than the old man had to ascend, and when Father Gillenormand
entered the attic, Marius was no longer there.
The bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay, outspread, but not defiantly the greatcoat and the black
ribbon.
"I like this better," said M. Gillenormand.
And a moment later, he made his entrance into the salon, where Mademoiselle Gillenormand was already
seated, busily embroidering her cartwheels.
The entrance was a triumphant one.
M. Gillenormand held in one hand the greatcoat, and in the other the neckribbon, and exclaimed:
"Victory! We are about to penetrate the mystery! We are going to learn the most minute details; we are going
to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend! Here we have the romance itself. I have the portrait!"
In fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion portrait, was suspended from the ribbon.
The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without opening it, with that air of enjoyment,
rapture, and wrath, with which a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner which is not for him, pass
under his very nose.
"For this evidently is a portrait. I know all about such things. That is worn tenderly on the heart. How stupid
they are! Some abominable fright that will make us shudder, probably! Young men have such bad taste
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nowadays!"
"Let us see, father," said the old spinster.
The case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper.
"From the same to the same," said M. Gillenormand, bursting with laughter. "I know what it is. A
billetdoux."
"Ah! let us read it!" said the aunt.
And she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper and read as follows:
"For my son.The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes
my right to this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will be worthy
of it is a matter of course."
The feelings of father and daughter cannot be described. They felt chilled as by the breath of a death'shead.
They did not exchange a word.
Only, M. Gillenormand said in a low voice and as though speaking to himself:
"It is the slasher's handwriting."
The aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions, then put it back in its case.
At the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue paper, fell from one of the pockets of the
greatcoat. Mademoiselle Gillenormand picked it up and unfolded the blue paper.
It contained Marius' hundred cards. She handed one of them to M. Gillenormand, who read: Le Baron Marius
Pontmercy.
The old man rang the bell. Nicolette came. M. Gillenormand took the ribbon, the case, and the coat, flung
them all on the floor in the middle of the room, and said:
"Carry those duds away."
A full hour passed in the most profound silence. The old man and the old spinster had seated themselves with
their backs to each other, and were thinking, each on his own account, the same things, in all probability.
At the expiration of this hour, Aunt Gillenormand said:"A pretty state of things!"
A few moments later, Marius made his appearance. He entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold, he
saw his grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand, and on catching sight of him, the latter
exclaimed with his air of bourgeois and grinning superiority which was something crushing:
"Well! well! well! well! well! so you are a baron now. I present you my compliments. What is the meaning of
this?"
Marius reddened slightly and replied:
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"It means that I am the son of my father."
M. Gillenormand ceased to laugh, and said harshly:
"I am your father."
"My father," retorted Marius, with downcast eyes and a severe air, "was a humble and heroic man, who
served the Republic and France gloriously, who was great in the greatest history that men have ever made,
who lived in the bivouac for a quarter of a century, beneath grapeshot and bullets, in snow and mud by day,
beneath rain at night, who captured two flags, who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and
abandoned, and who never committed but one mistake, which was to love too fondly two ingrates, his
country and myself."
This was more than M. Gillenormand could bear to hear. At the word republic, he rose, or, to speak more
correctly, he sprang to his feet. Every word that Marius had just uttered produced on the visage of the old
Royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull hue he had turned red,
from red, purple, and from purple, flamecolored.
"Marius!" he cried. "Abominable child! I do not know what your father was! I do not wish to know! I know
nothing about that, and I do not know him! But what I do know is, that there never was anything but
scoundrels among those men! They were all rascals, assassins, redcaps, thieves! I say all! I say all! I know
not one! I say all! Do you hear me, Marius! See here, you are no more a baron than my slipper is! They were
all bandits in the service of Robespierre! All who served Buonaparte were brigands! They were all
traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king! All cowards who fled before the Prussians and
the English at Waterloo! That is what I do know! Whether Monsieur your father comes in that category, I do
not know! I am sorry for it, so much the worse, your humble servant!"
In his turn, it was Marius who was the firebrand and M. Gillenormand who was the bellows. Marius quivered
in every limb, he did not know what would happen next, his brain was on fire. He was the priest who beholds
all his sacred wafers cast to the winds, the fakir who beholds a passerby spit upon his idol. It could not be
that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do? His father had just been trampled under
foot and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom? By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one
without outraging the other? It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather and it was equally impossible
for him to leave his father unavenged. On the one hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks.
He stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated, with all this whirlwind dashing
through his head; then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice of thunder:
"Down with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis XVIII.!"
Louis XVIII. had been dead for four years; but it was all the same to him.
The old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his hair. He wheeled round towards a bust of M. le
Duc de Berry, which stood on the chimneypiece, and made a profound bow, with a sort of peculiar majesty.
Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the
fireplace, traversing the whole length of the room, and making the polished floor creak as though he had been
a stone statue walking.
On his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was watching this encounter with the stupefied air of an
antiquated lamb, and said to her with a smile that was almost calm: "A baron like this gentleman, and a
bourgeois like myself cannot remain under the same roof."
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And drawing himself up, all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible, with his brow rendered more lofty by the
terrible radiance of wrath, he extended his arm towards Marius and shouted to him:
"Be off!"
Marius left the house.
On the following day, M. Gillenormand said to his daughter:
"You will send sixty pistoles every six months to that blooddrinker, and you will never mention his name to
me."
Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to
address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months.
Marius, on his side, had gone forth in indignation. There was one circumstance which, it must be admitted,
aggravated his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate domestic dramas.
They augment the grievances in such cases, although, in reality, the wrongs are not increased by them. While
carrying Marius' "duds" precipitately to his chamber, at his grandfather's command, Nicolette had,
inadvertently, let fall, probably, on the attic staircase, which was dark, that medallion of black shagreen
which contained the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor case could afterwards be found. Marius
was convinced that "Monsieur Gillenormand"from that day forth he never alluded to him otherwisehad
flung "his father's testament" in the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written, and,
consequently, nothing was lost. But the paper, the writing, that sacred relic,all that was his very heart.
What had been done with it?
Marius had taken his departure without saying whither he was going, and without knowing where, with thirty
francs, his watch, and a few clothes in a handbag. He had entered a hackneycoach, had engaged it by the
hour, and had directed his course at haphazard towards the Latin quarter.
What was to become of Marius?
BOOK FOURTH.THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC
CHAPTER I. A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC
At that epoch, which was, to all appearances indifferent, a certain revolutionary quiver was vaguely current.
Breaths which had started forth from the depths of '89 and '93 were in the air. Youth was on the point, may
the reader pardon us the word, of moulting. People were undergoing a transformation, almost without being
conscious of it, through the movement of the age. The needle which moves round the compass also moves in
souls. Each person was taking that step in advance which he was bound to take. The Royalists were becoming
liberals, liberals were turning democrats. It was a flood tide complicated with a thousand ebb movements; the
peculiarity of ebbs is to create intermixtures; hence the combination of very singular ideas; people adored
both Napoleon and liberty. We are making history here. These were the mirages of that period. Opinions
traverse phases. Voltairian royalism, a quaint variety, had a no less singular sequel, Bonapartist liberalism.
Other groups of minds were more serious. In that direction, they sounded principles, they attached themselves
to the right. They grew enthusiastic for the absolute, they caught glimpses of infinite realizations; the
absolute, by its very rigidity, urges spirits towards the sky and causes them to float in illimitable space. There
is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future.
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Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.
These advanced opinions had a double foundation. A beginning of mystery menaced "the established order of
things," which was suspicious and underhand. A sign which was revolutionary to the highest degree. The
second thoughts of power meet the second thoughts of the populace in the mine. The incubation of
insurrections gives the retort to the premeditation of coups d'etat.
There did not, as yet, exist in France any of those vast underlying organizations, like the German tugendbund
and Italian Carbonarism; but here and there there were dark underminings, which were in process of throwing
off shoots. The Cougourde was being outlined at Aix; there existed at Paris, among other affiliations of that
nature, the society of the Friends of the A B C.
What were these Friends of the A B C? A society which had for its object apparently the education of
children, in reality the elevation of man.
They declared themselves the Friends of the A B C,the Abaisse, the debased,that is to say, the
people. They wished to elevate the people. It was a pun which we should do wrong to smile at. Puns are
sometimes serious factors in politics; witness the Castratus ad castra, which made a general of the army of
Narses; witness: Barbari et Barberini; witness: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram, etc., etc.
The Friends of the A B C were not numerous, it was a secret society in the state of embryo, we might almost
say a coterie, if coteries ended in heroes. They assembled in Paris in two localities, near the fishmarket, in a
wineshop called Corinthe, of which more will be heard later on, and near the Pantheon in a little cafe in the
Rue SaintMichel called the Cafe Musain, now torn down; the first of these meetingplaces was close to the
workingman, the second to the students.
The assemblies of the Friends of the A B C were usually held in a back room of the Cafe Musain.
This hall, which was tolerably remote from the cafe, with which it was connected by an extremely long
corridor, had two windows and an exit with a private stairway on the little Rue des Gres. There they smoked
and drank, and gambled and laughed. There they conversed in very loud tones about everything, and in
whispers of other things. An old map of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall, a sign quite
sufficient to excite the suspicion of a police agent.
The greater part of the Friends of the A B C were students, who were on cordial terms with the working
classes. Here are the names of the principal ones. They belong, in a certain measure, to history: Enjolras,
Combeferre, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, Grantaire.
These young men formed a sort of family, through the bond of friendship. All, with the exception of Laigle,
were from the South.
This was a remarkable group. It vanished in the invisible depths which lie behind us. At the point of this
drama which we have now reached, it will not perhaps be superfluous to throw a ray of light upon these
youthful heads, before the reader beholds them plunging into the shadow of a tragic adventure.
Enjolras, whose name we have mentioned first of all,the reader shall see why later on,was an only son
and wealthy.
Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He
was a savage Antinous. One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had
already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the
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tradition of it as though he had been a witness. He was acquainted with all the minute details of the great
affair. A pontifical and warlike nature, a singular thing in a youth. He was an officiating priest and a man of
war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the
priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became
disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view. Like
certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early
age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of
pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was
serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one
passionthe right; but one thoughtto overthrow the obstacle. On Mount Aventine, he would have been
Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been SaintJust. He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he
did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it
would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the
sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the
Republic. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired, and had the thrill of a hymn.
He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the loveaffair which should have risked itself beside
him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue SaintJeandeBeauvais, seeing that face of a youth
escaped from college, that page's mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the
wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete
aurora, and had tried her beauty on Enjolras, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown
her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant
Cherubino of Beaumarchais.
By the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of the Revolution, Combeferre represented its philosophy.
Between the logic of the Revolution and its philosophy there exists this differencethat its logic may end in
war, whereas its philosophy can end only in peace. Combeferre complemented and rectified Enjolras. He was
less lofty, but broader. He desired to pour into all minds the extensive principles of general ideas: he said:
"Revolution, but civilization"; and around the mountain peak he opened out a vast view of the blue sky. The
Revolution was more adapted for breathing with Combeferre than with Enjolras. Enjolras expressed its divine
right, and Combeferre its natural right. The first attached himself to Robespierre; the second confined himself
to Condorcet. Combeferre lived the life of all the rest of the world more than did Enjolras. If it had been
granted to these two young men to attain to history, the one would have been the just, the other the wise man.
Enjolras was the more virile, Combeferre the more humane. Homo and vir, that was the exact effect of their
different shades. Combeferre was as gentle as Enjolras was severe, through natural whiteness. He loved the
word citizen, but he preferred the word man. He would gladly have said: Hombre, like the Spanish. He read
everything, went to the theatres, attended the courses of public lecturers, learned the polarization of light from
Arago, grew enthusiastic over a lesson in which Geoffrey SainteHilaire explained the double function of the
external carotid artery, and the internal, the one which makes the face, and the one which makes the brain; he
kept up with what was going on, followed science step by step, compared SaintSimon with Fourier,
deciphered hieroglyphics, broke the pebble which he found and reasoned on geology, drew from memory a
silkworm moth, pointed out the faulty French in the Dictionary of the Academy, studied Puysegur and
Deleuze, affirmed nothing, not even miracles; denied nothing, not even ghosts; turned over the files of the
Moniteur, reflected. He declared that the future lies in the hand of the schoolmaster, and busied himself with
educational questions. He desired that society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of the moral
and intellectual level, at coining science, at putting ideas into circulation, at increasing the mind in youthful
persons, and he feared lest the present poverty of method, the paltriness from a literary point of view confined
to two or three centuries called classic, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices and
routines should end by converting our colleges into artificial oyster beds. He was learned, a purist, exact, a
graduate of the Polytechnic, a close student, and at the same time, thoughtful "even to chimaeras," so his
friends said. He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the
fixing of images in the dark chamber, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons. Moreover, he was not
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much alarmed by the citadels erected against the human mind in every direction, by superstition, despotism,
and prejudice. He was one of those who think that science will eventually turn the position. Enjolras was a
chief, Combeferre was a guide. One would have liked to fight under the one and to march behind the other. It
is not that Combeferre was not capable of fighting, he did not refuse a handtohand combat with the
obstacle, and to attack it by main force and explosively; but it suited him better to bring the human race into
accord with its destiny gradually, by means of education, the inculcation of axioms, the promulgation of
positive laws; and, between two lights, his preference was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A
conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but
daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly, Combeferre preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to
the blaze of the sublime. A light troubled by smoke, progress purchased at the expense of violence, only half
satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, a '93, terrified
him; nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the
whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to
the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste. While his tumultuous friends, captivated
by the absolute, adored and invoked splendid revolutionary adventures, Combeferre was inclined to let
progress, good progress, take its own course; he may have been cold, but he was pure; methodical, but
irreproachable; phlegmatic, but imperturbable. Combeferre would have knelt and clasped his hands to enable
the future to arrive in all its candor, and that nothing might disturb the immense and virtuous evolution of the
races. The good must be innocent, he repeated incessantly. And in fact, if the grandeur of the Revolution
consists in keeping the dazzling ideal fixedly in view, and of soaring thither athwart the lightnings, with fire
and blood in its talons, the beauty of progress lies in being spotless; and there exists between Washington,
who represents the one, and Danton, who incarnates the other, that difference which separates the swan from
the angel with the wings of an eagle.
Jean Prouvaire was a still softer shade than Combeferre. His name was Jehan, owing to that petty momentary
freak which mingled with the powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study of
the Middle Ages. Jean Prouvaire was in love; he cultivated a pot of flowers, played on the flute, made verses,
loved the people, pitied woman, wept over the child, confounded God and the future in the same confidence,
and blamed the Revolution for having caused the fall of a royal head, that of Andre Chenier. His voice was
ordinarily delicate, but suddenly grew manly. He was learned even to erudition, and almost an Orientalist.
Above all, he was good; and, a very simple thing to those who know how nearly goodness borders on
grandeur, in the matter of poetry, he preferred the immense. He knew Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; and
these served him only for the perusal of four poets: Dante, Juvenal, AEschylus, and Isaiah. In French, he
preferred Corneille to Racine, and Agrippa d'Aubigne to Corneille. He loved to saunter through fields of wild
oats and cornflowers, and busied himself with clouds nearly as much as with events. His mind had two
attitudes, one on the side towards man, the other on that towards God; he studied or he contemplated. All day
long, he buried himself in social questions, salary, capital, credit, marriage, religion, liberty of thought,
education, penal servitude, poverty, association, property, production and sharing, the enigma of this lower
world which covers the human anthill with darkness; and at night, he gazed upon the planets, those
enormous beings. Like Enjolras, he was wealthy and an only son. He spoke softly, bowed his head, lowered
his eyes, smiled with embarrassment, dressed badly, had an awkward air, blushed at a mere nothing, and was
very timid. Yet he was intrepid.
Feuilly was a workingman, a fanmaker, orphaned both of father and mother, who earned with difficulty
three francs a day, and had but one thought, to deliver the world. He had one other preoccupation, to educate
himself; he called this also, delivering himself. He had taught himself to read and write; everything that he
knew, he had learned by himself. Feuilly had a generous heart. The range of his embrace was immense. This
orphan had adopted the peoples. As his mother had failed him, he meditated on his country. He brooded with
the profound divination of the man of the people, over what we now call the idea of the nationality, had
learned history with the express object of raging with full knowledge of the case. In this club of young
Utopians, occupied chiefly with France, he represented the outside world. He had for his specialty Greece,
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Poland, Hungary, Roumania, Italy. He uttered these names incessantly, appropriately and inappropriately,
with the tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Russia on Warsaw, of Austria
on Venice, enraged him. Above all things, the great violence of 1772 aroused him. There is no more
sovereign eloquence than the true in indignation; he was eloquent with that eloquence. He was inexhaustible
on that infamous date of 1772, on the subject of that noble and valiant race suppressed by treason, and that
threesided crime, on that monstrous ambush, the prototype and pattern of all those horrible suppressions of
states, which, since that time, have struck many a noble nation, and have annulled their certificate of birth, so
to speak. All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland
is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries. There has not been a despot, nor a
traitor for nearly a century back, who has not signed, approved, countersigned, and copied, ne variatur, the
partition of Poland. When the record of modern treasons was examined, that was the first thing which made
its appearance. The congress of Vienna consulted that crime before consummating its own. 1772 sounded the
onset; 1815 was the death of the game. Such was Feuilly's habitual text. This poor workingman had
constituted himself the tutor of Justice, and she recompensed him by rendering him great. The fact is, that
there is eternity in right. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teuton. Kings lose their pains
and their honor in the attempt to make them so. Sooner or later, the submerged part floats to the surface and
reappears. Greece becomes Greece again, Italy is once more Italy. The protest of right against the deed
persists forever. The theft of a nation cannot be allowed by prescription. These lofty deeds of rascality have
no future. A nation cannot have its mark extracted like a pocket handkerchief.
Courfeyrac had a father who was called M. de Courfeyrac. One of the false ideas of the bourgeoisie under the
Restoration as regards aristocracy and the nobility was to believe in the particle. The particle, as every one
knows, possesses no significance. But the bourgeois of the epoch of la Minerve estimated so highly that poor
de, that they thought themselves bound to abdicate it. M. de Chauvelin had himself called M. Chauvelin; M.
de Caumartin, M. Caumartin; M. de Constant de Robecque, Benjamin Constant; M. de Lafayette, M.
Lafayette. Courfeyrac had not wished to remain behind the rest, and called himself plain Courfeyrac.
We might almost, so far as Courfeyrac is concerned, stop here, and confine ourselves to saying with regard to
what remains: "For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes."
Courfeyrac had, in fact, that animation of youth which may be called the beaute du diable of the mind. Later
on, this disappears like the playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends, with the bourgeois, on two legs,
and with the tomcat, on four paws.
This sort of wit is transmitted from generation to generation of the successive levies of youth who traverse
the schools, who pass it from hand to hand, quasi cursores, and is almost always exactly the same; so that, as
we have just pointed out, any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard
Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the
exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in
the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district
attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.
Enjolras was the chief, Combeferre was the guide, Courfeyrac was the centre. The others gave more light, he
shed more warmth; the truth is, that he possessed all the qualities of a centre, roundness and radiance.
Bahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June, 1822, on the occasion of the burial of young Lallemand.
Bahorel was a goodnatured mortal, who kept bad company, brave, a spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge
of generosity, talkative, and at times eloquent, bold to the verge of effrontery; the best fellow possible; he had
daring waistcoats, and scarlet opinions; a wholesale blusterer, that is to say, loving nothing so much as a
quarrel, unless it were an uprising; and nothing so much as an uprising, unless it were a revolution; always
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ready to smash a windowpane, then to tear up the pavement, then to demolish a government, just to see the
effect of it; a student in his eleventh year. He had nosed about the law, but did not practise it. He had taken
for his device: "Never a lawyer," and for his armorial bearings a nightstand in which was visible a square cap.
Every time that he passed the lawschool, which rarely happened, he buttoned up his frockcoat,the
paletot had not yet been invented,and took hygienic precautions. Of the school porter he said: "What a fine
old man!" and of the dean, M. Delvincourt: "What a monument!" In his lectures he espied subjects for
ballads, and in his professors occasions for caricature. He wasted a tolerably large allowance, something like
three thousand francs a year, in doing nothing.
He had peasant parents whom he had contrived to imbue with respect for their son.
He said of them: "They are peasants and not bourgeois; that is the reason they are intelligent."
Bahorel, a man of caprice, was scattered over numerous cafes; the others had habits, he had none. He
sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In reality, he had a penetrating mind and was more of a
thinker than appeared to view.
He served as a connecting link between the Friends of the A B C and other still unorganized groups, which
were destined to take form later on.
In this conclave of young heads, there was one bald member.
The Marquis d'Avaray, whom Louis XVIII. made a duke for having assisted him to enter a hackneycoach
on the day when he emigrated, was wont to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the King was
disembarking at Calais, a man handed him a petition.
"What is your request?" said the King.
"Sire, a postoffice."
"What is your name?"
"L'Aigle."
The King frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition and beheld the name written thus: LESGLE. This
nonBonoparte orthography touched the King and he began to smile. "Sire," resumed the man with the
petition, "I had for ancestor a keeper of the hounds surnamed Lesgueules. This surname furnished my name. I
am called Lesgueules, by contraction Lesgle, and by corruption l'Aigle." This caused the King to smile
broadly. Later on he gave the man the posting office of Meaux, either intentionally or accidentally.
The bald member of the group was the son of this Lesgle, or Legle, and he signed himself, Legle [de Meaux].
As an abbreviation, his companions called him Bossuet.
Bossuet was a gay but unlucky fellow. His specialty was not to succeed in anything. As an offset, he laughed
at everything. At five and twenty he was bald. His father had ended by owning a house and a field; but he, the
son, had made haste to lose that house and field in a bad speculation. He had nothing left. He possessed
knowledge and wit, but all he did miscarried. Everything failed him and everybody deceived him; what he
was building tumbled down on top of him. If he were splitting wood, he cut off a finger. If he had a mistress,
he speedily discovered that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment, hence his
joviality. He said: "I live under falling tiles." He was not easily astonished, because, for him, an accident was
what he had foreseen, he took his bad luck serenely, and smiled at the teasing of fate, like a person who is
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listening to pleasantries. He was poor, but his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached his
last sou, never his last burst of laughter. When adversity entered his doors, he saluted this old acquaintance
cordially, he tapped all catastrophes on the stomach; he was familiar with fatality to the point of calling it by
its nickname: "Good day, Guignon," he said to it.
These persecutions of fate had rendered him inventive. He was full of resources. He had no money, but he
found means, when it seemed good to him, to indulge in "unbridled extravagance." One night, he went so far
as to eat a "hundred francs" in a supper with a wench, which inspired him to make this memorable remark in
the midst of the orgy: "Pull off my boots, you fivelouis jade."
Bossuet was slowly directing his steps towards the profession of a lawyer; he was pursuing his law studies
after the manner of Bahorel. Bossuet had not much domicile, sometimes none at all. He lodged now with one,
now with another, most often with Joly. Joly was studying medicine. He was two years younger than
Bossuet.
Joly was the "malade imaginaire" junior. What he had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a
doctor. At three and twenty he thought himself a valetudinarian, and passed his life in inspecting his tongue
in the mirror. He affirmed that man becomes magnetic like a needle, and in his chamber he placed his bed
with its head to the south, and the foot to the north, so that, at night, the circulation of his blood might not be
interfered with by the great electric current of the globe. During thunder storms, he felt his pulse. Otherwise,
he was the gayest of them all. All these young, maniacal, puny, merry incoherences lived in harmony
together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable being whom his comrades, who were prodigal of
winged consonants, called Jolllly . "You may fly away on the four L's," Jean Prouvaire said to him.[23]
[23] L'Aile, wing.
Joly had a trick of touching his nose with the tip of his cane, which is an indication of a sagacious mind.
All these young men who differed so greatly, and who, on the whole, can only be discussed seriously, held
the same religion: Progress.
All were the direct sons of the French Revolution. The most giddy of them became solemn when they
pronounced that date: '89. Their fathers in the flesh had been, either royalists, doctrinaires, it matters not
what; this confusion anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern them at all; the pure blood of
principle ran in their veins. They attached themselves, without intermediate shades, to incorruptible right and
absolute duty.
Affiliated and initiated, they sketched out the ideal underground.
Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there?
By juxtaposition. This sceptic's name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this
rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the
students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at
the Cafe Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Cafe Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at
the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes at
the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Com pat. He knew the best place
for everything; in addition, boxing and footfencing and some dances; and he was a thorough singlestick
player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot. He was inordinately homely: the prettiest bootstitcher of that
day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows: "Grantaire is
impossible"; but Grantaire's fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women,
with the air of saying to them all: "If I only chose!" and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in
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general demand.
All those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic,
democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to
Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea.
He lived with irony. This was his axiom: "There is but one certainty, my full glass." He sneered at all
devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. "They are
greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: "There is a gibbet which has been a
success." A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming
incessantly: "J'aimons les filles, et j'aimons le bon vin." Air: Vive Henri IV.
However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a
science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this
anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had
Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A
sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack
attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drummajor. The toad always has
his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt,
loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard,
candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to
himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly,
shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that
firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover,
composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His
indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without
friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There
are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles,
Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another
man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not
their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the
obverse of Enjolras.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are
inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades.
Grantaire, Enjolras' true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure
anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the
fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor.
Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded
him a little lofty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always harshly treated by Enjolras, roughly
repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Enjolras: "What fine marble!"
CHAPTER II. BLONDEAU'S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET
On a certain afternoon, which had, as will be seen hereafter, some coincidence with the events heretofore
related, Laigle de Meaux was to be seen leaning in a sensual manner against the doorpost of the Cafe Musain.
He had the air of a caryatid on a vacation; he carried nothing but his revery, however. He was staring at the
Place SaintMichel. To lean one's back against a thing is equivalent to lying down while standing erect,
which attitude is not hated by thinkers. Laigle de Meaux was pondering without melancholy, over a little
misadventure which had befallen him two days previously at the lawschool, and which had modified his
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personal plans for the future, plans which were rather indistinct in any case.
Revery does not prevent a cab from passing by, nor the dreamer from taking note of that cab. Laigle de
Meaux, whose eyes were straying about in a sort of diffuse lounging, perceived, athwart his somnambulism, a
twowheeled vehicle proceeding through the place, at a foot pace and apparently in indecision. For whom
was this cabriolet? Why was it driving at a walk? Laigle took a survey. In it, beside the coachman, sat a
young man, and in front of the young man lay a rather bulky handbag. The bag displayed to passersby the
following name inscribed in large black letters on a card which was sewn to the stuff: MARIUS
PONTMERCY.
This name caused Laigle to change his attitude. He drew himself up and hurled this apostrophe at the young
man in the cabriolet:
"Monsieur Marius Pontmercy!"
The cabriolet thus addressed came to a halt.
The young man, who also seemed deeply buried in thought, raised his eyes:
"Hey?" said he.
"You are M. Marius Pontmercy?"
"Certainly."
"I was looking for you," resumed Laigle de Meaux.
"How so?" demanded Marius; for it was he: in fact, he had just quitted his grandfather's, and had before him a
face which he now beheld for the first time. "I do not know you."
"Neither do I know you," responded Laigle.
Marius thought he had encountered a wag, the beginning of a mystification in the open street. He was not in a
very good humor at the moment. He frowned. Laigle de Meaux went on imperturbably:
"You were not at the school day before yesterday."
"That is possible."
"That is certain."
"You are a student?" demanded Marius.
"Yes, sir. Like yourself. Day before yesterday, I entered the school, by chance. You know, one does have
such freaks sometimes. The professor was just calling the roll. You are not unaware that they are very
ridiculous on such occasions. At the third call, unanswered, your name is erased from the list. Sixty francs in
the gulf."
Marius began to listen.
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"It was Blondeau who was making the call. You know Blondeau, he has a very pointed and very malicious
nose, and he delights to scent out the absent. He slyly began with the letter P. I was not listening, not being
compromised by that letter. The call was not going badly. No erasures; the universe was present. Blondeau
was grieved. I said to myself: `Blondeau, my love, you will not get the very smallest sort of an execution
today.' All at once Blondeau calls, `Marius Pontmercy!' No one answers. Blondeau, filled with hope, repeats
more loudly: `Marius Pontmercy!' And he takes his pen. Monsieur, I have bowels of compassion. I said to
myself hastily: `Here's a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out. Attention. Here is a veritable mortal
who is not exact. He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavysides, a student who studies, a
greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square;
a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the
grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save
him. Death to Blondeau!' At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ink, cast
his yellow eyes round the audience room, and repeated for the third time: `Marius Pontmercy!' I replied:
`Present!' This is why you were not crossed off."
"Monsieur!" said Marius.
"And why I was," added Laigle de Meaux.
"I do not understand you," said Marius.
Laigle resumed:
"Nothing is more simple. I was close to the desk to reply, and close to the door for the purpose of flight. The
professor gazed at me with a certain intensity. All of a sudden, Blondeau, who must be the malicious nose
alluded to by Boileau, skipped to the letter L. L is my letter. I am from Meaux, and my name is Lesgle."
"L'Aigle!" interrupted Marius, "what fine name!"
"Monsieur, Blondeau came to this fine name, and called: `Laigle!' I reply: `Present!' Then Blondeau gazes at
me, with the gentleness of a tiger, and says to me: `lf you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle.' A phrase which
has a disobliging air for you, but which was lugubrious only for me. That said, he crossed me off."
Marius exclaimed:
"I am mortified, sir"
"First of all," interposed Laigle, "I demand permission to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of deeply felt
eulogium. I will assume that he is dead. There will be no great change required in his gauntness, in his pallor,
in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say: `Erudimini qui judicatis terram. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the
Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplinae, the bloodhound of the password, the angel of
the rollcall, who was upright, square exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God crossed him off as he crossed me
off.'"
Marius resumed:
"I am very sorry"
"Young man," said Laigle de Meaux, "let this serve you as a lesson. In future, be exact."
"I really beg you a thousand pardons."
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"Do not expose your neighbor to the danger of having his name erased again."
"I am extremely sorry"
Laigle burst out laughing.
"And I am delighted. I was on the brink of becoming a lawyer. This erasure saves me. I renounce the
triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more
stage. Here is my erasure all ready for me. It is to you that I am indebted for it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend
to pay a solemn call of thanks upon you. Where do you live?"
"In this cab," said Marius.
"A sign of opulence," retorted Laigle calmly. "I congratulate you. You have there a rent of nine thousand
francs per annum."
At that moment, Courfeyrac emerged from the cafe.
Marius smiled sadly.
"I have paid this rent for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it; but there is a sort of history attached
to it, and I don't know where to go."
"Come to my place, sir," said Courfeyrac.
"I have the priority," observed Laigle, "but I have no home."
"Hold your tongue, Bossuet," said Courfeyrac.
"Bossuet," said Marius, "but I thought that your name was Laigle."
"De Meaux," replied Laigle; "by metaphor, Bossuet."
Courfeyrac entered the cab.
"Coachman," said he, "hotel de la PorteSaintJacques."
And that very evening, Marius found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la PorteSaintJacques
side by side with Courfeyrac.
CHAPTER III. MARIUS' ASTONISHMENTS
In a few days, Marius had become Courfeyrac's friend. Youth is the season for prompt welding and the rapid
healing of scars. Marius breathed freely in Courfeyrac's society, a decidedly new thing for him. Courfeyrac
put no questions to him. He did not even think of such a thing. At that age, faces disclose everything on the
spot. Words are superfluous. There are young men of whom it can be said that their countenances chatter.
One looks at them and one knows them.
One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly addressed this interrogation to him:
"By the way, have you any political opinions?"
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"The idea!" said Marius, almost affronted by the question.
"What are you?"
"A democratBonapartist."
"The gray hue of a reassured rat," said Courfeyrac.
On the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius at the Cafe Musain. Then he whispered in his ear, with a
smile: "I must give you your entry to the revolution." And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the A B C.
He presented him to the other comrades, saying this simple word which Marius did not understand: "A
pupil."
Marius had fallen into a wasps'nest of wits. However, although he was silent and grave, he was, none the
less, both winged and armed.
Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little
fluttered by this covey of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited his attention at once,
and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements of these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a
whirl. Sometimes, in his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had difficulty in recovering them. He
heard them talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fashion. He caught
glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in proper perspective, he was not altogether sure
that it was not chaos that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather's opinions for the opinions of his father,
he had supposed himself fixed; he now suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself,
that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be displaced anew. A certain oscillation set
all the horizons of his brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting. He almost suffered from it.
It seemed as though there were no "consecrated things" for those young men. Marius heard singular
propositions on every sort of subject, which embarrassed his still timid mind.
A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy from the ancient repertory called classic:
"Down with tragedy dear to the bourgeois!" cried Bahorel. And Marius heard Combeferre reply:
"You are wrong, Bahorel. The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that
score. Bewigged tragedy has a reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by order of
AEschylus, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in nature; there are, in creation,
readymade parodies; a beak which is not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws
which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh, there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists
by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy."
Or chance decreed that Marius should traverse Rue JeanJacques Rousseau between Enjolras and
Courfeyrac.
Courfeyrac took his arm:
"Pay attention. This is the Rue Platriere, now called Rue JeanJacques Rousseau, on account of a singular
household which lived in it sixty years ago. This consisted of JeanJacques and Therese. From time to time,
little beings were born there. Therese gave birth to them, JeanJacques represented them as foundlings."
And Enjolras addressed Courfeyrac roughly:
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"Silence in the presence of JeanJacques! I admire that man. He denied his own children, that may be; but he
adopted the people."
Not one of these young men articulated the word: The Emperor. Jean Prouvaire alone sometimes said
Napoleon; all the others said "Bonaparte." Enjolras pronounced it "Buonaparte."
Marius was vaguely surprised. Initium sapientiae.
CHAPTER IV. THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFE MUSAIN
One of the conversations among the young men, at which Marius was present and in which he sometimes
joined, was a veritable shock to his mind.
This took place in the back room of the Cafe Musain. Nearly all the Friends of the A B C had convened that
evening. The argand lamp was solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion and
with noise. With the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who held their peace, all were haranguing rather at
haphazard. Conversations between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable tumults. It was a
game and an uproar as much as a conversation. They tossed words to each other and caught them up in turn.
They were chattering in all quarters.
No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the dishwasher of the cafe, who passed through
it from time to time, to go to her washing in the "lavatory."
Grantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had taken possession, reasoning and
contradicting at the top of his lungs, and shouting:
"I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one
of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous
invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living.
Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted
on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: `All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps.
Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with
big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an
apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a
woodlouse is a pterigybranche. Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro
with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I
laugh over the other. What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and honor, are generally of
pinchbeck. Kings make playthings of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight
of a sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef. As for the intrinsic
value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of
neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A
bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra. It is a shame that I
am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have
always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time
in pilfering apples; rapin[24] is the masculine of rapine. So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you are
worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every good quality tends
towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man
rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in
virtue as there are holes in Diogenes' cloak. Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer, Caesar or Brutus?
Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue. Virtue, granted,
but madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed Caesar was in love with
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the statue of a little boy. This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved
that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels.
This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the
one, Nero with the other. All history is nothing but wearisome repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the
other. The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon
are as like each other as two drops of water. I don't attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as
to conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If you are content with success, what
mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything
obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, says Horace. Therefore I disdain the human race. Shall we
descend to the party at all? Do you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Shall
it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and
fawned upon tyrants to such an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: "His urine attracts the bees." The
most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin
that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the
great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented
Episthates. What did Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to
others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France? France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you
my opinion of Athens. England? Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And then, London, the
metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness. There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the
parish of CharingCross alone. Such is Albion. I add, as the climax, that I have seen an Englishwoman
dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles. A fig then for England! If I do not admire John Bull, shall I
admire Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slaveholding brother. Take away Time is money,
what remains of England? Take away Cotton is king, what remains of America? Germany is the lymph, Italy
is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He also admired China. I admit that
Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their health is delicate. A
decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans
strangled, with their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this indicates that the palace of
the Emperors of Russia is in a condition of flagrant insalubrity. All civilized peoples offer this detail to the
admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and sums up all the forms of ruffianism,
from the brigandage of the Trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the Comanche Indians
in the Doubtful Pass. `Bah!' you will say to me, `but Europe is certainly better than Asia?' I admit that Asia is
a farce; but I do not precisely see what you find to laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples of the west, who
have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty
chemise of Queen Isabella to the chamberchair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human race, I tell you, not
a bit of it! It is at Brussels that the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most
chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris
the most absinthe; there are all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even the
ragpickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a ragpicker of the Place Maubert better than to
be a philosopher at the Piraeus. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the ragpickers are called bibines; the
most celebrated are the Saucepan and The SlaughterHouse. Hence, teagardens, goguettes, caboulots,
bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the ragpickers, caravanseries of the caliphs, I
certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I eat at Richard's at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to roll
naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison. Good day."
[24] The slang term for a painter's assistant.
Thus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into speech, catching at the dishwasher in her passage,
from his corner in the back room of the Cafe Musain.
Bossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on him, and Grantaire began again worse
than ever:
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"Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates
refusing Artaxerxes' bricabrac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do
you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God
made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch,
Femmewomanrhymes with infame, infamous. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy,
with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired
to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!"
"Silence then, capital R!" resumed Bossuet, who was discussing a point of law behind the scenes, and who
was plunged more than waist high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion:
"And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most, an amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in
accordance with the terms of the customs of Normandy, at SaintMichel, and for each year, an equivalent
must be paid to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving the rights of others, and by all and several, the
proprietors as well as those seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphyteuses, leases, freeholds, contracts
of domain, mortgages"
"Echo, plaintive nymph," hummed Grantaire.
Near Grantaire, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper, an inkstand and a pen between two glasses of brandy,
announced that a vaudeville was being sketched out.
This great affair was being discussed in a low voice, and the two heads at work touched each other: "Let us
begin by finding names. When one has the names, one finds the subject."
"That is true. Dictate. I will write."
"Monsieur Dorimon."
"An independent gentleman?"
"Of course."
"His daughter, Celestine."
"tine. What next?"
"Colonel Sainval."
"Sainval is stale. I should say Valsin."
Beside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was also taking advantage of the uproar to talk low,
was discussing a duel. An old fellow of thirty was counselling a young one of eighteen, and explaining to him
what sort of an adversary he had to deal with.
"The deuce! Look out for yourself. He is a fine swordsman. His play is neat. He has the attack, no wasted
feints, wrist, dash, lightning, a just parade, mathematical parries, bigre! and he is lefthanded."
In the angle opposite Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were playing dominoes, and talking of love.
"You are in luck, that you are," Joly was saying. "You have a mistress who is always laughing."
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"That is a fault of hers," returned Bahorel. "One's mistress does wrong to laugh. That encourages one to
deceive her. To see her gay removes your remorse; if you see her sad, your conscience pricks you."
"Ingrate! a woman who laughs is such a good thing! And you never quarrel!"
"That is because of the treaty which we have made. On forming our little Holy Alliance we assigned
ourselves each our frontier, which we never cross. What is situated on the side of winter belongs to Vaud, on
the side of the wind to Gex. Hence the peace."
"Peace is happiness digesting."
"And you, Jolllly, where do you stand in your entanglement with Mamselle you know whom I mean?"
"She sulks at me with cruel patience."
"Yet you are a lover to soften the heart with gauntness."
"Alas!"
"In your place, I would let her alone."
"That is easy enough to say."
"And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?"
"Yes. Ah! my poor Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with tiny feet, little hands, she dresses well,
and is white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortuneteller. I am wild over her."
"My dear fellow, then in order to please her, you must be elegant, and produce effects with your knees. Buy a
good pair of trousers of doublemilled cloth at Staub's. That will assist."
"At what price?" shouted Grantaire.
The third corner was delivered up to a poetical discussion. Pagan mythology was giving battle to Christian
mythology. The question was about Olympus, whose part was taken by Jean Prouvaire, out of pure
romanticism.
Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his
enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.
"Let us not insult the gods," said he. "The gods may not have taken their departure. Jupiter does not impress
me as dead. The gods are dreams, you say. Well, even in nature, such as it is today, after the flight of these
dreams, we still find all the grand old pagan myths. Such and such a mountain with the profile of a citadel,
like the Vignemale, for example, is still to me the headdress of Cybele; it has not been proved to me that Pan
does not come at night to breathe into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with his
fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do with the cascade of Pissevache."
In the last corner, they were talking politics. The Charter which had been granted was getting roughly
handled. Combeferre was upholding it weakly. Courfeyrac was energetically making a breach in it. On the
table lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac had seized it, and was brandishing
it, mingling with his arguments the rattling of this sheet of paper.
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"In the first place, I won't have any kings; if it were only from an economical point of view, I don't want any;
a king is a parasite. One does not have kings gratis. Listen to this: the dearness of kings. At the death of
Francois I., the national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis
XIV. it was two milliards, six hundred millions, at twentyeight livres the mark, which was equivalent in
1760, according to Desmarets, to four milliards, five hundred millions, which would today be equivalent to
twelve milliards. In the second place, and no offence to Combeferre, a charter granted is but a poor expedient
of civilization. To save the transition, to soften the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass
insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,what detestable
reasons all those are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and
pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all
such grants there is an Article 14. By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back.
I refuse your charter pointblank. A charter is a mask; the lie lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a
charter abdicates. The law is only the law when entire. No! no charter!"
It was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the fireplace. This was tempting, and Courfeyrac could not
resist. He crumpled the poor Touquet Charter in his fist, and flung it in the fire. The paper flashed up.
Combeferre watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn philosophically, and contented himself with
saying:
"The charter metamorphosed into flame."
And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, and that English thing which is called
humor, good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue, mounting together
and crossing from all points of the room, produced a sort of merry bombardment over their heads.
CHAPTER V. ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON
The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable property, that one can never foresee the
spark, nor divine the lightning flash. What will dart out presently? No one knows. The burst of laughter starts
from a tender feeling.
At the moment of jest, the serious makes its entry. Impulses depend on the first chance word. The spirit of
each is sovereign, jest suffices to open the field to the unexpected. These are conversations with abrupt turns,
in which the perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the stagemanager of such conversations.
A severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words, suddenly traversed the conflict of quips in which
Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing.
How does a phrase crop up in a dialogue? Whence comes it that it suddenly impresses itself on the attention
of those who hear it? We have just said, that no one knows anything about it. In the midst of the uproar,
Bossuet all at once terminated some apostrophe to Combeferre, with this date:
"June 18th, 1815, Waterloo."
At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who was leaning his elbows on a table, beside a glass of water, removed
his wrist from beneath his chin, and began to gaze fixedly at the audience.
"Pardieu!" exclaimed Courfeyrac ("Parbleu" was falling into disuse at this period), "that number 18 is strange
and strikes me. It is Bonaparte's fatal number. Place Louis in front and Brumaire behind, you have the whole
destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity, that the end treads close on the heels of the
commencement."
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Enjolras, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence and addressed this remark to
Combeferre:
"You mean to say, the crime and the expiation."
This word crime overpassed the measure of what Marius, who was already greatly agitated by the abrupt
evocation of Waterloo, could accept.
He rose, walked slowly to the map of France spread out on the wall, and at whose base an island was visible
in a separate compartment, laid his finger on this compartment and said:
"Corsica, a little island which has rendered France very great."
This was like a breath of icy air. All ceased talking. They felt that something was on the point of occurring.
Bahorel, replying to Bossuet, was just assuming an attitude of the torso to which he was addicted. He gave it
up to listen.
Enjolras, whose blue eye was not fixed on any one, and who seemed to be gazing at space, replied, without
glancing at Marius:
"France needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France. Quia nomina leo."
Marius felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Enjolras, and his voice burst forth with a vibration which
came from a quiver of his very being:
"God forbid that I should diminish France! But amalgamating Napoleon with her is not diminishing her.
Come! let us argue the question. I am a new comer among you, but I will confess that you amaze me. Where
do we stand? Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let us come to an explanation about the Emperor. I
hear you say Buonaparte, accenting the u like the Royalists. I warn you that my grandfather does better still;
he says Buonaparte'. I thought you were young men. Where, then, is your enthusiasm? And what are you
doing with it? Whom do you admire, if you do not admire the Emperor? And what more do you want? If you
will have none of that great man, what great men would you like? He had everything. He was complete. He
had in his brain the sum of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like Caesar, his
conversation was mingled with the lightningflash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus, he made
history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of
Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty,
at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State be held his own against Merlin, he
gave a soul to the geometry of the first, and to the chicanery of the last, he was a legist with the attorneys and
sidereal with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to
bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything; he knew everything; which did not prevent him from laughing
goodnaturedly beside the cradle of his little child; and all at once, frightened Europe lent an ear, armies put
themselves in motion, parks of artillery rumbled, pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry
galloped in the storm, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction, the frontiers of kingdoms
oscillated on the map, the sound of a superhuman sword was heard, as it was drawn from its sheath; they
beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding
amid the thunder, his two wings, the grand army and the old guard, and he was the archangel of war!"
All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head. Silence always produces somewhat the effect of
acquiescence, of the enemy being driven to the wall. Marius continued with increased enthusiasm, and almost
without pausing for breath:
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"Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny for a nation to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when
that nation is France and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man! To appear and to reign, to
march and to triumph, to have for haltingplaces all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of
them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge; to make you feel that
when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow in a single man, Hannibal,
Caesar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement
of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light
prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause constellations
of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a
pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions
fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike
with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries a
trumpetblast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what
greater thing is there?"
"To be free," said Combeferre.
Marius lowered his head in his turn; that cold and simple word had traversed his epic effusion like a blade of
steel, and he felt it vanishing within him. When he raised his eyes, Combeferre was no longer there. Probably
satisfied with his reply to the apotheosis, he had just taken his departure, and all, with the exception of
Enjolras, had followed him. The room had been emptied. Enjolras, left alone with Marius, was gazing gravely
at him. Marius, however, having rallied his ideas to some extent, did not consider himself beaten; there
lingered in him a trace of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt, of translating itself into
syllogisms arrayed against Enjolras, when all of a sudden, they heard some one singing on the stairs as he
went. It was Combeferre, and this is what he was singing:
"Si Cesar m'avait donne[25]
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallait quitter
L'amour de ma mere,
Je dirais au grand Cesar:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mere, o gue!
J'aime mieux ma mere!"
[25] If Cesar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother's love, I would say to great
Caesar, "Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother."
The wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated to this couplet a sort of strange
grandeur. Marius, thoughtfully, and with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: "My
mother?"
At that moment, he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder.
"Citizen," said Enjolras to him, "my mother is the Republic."
CHAPTER VI. RES ANGUSTA
That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy shadow in his soul. He felt what the
earth may possibly feel, at the moment when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be
deposited within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ and the joy of the fruit only arrive later.
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Marius was gloomy. He had but just acquired a faith; must he then reject it already? He affirmed to himself
that he would not. He declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself.
To stand between two religions, from one of which you have not as yet emerged, and another into which you
have not yet entered, is intolerable; and twilight is pleasing only to batlike souls. Marius was cleareyed,
and he required the true light. The halflights of doubt pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to
remain where he was, he could not halt there, he was irresistibly constrained to continue, to advance, to
examine, to think, to march further. Whither would this lead him? He feared, after having taken so many
steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to now take a step which should estrange him from that
father. His discomfort was augmented by all the reflections which occurred to him. An escarpment rose
around him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with his friends; daring in the eyes of the one,
he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on
the side of age and on the side of youth. He ceased to go to the Cafe Musain.
In the troubled state of his conscience, he no longer thought of certain serious sides of existence. The realities
of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten. They soon elbowed him abruptly.
One morning, the proprietor of the hotel entered Marius' room and said to him:
"Monsieur Courfeyrac answered for you."
"Yes."
"But I must have my money."
"Request Courfeyrac to come and talk with me," said Marius.
Courfeyrac having made his appearance, the host left them. Marius then told him what it had not before
occurred to him to relate, that he was the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives.
"What is to become of you?" said Courfeyrac.
"I do not know in the least," replied Marius.
"What are you going to do?"
"I do not know."
"Have you any money?"
"Fifteen francs."
"Do you want me to lend you some?"
"Never."
"Have you clothes?"
"Here is what I have."
"Have you trinkets?"
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"A watch."
"Silver?"
"Gold; here it is."
"I know a clothesdealer who will take your frockcoat and a pair of trousers."
"That is good."
"You will then have only a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, a hat and a coat."
"And my boots."
"What! you will not go barefoot? What opulence!"
"That will be enough."
"I know a watchmaker who will buy your watch."
"That is good."
"No; it is not good. What will you do after that?"
"Whatever is necessary. Anything honest, that is to say."
"Do you know English?"
"No."
"Do you know German?"
"No."
"So much the worse."
"Why?"
"Because one of my friends, a publisher, is getting up a sort of an encyclopaedia, for which you might have
translated English or German articles. It is badly paid work, but one can live by it."
"I will learn English and German."
"And in the meanwhile?"
"In the meanwhile I will live on my clothes and my watch."
The clothesdealer was sent for. He paid twenty francs for the castoff garments. They went to the
watchmaker's. He bought the watch for fortyfive francs.
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"That is not bad," said Marius to Courfeyrac, on their return to the hotel, "with my fifteen francs, that makes
eighty."
"And the hotel bill?" observed Courfeyrac.
"Hello, I had forgotten that," said Marius.
The landlord presented his bill, which had to be paid on the spot. It amounted to seventy francs.
"I have ten francs left," said Marius.
"The deuce," exclaimed Courfeyrac, "you will eat up five francs while you are learning English, and five
while learning German. That will be swallowing a tongue very fast, or a hundred sous very slowly."
In the meantime Aunt Gillenormand, a rather goodhearted person at bottom in difficulties, had finally
hunted up Marius' abode.
One morning, on his return from the lawschool, Marius found a letter from his aunt, and the sixty pistoles,
that is to say, six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed box.
Marius sent back the thirty louis to his aunt, with a respectful letter, in which he stated that he had sufficient
means of subsistence and that he should be able thenceforth to supply all his needs. At that moment, he had
three francs left.
His aunt did not inform his grandfather of this refusal for fear of exasperating him. Besides, had he not said:
"Let me never hear the name of that blooddrinker again!"
Marius left the hotel de la Porte SaintJacques, as he did not wish to run in debt there.
BOOK FIFTH.THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
CHAPTER I. MARIUS INDIGENT
Life became hard for Marius. It was nothing to eat his clothes and his watch. He ate of that terrible,
inexpressible thing that is called de la vache enrage; that is to say, he endured great hardships and privations.
A terrible thing it is, containing days without bread, nights without sleep, evenings without a candle, a hearth
without a fire, weeks without work, a future without hope, a coat out at the elbows, an old hat which evokes
the laughter of young girls, a door which one finds locked on one at night because one's rent is not paid, the
insolence of the porter and the cookshop man, the sneers of neighbors, humiliations, dignity trampled on,
work of whatever nature accepted, disgusts, bitterness, despondency. Marius learned how all this is eaten, and
how such are often the only things which one has to devour. At that moment of his existence when a man
needs his pride, because he needs love, he felt that he was jeered at because he was badly dressed, and
ridiculous because he was poor. At the age when youth swells the heart with imperial pride, he dropped his
eyes more than once on his dilapidated boots, and he knew the unjust shame and the poignant blushes of
wretchedness. Admirable and terrible trial from which the feeble emerge base, from which the strong emerge
sublime. A crucible into which destiny casts a man, whenever it desires a scoundrel or a demigod.
For many great deeds are performed in petty combats. There are instances of bravery ignored and obstinate,
which defend themselves step by step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and
mysterious triumphs which no eye beholds, which are requited with no renown, which are saluted with no
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trumpet blast. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their
heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.
Firm and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother;
destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good milk for
the magnanimous.
There came a moment in Marius' life, when he swept his own landing, when he bought his sou's worth of Brie
cheese at the fruiterer's, when he waited until twilight had fallen to slip into the baker's and purchase a loaf,
which he carried off furtively to his attic as though he had stolen it. Sometimes there could be seen gliding
into the butcher's shop on the corner, in the midst of the bantering cooks who elbowed him, an awkward
young man, carrying big books under his arm, who had a timid yet angry air, who, on entering, removed his
hat from a brow whereon stood drops of perspiration, made a profound bow to the butcher's astonished wife,
asked for a mutton cutlet, paid six or seven sous for it, wrapped it up in a paper, put it under his arm, between
two books, and went away. It was Marius. On this cutlet, which he cooked for himself, he lived for three
days.
On the first day he ate the meat, on the second he ate the fat, on the third he gnawed the bone. Aunt
Gillenormand made repeated attempts, and sent him the sixty pistoles several times. Marius returned them on
every occasion, saying that he needed nothing.
He was still in mourning for his father when the revolution which we have just described was effected within
him. From that time forth, he had not put off his black garments. But his garments were quitting him. The day
came when he had no longer a coat. The trousers would go next. What was to be done? Courfeyrac, to whom
he had, on his side, done some good turns, gave him an old coat. For thirty sous, Marius got it turned by some
porter or other, and it was a new coat. But this coat was green. Then Marius ceased to go out until after
nightfall. This made his coat black. As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the
night.
In spite of all this, he got admitted to practice as a lawyer. He was supposed to live in Courfeyrac's room,
which was decent, and where a certain number of lawbooks backed up and completed by several dilapidated
volumes of romance, passed as the library required by the regulations. He had his letters addressed to
Courfeyrac's quarters.
When Marius became a lawyer, he informed his grandfather of the fact in a letter which was cold but full of
submission and respect. M. Gillenormand trembled as he took the letter, read it, tore it in four pieces, and
threw it into the wastebasket. Two or three days later, Mademoiselle Gillenormand heard her father, who
was alone in his room, talking aloud to himself. He always did this whenever he was greatly agitated. She
listened, and the old man was saying: "If you were not a fool, you would know that one cannot be a baron and
a lawyer at the same time."
CHAPTER II. MARIUS POOR
It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally assumes a
form, and adjusts itself. One vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, which is,
however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which the existence of Marius Pontmercy was arranged:
He had passed the worst straits; the narrow pass was opening out a little in front of him. By dint of toil,
perseverance, courage, and will, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs a year.
He had learned German and English; thanks to Courfeyrac, who had put him in communication with his
friend the publisher, Marius filled the modest post of utility man in the literature of the publishing house. He
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drew up prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotated editions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product,
year in and year out, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We will explain.
Marius occupied in the Gorbeau house, for an annual sum of thirty francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a
cabinet, which contained only the most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged to him. He
gave three francs a month to the old principal tenant to come and sweep his hole, and to bring him a little hot
water every morning, a fresh egg, and a penny roll. He breakfasted on this egg and roll. His breakfast varied
in cost from two to four sous, according as eggs were dear or cheap. At six o'clock in the evening he
descended the Rue SaintJacques to dine at Rousseau's, opposite Basset's, the stampdealer's, on the corner
of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup. He took a sixsou plate of meat, a halfportion of vegetables for
three sous, and a threesou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread as he wished. As for wine, he drank
water. When he paid at the desk where Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majestically
presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a smile. Then he went away. For
sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.
This Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water carafes were emptied, was a calming
potion rather than a restaurant. It no longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called
Rousseau the Aquatic.
Thus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him twenty sous a day; which made three
hundred and sixtyfive francs a year. Add the thirty francs for rent, and the thirtysix francs to the old
woman, plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty francs, Marius was fed, lodged, and waited
on. His clothing cost him a hundred francs, his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the whole did not
exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had
once been able to borrow sixty francs of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had no fireplace, he had
"simplified matters."
Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for every day"; the other, brand new for
special occasions. Both were black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode,
and the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out. They were always ragged,
which caused him to button his coat to the chin.
It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishing condition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to
traverse, others to climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything in the way of
destitution; he had done everything except contract debts. He did himself the justice to say that he had never
owed any one a sou. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He even said to himself, that a creditor is
worse than a master; for the master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can
administer to it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He had passed many a day
fasting. Feeling that all extremes meet, and that, if one is not on one's guard, lowered fortunes may lead to
baseness of soul, he kept a jealous watch on his pride. Such and such a formality or action, which, in any
other situation would have appeared merely a deference to him, now seemed insipidity, and he nerved
himself against it. His face wore a sort of severe flush. He was timid even to rudeness.
During all these trials he had felt himself encouraged and even uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he
possessed within himself. The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is the only bird which
bears up its own cage.
Besides his father's name, another name was graven in Marius' heart, the name of Thenardier. Marius, with
his grave and enthusiastic nature, surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts, he
owed his father's life,that intrepid sergeant who had saved the colonel amid the bullets and the
cannonballs of Waterloo. He never separated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, and he
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associated them in his veneration. It was a sort of worship in two steps, with the grand altar for the colonel
and the lesser one for Thenardier. What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towards Thenardier, was the
idea of the distress into which he knew that Thenardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius
had learned at Montfermeil of the ruin and bankruptcy of the unfortunate innkeeper. Since that time, he had
made unheardof efforts to find traces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which
Thenardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country; he had gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to
Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He had persisted for three years, expending in these explorations the little
money which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news of Thenardier: he was supposed to
have gone abroad. His creditors had also sought him, with less love than Marius, but with as much assiduity,
and had not been able to lay their hands on him. Marius blamed himself, and was almost angry with himself
for his lack of success in his researches. It was the only debt left him by the colonel, and Marius made it a
matter of honor to pay it. "What," he thought, "when my father lay dying on the field of battle, did Thenardier
contrive to find him amid the smoke and the grapeshot, and bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he owed
him nothing, and I, who owe so much to Thenardier, cannot join him in this shadow where he is lying in the
pangs of death, and in my turn bring him back from death to life! Oh! I will find him!" To find Thenardier, in
fact, Marius would have given one of his arms, to rescue him from his misery, he would have sacrificed all
his blood. To see Thenardier, to render Thenardier some service, to say to him: "You do not know me; well, I
do know you! Here I am. Dispose of me!" This was Marius' sweetest and most magnificent dream.
CHAPTER III. MARIUS GROWN UP
At this epoch, Marius was twenty years of age. It was three years since he had left his grandfather. Both
parties had remained on the same terms, without attempting to approach each other, and without seeking to
see each other. Besides, what was the use of seeing each other? Marius was the brass vase, while Father
Gillenormand was the iron pot.
We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's heart. He had imagined that M. Gillenormand had
never loved him, and that that crusty, harsh, and smiling old fellow who cursed, shouted, and stormed and
brandished his cane, cherished for him, at the most, only that affection, which is at once slight and severe, of
the dotards of comedy. Marius was in error. There are fathers who do not love their children; there exists no
grandfather who does not adore his grandson. At bottom, as we have said, M. Gillenormand idolized Marius.
He idolized him after his own fashion, with an accompaniment of snappishness and boxes on the ear; but, this
child once gone, he felt a black void in his heart; he would allow no one to mention the child to him, and all
the while secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed. At first, he hoped that this Buonapartist, this Jacobin,
this terrorist, this Septembrist, would return. But the weeks passed by, years passed; to M. Gillenormand's
great despair, the "blooddrinker" did not make his appearance. "I could not do otherwise than turn him out,"
said the grandfather to himself, and he asked himself: "If the thing were to do over again, would I do it?" His
pride instantly answered "yes," but his aged head, which he shook in silence, replied sadly "no." He had his
hours of depression. He missed Marius. Old men need affection as they need the sun. It is warmth. Strong as
his nature was, the absence of Marius had wrought some change in him. Nothing in the world could have
induced him to take a step towards "that rogue"; but he suffered. He never inquired about him, but he thought
of him incessantly. He lived in the Marais in a more and more retired manner; he was still merry and violent
as of old, but his merriment had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always terminated in a sort of
gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said: "Oh! if he only would return, what a good box on the ear I
would give him!"
As for his aunt, she thought too little to love much; Marius was no longer for her much more than a vague
black form; and she eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with the cat or the paroquet
which she probably had. What augmented Father Gillenormand's secret suffering was, that he locked it all up
within his breast, and did not allow its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those recently invented
furnaces which consume their own smoke. It sometimes happened that officious busybodies spoke to him of
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Marius, and asked him: "What is your grandson doing?" "What has become of him?" The old bourgeois
replied with a sigh, that he was a sad case, and giving a fillip to his cuff, if he wished to appear gay:
"Monsieur le Baron de Pontmercy is practising pettifogging in some corner or other."
While the old man regretted, Marius applauded himself. As is the case with all goodhearted people,
misfortune had eradicated his bitterness. He only thought of M. Gillenormand in an amiable light, but he had
set his mind on not receiving anything more from the man who had been unkind to his father. This was the
mitigated translation of his first indignation. Moreover, he was happy at having suffered, and at suffering
still. It was for his father's sake. The hardness of his life satisfied and pleased him. He said to himself with a
sort of joy that it was certainly the least he could do; that it was an expiation; that, had it not been for
that, he would have been punished in some other way and later on for his impious indifference towards his
father, and such a father! that it would not have been just that his father should have all the suffering, and he
none of it; and that, in any case, what were his toils and his destitution compared with the colonel's heroic
life? that, in short, the only way for him to approach his father and resemble him, was to be brave in the face
of indigence, as the other had been valiant before the enemy; and that that was, no doubt, what the colonel
had meant to imply by the words: "He will be worthy of it." Words which Marius continued to wear, not on
his breast, since the colonel's writing had disappeared, but in his heart.
And then, on the day when his grandfather had turned him out of doors, he had been only a child, now he was
a man. He felt it. Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this
magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards
aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds
towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has a hundred coarse and brilliant distractions, horse races,
hunting, dogs, tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and all the rest of it; occupations for the baser side of the soul,
at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty; he
eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes
gratis; he gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the
creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon
creation to such an extent that he beholds God. He dreams, he feels himself great; he dreams on, and feels
himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the compassion of the man who
meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him, forgetfulness of self and pity for all. As he thinks of
the innumerable enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls which stand open, and refuses to
souls that are closed, he comes to pity, he the millionnaire of the mind, the millionnaire of money. All hatred
departs from his heart, in proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And is he unhappy? No. The misery of a
young man is never miserable. The first young lad who comes to hand, however poor he may be, with his
strength, his health, his rapid walk, his brilliant eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black hair, his red lips,
his white teeth, his pure breath, will always arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he
sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column
gains pride, his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to
joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire;
his head in the light. He is firm serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, kindly; and he
thanks God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks: work, which
makes him free; and thought, which makes him dignified.
This is what had happened with Marius. To tell the truth, he inclined a little too much to the side of
contemplation. From the day when he had succeeded in earning his living with some approach to certainty, he
had stopped, thinking it good to be poor, and retrenching time from his work to give to thought; that is to say,
he sometimes passed entire days in meditation, absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute
voluptuousness of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus propounded the problem of his life: to toil as
little as possible at material labor, in order to toil as much as possible at the labor which is impalpable; in
other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to cast the rest to the infinite. As he believed that he
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lacked nothing, he did not perceive that contemplation, thus understood, ends by becoming one of the forms
of idleness; that he was contenting himself with conquering the first necessities of life, and that he was resting
from his labors too soon.
It was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature, this could only be a transitory state, and that, at
the first shock against the inevitable complications of destiny, Marius would awaken.
In the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever Father Gillenormand thought about the matter, he
was not practising, he was not even pettifogging. Meditation had turned him aside from pleading. To haunt
attorneys, to follow the court, to hunt up cases what a bore! Why should he do it? He saw no reason for
changing the manner of gaining his livelihood! The obscure and illpaid publishing establishment had come
to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too much labor, as we have explained, and
which sufficed for his wants.
One of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I think, offered to take him into his own house, to
lodge him well, to furnish him with regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred francs a year. To be
well lodged! Fifteen hundred francs! No doubt. But renounce his liberty! Be on fixed wages! A sort of hired
man of letters! According to Marius' opinion, if he accepted, his position would become both better and
worse at the same time, he acquired comfort, and lost his dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness
converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture: something like the case of a blind man who should
recover the sight of one eye. He refused.
Marius dwelt in solitude. Owing to his taste for remaining outside of everything, and through having been too
much alarmed, he had not entered decidedly into the group presided over by Enjolras. They had remained
good friends; they were ready to assist each other on occasion in every possible way; but nothing more.
Marius had two friends: one young, Courfeyrac; and one old, M. Mabeuf. He inclined more to the old man. In
the first place, he owed to him the revolution which had taken place within him; to him he was indebted for
having known and loved his father. "He operated on me for a cataract," he said.
The churchwarden had certainly played a decisive part.
It was not, however, that M. Mabeuf had been anything but the calm and impassive agent of Providence in
this connection. He had enlightened Marius by chance and without being aware of the fact, as does a candle
which some one brings; he had been the candle and not the some one.
As for Marius' inward political revolution, M. Mabeuf was totally incapable of comprehending it, of willing
or of directing it.
As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be superfluous.
CHAPTER IV. M. MABEUF
On the day when M. Mabeuf said to Marius: "Certainly I approve of political opinions," he expressed the real
state of his mind. All political opinions were matters of indifference to him, and he approved them all,
without distinction, provided they left him in peace, as the Greeks called the Furies "the beautiful, the good,
the charming," the Eumenides. M. Mabeuf's political opinion consisted in a passionate love for plants, and,
above all, for books. Like all the rest of the world, he possessed the termination in ist, without which no one
could exist at that time, but he was neither a Royalist, a Bonapartist, a Chartist, an Orleanist, nor an
Anarchist; he was a bouquinist, a collector of old books. He did not understand how men could busy
themselves with hating each other because of silly stuff like the charter, democracy, legitimacy, monarchy,
the republic, etc., when there were in the world all sorts of mosses, grasses, and shrubs which they might be
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looking at, and heaps of folios, and even of 32mos, which they might turn over. He took good care not to
become useless; having books did not prevent his reading, being a botanist did not prevent his being a
gardener. When he made Pontmercy's acquaintance, this sympathy had existed between the colonel and
himselfthat what the colonel did for flowers, he did for fruits. M. Mabeuf had succeeded in producing
seedling pears as savory as the pears of St. Germain; it is from one of his combinations, apparently, that the
October Mirabelle, now celebrated and no less perfumed than the summer Mirabelle, owes its origin. He went
to mass rather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he loved the faces of men, but hated their
noise, he found them assembled and silent only in church. Feeling that he must be something in the State, he
had chosen the career of warden. However, he had never succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip
bulb, nor any man as much as an Elzevir. He had long passed sixty, when, one day, some one asked him:
"Have you never been married?" "I have forgotten," said he. When it sometimes happened to himand to
whom does it not happen? to say: "Oh! if I were only rich!" it was not when ogling a pretty girl, as was the
case with Father Gillenormand, but when contemplating an old book. He lived alone with an old
housekeeper. He was somewhat gouty, and when he was asleep, his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism,
lay crooked up in the folds of his sheets. He had composed and published a Flora of the Environs of
Cauteretz, with colored plates, a work which enjoyed a tolerable measure of esteem and which sold well.
People rang his bell, in the Rue Mesieres, two or three times a day, to ask for it. He drew as much as two
thousand francs a year from it; this constituted nearly the whole of his fortune. Although poor, he had had the
talent to form for himself, by dint of patience, privations, and time, a precious collection of rare copies of
every sort. He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two. The sole
decoration of the four rooms on the ground floor, which composed his lodgings, consisted of framed
herbariums, and engravings of the old masters. The sight of a sword or a gun chilled his blood. He had never
approached a cannon in his life, even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was a cure,
perfectly white hair, no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, a trembling in every limb, a Picard accent, an
infantile laugh, the air of an old sheep, and he was easily frightened. Add to this, that he had no other
friendship, no other acquaintance among the living, than an old bookseller of the PorteSaintJacques,
named Royal. His dream was to naturalize indigo in France.
His servant was also a sort of innocent. The poor good old woman was a spinster. Sultan, her cat, which
might have mewed Allegri's miserere in the Sixtine Chapel, had filled her heart and sufficed for the quantity
of passion which existed in her. None of her dreams had ever proceeded as far as man. She had never been
able to get further than her cat. Like him, she had a mustache. Her glory consisted in her caps, which were
always white. She passed her time, on Sundays, after mass, in counting over the linen in her chest, and in
spreading out on her bed the dresses in the piece which she bought and never had made up. She knew how to
read. M. Mabeuf had nicknamed her Mother Plutarque.
M. Mabeuf had taken a fancy to Marius, because Marius, being young and gentle, warmed his age without
startling his timidity. Youth combined with gentleness produces on old people the effect of the sun without
wind. When Marius was saturated with military glory, with gunpowder, with marches and countermarches,
and with all those prodigious battles in which his father had given and received such tremendous blows of the
sword, he went to see M. Mabeuf, and M. Mabeuf talked to him of his hero from the point of view of flowers.
His brother the cure died about 1830, and almost immediately, as when the night is drawing on, the whole
horizon grew dark for M. Mabeuf. A notary's failure deprived him of the sum of ten thousand francs, which
was all that he possessed in his brother's right and his own. The Revolution of July brought a crisis to
publishing. In a period of embarrassment, the first thing which does not sell is a Flora. The Flora of the
Environs of Cauteretz stopped short. Weeks passed by without a single purchaser. Sometimes M. Mabeuf
started at the sound of the bell. "Monsieur," said Mother Plutarque sadly, "it is the watercarrier." In short,
one day, M. Mabeuf quitted the Rue Mesieres, abdicated the functions of warden, gave up SaintSulpice,
sold not a part of his books, but of his prints, that to which he was the least attached,and installed
himself in a little house on the Rue Montparnasse, where, however, he remained but one quarter for two
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reasons: in the first place, the ground floor and the garden cost three hundred francs, and he dared not spend
more than two hundred francs on his rent; in the second, being near Faton's shootinggallery, he could hear
the pistolshots; which was intolerable to him.
He carried off his Flora, his copperplates, his herbariums, his portfolios, and his books, and established
himself near the Salpetriere, in a sort of thatched cottage of the village of Austerlitz, where, for fifty crowns a
year, he got three rooms and a garden enclosed by a hedge, and containing a well. He took advantage of this
removal to sell off nearly all his furniture. On the day of his entrance into his new quarters, he was very gay,
and drove the nails on which his engravings and herbariums were to hang, with his own hands, dug in his
garden the rest of the day, and at night, perceiving that Mother Plutarque had a melancholy air, and was very
thoughtful, he tapped her on the shoulder and said to her with a smile: "We have the indigo!"
Only two visitors, the bookseller of the PorteSaintJacques and Marius, were admitted to view the thatched
cottage at Austerlitz, a brawling name which was, to tell the truth, extremely disagreeable to him.
However, as we have just pointed out, brains which are absorbed in some bit of wisdom, or folly, or, as it
often happens, in both at once, are but slowly accessible to the things of actual life. Their own destiny is a
faroff thing to them. There results from such concentration a passivity, which, if it were the outcome of
reasoning, would resemble philosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet
is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In
the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our
happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.
It is thus that, athwart the cloud which formed about him, when all his hopes were extinguished one after the
other, M. Mabeuf remained rather puerilely, but profoundly serene. His habits of mind had the regular swing
of a pendulum. Once mounted on an illusion, he went for a very long time, even after the illusion had
disappeared. A clock does not stop short at the precise moment when the key is lost.
M. Mabeuf had his innocent pleasures. These pleasures were inexpensive and unexpected; the merest chance
furnished them. One day, Mother Plutarque was reading a romance in one corner of the room. She was
reading aloud, finding that she understood better thus. To read aloud is to assure one's self of what one is
reading. There are people who read very loud, and who have the appearance of giving themselves their word
of honor as to what they are perusing.
It was with this sort of energy that Mother Plutarque was reading the romance which she had in hand. M.
Mabeuf heard her without listening to her.
In the course of her reading, Mother Plutarque came to this phrase. It was a question of an officer of dragoons
and a beauty:
"The beauty pouted, and the dragoon"
Here she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses.
"Bouddha and the Dragon," struck in M. Mabeuf in a low voice. "Yes, it is true that there was a dragon,
which, from the depths of its cave, spouted flame through his maw and set the heavens on fire. Many stars
had already been consumed by this monster, which, besides, had the claws of a tiger. Bouddha went into its
den and succeeded in converting the dragon. That is a good book that you are reading, Mother Plutarque.
There is no more beautiful legend in existence."
And M. Mabeuf fell into a delicious revery.
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CHAPTER V. POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY
Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually falling into the clutches of indigence, and who
came to feel astonishment, little by little, without, however, being made melancholy by it. Marius met
Courfeyrac and sought out M. Mabeuf. Very rarely, however; twice a month at most.
Marius' pleasure consisted in taking long walks alone on the outer boulevards, or in the ChampsdeMars, or
in the least frequented alleys of the Luxembourg. He often spent half a day in gazing at a market garden, the
beds of lettuce, the chickens on the dungheap, the horse turning the waterwheel. The passersby stared at
him in surprise, and some of them thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He was only a poor
young man dreaming in an objectless way.
It was during one of his strolls that he had hit upon the Gorbeau house, and, tempted by its isolation and its
cheapness, had taken up his abode there. He was known there only under the name of M. Marius.
Some of his father's old generals or old comrades had invited him to go and see them, when they learned
about him. Marius had not refused their invitations. They afforded opportunities of talking about his father.
Thus he went from time to time, to Comte Pajol, to General Bellavesne, to General Fririon, to the Invalides.
There was music and dancing there. On such evenings, Marius put on his new coat. But he never went to
these evening parties or balls except on days when it was freezing cold, because he could not afford a
carriage, and he did not wish to arrive with boots otherwise than like mirrors.
He said sometimes, but without bitterness: "Men are so made that in a drawingroom you may be soiled
everywhere except on your shoes. In order to insure a good reception there, only one irreproachable thing is
asked of you; your conscience? No, your boots."
All passions except those of the heart are dissipated by revery. Marius' political fevers vanished thus. The
Revolution of 1830 assisted in the process, by satisfying and calming him. He remained the same, setting
aside his fits of wrath. He still held the same opinions. Only, they had been tempered. To speak accurately, he
had no longer any opinions, he had sympathies. To what party did he belong? To the party of humanity. Out
of humanity he chose France; out of the Nation he chose the people; out of the people he chose the woman. It
was to that point above all, that his pity was directed. Now he preferred an idea to a deed, a poet to a hero,
and he admired a book like Job more than an event like Marengo. And then, when, after a day spent in
meditation, he returned in the evening through the boulevards, and caught a glimpse through the branches of
the trees of the fathomless space beyond, the nameless gleams, the abyss, the shadow, the mystery, all that
which is only human seemed very pretty indeed to him.
He thought that he had, and he really had, in fact, arrived at the truth of life and of human philosophy, and he
had ended by gazing at nothing but heaven, the only thing which Truth can perceive from the bottom of her
well.
This did not prevent him from multiplying his plans, his combinations, his scaffoldings, his projects for the
future. In this state of revery, an eye which could have cast a glance into Marius' interior would have been
dazzled with the purity of that soul. In fact, had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the
consciences of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams, than
according to what he thinks. There is will in thought, there is none in dreams. Revery, which is utterly
spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our spirit. Nothing proceeds
more directly and more sincerely from the very depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless
aspirations towards the splendors of destiny. In these aspirations, much more than in deliberate, rational
coordinated ideas, is the real character of a man to be found. Our chimeras are the things which the most
resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature.
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Towards the middle of this year 1831, the old woman who waited on Marius told him that his neighbors, the
wretched Jondrette family, had been turned out of doors. Marius, who passed nearly the whole of his days out
of the house, hardly knew that he had any neighbors.
"Why are they turned out?" he asked.
"Because they do not pay their rent; they owe for two quarters."
"How much is it?"
"Twenty francs," said the old woman.
Marius had thirty francs saved up in a drawer.
"Here," he said to the old woman, "take these twentyfive francs. Pay for the poor people and give them five
francs, and do not tell them that it was I."
CHAPTER VI. THE SUBSTITUTE
It chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Theodule belonged came to perform garrison duty in Paris.
This inspired Aunt Gillenormand with a second idea. She had, on the first occasion, hit upon the plan of
having Marius spied upon by Theodule; now she plotted to have Theodule take Marius' place.
At all events and in case the grandfather should feel the vague need of a young face in the house,these rays
of dawn are sometimes sweet to ruin,it was expedient to find another Marius. "Take it as a simple
erratum," she thought, "such as one sees in books. For Marius, read Theodule."
A grandnephew is almost the same as a grandson; in default of a lawyer one takes a lancer.
One morning, when M. Gillenormand was about to read something in the Quotidienne, his daughter entered
and said to him in her sweetest voice; for the question concerned her favorite:
"Father, Theodule is coming to present his respects to you this morning."
"Who's Theodule?"
"Your grandnephew."
"Ah!" said the grandfather.
Then he went back to his reading, thought no more of his grandnephew, who was merely some Theodule or
other, and soon flew into a rage, which almost always happened when he read. The "sheet" which he held,
although Royalist, of course, announced for the following day, without any softening phrases, one of these
little events which were of daily occurrence at that date in Paris: "That the students of the schools of law and
medicine were to assemble on the Place du Pantheon, at midday,to deliberate." The discussion concerned
one of the questions of the moment, the artillery of the National Guard, and a conflict between the Minister of
War and "the citizen's militia," on the subject of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The
students were to "deliberate" over this. It did not take much more than this to swell M. Gillenormand's rage.
He thought of Marius, who was a student, and who would probably go with the rest, to "deliberate, at midday,
on the Place du Pantheon."
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As he was indulging in this painful dream, Lieutenant Theodule entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois,
which was clever of him, and was discreetly introduced by Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The lancer had
reasoned as follows: "The old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension. It is well to disguise one's
self as a civilian from time to time."
Mademoiselle Gillenormand said aloud to her father:
"Theodule, your grandnephew."
And in a low voice to the lieutenant:
"Approve of everything."
And she withdrew.
The lieutenant, who was but little accustomed to such venerable encounters, stammered with some timidity:
"Good day, uncle," and made a salute composed of the involuntary and mechanical outline of the military
salute finished off as a bourgeois salute.
"Ah! so it's you; that is well, sit down," said the old gentleman.
That said, he totally forgot the lancer.
Theodule seated himself, and M. Gillenormand rose.
M. Gillenormand began to pace back and forth, his hands in his pockets, talking aloud, and twitching, with
his irritated old fingers, at the two watches which he wore in his two fobs.
"That pack of brats! they convene on the Place du Pantheon! by my life! urchins who were with their nurses
but yesterday! If one were to squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate tomorrow, at
midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is
what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open
air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism
leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there but returned
convicts and released galleyslaves. The Republicans and the galleyslaves,they form but one nose and
one handkerchief. Carnot used to say: `Where would you have me go, traitor?' Fouche replied: `Wherever
you please, imbecile!' That's what the Republicans are like."
"That is true," said Theodule.
M. Gillenormand half turned his head, saw Theodule, and went on:
"When one reflects that that scoundrel was so vile as to turn carbonaro! Why did you leave my house? To go
and become a Republican! Pssst! In the first place, the people want none of your republic, they have common
sense, they know well that there always have been kings, and that there always will be; they know well that
the people are only the people, after all, they make sport of it, of your republic do you understand, idiot? Is
it not a horrible caprice? To fall in love with Pere Duchesne, to make sheep'seyes at the guillotine, to sing
romances, and play on the guitar under the balcony of '93it's enough to make one spit on all these young
fellows, such fools are they! They are all alike. Not one escapes. It suffices for them to breathe the air which
blows through the street to lose their senses. The nineteenth century is poison. The first scamp that happens
along lets his beard grow like a goat's, thinks himself a real scoundrel, and abandons his old relatives. He's a
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Republican, he's a romantic. What does that mean, romantic? Do me the favor to tell me what it is. All
possible follies. A year ago, they ran to Hernani. Now, I just ask you, Hernani! antitheses! abominations
which are not even written in French! And then, they have cannons in the courtyard of the Louvre. Such are
the rascalities of this age!"
"You are right, uncle," said Theodule.
M. Gillenormand resumed:
"Cannons in the courtyard of the Museum! For what purpose? Do you want to fire grapeshot at the Apollo
Belvedere? What have those cartridges to do with the Venus de Medici? Oh! the young men of the present
day are all blackguards! What a pretty creature is their Benjamin Constant! And those who are not rascals are
simpletons! They do all they can to make themselves ugly, they are badly dressed, they are afraid of women,
in the presence of petticoats they have a mendicant air which sets the girls into fits of laughter; on my word of
honor, one would say the poor creatures were ashamed of love. They are deformed, and they complete
themselves by being stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and Potier, they have sack coats, stablemen's
waistcoats, shirts of coarse linen, trousers of coarse cloth, boots of coarse leather, and their rigmarole
resembles their plumage. One might make use of their jargon to put new soles on their old shoes. And all this
awkward batch of brats has political opinions, if you please. Political opinions should be strictly forbidden.
They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they
put the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe topsyturvy, they
reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these
women climb into their carts. Ah! Marius! Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate on the public place! to
discuss, to debate, to take measures! They call that measures, just God! Disorder humbles itself and becomes
silly. I have seen chaos, I now see a mess. Students deliberating on the National Guard, such a thing could
not be seen among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! Savages who go naked, with their noddles dressed like
a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bachelors of arts! The fourpenny
monkeys! And they set up for judges! Those creatures deliberate and ratiocinate! The end of the world is
come! This is plainly the end of this miserable terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and France
has emitted it. Deliberate, my rascals! Such things will happen so long as they go and read the newspapers
under the arcades of the Odeon. That costs them a sou, and their good sense, and their intelligence, and their
heart and their soul, and their wits. They emerge thence, and decamp from their families. All newspapers are
pests; all, even the Drapeau Blanc! At bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin. Ah! just Heaven! you may boast
of having driven your grandfather to despair, that you may!"
"That is evident," said Theodule.
And profiting by the fact that M. Gillenormand was taking breath, the lancer added in a magisterial
manner:
"There should be no other newspaper than the Moniteur, and no other book than the Annuaire Militaire."
M. Gillenormand continued:
"It is like their Sieyes! A regicide ending in a senator; for that is the way they always end. They give
themselves a scar with the address of thou as citizens, in order to get themselves called, eventually, Monsieur
le Comte. Monsieur le Comte as big as my arm, assassins of September. The philosopher Sieyes! I will do
myself the justice to say, that I have never had any better opinion of the philosophies of all those
philosophers, than of the spectacles of the grimacer of Tivoli! One day I saw the Senators cross the Quai
Malplaquet in mantles of violet velvet sown with bees, with hats a la Henri IV. They were hideous. One
would have pronounced them monkeys from the tiger's court. Citizens, I declare to you, that your progress is
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CHAPTER VI. THE SUBSTITUTE 472
Page No 484
madness, that your humanity is a dream, that your revolution is a crime, that your republic is a monster, that
your young and virgin France comes from the brothel, and I maintain it against all, whoever you may be,
whether journalists, economists, legists, or even were you better judges of liberty, of equality, and fraternity
than the knife of the guillotine! And that I announce to you, my flne fellows!"
"Parbleu!" cried the lieutenant, "that is wonderfully true."
M. Gillenormand paused in a gesture which he had begun, wheeled round, stared Lancer Theodule intently in
the eyes, and said to him:
"You are a fool."
BOOK SIXTH.THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
CHAPTER I. THE SOBRIQUET: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY
NAMES
Marius was, at this epoch, a handsome young man, of medium stature, with thick and intensely black hair, a
lofty and intelligent brow, wellopened and passionate nostrils, an air of calmness and sincerity, and with
something indescribably proud, thoughtful, and innocent over his whole countenance. His profile, all of
whose lines were rounded, without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic sweetness, which
has made its way into the French physiognomy by way of Alsace and Lorraine, and that complete absence of
angles which rendered the Sicambres so easily recognizable among the Romans, and which distinguishes the
leonine from the aquiline race. He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in
nearly equal parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he had all that is required to be
stupid: one more turn of the key, and he might be sublime. His manners were reserved, cold, polished, not
very genial. As his mouth was charming, his lips the reddest, and his teeth the whitest in the world, his smile
corrected the severity of his face, as a whole. At certain moments, that pure brow and that voluptuous smile
presented a singular contrast. His eyes were small, but his glance was large.
At the period of his most abject misery, he had observed that young girls turned round when he passed by,
and he fled or hid, with death in his soul. He thought that they were staring at him because of his old clothes,
and that they were laughing at them; the fact is, that they stared at him because of his grace, and that they
dreamed of him.
This mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passersby had made him shy. He chose none of
them for the excellent reason that he fled from all of them. He lived thus indefinitely, stupidly, as
Courfeyrac said.
Courfeyrac also said to him: "Do not aspire to be venerable" [they called each other thou; it is the tendency of
youthful friendships to slip into this mode of address]. "Let me give you a piece of advice, my dear fellow.
Don't read so many books, and look a little more at the lasses. The jades have some good points about them,
O Marius! By dint of fleeing and blushing, you will become brutalized."
On other occasions, Courfeyrac encountered him and said:"Good morning, Monsieur l'Abbe!"
When Courfeyrac had addressed to him some remark of this nature, Marius avoided women, both young and
old, more than ever for a week to come, and he avoided Courfeyrac to boot.
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Page No 485
Nevertheless, there existed in all the immensity of creation, two women whom Marius did not flee, and to
whom he paid no attention whatever. In truth, he would have been very much amazed if he had been
informed that they were women. One was the bearded old woman who swept out his chamber, and caused
Courfeyrac to say: "Seeing that his servant woman wears his beard, Marius does not wear his own beard."
The other was a sort of little girl whom he saw very often, and whom he never looked at.
For more than a year, Marius had noticed in one of the walks of the Luxembourg, the one which skirts the
parapet of the Pepiniere, a man and a very young girl, who were almost always seated side by side on the
same bench, at the most solitary end of the alley, on the Rue de l'Ouest side. Every time that that chance
which meddles with the strolls of persons whose gaze is turned inwards, led Marius to that walk,and it was
nearly every day,he found this couple there. The man appeared to be about sixty years of age; he seemed
sad and serious; his whole person presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military men who have
retired from the service. If he had worn a decoration, Marius would have said: "He is an exofficer." He had
a kindly but unapproachable air, and he never let his glance linger on the eyes of any one. He wore blue
trousers, a blue frock coat and a broadbrimmed hat, which always appeared to be new, a black cravat, a
quaker shirt, that is to say, it was dazzlingly white, but of coarse linen. A grisette who passed near him one
day, said: "Here's a very tidy widower." His hair was very white.
The first time that the young girl who accompanied him came and seated herself on the bench which they
seemed to have adopted, she was a sort of child thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost
homely, awkward, insignificant, and with a possible promise of handsome eyes. Only, they were always
raised with a sort of displeasing assurance. Her dress was both aged and childish, like the dress of the
scholars in a convent; it consisted of a badly cut gown of black merino. They had the air of being father and
daughter.
Marius scanned this old man, who was not yet aged, and this little girl, who was not yet a person, for a few
days, and thereafter paid no attention to them. They, on their side, did not appear even to see him. They
conversed together with a peaceful and indifferent air. The girl chattered incessantly and merrily. The old
man talked but little, and, at times, he fixed on her eyes overflowing with an ineffable paternity.
Marius had acquired the mechanical habit of strolling in that walk. He invariably found them there.
This is the way things went:
Marius liked to arrive by the end of the alley which was furthest from their bench; he walked the whole
length of the alley, passed in front of them, then returned to the extremity whence he had come, and began
again. This he did five or six times in the course of his promenade, and the promenade was taken five or six
times a week, without its having occurred to him or to these people to exchange a greeting. That personage,
and that young girl, although they appeared,and perhaps because they appeared, to shun all glances,
had, naturally, caused some attention on the part of the five or six students who strolled along the Pepiniere
from time to time; the studious after their lectures, the others after their game of billiards. Courfeyrac, who
was among the last, had observed them several times, but, finding the girl homely, he had speedily and
carefully kept out of the way. He had fled, discharging at them a sobriquet, like a Parthian dart. Impressed
solely with the child's gown and the old man's hair, he had dubbed the daughter Mademoiselle Lanoire, and
the father, Monsieur Leblanc, so that as no one knew them under any other title, this nickname became a law
in the default of any other name. The students said: "Ah! Monsieur Leblanc is on his bench." And Marius,
like the rest, had found it convenient to call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc.
We shall follow their example, and we shall say M. Leblanc, in order to facilitate this tale.
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Page No 486
So Marius saw them nearly every day, at the same hour, during the first year. He found the man to his taste,
but the girl insipid.
CHAPTER II. LUX FACTA EST
During the second year, precisely at the point in this history which the reader has now reached, it chanced
that this habit of the Luxembourg was interrupted, without Marius himself being quite aware why, and nearly
six months elapsed, during which he did not set foot in the alley. One day, at last, he returned thither once
more; it was a serene summer morning, and Marius was in joyous mood, as one is when the weather is fine. It
seemed to him that he had in his heart all the songs of the birds that he was listening to, and all the bits of
blue sky of which he caught glimpses through the leaves of the trees.
He went straight to "his alley," and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that
wellknown couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that it
was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of
all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most
ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two
words, "fifteen years." She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed
made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of roseleaf, a pale flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite
mouth, whence smiles darted like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given
to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Goujon would have attributed to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might
be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome it was pretty; neither straight nor curved,
neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,which
drives painters to despair, and charms poets.
When Marius passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were constantly lowered. He saw only her
long chestnut lashes, permeated with shadow and modesty.
This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the whitehaired old man was
saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping
eyes.
For a moment, Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no
doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had
examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young
maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom
out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one
finds them disquieting to the feelings.
This child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees
with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived.
One sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury,
indulge in expenditures of all sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is the
result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly
income.
And then, she was no longer the schoolgirl with her felt hat, her merino gown, her scholar's shoes, and red
hands; taste had come to her with beauty; she was a welldressed person, clad with a sort of rich and simple
elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a
bonnet of white crape. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved,
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Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed
near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.
As for the man, he was the same as usual.
The second time that Marius approached her, the young girl raised her eyelids; her eyes were of a deep,
celestial blue, but in that veiled azure, there was, as yet, nothing but the glance of a child. She looked at
Marius indifferently, as she would have stared at the brat running beneath the sycamores, or the marble vase
which cast a shadow on the bench, and Marius, on his side, continued his promenade, and thought about
something else.
He passed near the bench where the young girl sat, five or six times, but without even turning his eyes in her
direction.
On the following days, he returned, as was his wont, to the Luxembourg; as usual, he found there "the father
and daughter;" but he paid no further attention to them. He thought no more about the girl now that she was
beautiful than he had when she was homely. He passed very near the bench where she sat, because such was
his habit.
CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF THE SPRING
One day, the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and shade, the sky was as pure as
though the angels had washed it that morning, the sparrows were giving vent to little twitters in the depths of
the chestnuttrees. Marius had thrown open his whole soul to nature, he was not thinking of anything, he
simply lived and breathed, he passed near the bench, the young girl raised her eyes to him, the two glances
met.
What was there in the young girl's glance on this occasion? Marius could not have told. There was nothing
and there was everything. It was a strange flash.
She dropped her eyes, and he pursued his way.
What he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a child; it was a mysterious gulf which
had half opened, then abruptly closed again.
There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there!
That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of
something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam,
which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the
innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of undecided tenderness which
reveals itself by chance, and which waits. It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself,
and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman.
It is rare that a profound revery does not spring from that glance, where it falls. All purities and all candors
meet in that celestial and fatal gleam which, more than all the bestplanned tender glances of coquettes,
possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming, in the depths of the soul, of that sombre
flower, impregnated with perfume and with poison, which is called love.
That evening, on his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over his garments, and perceived, for the first
time, that he had been so slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the
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Luxembourg with his "everyday clothes," that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse carter's
boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the elbows.
CHAPTER IV. BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY
On the following day, at the accustomed hour, Marius drew from his wardrobe his new coat, his new trousers,
his new hat, and his new boots; he clothed himself in this complete panoply, put on his gloves, a tremendous
luxury, and set off for the Luxembourg.
On the way thither, he encountered Courfeyrac, and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac, on his return
home, said to his friends:
"I have just met Marius' new hat and new coat, with Marius inside them. He was going to pass an
examination, no doubt. He looked utterly stupid."
On arriving at the Luxembourg, Marius made the tour of the fountain basin, and stared at the swans; then he
remained for a long time in contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with mould, and
one of whose hips was missing. Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent
stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him: "Shun excess, my son, keep
at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy." Marius listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the
circuit of the basin once more. At last he directed his course towards "his alley," slowly, and as if with regret.
One would have said that he was both forced to go there and withheld from doing so. He did not perceive it
himself, and thought that he was doing as he always did.
On turning into the walk, he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the other end, "on their bench." He
buttoned his coat up to the very top, pulled it down on his body so that there might be no wrinkles, examined,
with a certain complaisance, the lustrous gleams of his trousers, and marched on the bench. This march
savored of an attack, and certainly of a desire for conquest. So I say that he marched on the bench, as I should
say: "Hannibal marched on Rome."
However, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had interrupted none of the habitual
preoccupations of his mind and labors. At that moment, he was thinking that the Manuel du Baccalaureat was
a stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to allow of three tragedies of Racine and
only one comedy of Moliere being analyzed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a piercing
whistling going on in his ears. As he approached the bench, he held fast to the folds in his coat, and fixed his
eyes on the young girl. It seemed to him that she filled the entire extremity of the alley with a vague blue
light.
In proportion as he drew near, his pace slackened more and more. On arriving at some little distance from the
bench, and long before he had reached the end of the walk, he halted, and could not explain to himself why
he retraced his steps. He did not even say to himself that he would not go as far as the end. It was only with
difficulty that the young girl could have perceived him in the distance and noted his fine appearance in his
new clothes. Nevertheless, he held himself very erect, in case any one should be looking at him from behind.
He attained the opposite end, then came back, and this time he approached a little nearer to the bench. He
even got to within three intervals of trees, but there he felt an indescribable impossibility of proceeding
further, and he hesitated. He thought he saw the young girl's face bending towards him. But he exerted a
manly and violent effort, subdued his hesitation, and walked straight ahead. A few seconds later, he rushed in
front of the bench, erect and firm, reddening to the very ears, without daring to cast a glance either to the
right or to the left, with his hand thrust into his coat like a statesman. At the moment when he passed,
under the cannon of the place,he felt his heart beat wildly. As on the preceding day, she wore her damask
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gown and her crape bonnet. He heard an ineffable voice, which must have been "her voice." She was talking
tranquilly. She was very pretty. He felt it, although he made no attempt to see her. "She could not, however,"
he thought, "help feeling esteem and consideration for me, if she only knew that I am the veritable author of
the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronde, which M. Francois de Neufchateau put, as though it were
his own, at the head of his edition of Gil Blas." He went beyond the bench as far as the extremity of the walk,
which was very near, then turned on his heel and passed once more in front of the lovely girl. This time, he
was very pale. Moreover, all his emotions were disagreeable. As he went further from the bench and the
young girl, and while his back was turned to her, he fancied that she was gazing after him, and that made him
stumble.
He did not attempt to approach the bench again; he halted near the middle of the walk, and there, a thing
which he never did, he sat down, and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths of his spirit, that
after all, it was hard that persons whose white bonnet and black gown he admired should be absolutely
insensible to his splendid trousers and his new coat.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were on the point of again beginning his
march towards that bench which was surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there, motionless.
For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself that that gentleman who sat there every day with his
daughter, had, on his side, noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular.
For the first time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence in designating that stranger, even in his secret
thoughts, by the sobriquet of M. le Blanc.
He stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures in the sand, with the cane which he
held in his hand.
Then he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench, to M. Leblanc and his daughter, and went
home.
That day he forgot to dine. At eight o'clock in the evening he perceived this fact, and as it was too late to go
down to the Rue SaintJacques, he said: "Never mind!" and ate a bit of bread.
He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up with great care.
CHAPTER V. DIVRS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON
On the following day, Ma'am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old portressprincipaltenant, housekeeper
of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma'am Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have found out,
but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing, Ma'am Bougon observed, with stupefaction, that M.
Marius was going out again in his new coat.
He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than his bench midway of the alley. He
seated himself there, as on the preceding day, surveying from a distance, and clearly making out, the white
bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light. He did not stir from it, and only went home when the
gates of the Luxembourg closed. He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they
had quitted the garden by the gate on the Rue de l'Ouest. Later on, several weeks afterwards, when he came
to think it over, he could never recall where he had dined that evening.
On the following day, which was the third, Ma'am Bougon was thunderstruck. Marius went out in his new
coat. "Three days in succession!" she exclaimed.
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She tried to follow him, but Marius walked briskly, and with immense strides; it was a hippopotamus
undertaking the pursuit of a chamois. She lost sight of him in two minutes, and returned breathless,
threequarters choked with asthma, and furious. "If there is any sense," she growled, "in putting on one's best
clothes every day, and making people run like this!"
Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg.
The young girl was there with M. Leblanc. Marius approached as near as he could, pretending to be busy
reading a book, but he halted afar off, then returned and seated himself on his bench, where he spent four
hours in watching the housesparrows who were skipping about the walk, and who produced on him the
impression that they were making sport of him.
A fortnight passed thus. Marius went to the Luxembourg no longer for the sake of strolling there, but to seat
himself always in the same spot, and that without knowing why. Once arrived there, he did not stir. He put on
his new coat every morning, for the purpose of not showing himself, and he began all over again on the
morrow.
She was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching a criticism, that could be made, was,
that the contradiction between her gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry, gave a
rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet countenance to become strange without
ceasing to be charming.
CHAPTER VI. TAKEN PRISONER
On one of the last days of the second week, Marius was seated on his bench, as usual, holding in his hand an
open book, of which he had not turned a page for the last two hours. All at once he started. An event was
taking place at the other extremity of the walk. Leblanc and his daughter had just left their seat, and the
daughter had taken her father's arm, and both were advancing slowly, towards the middle of the alley where
Marius was. Marius closed his book, then opened it again, then forced himself to read; he trembled; the
aureole was coming straight towards him. "Ah! good Heavens!" thought he, "I shall not have time to strike an
attitude." Still the whitehaired man and the girl advanced. It seemed to him that this lasted for a century, and
that it was but a second. "What are they coming in this direction for?" he asked himself. "What! She will pass
here? Her feet will tread this sand, this walk, two paces from me?" He was utterly upset, he would have liked
to be very handsome, he would have liked to own the cross. He heard the soft and measured sound of their
approaching footsteps. He imagined that M. Leblanc was darting angry glances at him. "Is that gentleman
going to address me?" he thought to himself. He dropped his head; when he raised it again, they were very
near him. The young girl passed, and as she passed, she glanced at him. She gazed steadily at him, with a
pensive sweetness which thrilled Marius from head to foot. It seemed to him that she was reproaching him for
having allowed so long a time to elapse without coming as far as her, and that she was saying to him: "I am
coming myself." Marius was dazzled by those eyes fraught with rays and abysses.
He felt his brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She appeared
to him more beautiful than he had ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty which was wholly feminine and
angelic, with a complete beauty which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. It seemed to him that
he was floating free in the azure heavens. At the same time, he was horribly vexed because there was dust on
his boots.
He thought he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too.
He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he started up and walked about the Luxembourg
garden like a madman. It is possible that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so dreamy
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when he came near the children's nurses, that each one of them thought him in love with her.
He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street.
He encountered Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Odeon, and said to him: "Come and dine with me." They
went off to Rousseau's and spent six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At dessert,
he said to Courfeyrac. "Have you read the paper? What a fine discourse Audry de Puyraveau delivered!"
He was desperately in love.
After dinner, he said to Courfeyrac: "I will treat you to the play." They went to the PorteSainteMartin to
see Frederick in l'Auberge des Adrets. Marius was enormously amused.
At the same time, he had a redoubled attack of shyness. On emerging from the theatre, he refused to look at
the garter of a modiste who was stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac, who said: "I should like to put that
woman in my collection," almost horrified him.
Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast at the Cafe Voltaire on the following morning. Marius went thither, and
ate even more than on the preceding evening. He was very thoughtful and very merry. One would have said
that he was taking advantage of every occasion to laugh uproariously. He tenderly embraced some man or
other from the provinces, who was presented to him. A circle of students formed round the table, and they
spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State which was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then the
conversation fell upon the faults and omissions in Guicherat's dictionaries and grammars. Marius interrupted
the discussion to exclaim: "But it is very agreeable, all the same to have the cross!"
"That's queer!" whispered Courfeyrac to Jean Prouvaire.
"No," responded Prouvaire, "that's serious."
It was serious; in fact, Marius had reached that first violent and charming hour with which grand passions
begin.
A glance had wrought all this.
When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is more simple. A glance is a spark.
It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His fate was entering the unknown.
The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet
formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of
anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh.
All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It
has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which was fluttering loose, by
some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of
mysterious forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human succor is possible. You go
on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, from torture to torture, you, your mind, your
fortune, your future, your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power of a wicked creature, or of a
noble heart, you will not escape from this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame, or
transfigured by passion.
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CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO
CONJECTURES
Isolation, detachment, from everything, pride, independence, the taste of nature, the absence of daily and
material activity, the life within himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards all
creation, had prepared Marius for this possession which is called passion. His worship of his father had
gradually become a religion, and, like all religions, it had retreated to the depths of his soul. Something was
required in the foreground. Love came.
A full month elapsed, during which Marius went every day to the Luxembourg. When the hour arrived,
nothing could hold him back."He is on duty," said Courfeyrac. Marius lived in a state of delight. It is
certain that the young girl did look at him.
He had finally grown bold, and approached the bench. Still, he did not pass in front of it any more, in
obedience to the instinct of timidity and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers. He considered it better
not to attract "the attention of the father." He combined his stations behind the trees and the pedestals of the
statues with a profound diplomacy, so that he might be seen as much as possible by the young girl and as
little as possible by the old gentleman. Sometimes, he remained motionless by the halfhour together in the
shade of a Leonidas or a Spartacus, holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes, gently raised, sought
the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her charming profile towards him with a vague smile. While
conversing in the most natural and tranquil manner in the world with the whitehaired man, she bent upon
Marius all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye. Ancient and timehonored manoeuvre which Eve
understood from the very first day of the world, and which every woman understands from the very first day
of her life! her mouth replied to one, and her glance replied to another.
It must be supposed, that M. Leblanc finally noticed something, for often, when Marius arrived, he rose and
began to walk about. He had abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench by the Gladiator,
near the other end of the walk, as though with the object of seeing whether Marius would pursue them thither.
Marius did not understand, and committed this error. "The father" began to grow inexact, and no longer
brought "his daughter" every day. Sometimes, he came alone. Then Marius did not stay. Another blunder.
Marius paid no heed to these symptoms. From the phase of timidity, he had passed, by a natural and fatal
progress, to the phase of blindness. His love increased. He dreamed of it every night. And then, an
unexpected bliss had happened to him, oil on the fire, a redoubling of the shadows over his eyes. One
evening, at dusk, he had found, on the bench which "M. Leblanc and his daughter" had just quitted, a
handkerchief, a very simple handkerchief, without embroidery, but white, and fine, and which seemed to him
to exhale ineffable perfume. He seized it with rapture. This handkerchief was marked with the letters U. F.
Marius knew nothing about this beautiful child,neither her family name, her Christian name nor her abode;
these two letters were the first thing of her that he had gained possession of, adorable initials, upon which he
immediately began to construct his scaffolding. U was evidently the Christian name. "Ursule!" he thought,
"what a delicious name!" He kissed the handkerchief, drank it in, placed it on his heart, on his flesh, during
the day, and at night, laid it beneath his lips that he might fall asleep on it.
"I feel that her whole soul lies within it!" he exclaimed.
This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it fall from his pocket.
In the days which followed the finding of this treasure, he only displayed himself at the Luxembourg in the
act of kissing the handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood nothing of all this,
and signified it to him by imperceptible signs.
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"O modesty!" said Marius.
CHAPTER VIII. THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY
Since we have pronounced the word modesty, and since we conceal nothing, we ought to say that once,
nevertheless, in spite of his ecstasies, "his Ursule" caused him very serious grief. It was on one of the days
when she persuaded M. Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll along the walk. A brisk May breeze was
blowing, which swayed the crests of the plaintaintrees. The father and daughter, arm in arm, had just passed
Marius' bench. Marius had risen to his feet behind them, and was following them with his eyes, as was fitting
in the desperate situation of his soul.
All at once, a gust of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably charged with performing the affairs of
Springtime, swept down from the nursery, flung itself on the alley, enveloped the young girl in a delicious
shiver, worthy of Virgil's nymphs, and the fawns of Theocritus, and lifted her dress, the robe more sacred
than that of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite shape appeared. Marius saw it. He was
exasperated and furious.
The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely troubled motion, but he was none the less
angry for all that. He was alone in the alley, it is true. But there might have been some one there. And what if
there had been some one there! Can any one comprehend such a thing? What she had just done is
horrible!Alas, the poor child had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind; but Marius, in
whom quivered the Bartholo who exists in Cherubin, was determined to be vexed, and was jealous of his own
shadow. It is thus, in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of the flesh awakens in the human heart, and
takes possession of it, even without any right. Moreover, setting aside even that jealousy, the sight of that
charming leg had contained nothing agreeable for him; the white stocking of the first woman he chanced to
meet would have afforded him more pleasure.
When "his Ursule," after having reached the end of the walk, retraced her steps with M. Leblanc, and passed
in front of the bench on which Marius had seated himself once more, Marius darted a sullen and ferocious
glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight straightening up with a backward movement,
accompanied by a raising of the eyelids, which signifies: "Well, what is the matter?"
This was "their first quarrel."
Marius had hardly made this scene at her with his eyes, when some one crossed the walk. It was a veteran,
very much bent, extremely wrinkled, and pale, in a uniform of the Louis XV. pattern, bearing on his breast
the little oval plaque of red cloth, with the crossed swords, the soldier's cross of SaintLouis, and adorned, in
addition, with a coatsleeve, which had no arm within it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Marius thought
he perceived that this man had an extremely well satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he
hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink, as though some chance had
created an understanding between them, and as though they had shared some piece of good luck together.
What did that relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had passed between that wooden leg and the
other? Marius reached a paroxysm of jealousy."Perhaps he was there!" he said to himself; "perhaps he
saw!"And he felt a desire to exterminate the veteran.
With the aid of time, all points grow dull. Marius' wrath against "Ursule," just and legitimate as it was, passed
off. He finally pardoned her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three days.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this, his passion augmented and grew to madness.
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CHAPTER IX. ECLIPSE
The reader has just seen how Marius discovered, or thought that he discovered, that She was named Ursule.
Appetite grows with loving. To know that her name was Ursule was a great deal; it was very little. In three or
four weeks, Marius had devoured this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she lived.
He had committed his first blunder, by falling into the ambush of the bench by the Gladiator. He had
committed a second, by not remaining at the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc came thither alone. He now
committed a third, and an immense one. He followed "Ursule."
She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot, in a new, threestory house, of modest
appearance.
From that moment forth, Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg the happiness of
following her home.
His hunger was increasing. He knew her first name, at least, a charming name, a genuine woman's name; he
knew where she lived; he wanted to know who she was.
One evening, after he had followed them to their dwelling, and had seen them disappear through the carriage
gate, he entered in their train and said boldly to the porter:
"Is that the gentleman who lives on the first floor, who has just come in?"
"No," replied the porter. "He is the gentleman on the third floor."
Another step gained. This success emboldened Marius.
"On the front?" he asked.
"Parbleu!" said the porter, "the house is only built on the street."
"And what is that gentleman's business?" began Marius again.
"He is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does good to the unfortunate, though not rich
himself."
"What is his name?" resumed Marius.
The porter raised his head and said:
"Are you a police spy, sir?"
Marius went off quite abashed, but delighted. He was getting on.
"Good," thought he, "I know that her name is Ursule, that she is the daughter of a gentleman who lives on his
income, and that she lives there, on the third floor, in the Rue de l'Ouest."
On the following day, M. Leblanc and his daughter made only a very brief stay in the Luxembourg; they went
away while it was still broad daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l'Ouest, as he had taken up the
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habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage entrance M. Leblanc made his daughter pass in first, then paused,
before crossing the threshold, and stared intently at Marius.
On the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Marius waited for them all day in vain.
At nightfall, he went to the Rue de l'Ouest, and saw a light in the windows of the third story.
He walked about beneath the windows until the light was extinguished.
The next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Marius waited all day, then went and did sentinel duty under their
windows. This carried him on to ten o'clock in the evening.
His dinner took care of itself. Fever nourishes the sick man, and love the lover.
He spent a week in this manner. M. Leblanc no longer appeared at the Luxembourg.
Marius indulged in melancholy conjectures; he dared not watch the porte cochere during the day; he
contented himself with going at night to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times he saw shadows flit
across them, and his heart began to beat.
On the eighth day, when he arrived under the windows, there was no light in them.
"Hello!" he said, "the lamp is not lighted yet. But it is dark. Can they have gone out?" He waited until ten
o'clock. Until midnight. Until one in the morning. Not a light appeared in the windows of the third story, and
no one entered the house.
He went away in a very gloomy frame of mind.
On the morrow,for he only existed from morrow to morrow, there was, so to speak, no today for
him,on the morrow, he found no one at the Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk, he went to the
house.
No light in the windows; the shades were drawn; the third floor was totally dark.
Marius rapped at the porte cochere, entered, and said to the porter:
"The gentleman on the third floor?"
"Has moved away," replied the porter.
Marius reeled and said feebly:
"How long ago?"
"Yesterday."
"Where is he living now?"
"I don't know anything about it."
"So he has not left his new address?"
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"No."
And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius.
"Come! So it's you!" said he; "but you are decidedly a spy then?"
BOOK SEVENTH.PATRON MINETTE
CHAPTER I. MINES AND MINERS
Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance, a third lower floor. The social soil is
everywhere undermined, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed one upon the
other. There are superior mines and inferior mines. There is a top and a bottom in this obscure subsoil,
which sometimes gives way beneath civilization, and which our indifference and heedlessness trample under
foot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, those
sombre hatchers of primitive Christianity, only awaited an opportunity to bring about an explosion under the
Caesars and to inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred shadows there lies latent light.
Volcanoes are full of a shadow that is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins by being night. The
catacombs, in which the first mass was said, were not alone the cellar of Rome, they were the vaults of the
world.
Beneath the social construction, that complicated marvel of a structure, there are excavations of all sorts.
There is the religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine. Such and
such a pickaxe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers. Such another with wrath. People hail and answer
each other from one catacomb to another. Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they branch
out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. JeanJacques lends his pick to Diogenes,
who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But
nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous
activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which
immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside.
Society hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as
many different subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from
these deep excavations? The future.
The deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilers. The work is good, up to a degree which the social
philosophies are able to recognize; beyond that degree it is doubtful and mixed; lower down, it becomes
terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations are no longer penetrable by the spirit of civilization, the limit
breathable by man has been passed; a beginning of monsters is possible.
The descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of this ladder corresponds to a stage where
philosophy can find foothold, and where one encounters one of these workmen, sometimes divine, sometimes
misshapen. Below John Huss, there is Luther; below Luther, there is Descartes; below Descartes, there is
Voltaire; below Voltaire, there is Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre,
there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf. And so it goes on. Lower down, confusedly, at the limit which
separates the indistinct from the invisible, one perceives other gloomy men, who perhaps do not exist as yet.
The men of yesterday are spectres; those of tomorrow are forms. The eye of the spirit distinguishes them but
obscurely. The embryonic work of the future is one of the visions of philosophy.
A world in limbo, in the state of foetus, what an unheardof spectre!
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SaintSimon, Owen, Fourier, are there also, in lateral galleries.
Surely, although a divine and invisible chain unknown to themselves, binds together all these subterranean
pioneers who, almost always, think themselves isolated, and who are not so, their works vary greatly, and the
light of some contrasts with the blaze of others. The first are paradisiacal, the last are tragic. Nevertheless,
whatever may be the contrast, all these toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest to the
most foolish, possess one likeness, and this is it: disinterestedness. Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They
throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of themselves. They have a glance, and
that glance seeks the absolute. The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he
may be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite. Venerate the man, whoever he may be,
who has this signthe starry eye.
The shadowy eye is the other sign.
With it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the presence of any one who has no glance at all. The social
order has its black miners.
There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where light becomes extinct.
Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all these galleries, below this whole immense,
subterranean, venous system of progress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower than Marat,
lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection with the upper levels, there lies the last
mine. A formidable spot. This is what we have designated as the le troisieme dessous. It is the grave of
shadows. It is the cellar of the blind. Inferi.
This communicates with the abyss.
CHAPTER II. THE LOWEST DEPTHS
There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each one is for himself. The _I_ in the eyes
howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.
The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal
progress; they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything but the
satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of
terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both stepmothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide,
necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not
after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime;
fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no
longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be
hungry, to be thirstythat is the point of departure; to be Satanthat is the point reached. From that vault
Lacenaire emerges.
We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the upper mine, of the great political,
revolutionary, and philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest.
There, assuredly, one might be misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply
heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress.
The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath
society, we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated, the
great cavern of evil.
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This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, without exception. This cavern knows no
philosophers; its dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of
the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of
a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to
Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything.
Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous
swarming, the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines
civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder,
assassination. It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.
All the others, those above it, have but one objectto suppress it. It is to this point that philosophy and
progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their
contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.
Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness.
Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in
predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But
ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the
interior of a man and is there converted into evil.
CHAPTER III. BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND
MONTPARNASSE
A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse governed the third lower floor of
Paris, from 1830 to 1835.
Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had the sewer of the ArcheMarion. He was
six feet high, his pectoral muscles were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern, his
torso that of a colossus, his head that of a bird. One thought one beheld the Farnese Hercules clad in duck
trousers and a cotton velvet waistcoat. Gueulemer, built after this sculptural fashion, might have subdued
monsters; he had found it more expeditious to be one. A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age,
but with crow'sfeet, harsh, short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard like that of a wild boar; the reader can see
the man before him. His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have none of it. He was a great, idle
force. He was an assassin through coolness. He was thought to be a creole. He had, probably, somewhat to do
with Marshal Brune, having been a porter at Avignon in 1815. After this stage, he had turned ruffian.
The diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with the grossness of Gueulemer. Babet was thin and learned. He was
transparent but impenetrable. Daylight was visible through his bones, but nothing through his eyes. He
declared that he was a chemist. He had been a jack of all trades. He had played in vaudeville at SaintMihiel.
He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His
occupation consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts and portraits of "the head of the State." In
addition to this, he extracted teeth. He had exhibited phenomena at fairs, and he had owned a booth with a
trumpet and this poster: "Babet, Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical experiments on
metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners. Price: one
tooth, one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs, fifty. Take advantage of this
opportunity." This Take advantage of this opportunity meant: Have as many teeth extracted as possible. He
had been married and had had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had
lost them as one loses his handkerchief. Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he
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belonged. One day, at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the
Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child, who was doing well, and had a calf's muzzle, and he
exclaimed: "There's a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me with a child like that!"
Later on he had abandoned everything, in order to "undertake Paris." This was his expression.
Who was Claquesous? He was night. He waited until the sky was daubed with black, before he showed
himself. At nightfall he emerged from the hole whither he returned before daylight. Where was this hole? No
one knew. He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness, and with his back turned to
them. Was his name Claquesous? Certainly not. If a candle was brought, he put on a mask. He was a
ventriloquist. Babet said: "Claquesous is a nocturne for two voices." Claquesous was vague, terrible, and a
roamer. No one was sure whether he had a name, Claquesous being a sobriquet; none was sure that he had a
voice, as his stomach spoke more frequently than his voice; no one was sure that he had a face, as he was
never seen without his mask. He disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air; when he appeared, it
was as though he sprang from the earth.
A lugubrious being was Montparnasse. Montparnasse was a child; less than twenty years of age, with a
handsome face, lips like cherries, charming black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes; he had all
vices and aspired to all crimes.
The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a
pickpocket turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his
hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived by
robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a fashionplate in
misery and given to the commission of murders. The cause of all this youth's crimes was the desire to be
welldressed. The first grisette who had said to him: "You are handsome!" had cast the stain of darkness into
his heart, and had made a Cain of this Abel. Finding that he was handsome, he desired to be elegant: now, the
height of elegance is idleness; idleness in a poor man means crime. Few prowlers were so dreaded as
Montparnasse. At eighteen, he had already numerous corpses in his past. More than one passerby lay with
outstretched arms in the presence of this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with
laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard
wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole;
such was this dandy of the sepulchre.
CHAPTER IV. COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE
These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police, and striving to escape
Vidocq's indiscreet glances "under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain," lending each other their names and
their traps, hiding in their own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each other, stripping
off their personalities, as one removes his false nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the
point of consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves to such a point that CocoLatour
himself took them for a whole throng.
These four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious robber with four heads, operating on a
grand scale on Paris; they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt of society.
Thanks to their ramifications, and to the network underlying their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous,
and Montparnasse were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the department of the Seine.
The inventors of ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to have their ideas
executed. They furnished the canvas to the four rascals, and the latter undertook the preparation of the
scenery. They labored at the stage setting. They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned and
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suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the shoulder, and which were sufficiently lucrative. When a
crime was in quest of arms, they underlet their accomplices. They kept a troupe of actors of the shadows at
the disposition of all underground tragedies.
They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour when they woke up, on the plains which adjoin the
Salpetriere. There they held their conferences. They had twelve black hours before them; they regulated their
employment accordingly.
PatronMinette,such was the name which was bestowed in the subterranean circulation on the association
of these four men. In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is vanishing day by day, PatronMinette
signifies the morning, the same as entre chien et loupbetween dog and wolfsignifies the evening. This
appellation, PatronMinette, was probably derived from the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being
the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians. These four men were known under this
title. When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in his prison, and questioned him concerning a
misdeed which Lacenaire denied, "Who did it?" demanded the President. Lacenaire made this response,
enigmatical so far as the magistrate was concerned, but clear to the police: "Perhaps it was PatronMinette."
A piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the personages; in the same manner a band can
almost be judged from the list of ruffians composing it. Here are the appellations to which the principal
members of PatronMinette answered,for the names have survived in special memoirs.
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille.
Brujon. [There was a Brujon dynasty; we cannot refrain from interpolating this word.]
Boulatruelle, the roadmender already introduced.
Laveuve.
Finistere.
HomereHogu, a negro.
Mardisoir. (Tuesday evening.)
Depeche. (Make haste.)
Fauntleroy, alias Bouquetiere (the Flower Girl).
Glorieux, a discharged convict.
Barrecarrosse (Stopcarriage), called Monsieur Dupont.
L'EsplanadeduSud.
Poussagrive.
Carmagnolet.
Kruideniers, called Bizarro.
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Mangedentelle. (Laceeater.)
Lespiedsenl'Air. (Feet in the air.)
DemiLiard, called DeuxMilliards.
Etc., etc.
We pass over some, and not the worst of them. These names have faces attached. They do not express merely
beings, but species. Each one of these names corresponds to a variety of those misshapen fungi from the
under side of civilization.
Those beings, who were not very lavish with their countenances, were not among the men whom one sees
passing along the streets. Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed, they went off by day to sleep,
sometimes in the limekilns, sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmatre or Montrouge, sometimes in
the sewers. They ran to earth.
What became of these men? They still exist. They have always existed. Horace speaks of them:
Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolae, mendici, mimae; and so long as society remains what it is, they will
remain what they are. Beneath the obscure roof of their cavern, they are continually born again from the
social ooze. They return, spectres, but always identical; only, they no longer bear the same names and they
are no longer in the same skins. The individuals extirpated, the tribe subsists.
They always have the same faculties. From the vagrant to the tramp, the race is maintained in its purity. They
divine purses in pockets, they scent out watches in fobs. Gold and silver possess an odor for them. There exist
ingenuous bourgeois, of whom it might be said, that they have a "stealable" air. These men patiently pursue
these bourgeois. They experience the quivers of a spider at the passage of a stranger or of a man from the
country.
These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches a glimpse of them, towards midnight, on a
deserted boulevard. They do not seem to be men but forms composed of living mists; one would say that they
habitually constitute one mass with the shadows, that they are in no wise distinct from them, that they possess
no other soul than the darkness, and that it is only momentarily and for the purpose of living for a few
minutes a monstrous life, that they have separated from the night.
What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light. Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the
dawn. Light up society from below.
BOOK EIGHTH.THE WICKED POOR MAN
CHAPTER I. MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET,
ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN A CAP
Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc nor the young girl had again set foot in
the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth, Marius had but one thought,to gaze once more on that sweet and
adorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere; he found nothing. He was no longer Marius, the
enthusiastic dreamer, the firm, resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain which erected future on
future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with projects, with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost
dog. He fell into a black melancholy. All was over. Work disgusted him, walking tired him. Vast nature,
formerly so filled with forms, lights, voices, counsels, perspectives, horizons, teachings, now lay empty
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before him. It seemed to him that everything had disappeared.
He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To
everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: "What is the use?"
He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. "Why did I follow her? I was so happy at the mere sight of her!
She looked at me; was not that immense? She had the air of loving me. Was not that everything? I wished to
have, what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd. It is my own fault," etc., etc. Courfeyrac, to
whom he confided nothing,it was his nature, but who made some little guess at everything,that was
his nature, had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though he was amazed at it; then, seeing
Marius fall into this melancholy state, he ended by saying to him: "I see that you have been simply an animal.
Here, come to the Chaumiere."
Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at
Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps, find her there.
Of course he did not see the one he sought."But this is the place, all the same, where all lost women are
found," grumbled Grantaire in an aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, alone,
through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry
wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in
his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the walnuttrees, along the road, in order to refresh his
head.
He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly given up to his inward anguish, going
and coming in his pain like the wolf in the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love.
On another occasion, he had an encounter which produced on him a singular effect. He met, in the narrow
streets in the vicinity of the Boulevard des Invalides, a man dressed like a workingman and wearing a cap
with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of very white hair. Marius was struck with the beauty of
this white hair, and scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in painful
meditation. Strange to say, he thought that he recognized M. Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile,
so far as the cap permitted a view of it, the mien identical, only more depressed. But why these workingman's
clothes? What was the meaning of this? What signified that disguise? Marius was greatly astonished. When
he recovered himself, his first impulse was to follow the man; who knows whether he did not hold at last the
clue which he was seeking? In any case, he must see the man near at hand, and clear up the mystery. But the
idea occurred to him too late, the man was no longer there. He had turned into some little side street, and
Marius could not find him. This encounter occupied his mind for three days and then was effaced. "After all,"
he said to himself, "it was probably only a resemblance."
CHAPTER II. TREASURE TROVE
Marius had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention to any one there.
At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants in the house, except himself and those
Jondrettes whose rent he had once paid, without, moreover, ever having spoken to either father, mother, or
daughters. The other lodgers had moved away or had died, or had been turned out in default of payment.
One day during that winter, the sun had shown itself a little in the afternoon, but it was the 2d of February,
that ancient Candlemas day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six weeks' cold spell, inspired Mathieu
Laensberg with these two lines, which have with justice remained classic:
Qu'il luise ou qu'il luiserne,
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L'ours rentre dans en sa caverne.[26]
[26] Whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns to his cave.
Marius had just emerged from his: night was falling. It was the hour for his dinner; for he had been obliged to
take to dining again, alas! oh, infirmities of ideal passions!
He had just crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon was sweeping at the moment, as she uttered this
memorable monologue:
"What is there that is cheap now? Everything is dear.
There is nothing in the world that is cheap except trouble; you can get that for nothing, the trouble of the
world!"
Marius slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier, in order to reach the Rue SaintJacques. He was
walking along with drooping head.
All at once, he felt some one elbow him in the dusk; he wheeled round, and saw two young girls clad in rags,
the one tall and slim, the other a little shorter, who were passing rapidly, all out of breath, in terror, and with
the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming to meet him, had not seen him, and had jostled him as they
passed. Through the twilight, Marius could distinguish their livid faces, their wild heads, their dishevelled
hair, their hideous bonnets, their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet. They were talking as they ran. The
taller said in a very low voice:
"The bobbies have come. They came near nabbing me at the halfcircle." The other answered: "I saw them. I
bolted, bolted, bolted!"
Through this repulsive slang, Marius understood that gendarmes or the police had come near apprehending
these two children, and that the latter had escaped.
They plunged among the trees of the boulevard behind him, and there created, for a few minutes, in the
gloom, a sort of vague white spot, then disappeared.
Marius had halted for a moment.
He was about to pursue his way, when his eye lighted on a little grayish package lying on the ground at his
feet. He stooped and picked it up. It was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers.
"Good," he said to himself, "those unhappy girls dropped it."
He retraced his steps, he called, he did not find them; he reflected that they must already be far away, put the
package in his pocket, and went off to dine.
On the way, he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouffetard, a child's coffin, covered with a black cloth resting on
three chairs, and illuminated by a candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind.
"Poor mothers!" he thought. "There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading
an evil life."
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Then those shadows which had varied his melancholy vanished from his thoughts, and he fell back once more
into his habitual preoccupations. He fell to thinking once more of his six months of love and happiness in the
open air and the broad daylight, beneath the beautiful trees of Luxembourg.
"How gloomy my life has become!" he said to himself. "Young girls are always appearing to me, only
formerly they were angels and now they are ghouls."
CHAPTER III. QUADRIFRONS
That evening, as he was undressing preparatory to going to bed, his hand came in contact, in the pocket of his
coat, with the packet which he had picked up on the boulevard. He had forgotten it. He thought that it would
be well to open it, and that this package might possibly contain the address of the young girls, if it really
belonged to them, and, in any case, the information necessary to a restitution to the person who had lost it.
He opened the envelope.
It was not sealed and contained four letters, also unsealed.
They bore addresses.
All four exhaled a horrible odor of tobacco.
The first was addressed: "To Madame, Madame la Marquise de Grucheray, the place opposite the Chamber
of Deputies, No."
Marius said to himself, that he should probably find in it the information which he sought, and that,
moreover, the letter being open, it was probable that it could be read without impropriety.
It was conceived as follows:
Madame la Marquise: The virtue of clemency and piety is that which most closely unites sosiety. Turn your
Christian spirit and cast a look of compassion on this unfortunate Spanish victim of loyalty and attachment to
the sacred cause of legitimacy, who has given with his blood, consecrated his fortune, evverything, to defend
that cause, and today finds himself in the greatest missery. He doubts not that your honorable person will
grant succor to preserve an existence exteremely painful for a military man of education and honor full of
wounds, counts in advance on the humanity which animates you and on the interest which Madame la
Marquise bears to a nation so unfortunate. Their prayer will not be in vain, and their gratitude will preserve
theirs charming souvenir.
My respectful sentiments, with which I have the honor to be
Madame,
Don Alvares, Spanish Captain
of Cavalry, a royalist who
has take refuge in France,
who finds himself on travells
for his country, and the
resources are lacking him to
continue his travells.
No address was joined to the signature. Marius hoped to find the address in the second letter, whose
superscription read: A Madame, Madame la Comtesse de Montvernet, Rue Cassette, No. 9. This is what
Marius read in it:
Les Miserables
CHAPTER III. QUADRIFRONS 493
Page No 505
Madame la Comtesse: It is an unhappy mother of a family of six children the last of which is only eight
months old. I sick since my last confinement, abandoned by my husband five months ago, haveing no
resources in the world the most frightful indigance.
In the hope of Madame la Comtesse, she has the honor to be, Madame, with profound respect,
Mistress Balizard.
Marius turned to the third letter, which was a petition like the preceding; he read:
Monsieur Pabourgeot, Elector, wholesale stocking merchant,
Rue SaintDenis on the corner of the Rue aux Fers.
I permit myself to address you this letter to beg you to grant me the pretious favor of your simpaties and to
interest yourself in a man of letters who has just sent a drama to the TheatreFrancais. The subject is
historical, and the action takes place in Auvergne in the time of the Empire; the style, I think, is natural,
laconic, and may have some merit. There are couplets to be sung in four places. The comic, the serious, the
unexpected, are mingled in a variety of characters, and a tinge of romanticism lightly spread through all the
intrigue which proceeds misteriously, and ends, after striking altarations, in the midst of many beautiful
strokes of brilliant scenes.
My principal object is to satisfi the desire which progressively animates the man of our century, that is to say,
the fashion, that capritious and bizarre weathervane which changes at almost every new wind.
In spite of these qualities I have reason to fear that jealousy, the egotism of priviliged authors, may obtaine
my exclusion from the theatre, for I am not ignorant of the mortifications with which newcomers are
treated.
Monsiuer Pabourgeot, your just reputation as an enlightened protector of men of litters emboldens me to send
you my daughter who will explain our indigant situation to you, lacking bread and fire in this wynter season.
When I say to you that I beg you to accept the dedication of my drama which I desire to make to you and of
all those that I shall make, is to prove to you how great is my ambition to have the honor of sheltering myself
under your protection, and of adorning my writings with your name. If you deign to honor me with the most
modest offering, I shall immediately occupy myself in making a piesse of verse to pay you my tribute of
gratitude. Which I shall endeavor to render this piesse as perfect as possible, will be sent to you before it is
inserted at the beginning of the drama and delivered on the stage.
To Monsieur
and Madame Pabourgeot,
My most respectful complements,
Genflot, man of letters.
P. S. Even if it is only forty sous.
Excuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting myself, but sad motives connected with the toilet do
not permit me, alas! to go out.
Finally, Marius opened the fourth letter. The address ran: To the benevolent Gentleman of the church of
SaintJacquesduhautPas. It contained the following lines:
Benevolent Man: If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will behold a misserable calamity, and I will
show you my certificates.
Les Miserables
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Page No 506
At the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved with a sentiment of obvious benevolence,
for true philosophers always feel lively emotions.
Admit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most cruel need, and that it is very painful, for
the sake of obtaining a little relief, to get oneself attested by the authorities as though one were not free to
suffer and to die of inanition while waiting to have our misery relieved. Destinies are very fatal for several
and too prodigal or too protecting for others.
I await your presence or your offering, if you deign to make one, and I beseech you to accept the respectful
sentiments with which I have the honor to be,
truly magnanimous man,
your very humble
and very obedient servant,
P. Fabantou, dramatic artist.
After perusing these four letters, Marius did not find himself much further advanced than before.
In the first place, not one of the signers gave his address.
Then, they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alveras, Mistress Balizard, the poet Genflot,
and dramatic artist Fabantou; but the singular thing about these letters was, that all four were written by the
same hand.
What conclusion was to be drawn from this, except that they all come from the same person?
Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable, the coarse and yellow paper was the same
in all four, the odor of tobacco was the same, and, although an attempt had been made to vary the style, the
same orthographical faults were reproduced with the greatest tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was
no more exempt from them than the Spanish captain.
It was waste of trouble to try to solve this petty mystery. Had it not been a chance find, it would have borne
the air of a mystification. Marius was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well, and to lend
himself to a game which the pavement of the street seemed desirous of playing with him. It seemed to him
that he was playing the part of the blind man in blind man's buff between the four letters, and that they were
making sport of him.
Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the two young girls whom Marius had met on the
boulevard. After all, they were evidently papers of no value. Marius replaced them in their envelope, flung
the whole into a corner and went to bed. About seven o'clock in the morning, he had just risen and
breakfasted, and was trying to settle down to work, when there came a soft knock at his door.
As he owned nothing, he never locked his door, unless occasionally, though very rarely, when he was
engaged in some pressing work. Even when absent he left his key in the lock. "You will be robbed," said
Ma'am Bougon. "Of what?" said Marius. The truth is, however, that he had, one day, been robbed of an old
pair of boots, to the great triumph of Ma'am Bougon.
There came a second knock, as gentle as the first.
"Come in," said Marius.
The door opened.
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"What do you want, Ma'am Bougon?" asked Marius, without raising his eyes from the books and manuscripts
on his table.
A voice which did not belong to Ma'am Bougon replied:
"Excuse me, sir"
It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old man, roughened with brandy and liquor.
Marius turned round hastily, and beheld a young girl.
CHAPTER IV. A ROSE IN MISERY
A very young girl was standing in the halfopen door. The dormer window of the garret, through which the
light fell, was precisely opposite the door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light. She was a frail,
emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a chemise and a petticoat upon that chilled and shivering
nakedness. Her girdle was a string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise,
a blond and lymphatic pallor, earthcolored collarbones, red hands, a halfopen and degraded mouth,
missing teeth, dull, bold, base eyes; she had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth, and the look
of a corrupt old woman; fifty years mingled with fifteen; one of those beings which are both feeble and
horrible, and which cause those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being, who was almost like the forms of the
shadows which traverse dreams.
The most heartbreaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In
her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the
hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that
face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter's day.
That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he remembered having seen it somewhere.
"What do you wish, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:
"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She called Marius by his name; he could not doubt that he was the person whom she wanted; but who was
this girl? How did she know his name?
Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She entered resolutely, staring, with a sort of
assurance that made the heart bleed, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holes
in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and her thin knees. She was shivering.
She held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Marius.
Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer which sealed it was still moist. The message
could not have come from a distance. He read:
Les Miserables
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Page No 508
My amiable neighbor, young man: I have learned of your goodness to me, that you paid my rent six months
ago. I bless you, young man. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for
two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your
generous heart will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you to be propitious to me by daigning
to lavish on me a slight favor.
I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,
Jondrette.
P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius.
This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure which had occupied Marius' thoughts ever
since the preceding evening, was like a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.
This letter came from the same place as the other four. There was the same writing, the same style, the same
orthography, the same paper, the same odor of tobacco.
There were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a single signer. The Spanish Captain Don
Alvares, the unhappy Mistress Balizard, the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou, were all four
named Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself were named Jondrette.
Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time, and he had had, as we have said, but very rare
occasion to see, to even catch a glimpse of, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind was elsewhere, and
where the mind is, there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more than once to pass the Jondrettes in the
corridor or on the stairs; but they were mere forms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that, on the
preceding evening, he had jostled the Jondrette girls on the boulevard, without recognizing them, for it had
evidently been they, and it was with great difficulty that the one who had just entered his room had awakened
in him, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having met her elsewhere.
Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbor Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the
industry of speculating on the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he wrote
under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy and compassionate, letters which his daughters
delivered at their risk and peril, for this father had come to such a pass, that he risked his daughters; he was
playing a game with fate, and he used them as the stake. Marius understood that probably, judging from their
flight on the evening before, from their breathless condition, from their terror and from the words of slang
which he had overheard, these unfortunate creatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that
the result of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now constituted, two miserable beings who
were neither girls nor women, a species of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.
Sad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good nor evil were any longer possible, and
who, on emerging from childhood, have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, nor
responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are faded today, like those flowers let fall in the
streets, which are soiled with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless,
while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, the young girl was wandering back and forth in the
garret with the audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to her nakedness.
Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about,
she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Marius' clothes, she rummaged
about to see what there was in the corners.
"Hullo!" said she, "you have a mirror!"
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Page No 509
And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone, frolicsome refrains which her hoarse
and guttural voice rendered lugubrious.
An indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were perceptible beneath this hardihood. Effrontery
is a disgrace.
Nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room, and, so to speak, flit with the
movements of a bird which is frightened by the daylight, or which has broken its wing. One felt that under
other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and overfree mien of this young girl might have turned
out sweet and charming. Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an
osprey. That is only to be seen among men.
Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way.
She approached the table.
"Ah!" said she, "books!"
A flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, and her accent expressed the happiness which she felt in
boasting of something, to which no human creature is insensible:
"I know how to read, I do!"
She eagerly seized a book which lay open on the table, and read with tolerable fluency:
"General Bauduin received orders to take the chateau of Hougomont which stands in the middle of the
plain of Waterloo, with five battalions of his brigade."
She paused.
"Ah! Waterloo! I know about that. It was a battle long ago. My father was there. My father has served in the
armies. We are fine Bonapartists in our house, that we are! Waterloo was against the English."
She laid down the book, caught up a pen, and exclaimed:
"And I know how to write, too!"
She dipped her pen in the ink, and turning to Marius:
"Do you want to see? Look here, I'm going to write a word to show you."
And before he had time to answer, she wrote on a sheet of white paper, which lay in the middle of the table:
"The bobbies are here."
Then throwing down the pen:
"There are no faults of orthography. You can look. We have received an education, my sister and I. We have
not always been as we are now. We were not made"
Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst out laughing, saying, with an intonation which
contained every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:
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CHAPTER IV. A ROSE IN MISERY 498
Page No 510
"Bah!"
And she began to hum these words to a gay air:
"J'ai faim, mon pere." I am hungry, father.
Pas de fricot. I have no food.
J'ai froid, ma mere. I am cold, mother.
Pas de tricot. I have no clothes.
Grelotte, Lolotte!
Lolotte! Shiver,
Sanglote, Sob,
Jacquot!" Jacquot!"
She had hardly finished this couplet, when she exexclaimed:
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do. I have a little brother who is a friend of the artists, and
who gives me tickets sometimes. But I don't like the benches in the galleries. One is cramped and
uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and people who smell bad."
Then she scrutinized Marius, assumed a singular air and said:
"Do you know, Mr. Marius, that you are a very handsome fellow?"
And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and made her smile and him blush. She
stepped up to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder: "You pay no heed to me, but I know you, Mr. Marius. I
meet you here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named Father Mabeuf who lives in
the direction of Austerlitz, sometimes when I have been strolling in that quarter. It is very becoming to you to
have your hair tumbled thus."
She tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep. A portion of her words was lost
in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes are missing.
Marius had retreated gently.
"Mademoiselle," said he, with his cool gravity, "I have here a package which belongs to you, I think. Permit
me to return it to you."
And he held out the envelope containing the four letters.
She clapped her hands and exclaimed:
"We have been looking everywhere for that!"
Then she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope, saying as she did so:
"Dieu de Dieu! how my sister and I have hunted! And it was you who found it! On the boulevard, was it not?
It must have been on the boulevard? You see, we let it fall when we were running. It was that brat of a sister
of mine who was so stupid. When we got home, we could not find it anywhere. As we did not wish to be
beaten, as that is useless, as that is entirely useless, as that is absolutely useless, we said that we had carried
the letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us: `Nix.' So here they are, those poor letters! And
how did you find out that they belonged to me? Ah! yes, the writing. So it was you that we jostled as we
passed last night. We couldn't see. I said to my sister: `Is it a gentleman?' My sister said to me: `I think it is a
Les Miserables
CHAPTER IV. A ROSE IN MISERY 499
Page No 511
gentleman.'"
In the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to "the benevolent gentleman of the church of
SaintJacquesduHautPas."
"Here!" said she, "this is for that old fellow who goes to mass. By the way, this is his hour. I'll go and carry it
to him. Perhaps he will give us something to breakfast on."
Then she began to laugh again, and added:
"Do you know what it will mean if we get a breakfast today? It will mean that we shall have had our
breakfast of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of today, and all that at once,
and this morning. Come! Parbleu! if you are not satisfied, dogs, burst!"
This reminded Marius of the wretched girl's errand to himself. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found
nothing there.
The young girl went on, and seemed to have no consciousness of Marius' presence.
"I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again. Last winter, before we came here, we
lived under the arches of the bridges. We huddled together to keep from freezing. My little sister cried. How
melancholy the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said to myself: `No, it's too cold.' I go out
alone, whenever I choose, I sometimes sleep in the ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the
boulevard, I see the trees like forks, I see houses, all black and as big as Notre Dame, I fancy that the white
walls are the river, I say to myself: `Why, there's water there!' The stars are like the lamps in illuminations,
one would say that they smoked and that the wind blew them out, I am bewildered, as though horses were
breathing in my ears; although it is night, I hear handorgans and spinningmachines, and I don't know what
all. I think people are flinging stones at me, I flee without knowing whither, everything whirls and whirls.
You feel very queer when you have had no food."
And then she stared at him with a bewildered air.
By dint of searching and ransacking his pockets, Marius had finally collected five francs sixteen sous. This
was all he owned in the world for the moment. "At all events," he thought, "there is my dinner for today,
and tomorrow we will see." He kept the sixteen sous, and handed the five francs to the young girl.
She seized the coin.
"Good!" said she, "the sun is shining!"
And, as though the sun had possessed the property of melting the avalanches of slang in her brain, she went
on:
"Five francs! the shiner! a monarch! in this hole! Ain't this fine! You're a jolly thief! I'm your humble
servant! Bravo for the good fellows! Two days' wine! and meat! and stew! we'll have a royal feast! and a
good fill!"
She pulled her chemise up on her shoulders, made a low bow to Marius, then a familiar sign with her hand,
and went towards the door, saying:
"Good morning, sir. It's all right. I'll go and find my old man."
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Page No 512
As she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode, which was moulding there amid the
dust; she flung herself upon it and bit into it, muttering:
"That's good! it's hard! it breaks my teeth!"
Then she departed.
CHAPTER V. A PROVIDENTIAL PEEPHOLE
Marius had lived for five years in poverty, in destitution, even in distress, but he now perceived that he had
not known real misery. True misery he had but just had a view of. It was its spectre which had just passed
before his eyes. In fact, he who has only beheld the misery of man has seen nothing; the misery of woman is
what he must see; he who has seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of the
child.
When a man has reached his last extremity, he has reached his last resources at the same time. Woe to the
defenceless beings who surround him! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, good will, all fail him
simultaneously. The light of day seems extinguished without, the moral light within; in these shadows man
encounters the feebleness of the woman and the child, and bends them violently to ignominy.
Then all horrors become possible. Despair is surrounded with fragile partitions which all open on either vice
or crime.
Health, youth, honor, all the shy delicacies of the young body, the heart, virginity, modesty, that epidermis of
the soul, are manipulated in sinister wise by that fumbling which seeks resources, which encounters
opprobrium, and which accomodates itself to it. Fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, men, women,
daughters, adhere and become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation, in that dusky promiscuousness
of sexes, relationships, ages, infamies, and innocences. They crouch, back to back, in a sort of hut of fate.
They exchange woebegone glances. Oh, the unfortunate wretches! How pale they are! How cold they are! It
seems as though they dwelt in a planet much further from the sun than ours.
This young girl was to Marius a sort of messenger from the realm of sad shadows. She revealed to him a
hideous side of the night.
Marius almost reproached himself for the preoccupations of revery and passion which had prevented his
bestowing a glance on his neighbors up to that day. The payment of their rent had been a mechanical
movement, which any one would have yielded to; but he, Marius, should have done better than that. What!
only a wall separated him from those abandoned beings who lived gropingly in the dark outside the pale of
the rest of the world, he was elbow to elbow with them, he was, in some sort, the last link of the human race
which they touched, he heard them live, or rather, rattle in the death agony beside him, and he paid no heed to
them! Every day, every instant, he heard them walking on the other side of the wall, he heard them go, and
come, and speak, and he did not even lend an ear! And groans lay in those words, and he did not even listen
to them, his thoughts were elsewhere, given up to dreams, to impossible radiances, to loves in the air, to
follies; and all the while, human creatures, his brothers in Jesus Christ, his brothers in the people, were
agonizing in vain beside him! He even formed a part of their misfortune, and he aggravated it. For if they had
had another neighbor who was less chimerical and more attentive, any ordinary and charitable man, evidently
their indigence would have been noticed, their signals of distress would have been perceived, and they would
have been taken hold of and rescued! They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, no doubt, very vile,
very odious even; but those who fall without becoming degraded are rare; besides, there is a point where the
unfortunate and the infamous unite and are confounded in a single word, a fatal word, the miserable; whose
fault is this? And then should not the charity be all the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great?
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Page No 513
While reading himself this moral lesson, for there were occasions on which Marius, like all truly honest
hearts, was his own pedagogue and scolded himself more than he deserved, he stared at the wall which
separated him from the Jondrettes, as though he were able to make his gaze, full of pity, penetrate that
partition and warm these wretched people. The wall was a thin layer of plaster upheld by lathes and beams,
and, as the reader had just learned, it allowed the sound of voices and words to be clearly distinguished. Only
a man as dreamy as Marius could have failed to perceive this long before. There was no paper pasted on the
wall, either on the side of the Jondrettes or on that of Marius; the coarse construction was visible in its
nakedness. Marius examined the partition, almost unconsciously; sometimes revery examines, observes, and
scrutinizes as thought would. All at once he sprang up; he had just perceived, near the top, close to the
ceiling, a triangular hole, which resulted from the space between three lathes. The plaster which should have
filled this cavity was missing, and by mounting on the commode, a view could be had through this aperture
into the Jondrettes' attic. Commiseration has, and should have, its curiosity. This aperture formed a sort of
peephole. It is permissible to gaze at misfortune like a traitor in order to succor it.[27]
[27] The peephole is a Judas in French. Hence the halfpunning allusion.
"Let us get some little idea of what these people are like," thought Marius, "and in what condition they are."
He climbed upon the commode, put his eye to the crevice, and looked.
CHAPTER VI. THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR
Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wicked and formidable creatures which they
contain conceal themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty,
that is to say, ugly; in forests, that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say,
beautiful. Taking one lair with another, the beast's is preferable to the man's. Caverns are better than hovels.
What Marius now beheld was a hovel.
Marius was poor, and his chamber was povertystricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat.
The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only furniture
consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the corners, two
indescribable pallets; all the light was furnishd by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders' webs.
Through this aperture there penetrated just enough light to make the face of a man appear like the face of a
phantom. The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like a visage disfigured by
some horrible malady; a repulsive moisture exuded from them. Obscene sketches roughly sketched with
charcoal could be distinguished upon them.
The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; this one was neither tiled nor
planked; its inhabitants stepped directly on the antique plaster of the hovel, which had grown black under the
longcontinued pressure of feet. Upon this uneven floor, where the dirt seemed to be fairly incrusted, and
which possessed but one virginity, that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old shoes,
socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace, so it was let for forty francs a year. There was
every sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards, rags suspended from nails, a birdcage,
ashes, and even a little fire. Two brands were smouldering there in a melancholy way.
One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, that it was large. It had projections and
angles and black holes, the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomable nooks
where it seemed as though spiders as big as one's fist, woodlice as large as one's foot, and perhaps
evenwho knows? some monstrous human beings, must be hiding.
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Page No 514
One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. One end of each touched the fireplace and
faced Marius. In a corner near the aperture through which Marius was gazing, a colored engraving in a black
frame was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large letters, was the inscription: THE
DREAM. This represented a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman's lap, an eagle
in a cloud, with a crown in his beak, and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child's head, without
awaking the latter; in the background, Napoleon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow
capital ornamented with this inscription:
MARINGO
AUSTERLITS
IENA
WAGRAMME
ELOT
Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was no longer than it was broad, stood on the ground and
rested in a sloping attitude against the wall. It had the appearance of a picture with its face turned to the wall,
of a frame probably showing a daub on the other side, of some pierglass detached from a wall and lying
forgotten there while waiting to be rehung.
Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink, and paper, sat a man about sixty years of age, small,
thin, livid, haggard, with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel.
If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird
of prey and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other; the
pettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the pettifogger horrible.
This man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman's chemise, which allowed his hairy breast and his
bare arms, bristling with gray hair, to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers and boots through which
his toes projected were visible.
He had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was no bread in the hovel, but there was still tobacco.
He was writing probably some more letters like those which Marius had read.
On the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated, reddish volume, and the size, which was the antique
12mo of readingrooms, betrayed a romance. On the cover sprawled the following title, printed in large
capitals: GOD; THE KING; HONOR AND THE LADIES; BY DUCRAY DUMINIL, 1814.
As the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Marius heard his words:
"The idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead! Just look at Pere Lachaise! The great, those who
are rich, are up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. The little people,
the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in
the damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without
sinking into the earth."
He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground his teeth:
"Oh! I could eat the whole world!"
A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred, was crouching near the fireplace on her bare
heels.
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She, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted petticoat patched with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen
apron concealed the half of her petticoat. Although this woman was doubled up and bent together, it could be
seen that she was of very lofty stature. She was a sort of giant, beside her husband. She had hideous hair, of a
reddish blond which was turning gray, and which she thrust back from time to time, with her enormous
shining hands, with their flat nails.
Beside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the same form as the other, and probably a volume of the
same romance.
On one of the pallets, Marius caught a glimpse of a sort of tall pale young girl, who sat there half naked and
with pendant feet, and who did not seem to be listening or seeing or living.
No doubt the younger sister of the one who had come to his room.
She seemed to be eleven or twelve years of age. On closer scrutiny it was evident that she really was
fourteen. She was the child who had said, on the boulevard the evening before: "I bolted, bolted, bolted!"
She was of that puny sort which remains backward for a long time, then suddenly starts up rapidly. It is
indigence which produces these melancholy human plants. These creatures have neither childhood nor youth.
At fifteen years of age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen they seem twenty. Today a little girl, tomorrow
a woman. One might say that they stride through life, in order to get through with it the more speedily.
At this moment, this being had the air of a child.
Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinningwheel, not a tool. In
one corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and
precedes the death agony.
Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more terrifying than the interior of a tomb, for the human
soul could be felt fluttering there, and life was palpitating there. The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where
certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre, but only
its antechamber; but, as the wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance of their palaces, it
seems that death, which stands directly side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that vestibule.
The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the young girl did not even seem to breathe. The
scratching of the pen on the paper was audible.
The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. "Canaille! canaille! everybody is canaille!"
This variation to Solomon's exclamation elicited a sigh from the woman.
"Calm yourself, my little friend," she said. "Don't hurt yourself, my dear. You are too good to write to all
those people, husband."
Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts draw apart. This woman must have loved this
man, to all appearance, judging from the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily and reciprocal
reproaches of the horrible distress which weighed on the whole group, this had become extinct. There no
longer existed in her anything more than the ashes of affection for her husband. Nevertheless, caressing
appellations had survived, as is often the case. She called him: My dear, my little friend, my good man, etc.,
with her mouth while her heart was silent.
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The man resumed his writing.
CHAPTER VII. STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Marius, with a load upon his breast, was on the point of descending from the species of observatory which he
had improvised, when a sound attracted his attention and caused him to remain at his post.
The door of the attic had just burst open abruptly. The eldest girl made her appearance on the threshold. On
her feet, she had large, coarse, men's shoes, bespattered with mud, which had splashed even to her red ankles,
and she was wrapped in an old mantle which hung in tatters. Marius had not seen it on her an hour
previously, but she had probably deposited it at his door, in order that she might inspire the more pity, and
had picked it up again on emerging. She entered, pushed the door to behind her, paused to take breath, for she
was completely breathless, then exclaimed with an expression of triumph and joy:
"He is coming!"
The father turned his eyes towards her, the woman turned her head, the little sister did not stir.
"Who?" demanded her father.
"The gentleman!"
"The philanthropist?"
"Yes."
"From the church of SaintJacques?"
"Yes."
"That old fellow?"
"Yes."
"And he is coming?"
"He is following me."
"You are sure?"
"I am sure."
"There, truly, he is coming?"
"He is coming in a fiacre."
"In a fiacre. He is Rothschild."
The father rose.
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"How are you sure? If he is coming in a fiacre, how is it that you arrive before him? You gave him our
address at least? Did you tell him that it was the last door at the end of the corridor, on the right? If he only
does not make a mistake! So you found him at the church? Did he read my letter? What did he say to you?"
"Ta, ta, ta," said the girl, "how you do gallop on, my good man! See here: I entered the church, he was in his
usual place, I made him a reverence, and I handed him the letter; he read it and said to me: `Where do you
live, my child?' I said: `Monsieur, I will show you.' He said to me: `No, give me your address, my daughter
has some purchases to make, I will take a carriage and reach your house at the same time that you do.' I gave
him the address. When I mentioned the house, he seemed surprised and hesitated for an instant, then he said:
`Never mind, I will come.' When the mass was finished, I watched him leave the church with his daughter,
and I saw them enter a carriage. I certainly did tell him the last door in the corridor, on the right."
"And what makes you think that he will come?"
"I have just seen the fiacre turn into the Rue PetitBanquier. That is what made me run so."
"How do you know that it was the same fiacre?"
"Because I took notice of the number, so there!"
"What was the number?"
"440."
"Good, you are a clever girl."
The girl stared boldly at her father, and showing the shoes which she had on her feet:
"A clever girl, possibly; but I tell you I won't put these shoes on again, and that I won't, for the sake of my
health, in the first place, and for the sake of cleanliness, in the next. I don't know anything more irritating than
shoes that squelch, and go ghi, ghi, ghi, the whole time. I prefer to go barefoot."
"You are right," said her father, in a sweet tone which contrasted with the young girl's rudeness, "but then,
you will not be allowed to enter churches, for poor people must have shoes to do that. One cannot go barefoot
to the good God," he added bitterly.
Then, returning to the subject which absorbed him:
"So you are sure that he will come?"
"He is following on my heels," said she.
The man started up. A sort of illumination appeared on his countenance.
"Wife!" he exclaimed, "you hear. Here is the philanthropist. Extinguish the fire."
The stupefied mother did not stir.
The father, with the agility of an acrobat, seized a brokennosed jug which stood on the chimney, and flung
the water on the brands.
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Then, addressing his eldest daughter:
"Here you! Pull the straw off that chair!"
His daughter did not understand.
He seized the chair, and with one kick he rendered it seatless. His leg passed through it.
As he withdrew his leg, he asked his daughter:
"Is it cold?"
"Very cold. It is snowing."
The father turned towards the younger girl who sat on the bed near the window, and shouted to her in a
thundering voice:
"Quick! get off that bed, you lazy thing! will you never do anything? Break a pane of glass!"
The little girl jumped off the bed with a shiver.
"Break a pane!" he repeated.
The child stood still in bewilderment.
"Do you hear me?" repeated her father, "I tell you to break a pane!"
The child, with a sort of terrified obedience, rose on tiptoe, and struck a pane with her fist. The glass broke
and fell with a loud clatter.
"Good," said the father.
He was grave and abrupt. His glance swept rapidly over all the crannies of the garret. One would have said
that he was a general making the final preparation at the moment when the battle is on the point of beginning.
The mother, who had not said a word so far, now rose and demanded in a dull, slow, languid voice, whence
her words seemed to emerge in a congealed state:
"What do you mean to do, my dear?"
"Get into bed," replied the man.
His intonation admitted of no deliberation. The mother obeyed, and threw herself heavily on one of the
pallets.
In the meantime, a sob became audible in one corner.
"What's that?" cried the father.
The younger daughter exhibited her bleeding fist, without quitting the corner in which she was cowering. She
had wounded herself while breaking the window; she went off, near her mother's pallet and wept silently.
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It was now the mother's turn to start up and exclaim:
"Just see there! What follies you commit! She has cut herself breaking that pane for you!"
"So much the better!" said the man. "I foresaw that."
"What? So much the better?" retorted his wife.
"Peace!" replied the father, "I suppress the liberty of the press."
Then tearing the woman's chemise which he was wearing, he made a strip of cloth with which he hastily
swathed the little girl's bleeding wrist.
That done, his eye fell with a satisfied expression on his torn chemise.
"And the chemise too," said he, "this has a good appearance."
An icy breeze whistled through the window and entered the room. The outer mist penetrated thither and
diffused itself like a whitish sheet of wadding vaguely spread by invisible fingers. Through the broken pane
the snow could be seen falling. The snow promised by the Candlemas sun of the preceding day had actually
come.
The father cast a glance about him as though to make sure that he had forgotten nothing. He seized an old
shovel and spread ashes over the wet brands in such a manner as to entirely conceal them.
Then drawing himself up and leaning against the chimneypiece:
"Now," said he, "we can receive the philanthropist."
CHAPTER VIII. THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL
The big girl approached and laid her hand in her father's.
"Feel how cold I am," said she.
"Bah!" replied the father, "I am much colder than that."
The mother exclaimed impetuously:
"You always have something better than any one else, so you do! even bad things."
"Down with you!" said the man.
The mother, being eyed after a certain fashion, held her tongue.
Silence reigned for a moment in the hovel. The elder girl was removing the mud from the bottom of her
mantle, with a careless air; her younger sister continued to sob; the mother had taken the latter's head between
her hands, and was covering it with kisses, whispering to her the while:
"My treasure, I entreat you, it is nothing of consequence, don't cry, you will anger your father."
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"No!" exclaimed the father, "quite the contrary! sob! sob! that's right."
Then turning to the elder:
"There now! He is not coming! What if he were not to come! I shall have extinguished my fire, wrecked my
chair, torn my shirt, and broken my pane all for nothing."
"And wounded the child!" murmured the mother.
"Do you know," went on the father, "that it's beastly cold in this devil's garret! What if that man should not
come! Oh! See there, you! He makes us wait! He says to himself: `Well! they will wait for me! That's what
they're there for.' Oh! how I hate them, and with what joy, jubilation, enthusiasm, and satisfaction I could
strangle all those rich folks! all those rich folks! These men who pretend to be charitable, who put on airs,
who go to mass, who make presents to the priesthood, preachy, preachy, in their skullcaps, and who think
themselves above us, and who come for the purpose of humiliating us, and to bring us `clothes,' as they say!
old duds that are not worth four sous! And bread! That's not what I want, pack of rascals that they are, it's
money! Ah! money! Never! Because they say that we would go off and drink it up, and that we are drunkards
and idlers! And they! What are they, then, and what have they been in their time! Thieves! They never could
have become rich otherwise! Oh! Society ought to be grasped by the four corners of the cloth and tossed into
the air, all of it! It would all be smashed, very likely, but at least, no one would have anything, and there
would be that much gained! But what is that blockhead of a benevolent gentleman doing? Will he come?
Perhaps the animal has forgotten the address! I'll bet that that old beast"
At that moment there came a light tap at the door, the man rushed to it and opened it, exclaiming, amid
profound bows and smiles of adoration:
"Enter, sir! Deign to enter, most respected benefactor, and your charming young lady, also."
A man of ripe age and a young girl made their appearance on the threshold of the attic.
Marius had not quitted his post. His feelings for the moment surpassed the powers of the human tongue.
It was She!
Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meanings contained in those three letters of that word: She.
It was certainly she. Marius could hardly distinguish her through the luminous vapor which had suddenly
spread before his eyes. It was that sweet, absent being, that star which had beamed upon him for six months;
it was those eyes, that brow, that mouth, that lovely vanished face which had created night by its departure.
The vision had been eclipsed, now it reappeared.
It reappeared in that gloom, in that garret, in that misshapen attic, in all that horror.
Marius shuddered in dismay. What! It was she! The palpitations of his heart troubled his sight. He felt that he
was on the brink of bursting into tears! What! He beheld her again at last, after having sought her so long! It
seemed to him that he had lost his soul, and that he had just found it again.
She was the same as ever, only a little pale; her delicate face was framed in a bonnet of violet velvet, her
figure was concealed beneath a pelisse of black satin. Beneath her long dress, a glimpse could be caught of
her tiny foot shod in a silken boot.
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She was still accompanied by M. Leblanc.
She had taken a few steps into the room, and had deposited a tolerably bulky parcel on the table.
The eldest Jondrette girl had retired behind the door, and was staring with sombre eyes at that velvet bonnet,
that silk mantle, and that charming, happy face.
CHAPTER IX. JONDRETTE COMES NEAR WEEPING
The hovel was so dark, that people coming from without felt on entering it the effect produced on entering a
cellar. The two newcomers advanced, therefore, with a certain hesitation, being hardly able to distinguish
the vague forms surrounding them, while they could be clearly seen and scrutinized by the eyes of the
inhabitants of the garret, who were accustomed to this twilight.
M. Leblanc approached, with his sad but kindly look, and said to Jondrette the father:
"Monsieur, in this package you will find some new clothes and some woollen stockings and blankets."
"Our angelic benefactor overwhelms us," said Jondrette, bowing to the very earth.
Then, bending down to the ear of his eldest daughter, while the two visitors were engaged in examining this
lamentable interior, he added in a low and rapid voice:
"Hey? What did I say? Duds! No money! They are all alike! By the way, how was the letter to that old
blockhead signed?"
"Fabantou," replied the girl.
"The dramatic artist, good!"
It was lucky for Jondrette, that this had occurred to him, for at the very moment, M. Leblanc turned to him,
and said to him with the air of a person who is seeking to recall a name:
"I see that you are greatly to be pitied, Monsieur"
"Fabantou," replied Jondrette quickly.
"Monsieur Fabantou, yes, that is it. I remember."
"Dramatic artist, sir, and one who has had some success."
Here Jondrette evidently judged the moment propitious for capturing the "philanthropist." He exclaimed with
an accent which smacked at the same time of the vainglory of the mountebank at fairs, and the humility of the
mendicant on the highway:
"A pupil of Talma! Sir! I am a pupil of Talma! Fortune formerly smiled on meAlas! Now it is misfortune's
turn. You see, my benefactor, no bread, no fire. My poor babes have no fire! My only chair has no seat! A
broken pane! And in such weather! My spouse in bed! Ill!"
"Poor woman!" said M. Leblanc.
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"My child wounded!" added Jondrette.
The child, diverted by the arrival of the strangers, had fallen to contemplating "the young lady," and had
ceased to sob.
"Cry! bawl!" said Jondrette to her in a low voice.
At the same time he pinched her sore hand. All this was done with the talent of a juggler.
The little girl gave vent to loud shrieks.
The adorable young girl, whom Marius, in his heart, called "his Ursule," approached her hastily.
"Poor, dear child!" said she.
"You see, my beautiful young lady," pursued Jondrette "her bleeding wrist! It came through an accident while
working at a machine to earn six sous a day. It may be necessary to cut off her arm."
"Really?" said the old gentleman, in alarm.
The little girl, taking this seriously, fell to sobbing more violently than ever.
"Alas! yes, my benefactor!" replied the father.
For several minutes, Jondrette had been scrutinizing "the benefactor" in a singular fashion. As he spoke, he
seemed to be examining the other attentively, as though seeking to summon up his recollections. All at once,
profiting by a moment when the newcomers were questioning the child with interest as to her injured hand,
he passed near his wife, who lay in her bed with a stupid and dejected air, and said to her in a rapid but very
low tone:
"Take a look at that man!"
Then, turning to M. Leblanc, and continuing his lamentations:
"You see, sir! All the clothing that I have is my wife's chemise! And all torn at that! In the depths of winter! I
can't go out for lack of a coat. If I had a coat of any sort, I would go and see Mademoiselle Mars, who knows
me and is very fond of me. Does she not still reside in the Rue de la TourdesDames? Do you know, sir?
We played together in the provinces. I shared her laurels. Celimene would come to my succor, sir! Elmire
would bestow alms on Belisaire! But no, nothing! And not a sou in the house! My wife ill, and not a sou! My
daughter dangerously injured, not a sou! My wife suffers from fits of suffocation. It comes from her age, and
besides, her nervous system is affected. She ought to have assistance, and my daughter also! But the doctor!
But the apothecary! How am I to pay them? I would kneel to a penny, sir! Such is the condition to which the
arts are reduced. And do you know, my charming young lady, and you, my generous protector, do you know,
you who breathe forth virtue and goodness, and who perfume that church where my daughter sees you every
day when she says her prayers?For I have brought up my children religiously, sir. I did not want them to
take to the theatre. Ah! the hussies! If I catch them tripping! I do not jest, that I don't! I read them lessons on
honor, on morality, on virtue! Ask them! They have got to walk straight. They are none of your unhappy
wretches who begin by having no family, and end by espousing the public. One is Mamselle Nobody, and
one becomes Madame Everybody. Deuce take it! None of that in the Fabantou family! I mean to bring them
up virtuously, and they shall be honest, and nice, and believe in God, by the sacred name! Well, sir, my
worthy sir, do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? Tomorrow is the fourth day of February, the
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fatal day, the last day of grace allowed me by my landlord; if by this evening I have not paid my rent,
tomorrow my oldest daughter, my spouse with her fever, my child with her wound, we shall all four be
turned out of here and thrown into the street, on the boulevard, without shelter, in the rain, in the snow.
There, sir. I owe for four quartersa whole year! that is to say, sixty francs."
Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs, and he could not owe four, because
six months had not elapsed since Marius had paid for two.
M. Leblanc drew five francs from his pocket and threw them on the table.
Jondrette found time to mutter in the ear of his eldest daughter:
"The scoundrel! What does he think I can do with his five francs? That won't pay me for my chair and pane
of glass! That's what comes of incurring expenses!"
In the meanwhile, M. Leblanc had removed the large brown greatcoat which he wore over his blue coat, and
had thrown it over the back of the chair.
"Monsieur Fabantou," he said, "these five francs are all that I have about me, but I shall now take my
daughter home, and I will return this evening,it is this evening that you must pay, is it not?"
Jondrette's face lighted up with a strange expression. He replied vivaciously:
"Yes, respected sir. At eight o'clock, I must be at my landlord's."
"I will be here at six, and I will fetch you the sixty francs."
"My benefactor!" exclaimed Jondrette, overwhelmed. And he added, in a low tone: "Take a good look at him,
wife!"
M. Leblanc had taken the arm of the young girl, once more, and had turned towards the door.
"Farewell until this evening, my friends!" said he.
"Six o'clock?" said Jondrette.
"Six o'clock precisely."
At that moment, the overcoat lying on the chair caught the eye of the elder Jondrette girl.
"You are forgetting your coat, sir," said she.
Jondrette darted an annihilating look at his daughter, accompanied by a formidable shrug of the shoulders.
M. Leblanc turned back and said, with a smile:
"I have not forgotten it, I am leaving it."
"O my protector!" said Jondrette, "my august benefactor, I melt into tears! Permit me to accompany you to
your carriage."
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"If you come out," answered M. Leblanc, "put on this coat. It really is very cold."
Jondrette did not need to be told twice. He hastily donned the brown greatcoat. And all three went out,
Jondrette preceding the two strangers.
CHAPTER X. TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR
Marius had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in reality, had seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed
on the young girl, his heart had, so to speak, seized her and wholly enveloped her from the moment of her
very first step in that garret. During her entire stay there, he had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends
material perceptions and precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that girl, but that
light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he
would not have been any more dazzled.
While the young girl was engaged in opening the package, unfolding the clothing and the blankets,
questioning the sick mother kindly, and the little injured girl tenderly, he watched her every movement, he
sought to catch her words. He knew her eyes, her brow, her beauty, her form, her walk, he did not know the
sound of her voice. He had once fancied that he had caught a few words at the Luxembourg, but he was not
absolutely sure of the fact. He would have given ten years of his life to hear it, in order that he might bear
away in his soul a little of that music. But everything was drowned in the lamentable exclamations and
trumpet bursts of Jondrette. This added a touch of genuine wrath to Marius' ecstasy. He devoured her with his
eyes. He could not believe that it really was that divine creature whom he saw in the midst of those vile
creatures in that monstrous lair. It seemed to him that he beheld a hummingbird in the midst of toads.
When she took her departure, he had but one thought, to follow her, to cling to her trace, not to quit her until
he learned where she lived, not to lose her again, at least, after having so miraculously rediscovered her. He
leaped down from the commode and seized his hat. As he laid his hand on the lock of the door, and was on
the point of opening it, a sudden reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was long, the staircase steep,
Jondrette was talkative, M. Leblanc had, no doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the
corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him, Marius, in that house, he would, evidently, take
the alarm, and find means to escape from him again, and this time it would be final. What was he to do?
Should he wait a little? But while he was waiting, the carriage might drive off. Marius was perplexed. At last
he accepted the risk and quitted his room.
There was no one in the corridor. He hastened to the stairs. There was no one on the staircase. He descended
in all haste, and reached the boulevard in time to see a fiacre turning the corner of the Rue du PetitBanquier,
on its way back to Paris.
Marius rushed headlong in that direction. On arriving at the angle of the boulevard, he caught sight of the
fiacre again, rapidly descending the Rue Mouffetard; the carriage was already a long way off, and there was
no means of overtaking it; what! run after it? Impossible; and besides, the people in the carriage would
assuredly notice an individual running at full speed in pursuit of a fiacre, and the father would recognize him.
At that moment, wonderful and unprecedented good luck, Marius perceived an empty cab passing along the
boulevard. There was but one thing to be done, to jump into this cab and follow the fiacre. That was sure,
efficacious, and free from danger.
Marius made the driver a sign to halt, and called to him:
"By the hour?"
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Marius wore no cravat, he had on his workingcoat, which was destitute of buttons, his shirt was torn along
one of the plaits on the bosom.
The driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand to Marius, rubbing his forefinger gently with his thumb.
"What is it?" said Marius.
"Pay in advance," said the coachman.
Marius recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him.
"How much?" he demanded.
"Forty sous."
"I will pay on my return."
The driver's only reply was to whistle the air of La Palisse and to whip up his horse.
Marius stared at the retreating cabriolet with a bewildered air. For the lack of four and twenty sous, he was
losing his joy, his happiness, his love! He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected bitterly,
and it must be confessed, with profound regret, on the five francs which he had bestowed, that very morning,
on that miserable girl. If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have been born
again, he would have emerged from the limbo and darkness, he would have made his escape from isolation
and spleen, from his widowed state; he might have reknotted the black thread of his destiny to that beautiful
golden thread, which had just floated before his eyes and had broken at the same instant, once more! He
returned to his hovel in despair.
He might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised to return in the evening, and that all he had to do
was to set about the matter more skilfully, so that he might follow him on that occasion; but, in his
contemplation, it is doubtful whether he had heard this.
As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the other side of the boulevard, near the
deserted wall skirting the Rue De la BarrieredesGobelins, Jondrette, wrapped in the "philanthropist's"
greatcoat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of disquieting aspect who have been dubbed by
common consent, prowlers of the barriers; people of equivocal face, of suspicious monologues, who present
the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep in the daytime, which suggests the supposition that they
work by night.
These two men, standing there motionless and in conversation, in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds,
formed a group that a policeman would surely have observed, but which Marius hardly noticed.
Still, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could not refrain from saying to himself that this prowler of
the barriers with whom Jondrette was talking resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille,
whom Courfeyrac had once pointed out to him as a very dangerous nocturnal roamer. This man's name the
reader has learned in the preceding book. This Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, figured later on in
many criminal trials, and became a notorious rascal. He was at that time only a famous rascal. Today he
exists in the state of tradition among ruffians and assassins. He was at the head of a school towards the end of
the last reign. And in the evening, at nightfall, at the hour when groups form and talk in whispers, he was
discussed at La Force in the FosseauxLions. One might even, in that prison, precisely at the spot where the
sewer which served the unprecedented escape, in broad daylight, of thirty prisoners, in 1843, passes under the
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culvert, read his name, PANCHAUD, audaciously carved by his own hand on the wall of the sewer, during
one of his attempts at flight. In 1832, the police already had their eye on him, but he had not as yet made a
serious beginning.
CHAPTER XI. OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS
Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment when he was about to reenter his
cell, he caught sight of the elder Jondrette girl following him through the corridor. The very sight of this girl
was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was too late to demand them back, the cab was no
longer there, the fiacre was far away. Moreover, she would not have given them back. As for questioning her
about the residence of the persons who had just been there, that was useless; it was evident that she did not
know, since the letter signed Fabantou had been addressed "to the benevolent gentleman of the church of
SaintJacquesduHautPas."
Marius entered his room and pushed the door to after him.
It did not close; he turned round and beheld a hand which held the door half open.
"What is it?" he asked, "who is there?"
It was the Jondrette girl.
"Is it you?" resumed Marius almost harshly, "still you! What do you want with me?"
She appeared to be thoughtful and did not look at him. She no longer had the air of assurance which had
characterized her that morning. She did not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Marius
could see her through the halfopen door.
"Come now, will you answer?" cried Marius. "What do you want with me?"
She raised her dull eyes, in which a sort of gleam seemed to flicker vaguely, and said:
"Monsieur Marius, you look sad. What is the matter with you?"
"With me!" said Marius.
"Yes, you."
"There is nothing the matter with me."
"Yes, there is!"
"No."
"I tell you there is!"
"Let me alone!"
Marius gave the door another push, but she retained her hold on it.
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"Stop," said she, "you are in the wrong. Although you are not rich, you were kind this morning. Be so again
now. You gave me something to eat, now tell me what ails you. You are grieved, that is plain. I do not want
you to be grieved. What can be done for it? Can I be of any service? Employ me. I do not ask for your
secrets, you need not tell them to me, but I may be of use, nevertheless. I may be able to help you, since I
help my father. When it is necessary to carry letters, to go to houses, to inquire from door to door, to find out
an address, to follow any one, I am of service. Well, you may assuredly tell me what is the matter with you,
and I will go and speak to the persons; sometimes it is enough if some one speaks to the persons, that suffices
to let them understand matters, and everything comes right. Make use of me."
An idea flashed across Marius' mind. What branch does one disdain when one feels that one is falling?
He drew near to the Jondrette girl.
"Listen" he said to her.
She interrupted him with a gleam of joy in her eyes.
"Oh yes, do call me thou! I like that better."
"Well," he resumed, "thou hast brought hither that old gentleman and his daughter!"
"Yes."
"Dost thou know their address?"
"No."
"Find it for me."
The Jondrette's dull eyes had grown joyous, and they now became gloomy.
"Is that what you want?" she demanded.
"Yes."
"Do you know them?"
"No."
"That is to say," she resumed quickly, "you do not know her, but you wish to know her."
This them which had turned into her had something indescribably significant and bitter about it.
"Well, can you do it?" said Marius.
"You shall have the beautiful lady's address."
There was still a shade in the words "the beautiful lady" which troubled Marius. He resumed:
"Never mind, after all, the address of the father and daughter. Their address, indeed!"
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She gazed fixedly at him.
"What will you give me?"
"Anything you like."
"Anything I like?"
"Yes."
"You shall have the address."
She dropped her head; then, with a brusque movement, she pulled to the door, which closed behind her.
Marius found himself alone.
He dropped into a chair, with his head and both elbows on his bed, absorbed in thoughts which he could not
grasp, and as though a prey to vertigo. All that had taken place since the morning, the appearance of the
angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a gleam of hope floating in an immense
despair, this was what filled his brain confusedly.
All at once he was violently aroused from his revery.
He heard the shrill, hard voice of Jondrette utter these words, which were fraught with a strange interest for
him:
"I tell you that I am sure of it, and that I recognized him."
Of whom was Jondrette speaking? Whom had he recognized? M. Leblanc? The father of "his Ursule"? What!
Did Jondrette know him? Was Marius about to obtain in this abrupt and unexpected fashion all the
information without which his life was so dark to him? Was he about to learn at last who it was that he loved,
who that young girl was? Who her father was? Was the dense shadow which enwrapped them on the point of
being dispelled? Was the veil about to be rent? Ah! Heavens!
He bounded rather than climbed upon his commode, and resumed his post near the little peephole in the
partition wall.
Again he beheld the interior of Jondrette's hovel.
CHAPTER XII. THE USE MADE OF M. LEBLANC'S FIVEFRANC PIECE
Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife and daughters had levied on the package
and put on woollen stockings and jackets. Two new blankets were thrown across the two beds.
Jondrette had evidently just returned. He still had the breathlessness of out of doors. His daughters were
seated on the floor near the fireplace, the elder engaged in dressing the younger's wounded hand. His wife
had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative of astonishment. Jondrette was pacing up
and down the garret with long strides. His eyes were extraordinary.
The woman, who seemed timid and overwhelmed with stupor in the presence of her husband, turned to
say:
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"What, really? You are sure?"
"Sure! Eight years have passed! But I recognize him! Ah! I recognize him. I knew him at once! What! Didn't
it force itself on you?"
"No."
"But I told you: `Pay attention!' Why, it is his figure, it is his face, only older,there are people who do not
grow old, I don't know how they manage it,it is the very sound of his voice. He is better dressed, that is all!
Ah! you mysterious old devil, I've got you, that I have!"
He paused, and said to his daughters:
"Get out of here, you!It's queer that it didn't strike you!"
They arose to obey.
The mother stammered:
"With her injured hand."
"The air will do it good," said Jondrette. "Be off."
It was plain that this man was of the sort to whom no one offers to reply. The two girls departed.
At the moment when they were about to pass through the door, the father detained the elder by the arm, and
said to her with a peculiar accent:
"You will be here at five o'clock precisely. Both of you. I shall need you."
Marius redoubled his attention.
On being left alone with his wife, Jondrette began to pace the room again, and made the tour of it two or three
times in silence. Then he spent several minutes in tucking the lower part of the woman's chemise which he
wore into his trousers.
All at once, he turned to the female Jondrette, folded his arms and exclaimed:
"And would you like to have me tell you something? The young lady"
"Well, what?" retorted his wife, "the young lady?"
Marius could not doubt that it was really she of whom they were speaking. He listened with ardent anxiety.
His whole life was in his ears.
But Jondrette had bent over and spoke to his wife in a whisper. Then he straightened himself up and
concluded aloud:
"It is she!"
"That one?" said his wife.
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"That very one," said the husband.
No expression can reproduce the significance of the mother's words. Surprise, rage, hate, wrath, were
mingled and combined in one monstrous intonation. The pronunciation of a few words, the name, no doubt,
which her husband had whispered in her ear, had sufficed to rouse this huge, somnolent woman, and from
being repulsive she became terrible.
"It is not possible!" she cried. "When I think that my daughters are going barefoot, and have not a gown to
their backs! What! A satin pelisse, a velvet bonnet, boots, and everything; more than two hundred francs'
worth of clothes! so that one would think she was a lady! No, you are mistaken! Why, in the first place, the
other was hideous, and this one is not so badlooking! She really is not badlooking! It can't be she!"
"I tell you that it is she. You will see."
At this absolute assertion, the Jondrette woman raised her large, red, blonde face and stared at the ceiling with
a horrible expression. At that moment, she seemed to Marius even more to be feared than her husband. She
was a sow with the look of a tigress.
"What!" she resumed, "that horrible, beautiful young lady, who gazed at my daughters with an air of
pity,she is that beggar brat! Oh! I should like to kick her stomach in for her!"
She sprang off of the bed, and remained standing for a moment, her hair in disorder, her nostrils dilating, her
mouth half open, her fists clenched and drawn back. Then she fell back on the bed once more. The man paced
to and fro and paid no attention to his female.
After a silence lasting several minutes, he approached the female Jondrette, and halted in front of her, with
folded arms, as he had done a moment before:
"And shall I tell you another thing?"
"What is it?" she asked.
He answered in a low, curt voice:
"My fortune is made."
The woman stared at him with the look that signifies: "Is the person who is addressing me on the point of
going mad?"
He went on:
"Thunder! It was not so very long ago that I was a parishioner of the parish of
dieofhungerifyouhaveafire,dieofcoldifyouhavebread! I have had enough of misery! my
share and other people's share! I am not joking any longer, I don't find it comic any more, I've had enough of
puns, good God! no more farces, Eternal Father! I want to eat till I am full, I want to drink my fill! to
gormandize! to sleep! to do nothing! I want to have my turn, so I do, come now! before I die! I want to be a
bit of a millionnaire!"
He took a turn round the hovel, and added:
"Like other people."
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"What do you mean by that?" asked the woman.
He shook his head, winked, screwed up one eye, and raised his voice like a medical professor who is about to
make a demonstration:
"What do I mean by that? Listen!"
"Hush!" muttered the woman, "not so loud! These are matters which must not be overheard."
"Bah! Who's here? Our neighbor? I saw him go out a little while ago. Besides, he doesn't listen, the big
booby. And I tell you that I saw him go out."
Nevertheless, by a sort of instinct, Jondrette lowered his voice, although not sufficiently to prevent Marius
hearing his words. One favorable circumstance, which enabled Marius not to lose a word of this conversation
was the falling snow which deadened the sound of vehicles on the boulevard.
This is what Marius heard:
"Listen carefully. The Croesus is caught, or as good as caught! That's all settled already. Everything is
arranged. I have seen some people. He will come here this evening at six o'clock. To bring sixty francs, the
rascal! Did you notice how I played that game on him, my sixty francs, my landlord, my fourth of February? I
don't even owe for one quarter! Isn't he a fool! So he will come at six o'clock! That's the hour when our
neighbor goes to his dinner. Mother Bougon is off washing dishes in the city. There's not a soul in the house.
The neighbor never comes home until eleven o'clock. The children shall stand on watch. You shall help us.
He will give in."
"And what if he does not give in?" demanded his wife.
Jondrette made a sinister gesture, and said:
"We'll fix him."
And he burst out laughing.
This was the first time Marius had seen him laugh. The laugh was cold and sweet, and provoked a shudder.
Jondrette opened a cupboard near the fireplace, and drew from it an old cap, which he placed on his head,
after brushing it with his sleeve.
"Now," said he, "I'm going out. I have some more people that I must see. Good ones. You'll see how well the
whole thing will work. I shall be away as short a time as possible, it's a fine stroke of business, do you look
after the house."
And with both fists thrust into the pockets of his trousers, he stood for a moment in thought, then
exclaimed:
"Do you know, it's mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn't recognize me! If he had recognized me on his
side, he would not have come back again. He would have slipped through our fingers! It was my beard that
saved us! my romantic beard! my pretty little romantic beard!"
And again he broke into a laugh.
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He stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking the gray of the sky.
"What beastly weather!" said he.
Then lapping his overcoat across his breast:
"This rind is too large for me. Never mind," he added, "he did a devilish good thing in leaving it for me, the
old scoundrel! If it hadn't been for that, I couldn't have gone out, and everything would have gone wrong!
What small points things hang on, anyway!"
And pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room.
He had barely had time to take half a dozen steps from the door, when the door opened again, and his savage
but intelligent face made its appearance once more in the opening.
"I came near forgetting," said he. "You are to have a brazier of charcoal ready."
And he flung into his wife's apron the fivefranc piece which the "philanthropist" had left with him.
"A brazier of charcoal?" asked his wife.
"Yes."
"How many bushels?"
"Two good ones."
"That will come to thirty sous. With the rest I will buy something for dinner."
"The devil, no."
"Why?"
"Don't go and spend the hundredsou piece."
"Why?"
"Because I shall have to buy something, too."
"What?"
"Something."
"How much shall you need?"
"Whereabouts in the neighborhood is there an ironmonger's shop?"
"Rue Mouffetard."
"Ah! yes, at the corner of a street; I can see the shop."
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"But tell me how much you will need for what you have to purchase?"
"Fifty sousthree francs."
"There won't be much left for dinner."
"Eating is not the point today. There's something better to be done."
"That's enough, my jewel."
At this word from his wife, Jondrette closed the door again, and this time, Marius heard his step die away in
the corridor of the hovel, and descend the staircase rapidly.
At that moment, one o'clock struck from the church of SaintMedard.
CHAPTER XIII. SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON
COGITABUNTUR ORARE PATER NOSTER
Marius, dreamer as he was, was, as we have said, firm and energetic by nature. His habits of solitary
meditation, while they had developed in him sympathy and compassion, had, perhaps, diminished the faculty
for irritation, but had left intact the power of waxing indignant; he had the kindliness of a brahmin, and the
severity of a judge; he took pity upon a toad, but he crushed a viper. Now, it was into a hole of vipers that his
glance had just been directed, it was a nest of monsters that he had beneath his eyes.
"These wretches must be stamped upon," said he.
Not one of the enigmas which he had hoped to see solved had been elucidated; on the contrary, all of them
had been rendered more dense, if anything; he knew nothing more about the beautiful maiden of the
Luxembourg and the man whom he called M. Leblanc, except that Jondrette was acquainted with them.
Athwart the mysterious words which had been uttered, the only thing of which he caught a distinct glimpse
was the fact that an ambush was in course of preparation, a dark but terrible trap; that both of them were
incurring great danger, she probably, her father certainly; that they must be saved; that the hideous plots of
the Jondrettes must be thwarted, and the web of these spiders broken.
He scanned the female Jondrette for a moment. She had pulled an old sheetiron stove from a corner, and she
was rummaging among the old heap of iron.
He descended from the commode as softly as possible, taking care not to make the least noise. Amid his
terror as to what was in preparation, and in the horror with which the Jondrettes had inspired him, he
experienced a sort of joy at the idea that it might be granted to him perhaps to render a service to the one
whom he loved.
But how was it to be done? How warn the persons threatened? He did not know their address. They had
reappeared for an instant before his eyes, and had then plunged back again into the immense depths of Paris.
Should he wait for M. Leblanc at the door that evening at six o'clock, at the moment of his arrival, and warn
him of the trap? But Jondrette and his men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely, they were
stronger than he, they would devise means to seize him or to get him away, and the man whom Marius was
anxious to save would be lost. One o'clock had just struck, the trap was to be sprung at six. Marius had five
hours before him.
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There was but one thing to be done.
He put on his decent coat, knotted a silk handkerchief round his neck, took his hat, and went out, without
making any more noise than if he had been treading on moss with bare feet.
Moreover, the Jondrette woman continued to rummage among her old iron.
Once outside of the house, he made for the Rue du PetitBanquier.
He had almost reached the middle of this street, near a very low wall which a man can easily step over at
certain points, and which abuts on a waste space, and was walking slowly, in consequence of his preoccupied
condition, and the snow deadened the sound of his steps; all at once he heard voices talking very close by. He
turned his head, the street was deserted, there was not a soul in it, it was broad daylight, and yet he distinctly
heard voices.
It occurred to him to glance over the wall which he was skirting.
There, in fact, sat two men, flat on the snow, with their backs against the wall, talking together in subdued
tones.
These two persons were strangers to him; one was a bearded man in a blouse, and the other a longhaired
individual in rags. The bearded man had on a fez, the other's head was bare, and the snow had lodged in his
hair.
By thrusting his head over the wall, Marius could hear their remarks.
The hairy one jogged the other man's elbow and said:
"With the assistance of PatronMinette, it can't fail."
"Do you think so?" said the bearded man.
And the longhaired one began again:
"It's as good as a warrant for each one, of five hundred balls, and the worst that can happen is five years, six
years, ten years at the most!"
The other replied with some hesitation, and shivering beneath his fez:
"That's a real thing. You can't go against such things."
"I tell you that the affair can't go wrong," resumed the longhaired man. "Father What'shisname's team
will be already harnessed."
Then they began to discuss a melodrama that they had seen on the preceding evening at the Gaite Theatre.
Marius went his way.
It seemed to him that the mysterious words of these men, so strangely hidden behind that wall, and crouching
in the snow, could not but bear some relation to Jondrette's abominable projects. That must be the affair.
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He directed his course towards the faubourg SaintMarceau and asked at the first shop he came to where he
could find a commissary of police.
He was directed to Rue de Pontoise, No. 14.
Thither Marius betook himself.
As he passed a baker's shop, he bought a twopenny roll, and ate it, foreseeing that he should not dine.
On the way, he rendered justice to Providence. He reflected that had he not given his five francs to the
Jondrette girl in the morning, he would have followed M. Leblanc's fiacre, and consequently have remained
ignorant of everything, and that there would have been no obstacle to the trap of the Jondrettes and that M.
Leblanc would have been lost, and his daughter with him, no doubt.
CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS
ON A LAWYER
On arriving at No. 14, Rue de Pontoise, he ascended to the first floor and inquired for the commissary of
police.
"The commissary of police is not here," said a clerk; "but there is an inspector who takes his place. Would
you like to speak to him? Are you in haste?"
"Yes," said Marius.
The clerk introduced him into the commissary's office. There stood a tall man behind a grating, leaning
against a stove, and holding up with both hands the tails of a vast topcoat, with three collars. His face was
square, with a thin, firmmouth, thick, gray, and very ferocious whiskers, and a look that was enough to turn
your pockets inside out. Of that glance it might have been well said, not that it penetrated, but that it
searched.
This man's air was not much less ferocious nor less terrible than Jondrette's; the dog is, at times, no less
terrible to meet than the wolf.
"What do you want?" he said to Marius, without adding "monsieur."
"Is this Monsieur le Commissaire de Police?"
"He is absent. I am here in his stead."
"The matter is very private."'
"Then speak."
"And great haste is required."
"Then speak quick."
This calm, abrupt man was both terrifying and reassuring at one and the same time. He inspired fear and
confidence. Marius related the adventure to him: That a person with whom he was not acquainted otherwise
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than by sight, was to be inveigled into a trap that very evening; that, as he occupied the room adjoining the
den, he, Marius Pontmercy, a lawyer, had heard the whole plot through the partition; that the wretch who had
planned the trap was a certain Jondrette; that there would be accomplices, probably some prowlers of the
barriers, among others a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille; that Jondrette's daughters were
to lie in wait; that there was no way of warning the threatened man, since he did not even know his name; and
that, finally, all this was to be carried out at six o'clock that evening, at the most deserted point of the
Boulevard de l'Hopital, in house No. 5052.
At the sound of this number, the inspector raised his head, and said coldly:
"So it is in the room at the end of the corridor?"
"Precisely," answered Marius, and he added: "Are you acquainted with that house?"
The inspector remained silent for a moment, then replied, as he warmed the heel of his boot at the door of the
stove:
"Apparently."
He went on, muttering between his teeth, and not addressing Marius so much as his cravat:
"PatronMinette must have had a hand in this."
This word struck Marius.
"PatronMinette," said he, "I did hear that word pronounced, in fact."
And he repeated to the inspector the dialogue between the longhaired man and the bearded man in the snow
behind the wall of the Rue du PetitBanquier.
The inspector muttered:
"The longhaired man must be Brujon, and the bearded one DemiLiard, alias DeuxMilliards."
He had dropped his eyelids again, and became absorbed in thought.
"As for Father What'shisname, I think I recognize him. Here, I've burned my coat. They always have too
much fire in these cursed stoves. Number 5052. Former property of Gorbeau."
Then he glanced at Marius.
"You saw only that bearded and that longhaired man?"
"And Panchaud."
"You didn't see a little imp of a dandy prowling about the premises?"
"No."
"Nor a big lump of matter, resembling an elephant in the Jardin des Plantes?"
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"No."
"Nor a scamp with the air of an old red tail?"
"No."
"As for the fourth, no one sees him, not even his adjutants, clerks, and employees. It is not surprising that you
did not see him."
"No. Who are all those persons?" asked Marius.
The inspector answered:
"Besides, this is not the time for them."
He relapsed into silence, then resumed:
"5052. I know that barrack. Impossible to conceal ourselves inside it without the artists seeing us, and then
they will get off simply by countermanding the vaudeville. They are so modest! An audience embarrasses
them. None of that, none of that. I want to hear them sing and make them dance."
This monologue concluded, he turned to Marius, and demanded, gazing at him intently the while:
"Are you afraid?"
"Of what?" said Marius.
"Of these men?"
"No more than yourself!" retorted Marius rudely, who had begun to notice that this police agent had not yet
said "monsieur" to him.
The inspector stared still more intently at Marius, and continued with sententious solemnity:
"There, you speak like a brave man, and like an honest man. Courage does not fear crime, and honesty does
not fear authority."
Marius interrupted him:
"That is well, but what do you intend to do?"
The inspector contented himself with the remark:
"The lodgers have passkeys with which to get in at night. You must have one."
"Yes," said Marius.
"Have you it about you?"
"Yes."
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"Give it to me," said the inspector.
Marius took his key from his waistcoat pocket, handed it to the inspector and added:
"If you will take my advice, you will come in force."
The inspector cast on Marius such a glance as Voltaire might have bestowed on a provincial academician
who had suggested a rhyme to him; with one movement he plunged his hands, which were enormous, into the
two immense pockets of his topcoat, and pulled out two small steel pistols, of the sort called
"knockmedowns." Then he presented them to Marius, saying rapidly, in a curt tone:
"Take these. Go home. Hide in your chamber, so that you may be supposed to have gone out. They are
loaded. Each one carries two balls. You will keep watch; there is a hole in the wall, as you have informed me.
These men will come. Leave them to their own devices for a time. When you think matters have reached a
crisis, and that it is time to put a stop to them, fire a shot. Not too soon. The rest concerns me. A shot into the
ceiling, the air, no matter where. Above all things, not too soon. Wait until they begin to put their project into
execution; you are a lawyer; you know the proper point." Marius took the pistols and put them in the side
pocket of his coat.
"That makes a lump that can be seen," said the inspector. "Put them in your trousers pocket."
Marius hid the pistols in his trousers pockets.
"Now," pursued the inspector, "there is not a minute more to be lost by any one. What time is it? Halfpast
two. Seven o'clock is the hour?"
"Six o'clock," answered Marius.
"I have plenty of time," said the inspector, "but no more than enough. Don't forget anything that I have said to
you. Bang. A pistol shot."
"Rest easy," said Marius.
And as Marius laid his hand on the handle of the door on his way out, the inspector called to him:
"By the way, if you have occasion for my services between now and then, come or send here. You will ask
for Inspector Javert."
CHAPTER XV. JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES
A few moments later, about three o'clock, Courfeyrac chanced to be passing along the Rue Mouffetard in
company with Bossuet. The snow had redoubled in violence, and filled the air. Bossuet was just saying to
Courfeyrac:
"One would say, to see all these snowflakes fall, that there was a plague of white butterflies in heaven." All
at once, Bossuet caught sight of Marius coming up the street towards the barrier with a peculiar air.
"Hold!" said Bossuet. "There's Marius."
"I saw him," said Courfeyrac. "Don't let's speak to him."
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"Why?"
"He is busy."
"With what?"
"Don't you see his air?"
"What air?"
"He has the air of a man who is following some one."
"That's true," said Bossuet.
"Just see the eyes he is making!" said Courfeyrac.
"But who the deuce is he following?"
"Some fine, flowery bonneted wench! He's in love."
"But," observed Bossuet, "I don't see any wench nor any flowery bonnet in the street. There's not a woman
round."
Courfeyrac took a survey, and exclaimed:
"He's following a man!"
A man, in fact, wearing a gray cap, and whose gray beard could be distinguished, although they only saw his
back, was walking along about twenty paces in advance of Marius.
This man was dressed in a greatcoat which was perfectly new and too large for him, and in a frightful pair
of trousers all hanging in rags and black with mud.
Bossuet burst out laughing.
"Who is that man?"
"He?" retorted Courfeyrac, "he's a poet. Poets are very fond of wearing the trousers of dealers in rabbit skins
and the overcoats of peers of France."
"Let's see where Marius will go," said Bossuet; "let's see where the man is going, let's follow them, hey?"
"Bossuet!" exclaimed Courfeyrac, "eagle of Meaux! You are a prodigious brute. Follow a man who is
following another man, indeed!"
They retraced their steps.
Marius had, in fact, seen Jondrette passing along the Rue Mouffetard, and was spying on his proceedings.
Jondrette walked straight ahead, without a suspicion that he was already held by a glance.
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He quitted the Rue Mouffetard, and Marius saw him enter one of the most terrible hovels in the Rue
Gracieuse; he remained there about a quarter of an hour, then returned to the Rue Mouffetard. He halted at an
ironmonger's shop, which then stood at the corner of the Rue PierreLombard, and a few minutes later
Marius saw him emerge from the shop, holding in his hand a huge cold chisel with a white wood handle,
which he concealed beneath his greatcoat. At the top of the Rue PetitGentilly he turned to the left and
proceeded rapidly to the Rue du PetitBanquier. The day was declining; the snow, which had ceased for a
moment, had just begun again. Marius posted himself on the watch at the very corner of the Rue du
PetitBanquier, which was deserted, as usual, and did not follow Jondrette into it. It was lucky that he did so,
for, on arriving in the vicinity of the wall where Marius had heard the longhaired man and the bearded man
conversing, Jondrette turned round, made sure that no one was following him, did not see him, then sprang
across the wall and disappeared.
The waste land bordered by this wall communicated with the back yard of an exlivery stablekeeper of bad
repute, who had failed and who still kept a few old singleseated berlins under his sheds.
Marius thought that it would be wise to profit by Jondrette's absence to return home; moreover, it was
growing late; every evening, Ma'am Bougon when she set out for her dishwashing in town, had a habit of
locking the door, which was always closed at dusk. Marius had given his key to the inspector of police; it was
important, therefore, that he should make haste.
Evening had arrived, night had almost closed in; on the horizon and in the immensity of space, there
remained but one spot illuminated by the sun, and that was the moon.
It was rising in a ruddy glow behind the low dome of Salpetriere.
Marius returned to No. 5052 with great strides. The door was still open when he arrived. He mounted the
stairs on tiptoe and glided along the wall of the corridor to his chamber. This corridor, as the reader will
remember, was bordered on both sides by attics, all of which were, for the moment, empty and to let. Ma'am
Bougon was in the habit of leaving all the doors open. As he passed one of these attics, Marius thought he
perceived in the uninhabited cell the motionless heads of four men, vaguely lighted up by a remnant of
daylight, falling through a dormer window,
Marius made no attempt to see, not wishing to be seen himself. He succeeded in reaching his chamber
without being seen and without making any noise. It was high time. A moment later he heard Ma'am Bougon
take her departure, locking the door of the house behind her.
CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN
ENGLISH AIR WHICH WAS IN FASHION IN 1832
Marius seated himself on his bed. It might have been halfpast five o'clock. Only half an hour separated him
from what was about to happen. He heard the beating of his arteries as one hears the ticking of a watch in the
dark. He thought of the double march which was going on at that moment in the dark,crime advancing on
one side, justice coming up on the other. He was not afraid, but he could not think without a shudder of what
was about to take place. As is the case with all those who are suddenly assailed by an unforeseen adventure,
the entire day produced upon him the effect of a dream, and in order to persuade himself that he was not the
prey of a nightmare, he had to feel the cold barrels of the steel pistols in his trousers pockets.
It was no longer snowing; the moon disengaged itself more and more clearly from the mist, and its light,
mingled with the white reflection of the snow which had fallen, communicated to the chamber a sort of
twilight aspect.
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There was a light in the Jondrette den. Marius saw the hole in the wall shining with a reddish glow which
seemed bloody to him.
It was true that the light could not be produced by a candle. However, there was not a sound in the Jondrette
quarters, not a soul was moving there, not a soul speaking, not a breath; the silence was glacial and profound,
and had it not been for that light, he might have thought himself next door to a sepulchre.
Marius softly removed his boots and pushed them under his bed.
Several minutes elapsed. Marius heard the lower door turn on its hinges; a heavy step mounted the staircase,
and hastened along the corridor; the latch of the hovel was noisily lifted; it was Jondrette returning.
Instantly, several voices arose. The whole family was in the garret. Only, it had been silent in the master's
absence, like wolf whelps in the absence of the wolf.
"It's I," said he.
"Good evening, daddy," yelped the girls.
"Well?" said the mother.
"All's going firstrate," responded Jondrette, "but my feet are beastly cold. Good! You have dressed up. You
have done well! You must inspire confidence."
"All ready to go out."
"Don't forget what I told you. You will do everything sure?"
"Rest easy."
"Because" said Jondrette. And he left the phrase unfinished.
Marius heard him lay something heavy on the table, probably the chisel which he had purchased.
"By the way," said Jondrette, "have you been eating here?"
"Yes," said the mother. "I got three large potatoes and some salt. I took advantage of the fire to cook them."
"Good," returned Jondrette. "Tomorrow I will take you out to dine with me. We will have a duck and
fixings. You shall dine like Charles the Tenth; all is going well!"
Then he added:
"The mousetrap is open. The cats are there."
He lowered his voice still further, and said:
"Put this in the fire."
Marius heard a sound of charcoal being knocked with the tongs or some iron utensil, and Jondrette
continued:
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"Have you greased the hinges of the door so that they will not squeak?"
"Yes," replied the mother.
"What time is it?"
"Nearly six. The halfhour struck from SaintMedard a while ago."
"The devil!" ejaculated Jondrette; "the children must go and watch. Come you, do you listen here."
A whispering ensued.
Jondrette's voice became audible again:
"Has old Bougon left?"
"Yes," said the mother.
"Are you sure that there is no one in our neighbor's room?"
"He has not been in all day, and you know very well that this is his dinner hour."
"You are sure?"
"Sure."
"All the same," said Jondrette, "there's no harm in going to see whether he is there. Here, my girl, take the
candle and go there."
Marius fell on his hands and knees and crawled silently under his bed.
Hardly had he concealed himself, when he perceived a light through the crack of his door.
"P'pa," cried a voice, "he is not in here."
He recognized the voice of the eldest daughter.
"Did you go in?" demanded her father.
"No," replied the girl, "but as his key is in the door, he must be out."
The father exclaimed:
"Go in, nevertheless."
The door opened, and Marius saw the tall Jondrette come in with a candle in her hand. She was as she had
been in the morning, only still more repulsive in this light.
She walked straight up to the bed. Marius endured an indescribable moment of anxiety; but near the bed there
was a mirror nailed to the wall, and it was thither that she was directing her steps. She raised herself on tiptoe
and looked at herself in it. In the neighboring room, the sound of iron articles being moved was audible.
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She smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand, and smiled into the mirror, humming with her cracked and
sepulchral voice:
Nos amours ont dure toute une semaine,[28]
Mais que du bonheur les instants sont courts!
S'adorer huit jours, c' etait bien la peine!
Le temps des amours devait durer toujours!
Devrait durer toujours! devrait durer toujours!
[28] Our love has lasted a whole week, but how short are the instants of happiness! To adore each other for
eight days was hardly worth the while! The time of love should last forever.
In the meantime, Marius trembled. It seemed impossible to him that she should not hear his breathing.
She stepped to the window and looked out with the halffoolish way she had.
"How ugly Paris is when it has put on a white chemise!" said she.
She returned to the mirror and began again to put on airs before it, scrutinizing herself fullface and
threequarters face in turn.
"Well!" cried her father, "what are you about there?"
"I am looking under the bed and the furniture," she replied, continuing to arrange her hair; "there's no one
here."
"Booby!" yelled her father. "Come here this minute! And don't waste any time about it!"
"Coming! Coming!" said she. "One has no time for anything in this hovel!"
She hummed:
Vous me quittez pour aller a la gloire;[29]
Mon triste coeur suivra partout.
[29] You leave me to go to glory; my sad heart will follow you everywhere.
She cast a parting glance in the mirror and went out, shutting the door behind her.
A moment more, and Marius heard the sound of the two young girls' bare feet in the corridor, and Jondrette's
voice shouting to them:
"Pay strict heed! One on the side of the barrier, the other at the corner of the Rue du PetitBanquier. Don't
lose sight for a moment of the door of this house, and the moment you see anything, rush here on the instant!
as hard as you can go! You have a key to get in."
The eldest girl grumbled:
"The idea of standing watch in the snow barefoot!"
"Tomorrow you shall have some dainty little green silk boots!" said the father.
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They ran down stairs, and a few seconds later the shock of the outer door as it banged to announced that they
were outside.
There now remained in the house only Marius, the Jondrettes and probably, also, the mysterious persons of
whom Marius had caught a glimpse in the twilight, behind the door of the unused attic.
CHAPTER XVII. THE USE MADE OF MARIUS' FIVEFRANC PIECE
Marius decided that the moment had now arrived when he must resume his post at his observatory. In a
twinkling, and with the agility of his age, he had reached the hole in the partition.
He looked.
The interior of the Jondrette apartment presented a curious aspect, and Marius found an explanation of the
singular light which he had noticed. A candle was burning in a candlestick covered with verdigris, but that
was not what really lighted the chamber. The hovel was completely illuminated, as it were, by the reflection
from a rather large sheetiron brazier standing in the fireplace, and filled with burning charcoal, the brazier
prepared by the Jondrette woman that morning. The charcoal was glowing hot and the brazier was red; a blue
flame flickered over it, and helped him to make out the form of the chisel purchased by Jondrette in the Rue
PierreLombard, where it had been thrust into the brazier to heat. In one corner, near the door, and as though
prepared for some definite use, two heaps were visible, which appeared to be, the one a heap of old iron, the
other a heap of ropes. All this would have caused the mind of a person who knew nothing of what was in
preparation, to waver between a very sinister and a very simple idea. The lair thus lighted up more resembled
a forge than a mouth of hell, but Jondrette, in this light, had rather the air of a demon than of a smith.
The heat of the brazier was so great, that the candle on the table was melting on the side next the
chafingdish, and was drooping over. An old darklantern of copper, worthy of Diogenes turned Cartouche,
stood on the chimneypiece.
The brazier, placed in the fireplace itself, beside the nearly extinct brands, sent its vapors up the chimney, and
gave out no odor.
The moon, entering through the four panes of the window, cast its whiteness into the crimson and flaming
garret; and to the poetic spirit of Marius, who was dreamy even in the moment of action, it was like a thought
of heaven mingled with the misshapen reveries of earth.
A breath of air which made its way in through the open pane, helped to dissipate the smell of the charcoal and
to conceal the presence of the brazier.
The Jondrette lair was, if the reader recalls what we have said of the Gorbeau building, admirably chosen to
serve as the theatre of a violent and sombre deed, and as the envelope for a crime. It was the most retired
chamber in the most isolated house on the most deserted boulevard in Paris. If the system of ambush and
traps had not already existed, they would have been invented there.
The whole thickness of a house and a multitude of uninhabited rooms separated this den from the boulevard,
and the only window that existed opened on waste lands enclosed with walls and palisades.
Jondrette had lighted his pipe, seated himself on the seatless chair, and was engaged in smoking. His wife
was talking to him in a low tone.
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If Marius had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, one of those men who laugh on every occasion in life, he would
have burst with laughter when his gaze fell on the Jondrette woman. She had on a black bonnet with plumes
not unlike the hats of the heraldsatarms at the coronation of Charles X., an immense tartan shawl over her
knitted petticoat, and the man's shoes which her daughter had scorned in the morning. It was this toilette
which had extracted from Jondrette the exclamation: "Good! You have dressed up. You have done well. You
must inspire confidence!"
As for Jondrette, he had not taken off the new surtout, which was too large for him, and which M. Leblanc
had given him, and his costume continued to present that contrast of coat and trousers which constituted the
ideal of a poet in Courfeyrac's eyes.
All at once, Jondrette lifted up his voice:
"By the way! Now that I think of it. In this weather, he will come in a carriage. Light the lantern, take it and
go down stairs. You will stand behind the lower door. The very moment that you hear the carriage stop, you
will open the door, instantly, he will come up, you will light the staircase and the corridor, and when he
enters here, you will go down stairs again as speedily as possible, you will pay the coachman, and dismiss the
fiacre.
"And the money?" inquired the woman.
Jondrette fumbled in his trousers pocket and handed her five francs.
"What's this?" she exclaimed.
Jondrette replied with dignity:
"That is the monarch which our neighbor gave us this morning."
And he added:
"Do you know what? Two chairs will be needed here."
"What for?"
"To sit on."
Marius felt a cold chill pass through his limbs at hearing this mild answer from Jondrette.
"Pardieu! I'll go and get one of our neighbor's."
And with a rapid movement, she opened the door of the den, and went out into the corridor.
Marius absolutely had not the time to descend from the commode, reach his bed, and conceal himself beneath
it.
"Take the candle," cried Jondrette.
"No," said she, "it would embarrass me, I have the two chairs to carry. There is moonlight."
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Marius heard Mother Jondrette's heavy hand fumbling at his lock in the dark. The door opened. He remained
nailed to the spot with the shock and with horror.
The Jondrette entered.
The dormer window permitted the entrance of a ray of moonlight between two blocks of shadow. One of
these blocks of shadow entirely covered the wall against which Marius was leaning, so that he disappeared
within it.
Mother Jondrette raised her eyes, did not see Marius, took the two chairs, the only ones which Marius
possessed, and went away, letting the door fall heavily to behind her.
She reentered the lair.
"Here are the two chairs."
"And here is the lantern. Go down as quick as you can."
She hastily obeyed, and Jondrette was left alone.
He placed the two chairs on opposite sides of the table, turned the chisel in the brazier, set in front of the
fireplace an old screen which masked the chafingdish, then went to the corner where lay the pile of rope,
and bent down as though to examine something. Marius then recognized the fact, that what he had taken for a
shapeless mass was a very wellmade ropeladder, with wooden rungs and two hooks with which to attach
it.
This ladder, and some large tools, veritable masses of iron, which were mingled with the old iron piled up
behind the door, had not been in the Jondrette hovel in the morning, and had evidently been brought thither in
the afternoon, during Marius' absence.
"Those are the utensils of an edgetool maker," thought Marius.
Had Marius been a little more learned in this line, he would have recognized in what he took for the engines
of an edgetool maker, certain instruments which will force a lock or pick a lock, and others which will cut
or slice, the two families of tools which burglars call cadets and fauchants.
The fireplace and the two chairs were exactly opposite Marius. The brazier being concealed, the only light in
the room was now furnished by the candle; the smallest bit of crockery on the table or on the chimneypiece
cast a large shadow. There was something indescribably calm, threatening, and hideous about this chamber.
One felt that there existed in it the anticipation of something terrible.
Jondrette had allowed his pipe to go out, a serious sign of preoccupation, and had again seated himself. The
candle brought out the fierce and the fine angles of his countenance. He indulged in scowls and in abrupt
unfoldings of the right hand, as though he were responding to the last counsels of a sombre inward
monologue. In the course of one of these dark replies which he was making to himself, he pulled the table
drawer rapidly towards him, took out a long kitchen knife which was concealed there, and tried the edge of its
blade on his nail. That done, he put the knife back in the drawer and shut it.
Marius, on his side, grasped the pistol in his right pocket, drew it out and cocked it.
The pistol emitted a sharp, clear click, as he cocked it.
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Jondrette started, half rose, listened a moment, then began to laugh and said:
"What a fool I am! It's the partition cracking!"
Marius kept the pistol in his hand.
CHAPTER XVIII. MARIUS' TWO CHAIRS FORM A VISAVIS
Suddenly, the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the panes. Six o'clock was striking from
SaintMedard.
Jondrette marked off each stroke with a toss of his head. When the sixth had struck, he snuffed the candle
with his fingers.
Then he began to pace up and down the room, listened at the corridor, walked on again, then listened once
more.
"Provided only that he comes!" he muttered, then he returned to his chair.
He had hardly reseated himself when the door opened.
Mother Jondrette had opened it, and now remained in the corridor making a horrible, amiable grimace, which
one of the holes of the darklantern illuminated from below.
"Enter, sir," she said.
"Enter, my benefactor," repeated Jondrette, rising hastily.
M. Leblanc made his appearance.
He wore an air of serenity which rendered him singularly venerable.
He laid four louis on the table.
"Monsieur Fabantou," said he, "this is for your rent and your most pressing necessities. We will attend to the
rest hereafter."
"May God requite it to you, my generous benefactor!" said Jondrette.
And rapidly approaching his wife:
"Dismiss the carriage!"
She slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering M. Leblanc a chair. An instant later she
returned and whispered in his ear:
"'Tis done."
The snow, which had not ceased falling since the morning, was so deep that the arrival of the fiacre had not
been audible, and they did not now hear its departure.
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Meanwhile, M. Leblanc had seated himself.
Jondrette had taken possession of the other chair, facing M. Leblanc.
Now, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to follow, let the reader picture to himself in his own
mind, a cold night, the solitudes of the Salpetriere covered with snow and white as windingsheets in the
moonlight, the taperlike lights of the street lanterns which shone redly here and there along those tragic
boulevards, and the long rows of black elms, not a passerby for perhaps a quarter of a league around, the
Gorbeau hovel, at its highest pitch of silence, of horror, and of darkness; in that building, in the midst of those
solitudes, in the midst of that darkness, the vast Jondrette garret lighted by a single candle, and in that den
two men seated at a table, M. Leblanc tranquil, Jondrette smiling and alarming, the Jondrette woman, the
female wolf, in one corner, and, behind the partition, Marius, invisible, erect, not losing a word, not missing a
single movement, his eye on the watch, and pistol in hand.
However, Marius experienced only an emotion of horror, but no fear. He clasped the stock of the pistol firmly
and felt reassured. "I shall be able to stop that wretch whenever I please," he thought.
He felt that the police were there somewhere in ambuscade, waiting for the signal agreed upon and ready to
stretch out their arm.
Moreover, he was in hopes, that this violent encounter between Jondrette and M. Leblanc would cast some
light on all the things which he was interested in learning.
CHAPTER XIX. OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS
Hardly was M. Leblanc seated, when he turned his eyes towards the pallets, which were empty.
"How is the poor little wounded girl?" he inquired.
"Bad," replied Jondrette with a heartbroken and grateful smile, "very bad, my worthy sir. Her elder sister
has taken her to the Bourbe to have her hurt dressed. You will see them presently; they will be back
immediately."
"Madame Fabantou seems to me to be better," went on M. Leblanc, casting his eyes on the eccentric costume
of the Jondrette woman, as she stood between him and the door, as though already guarding the exit, and
gazed at him in an attitude of menace and almost of combat.
"She is dying," said Jondrette. "But what do you expect, sir! She has so much courage, that woman has! She's
not a woman, she's an ox."
The Jondrette, touched by his compliment, deprecated it with the affected airs of a flattered monster.
"You are always too good to me, Monsieur Jondrette!"
"Jondrette!" said M. Leblanc, "I thought your name was Fabantou?"
"Fabantou, alias Jondrette!" replied the husband hurriedly. "An artistic sobriquet!"
And launching at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which M. Leblanc did not catch, he continued with an
emphatic and caressing inflection of voice:
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"Ah! we have had a happy life together, this poor darling and I! What would there be left for us if we had not
that? We are so wretched, my respectable sir! We have arms, but there is no work! We have the will, no
work! I don't know how the government arranges that, but, on my word of honor, sir, I am not Jacobin, sir, I
am not a bousingot.[30] I don't wish them any evil, but if I were the ministers, on my most sacred word,
things would be different. Here, for instance, I wanted to have my girls taught the trade of paperbox makers.
You will say to me: `What! a trade?' Yes! A trade! A simple trade! A breadwinner! What a fall, my
benefactor! What a degradation, when one has been what we have been! Alas! There is nothing left to us of
our days of prosperity! One thing only, a picture, of which I think a great deal, but which I am willing to part
with, for I must live! Item, one must live!"
[30] A democrat.
While Jondrette thus talked, with an apparent incoherence which detracted nothing from the thoughtful and
sagacious expression of his physiognomy, Marius raised his eyes, and perceived at the other end of the room
a person whom he had not seen before. A man had just entered, so softly that the door had not been heard to
turn on its hinges. This man wore a violet knitted vest, which was old, worn, spotted, cut and gaping at every
fold, wide trousers of cotton velvet, wooden shoes on his feet, no shirt, had his neck bare, his bare arms
tattooed, and his face smeared with black. He had seated himself in silence on the nearest bed, and, as he was
behind Jondrette, he could only be indistinctly seen.
That sort of magnetic instinct which turns aside the gaze, caused M. Leblanc to turn round almost at the same
moment as Marius. He could not refrain from a gesture of surprise which did not escape Jondrette.
"Ah! I see!" exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat with an air of complaisance, "you are looking at your
overcoat? It fits me! My faith, but it fits me!"
"Who is that man?" said M. Leblanc.
"Him?" ejaculated Jondrette, "he's a neighbor of mine. Don't pay any attention to him."
The neighbor was a singularlooking individual. However, manufactories of chemical products abound in the
Faubourg SaintMarceau. Many of the workmen might have black faces. Besides this, M. Leblanc's whole
person was expressive of candid and intrepid confidence.
He went on:
"Excuse me; what were you saying, M. Fabantou?"
"I was telling you, sir, and dear protector," replied Jondrette placing his elbows on the table and
contemplating M. Leblanc with steady and tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of the boaconstrictor, "I was
telling you, that I have a picture to sell."
A slight sound came from the door. A second man had just entered and seated himself on the bed, behind
Jondrette.
Like the first, his arms were bare, and he had a mask of ink or lampblack.
Although this man had, literally, glided into the room, he had not been able to prevent M. Leblanc catching
sight of him.
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"Don't mind them," said Jondrette, "they are people who belong in the house. So I was saying, that there
remains in my possession a valuable picture. But stop, sir, take a look at it."
He rose, went to the wall at the foot of which stood the panel which we have already mentioned, and turned it
round, still leaving it supported against the wall. It really was something which resembled a picture, and
which the candle illuminated, somewhat. Marius could make nothing out of it, as Jondrette stood between the
picture and him; he only saw a coarse daub, and a sort of principal personage colored with the harsh crudity
of foreign canvasses and screen paintings.
"What is that?" asked M. Leblanc.
Jondrette exclaimed:
"A painting by a master, a picture of great value, my benefactor! I am as much attached to it as I am to my
two daughters; it recalls souvenirs to me! But I have told you, and I will not take it back, that I am so
wretched that I will part with it."
Either by chance, or because he had begun to feel a dawning uneasiness, M. Leblanc's glance returned to the
bottom of the room as he examined the picture.
There were now four men, three seated on the bed, one standing near the doorpost, all four with bare arms
and motionless, with faces smeared with black. One of those on the bed was leaning against the wall, with
closed eyes, and it might have been supposed that he was asleep. He was old; his white hair contrasting with
his blackened face produced a horrible effect. The other two seemed to be young; one wore a beard, the other
wore his hair long. None of them had on shoes; those who did not wear socks were barefooted.
Jondrette noticed that M. Leblanc's eye was fixed on these men.
"They are friends. They are neighbors," said he. "Their faces are black because they work in charcoal. They
are chimneybuilders. Don't trouble yourself about them, my benefactor, but buy my picture. Have pity on
my misery. I will not ask you much for it. How much do you think it is worth?"
"Well," said M. Leblanc, looking Jondrette full in the eye, and with the manner of a man who is on his guard,
"it is some signboard for a tavern, and is worth about three francs."
Jondrette replied sweetly:
"Have you your pocketbook with you? I should be satisfied with a thousand crowns."
M. Leblanc sprang up, placed his back against the wall, and cast a rapid glance around the room. He had
Jondrette on his left, on the side next the window, and the Jondrette woman and the four men on his right, on
the side next the door. The four men did not stir, and did not even seem to be looking on.
Jondrette had again begun to speak in a plaintive tone, with so vague an eye, and so lamentable an intonation,
that M. Leblanc might have supposed that what he had before him was a man who had simply gone mad with
misery.
"If you do not buy my picture, my dear benefactor," said Jondrette, "I shall be left without resources; there
will be nothing left for me but to throw myself into the river. When I think that I wanted to have my two girls
taught the middleclass paperbox trade, the making of boxes for New Year's gifts! Well! A table with a
board at the end to keep the glasses from falling off is required, then a special stove is needed, a pot with
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three compartments for the different degrees of strength of the paste, according as it is to be used for wood,
paper, or stuff, a paringknife to cut the cardboard, a mould to adjust it, a hammer to nail the steels, pincers,
how the devil do I know what all? And all that in order to earn four sous a day! And you have to work
fourteen hours a day! And each box passes through the workwoman's hands thirteen times! And you can't wet
the paper! And you mustn't spot anything! And you must keep the paste hot. The devil, I tell you! Four sous a
day! How do you suppose a man is to live?"
As he spoke, Jondrette did not look at M. Leblanc, who was observing him. M. Leblanc's eye was fixed on
Jondrette, and Jondrette's eye was fixed on the door. Marius' eager attention was transferred from one to the
other. M. Leblanc seemed to be asking himself: "Is this man an idiot?" Jondrette repeated two or three
distinct times, with all manner of varying inflections of the whining and supplicating order: "There is nothing
left for me but to throw myself into the river! I went down three steps at the side of the bridge of Austerlitz
the other day for that purpose."
All at once his dull eyes lighted up with a hideous flash; the little man drew himself up and became terrible,
took a step toward M. Leblanc and cried in a voice of thunder: "That has nothing to do with the question! Do
you know me?"
CHAPTER XX. THE TRAP
The door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed a view of three men clad in blue linen blouses,
and masked with masks of black paper. The first was thin, and had a long, irontipped cudgel; the second,
who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the handle, with the blade downward, a butcher's
poleaxe for slaughtering cattle. The third, a man with thickset shoulders, not so slender as the first, held in
his hand an enormous key stolen from the door of some prison.
It appeared that the arrival of these men was what Jondrette had been waiting for. A rapid dialogue ensued
between him and the man with the cudgel, the thin one.
"Is everything ready?" said Jondrette.
"Yes," replied the thin man.
"Where is Montparnasse?"
"The young principal actor stopped to chat with your girl."
"Which?"
"The eldest."
"Is there a carriage at the door?"
"Yes."
"Is the team harnessed?"
"Yes."
"With two good horses?"
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"Excellent."
"Is it waiting where I ordered?"
"Yes."
"Good," said Jondrette.
M. Leblanc was very pale. He was scrutinizing everything around him in the den, like a man who understands
what he has fallen into, and his head, directed in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved on
his neck with an astonished and attentive slowness, but there was nothing in his air which resembled fear. He
had improvised an intrenchment out of the table; and the man, who but an instant previously, had borne
merely the appearance of a kindly old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist
on the back of his chair, with a formidable and surprising gesture.
This old man, who was so firm and so brave in the presence of such a danger, seemed to possess one of those
natures which are as courageous as they are kind, both easily and simply. The father of a woman whom we
love is never a stranger to us. Marius felt proud of that unknown man.
Three of the men, of whom Jondrette had said: "They are chimneybuilders," had armed themselves from the
pile of old iron, one with a heavy pair of shears, the second with weighingtongs, the third with a hammer,
and had placed themselves across the entrance without uttering a syllable. The old man had remained on the
bed, and had merely opened his eyes. The Jondrette woman had seated herself beside him.
Marius decided that in a few seconds more the moment for intervention would arrive, and he raised his right
hand towards the ceiling, in the direction of the corridor, in readiness to discharge his pistol.
Jondrette having terminated his colloquy with the man with the cudgel, turned once more to M. Leblanc, and
repeated his question, accompanying it with that low, repressed, and terrible laugh which was peculiar to
him:
"So you do not recognize me?"
M. Leblanc looked him full in the face, and replied:
"No."
Then Jondrette advanced to the table. He leaned across the candle, crossing his arms, putting his angular and
ferocious jaw close to M. Leblanc's calm face, and advancing as far as possible without forcing M. Leblanc to
retreat, and, in this posture of a wild beast who is about to bite, he exclaimed:
"My name is not Fabantou, my name is not Jondrette, my name is Thenardier. I am the innkeeper of
Montfermeil! Do you understand? Thenardier! Now do you know me?"
An almost imperceptible flush crossed M. Leblanc's brow, and he replied with a voice which neither trembled
nor rose above its ordinary level, with his accustomed placidity:
"No more than before."
Marius did not hear this reply. Any one who had seen him at that moment through the darkness would have
perceived that he was haggard, stupid, thunderstruck. At the moment when Jondrette said: "My name is
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Thenardier," Marius had trembled in every limb, and had leaned against the wall, as though he felt the cold of
a steel blade through his heart. Then his right arm, all ready to discharge the signal shot, dropped slowly, and
at the moment when Jondrette repeated, "Thenardier, do you understand?" Marius's faltering fingers had
come near letting the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity, had not moved M. Leblanc, but he had
quite upset Marius. That name of Thenardier, with which M. Leblanc did not seem to be acquainted, Marius
knew well. Let the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed
in his father's testament! He bore it at the bottom of his mind, in the depths of his memory, in that sacred
injunction: "A certain Thenardier saved my life. If my son encounters him, he will do him all the good that
lies in his power." That name, it will be remembered, was one of the pieties of his soul; he mingled it with the
name of his father in his worship. What! This man was that Thenardier, that innkeeper of Montfermeil
whom he had so long and so vainly sought! He had found him at last, and how? His father's saviour was a
ruffian! That man, to whose service Marius was burning to devote himself, was a monster! That liberator of
Colonel Pontmercy was on the point of committing a crime whose scope Marius did not, as yet, clearly
comprehend, but which resembled an assassination! And against whom, great God! what a fatality! What a
bitter mockery of fate! His father had commanded him from the depths of his coffin to do all the good in his
power to this Thenardier, and for four years Marius had cherished no other thought than to acquit this debt of
his father's, and at the moment when he was on the eve of having a brigand seized in the very act of crime by
justice, destiny cried to him: "This is Thenardier!" He could at last repay this man for his father's life, saved
amid a hailstorm of grapeshot on the heroic field of Waterloo, and repay it with the scaffold! He had sworn
to himself that if ever he found that Thenardier, he would address him only by throwing himself at his feet;
and now he actually had found him, but it was only to deliver him over to the executioner! His father said to
him: "Succor Thenardier!" And he replied to that adored and sainted voice by crushing Thenardier! He was
about to offer to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who had torn him from death at the peril of
his own life, executed on the Place SaintJacques through the means of his son, of that Marius to whom he
had entrusted that man by his will! And what a mockery to have so long worn on his breast his father's last
commands, written in his own hand, only to act in so horribly contrary a sense! But, on the other hand, now
look on that trap and not prevent it! Condemn the victim and to spare the assassin! Could one be held to any
gratitude towards so miserable a wretch? All the ideas which Marius had cherished for the last four years
were pierced through and through, as it were, by this unforeseen blow.
He shuddered. Everything depended on him. Unknown to themselves, he held in his hand all those beings
who were moving about there before his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Thenardier
lost; if he did not fire, M. Leblanc would be sacrificed, and, who knows? Thenardier would escape. Should he
dash down the one or allow the other to fall? Remorse awaited him in either case.
What was he to do? What should he choose? Be false to the most imperious souvenirs, to all those solemn
vows to himself, to the most sacred duty, to the most venerated text! Should he ignore his father's testament,
or allow the perpetration of a crime! On the one hand, it seemed to him that he heard "his Ursule"
supplicating for her father and on the other, the colonel commending Thenardier to his care. He felt that he
was going mad. His knees gave way beneath him. And he had not even the time for deliberation, so great was
the fury with which the scene before his eyes was hastening to its catastrophe. It was like a whirlwind of
which he had thought himself the master, and which was now sweeping him away. He was on the verge of
swooning.
In the meantime, Thenardier, whom we shall henceforth call by no other name, was pacing up and down in
front of the table in a sort of frenzy and wild triumph.
He seized the candle in his fist, and set it on the chimneypiece with so violent a bang that the wick came
near being extinguished, and the tallow bespattered the wall.
Then he turned to M. Leblanc with a horrible look, and spit out these words:
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"Done for! Smoked brown! Cooked! Spitchcocked!"
And again he began to march back and forth, in full eruption.
"Ah!" he cried, "so I've found you again at last, Mister philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire! Mister
giver of dolls! you old ninny! Ah! so you don't recognize me! No, it wasn't you who came to Montfermeil, to
my inn, eight years ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It wasn't you who carried off that Fantine's child from me!
The Lark! It wasn't you who had a yellow greatcoat! No! Nor a package of duds in your hand, as you had
this morning here! Say, wife, it seems to be his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses! Old
charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister millionnaire? You give away your stock in trade
to the poor, holy man! What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you don't recognize me? Well, I recognize you,
that I do! I recognized you the very moment you poked your snout in here. Ah! you'll find out presently, that
it isn't all roses to thrust yourself in that fashion into people's houses, under the pretext that they are taverns,
in wretched clothes, with the air of a poor man, to whom one would give a sou, to deceive persons, to play
the generous, to take away their means of livelihood, and to make threats in the woods, and you can't call
things quits because afterwards, when people are ruined, you bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable
hospital blankets, you old blackguard, you childstealer!"
He paused, and seemed to be talking to himself for a moment. One would have said that his wrath had fallen
into some hole, like the Rhone; then, as though he were concluding aloud the things which he had been
saying to himself in a whisper, he smote the table with his fist, and shouted:
"And with his goodygoody air!"
And, apostrophizing M. Leblanc:
"Parbleu! You made game of me in the past! You are the cause of all my misfortunes! For fifteen hundred
francs you got a girl whom I had, and who certainly belonged to rich people, and who had already brought in
a great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted enough to live on all my life! A girl who would
have made up to me for everything that I lost in that vile cookshop, where there was nothing but one
continual row, and where, like a fool, I ate up my last farthing! Oh! I wish all the wine folks drank in my
house had been poison to those who drank it! Well, never mind! Say, now! You must have thought me
ridiculous when you went off with the Lark! You had your cudgel in the forest. You were the stronger.
Revenge. I'm the one to hold the trumps today! You're in a sorry case, my good fellow! Oh, but I can laugh!
Really, I laugh! Didn't he fall into the trap! I told him that I was an actor, that my name was Fabantou, that I
had played comedy with Mamselle Mars, with Mamselle Muche, that my landlord insisted on being paid
tomorrow, the 4th of February, and he didn't even notice that the 8th of January, and not the 4th of February
is the time when the quarter runs out! Absurd idiot! And the four miserable Philippes which he has brought
me! Scoundrel! He hadn't the heart even to go as high as a hundred francs! And how he swallowed my
platitudes! That did amuse me. I said to myself: `Blockhead! Come, I've got you! I lick your paws this
morning, but I'll gnaw your heart this evening!'"
Thenardier paused. He was out of breath. His little, narrow chest panted like a forge bellows. His eyes were
full of the ignoble happiness of a feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, harass
what it has feared, and insult what it has flattered, the joy of a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the
head of Goliath, the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick bull, so nearly dead that he can no
longer defend himself, but sufficiently alive to suffer still.
M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he paused:
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"I do not know what you mean to say. You are mistaken in me. I am a very poor man, and anything but a
millionnaire. I do not know you. You are mistaking me for some other person."
"Ah!" roared Thenardier hoarsely, "a pretty lie! You stick to that pleasantry, do you! You're floundering, my
old buck! Ah! You don't remember! You don't see who I am?"
"Excuse me, sir," said M. Leblanc with a politeness of accent, which at that moment seemed peculiarly
strange and powerful, "I see that you are a villain!"
Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are
ticklish! At this word "villain," the female Thenardier sprang from the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as
though he were about to crush it in his hands. "Don't you stir!" he shouted to his wife; and, turning to M.
Leblanc:
"Villain! Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gentlemen! Stop! it's true that I became bankrupt, that I
am in hiding, that I have no bread, that I have not a single sou, that I am a villain! It's three days since I have
had anything to eat, so I'm a villain! Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have
wadded greatcoats, like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor in houses that have porters, you eat truffles,
you eat asparagus at forty francs the bunch in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves,
and when you want to know whether it is cold, you look in the papers to see what the engineer Chevalier's
thermometer says about it. We, it is we who are thermometers. We don't need to go out and look on the quay
at the corner of the Tour de l'Horologe, to find out the number of degrees of cold; we feel our blood
congealing in our veins, and the ice forming round our hearts, and we say: `There is no God!' And you come
to our caverns, yes our caverns, for the purpose of calling us villains! But we'll devour you! But we'll devour
you, poor little things! Just see here, Mister millionnaire: I have been a solid man, I have held a license, I
have been an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am! And it's quite possible that you are not!"
Here Thenardier took a step towards the men who stood near the door, and added with a shudder:
"When I think that he has dared to come here and talk to me like a cobbler!"
Then addressing M. Leblanc with a fresh outburst of frenzy:
"And listen to this also, Mister philanthropist! I'm not a suspicious character, not a bit of it! I'm not a man
whose name nobody knows, and who comes and abducts children from houses! I'm an old French soldier, I
ought to have been decorated! I was at Waterloo, so I was! And in the battle I saved a general called the
Comte of I don't know what. He told me his name, but his beastly voice was so weak that I didn't hear. All I
caught was Merci [thanks]. I'd rather have had his name than his thanks. That would have helped me to find
him again. The picture that you see here, and which was painted by David at Bruqueselles,do you know
what it represents? It represents me. David wished to immortalize that feat of prowess. I have that general on
my back, and I am carrying him through the grapeshot. There's the history of it! That general never did a
single thing for me; he was no better than the rest! But none the less, I saved his life at the risk of my own,
and I have the certificate of the fact in my pocket! I am a soldier of Waterloo, by all the furies! And now that
I have had the goodness to tell you all this, let's have an end of it. I want money, I want a deal of money, I
must have an enormous lot of money, or I'll exterminate you, by the thunder of the good God!"
Marius had regained some measure of control over his anguish, and was listening. The last possibility of
doubt had just vanished. It certainly was the Thenardier of the will. Marius shuddered at that reproach of
ingratitude directed against his father, and which he was on the point of so fatally justifying. His perplexity
was redoubled.
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Moreover, there was in all these words of Thenardier, in his accent, in his gesture, in his glance which darted
flames at every word, there was, in this explosion of an evil nature disclosing everything, in that mixture of
braggadocio and abjectness, of pride and pettiness, of rage and folly, in that chaos of real griefs and false
sentiments, in that immodesty of a malicious man tasting the voluptuous delights of violence, in that
shameless nudity of a repulsive soul, in that conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds,
something which was as hideous as evil, and as heartrending as the truth.
The picture of the master, the painting by David which he had proposed that M. Leblanc should purchase,
was nothing else, as the reader has divined, than the sign of his tavern painted, as it will be remembered, by
himself, the only relic which he had preserved from his shipwreck at Montfermeil.
As he had ceased to intercept Marius' visual ray, Marius could examine this thing, and in the daub, he
actually did recognize a battle, a background of smoke, and a man carrying another man. It was the group
composed of Pontmercy and Thenardier; the sergeant the rescuer, the colonel rescued. Marius was like a
drunken man; this picture restored his father to life in some sort; it was no longer the signboard of the
wineshop at Montfermeil, it was a resurrection; a tomb had yawned, a phantom had risen there. Marius
heard his heart beating in his temples, he had the cannon of Waterloo in his ears, his bleeding father, vaguely
depicted on that sinister panel terrified him, and it seemed to him that the misshapen spectre was gazing
intently at him.
When Thenardier had recovered his breath, he turned his bloodshot eyes on M. Leblanc, and said to him in a
low, curt voice:
"What have you to say before we put the handcuffs on you?"
M. Leblanc held his peace.
In the midst of this silence, a cracked voice launched this lugubrious sarcasm from the corridor:
"If there's any wood to be split, I'm there!"
It was the man with the axe, who was growing merry.
At the same moment, an enormous, bristling, and clayey face made its appearance at the door, with a hideous
laugh which exhibited not teeth, but fangs.
It was the face of the man with the butcher's axe.
"Why have you taken off your mask?" cried Thenardier in a rage.
"For fun," retorted the man.
For the last few minutes M. Leblanc had appeared to be watching and following all the movements of
Thenardier, who, blinded and dazzled by his own rage, was stalking to and fro in the den with full confidence
that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed man fast, he being armed himself, of being nine
against one, supposing that the female Thenardier counted for but one man.
During his address to the man with the poleaxe, he had turned his back to M. Leblanc.
M. Leblanc seized this moment, overturned the chair with his foot and the table with his fist, and with one
bound, with prodigious agility, before Thenardier had time to turn round, he had reached the window. To
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open it, to scale the frame, to bestride it, was the work of a second only. He was half out when six robust fists
seized him and dragged him back energetically into the hovel. These were the three "chimneybuilders," who
had flung themselves upon him. At the same time the Thenardier woman had wound her hands in his hair.
At the trampling which ensued, the other ruffians rushed up from the corridor. The old man on the bed, who
seemed under the influence of wine, descended from the pallet and came reeling up, with a stonebreaker's
hammer in his hand.
One of the "chimneybuilders," whose smirched face was lighted up by the candle, and in whom Marius
recognized, in spite of his daubing, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, lifted above M. Leblanc's
head a sort of bludgeon made of two balls of lead, at the two ends of a bar of iron.
Marius could not resist this sight. "My father," he thought, "forgive me!"
And his finger sought the trigger of his pistol.
The shot was on the point of being discharged when Thenardier's voice shouted:
"Don't harm him!"
This desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating Thenardier, had calmed him. There existed in him
two men, the ferocious man and the adroit man. Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the
presence of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not stir, the ferocious man had prevailed;
when the victim struggled and tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand.
"Don't hurt him!" he repeated, and without suspecting it, his first success was to arrest the pistol in the act of
being discharged, and to paralyze Marius, in whose opinion the urgency of the case disappeared, and who, in
the face of this new phase, saw no inconvenience in waiting a while longer.
Who knows whether some chance would not arise which would deliver him from the horrible alternative of
allowing Ursule's father to perish, or of destroying the colonel's saviour?
A herculean struggle had begun. With one blow full in the chest, M. Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling,
rolling in the middle of the room, then with two backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two more
assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches were rattling in the throat beneath this
pressure as under a granite millstone; but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both arms and
the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the two "chimneybuilders" on the floor.
Thus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing those beneath him and stifling under those on top
of him, endeavoring in vain to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared
under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.
They succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the window, and there they held him in awe. The
Thenardier woman had not released her clutch on his hair.
"Don't you mix yourself up in this affair," said Thenardier. "You'll tear your shawl."
The Thenardier obeyed, as the female wolf obeys the male wolf, with a growl.
"Now," said Thenardier, "search him, you other fellows!"
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M. Leblanc seemed to have renounced the idea of resistance.
They searched him.
He had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing six francs, and his handkerchief.
Thenardier put the handkerchief into his own pocket.
"What! No pocketbook?" he demanded.
"No, nor watch," replied one of the "chimneybuilders."
"Never mind," murmured the masked man who carried the big key, in the voice of a ventriloquist, "he's a
tough old fellow."
Thenardier went to the corner near the door, picked up a bundle of ropes and threw them at the men.
"Tie him to the leg of the bed," said he.
And, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched across the room by the blow from M. Leblanc's
fist, and who made no movement, he added:
"Is Boulatruelle dead?"
"No," replied Bigrenaille, "he's drunk."
"Sweep him into a corner," said Thenardier.
Two of the "chimneybuilders" pushed the drunken man into the corner near the heap of old iron with their
feet.
"Babet," said Thenardier in a low tone to the man with the cudgel, "why did you bring so many; they were
not needed."
"What can you do?" replied the man with the cudgel, "they all wanted to be in it. This is a bad season. There's
no business going on."
The pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital bed, elevated on four coarse wooden
legs, roughly hewn.
M. Leblanc let them take their own course.
The ruffians bound him securely, in an upright attitude, with his feet on the ground at the head of the bed, the
end which was most remote from the window, and nearest to the fireplace.
When the last knot had been tied, Thenardier took a chair and seated himself almost facing M. Leblanc.
Thenardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments his face had passed from unbridled
violence to tranquil and cunning sweetness.
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Marius found it difficult to recognize in that polished smile of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth
which had been foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming
metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a tiger converted into a lawyer.
"Monsieur" said Thenardier.
And dismissing with a gesture the ruffians who still kept their hands on M. Leblanc:
"Stand off a little, and let me have a talk with the gentleman."
All retired towards the door.
He went on:
"Monsieur, you did wrong to try to jump out of the window. You might have broken your leg. Now, if you
will permit me, we will converse quietly. In the first place, I must communicate to you an observation which
I have made which is, that you have not uttered the faintest cry."
Thenardier was right, this detail was correct, although it had escaped Marius in his agitation. M. Leblanc had
barely pronounced a few words, without raising his voice, and even during his struggle with the six ruffians
near the window he had preserved the most profound and singular silence.
Thenardier continued:
"Mon Dieu! You might have shouted `stop thief' a bit, and I should not have thought it improper. `Murder!'
That, too, is said occasionally, and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part. It is very
natural that you should make a little row when you find yourself with persons who don't inspire you with
sufficient confidence. You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you on that account. You
would not even have been gagged. And I will tell you why. This room is very private. That's its only
recommendation, but it has that in its favor. You might fire off a mortar and it would produce about as much
noise at the nearest police station as the snores of a drunken man. Here a cannon would make a boum, and the
thunder would make a pouf. It's a handy lodging. But, in short, you did not shout, and it is better so. I present
you my compliments, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from that fact: My dear sir, when a man
shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! You have not made an outcry; that is
because you don't care to have the police and the courts come in any more than we do. It is because,I have
long suspected it,you have some interest in hiding something. On our side we have the same interest. So
we can come to an understanding."
As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thenardier, who kept his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to
plunge the sharp points which darted from the pupils into the very conscience of his prisoner. Moreover, his
language, which was stamped with a sort of moderated, subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was reserved
and almost choice, and in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short time previously, one now felt
"the man who had studied for the priesthood."
The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all
anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry, all this,
it must be confessed, now that his attention had been called to it, troubled Marius, and affected him with
painful astonishment.
Thenardier's wellgrounded observation still further obscured for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped
that grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.
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But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave
which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of
Thenardier's wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not
refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which did not know the meaning of despair.
Here was one of those men who command amazement in desperate circumstances. Extreme as was the crisis,
inevitable as was the catastrophe, there was nothing here of the agony of the drowning man, who opens his
horrorfilled eyes under the water.
Thenardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace, shoved aside the screen, which he leaned
against the neighboring pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which the prisoner
could plainly see the chisel whitehot and spotted here and there with tiny scarlet stars.
Then Thenardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.
"I continue," said he. "We can come to an understanding. Let us arrange this matter in an amicable way. I was
wrong to lose my temper just now, I don't know what I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I said
extravagant things. For example, because you are a millionnaire, I told you that I exacted money, a lot of
money, a deal of money. That would not be reasonable. Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches, you have expenses
of your own who has not? I don't want to ruin you, I am not a greedy fellow, after all. I am not one of
those people who, because they have the advantage of the position, profit by the fact to make themselves
ridiculous. Why, I'm taking things into consideration and making a sacrifice on my side. I only want two
hundred thousand francs."
M. Leblanc uttered not a word.
Thenardier went on:
"You see that I put not a little water in my wine; I'm very moderate. I don't know the state of your fortune, but
I do know that you don't stick at money, and a benevolent man like yourself can certainly give two hundred
thousand francs to the father of a family who is out of luck. Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven't
imagined that I should take all the trouble I have today and organized this affair this evening, which has
been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to
go and drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer's. Two hundred thousand francsit's surely
worth all that. This trifle once out of your pocket, I guarantee you that that's the end of the matter, and that
you have no further demands to fear. You will say to me: `But I haven't two hundred thousand francs about
me.' Oh! I'm not extortionate. I don't demand that. I only ask one thing of you. Have the goodness to write
what I am about to dictate to you."
Here Thenardier paused; then he added, emphasizing his words, and casting a smile in the direction of the
brazier:
"I warn you that I shall not admit that you don't know how to write."
A grand inquisitor might have envied that smile.
Thenardier pushed the table close to M. Leblanc, and took an inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper from the
drawer which he left half open, and in which gleamed the long blade of the knife.
He placed the sheet of paper before M. Leblanc.
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"Write," said he.
The prisoner spoke at last.
"How do you expect me to write? I am bound."
"That's true, excuse me!" ejaculated Thenardier, "you are quite right."
And turning to Bigrenaille:
"Untie the gentleman's right arm."
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, executed Thenardier's order.
When the prisoner's right arm was free, Thenardier dipped the pen in the ink and presented it to him.
"Understand thoroughly, sir, that you are in our power, at our discretion, that no human power can get you
out of this, and that we shall be really grieved if we are forced to proceed to disagreeable extremities. I know
neither your name, nor your address, but I warn you, that you will remain bound until the person charged
with carrying the letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so good as to write."
"What?" demanded the prisoner.
"I will dictate."
M. Leblanc took the pen.
Thenardier began to dictate:
"My daughter"
The prisoner shuddered, and raised his eyes to Thenardier.
"Put down `My dear daughter'" said Thenardier.
M. Leblanc obeyed.
Thenardier continued:
"Come instantly"
He paused:
"You address her as thou, do you not?"
"Who?" asked M. Leblanc.
"Parbleu!" cried Thenardier, "the little one, the Lark."
M. Leblanc replied without the slightest apparent emotion:
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"I do not know what you mean."
"Go on, nevertheless," ejaculated Thenardier, and he continued to dictate:
"Come immediately, I am in absolute need of thee. The person who will deliver this note to thee is instructed
to conduct thee to me. I am waiting for thee. Come with confidence."
M. Leblanc had written the whole of this.
Thenardier resumed:
"Ah! erase `come with confidence'; that might lead her to suppose that everything was not as it should be, and
that distrust is possible."
M. Leblanc erased the three words.
"Now," pursued Thenardier, "sign it. What's your name?"
The prisoner laid down the pen and demanded:
"For whom is this letter?"
"You know well," retorted Thenardier, "for the little one I just told you so."
It was evident that Thenardier avoided naming the young girl in question. He said "the Lark," he said "the
little one," but he did not pronounce her namethe precaution of a clever man guarding his secret from his
accomplices. To mention the name was to deliver the whole "affair" into their hands, and to tell them more
about it than there was any need of their knowing.
He went on:
"Sign. What is your name?"
"Urbain Fabre," said the prisoner.
Thenardier, with the movement of a cat, dashed his hand into his pocket and drew out the handkerchief which
had been seized on M. Leblanc. He looked for the mark on it, and held it close to the candle.
"U. F. That's it. Urbain Fabre. Well, sign it U. F."
The prisoner signed.
"As two hands are required to fold the letter, give it to me, I will fold it."
That done, Thenardier resumed:
"Address it, `Mademoiselle Fabre,' at your house. I know that you live a long distance from here, near
SaintJacquesduHautPas, because you go to mass there every day, but I don't know in what street. I see
that you understand your situation. As you have not lied about your name, you will not lie about your
address. Write it yourself."
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The prisoner paused thoughtfully for a moment, then he took the pen and wrote:
"Mademoiselle Fabre, at M. Urbain Fabre's, Rue SaintDominiqueD'Enfer, No. 17."
Thenardier seized the letter with a sort of feverish convulsion.
"Wife!" he cried.
The Thenardier woman hastened to him.
"Here's the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at the door. Set out at once, and return
ditto."
And addressing the man with the meataxe:
"Since you have taken off your nosescreen, accompany the mistress. You will get up behind the fiacre. You
know where you left the team?"
"Yes," said the man.
And depositing his axe in a corner, he followed Madame Thenardier.
As they set off, Thenardier thrust his head through the halfopen door, and shouted into the corridor:
"Above all things, don't lose the letter! remember that you carry two hundred thousand francs with you!"
The Thenardier's hoarse voice replied:
"Be easy. I have it in my bosom."
A minute had not elapsed, when the sound of the cracking of a whip was heard, which rapidly retreated and
died away.
"Good!" growled Thenardier. "They're going at a fine pace. At such a gallop, the bourgeoise will be back
inside threequarters of an hour."
He drew a chair close to the fireplace, folding his arms, and presenting his muddy boots to the brazier.
"My feet are cold!" said he.
Only five ruffians now remained in the den with Thenardier and the prisoner.
These men, through the black masks or paste which covered their faces, and made of them, at fear's pleasure,
charcoalburners, negroes, or demons, had a stupid and gloomy air, and it could be felt that they perpetrated
a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath or mercy, with a sort of ennui. They were crowded
together in one corner like brutes, and remained silent.
Thenardier warmed his feet.
The prisoner had relapsed into his taciturnity. A sombre calm had succeeded to the wild uproar which had
filled the garret but a few moments before.
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The candle, on which a large "stranger" had formed, cast but a dim light in the immense hovel, the brazier
had grown dull, and all those monstrous heads cast misshapen shadows on the walls and ceiling.
No sound was audible except the quiet breathing of the old drunken man, who was fast asleep.
Marius waited in a state of anxiety that was augmented by every trifle. The enigma was more impenetrable
than ever.
Who was this "little one" whom Thenardier had called the Lark? Was she his "Ursule"? The prisoner had not
seemed to be affected by that word, "the Lark," and had replied in the most natural manner in the world: "I do
not know what you mean." On the other hand, the two letters U. F. were explained; they meant Urbain Fabre;
and Ursule was no longer named Ursule. This was what Marius perceived most clearly of all.
A sort of horrible fascination held him nailed to his post, from which he was observing and commanding this
whole scene. There he stood, almost incapable of movement or reflection, as though annihilated by the
abominable things viewed at such close quarters. He waited, in the hope of some incident, no matter of what
nature, since he could not collect his thoughts and did not know upon what course to decide.
"In any case," he said, "if she is the Lark, I shall see her, for the Thenardier woman is to bring her hither. That
will be the end, and then I will give my life and my blood if necessary, but I will deliver her! Nothing shall
stop me."
Nearly half an hour passed in this manner. Thenardier seemed to be absorbed in gloomy reflections, the
prisoner did not stir. Still, Marius fancied that at intervals, and for the last few moments, he had heard a faint,
dull noise in the direction of the prisoner.
All at once, Thenardier addressed the prisoner:
"By the way, Monsieur Fabre, I might as well say it to you at once."
These few words appeared to be the beginning of an explanation. Marius strained his ears.
"My wife will be back shortly, don't get impatient. I think that the Lark really is your daughter, and it seems
to me quite natural that you should keep her. Only, listen to me a bit. My wife will go and hunt her up with
your letter. I told my wife to dress herself in the way she did, so that your young lady might make no
difficulty about following her. They will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind. Somewhere,
outside the barrier, there is a trap harnessed to two very good horses. Your young lady will be taken to it. She
will alight from the fiacre. My comrade will enter the other vehicle with her, and my wife will come back
here to tell us: `It's done.' As for the young lady, no harm will be done to her; the trap will conduct her to a
place where she will be quiet, and just as soon as you have handed over to me those little two hundred
thousand francs, she will be returned to you. If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his
thumb to the Lark, that's all."
The prisoner uttered not a syllable. After a pause, Thenardier continued:
"It's very simple, as you see. There'll be no harm done unless you wish that there should be harm done. I'm
telling you how things stand. I warn you so that you may be prepared."
He paused: the prisoner did not break the silence, and Thenardier resumed:
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"As soon as my wife returns and says to me: `The Lark is on the way,' we will release you, and you will be
free to go and sleep at home. You see that our intentions are not evil."
Terrible images passed through Marius' mind. What! That young girl whom they were abducting was not to
be brought back? One of those monsters was to bear her off into the darkness? Whither? And what if it were
she!
It was clear that it was she. Marius felt his heart stop beating.
What was he to do? Discharge the pistol? Place all those scoundrels in the hands of justice? But the horrible
man with the meataxe would, none the less, be out of reach with the young girl, and Marius reflected on
Thenardier's words, of which he perceived the bloody significance: "If you have me arrested, my comrade
will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark."
Now, it was not alone by the colonel's testament, it was by his own love, it was by the peril of the one he
loved, that he felt himself restrained.
This frightful situation, which had already lasted above half an hour, was changing its aspect every moment.
Marius had sufficient strength of mind to review in succession all the most heartbreaking conjectures,
seeking hope and finding none.
The tumult of his thoughts contrasted with the funereal silence of the den.
In the midst of this silence, the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again.
The prisoner made a movement in his bonds.
"Here's the bourgeoise," said Thenardier.
He had hardly uttered the words, when the Thenardier woman did in fact rush hastily into the room, red,
panting, breathless, with flaming eyes, and cried, as she smote her huge hands on her thighs
simultaneously:
"False address!"
The ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and picked up his axe again.
She resumed:
"Nobody there! Rue SaintDominique, No. 17, no Monsieur Urbain Fabre! They know not what it means!"
She paused, choking, then went on:
"Monsieur Thenardier! That old fellow has duped you! You are too good, you see! If it had been me, I'd have
chopped the beast in four quarters to begin with! And if he had acted ugly, I'd have boiled him alive! He
would have been obliged to speak, and say where the girl is, and where he keeps his shiners! That's the way I
should have managed matters! People are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider than
women! Nobody at No. 17. It's nothing but a big carriage gate! No Monsieur Fabre in the Rue
SaintDominique! And after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all! I spoke to both the porter and the
portress, a fine, stout woman, and they know nothing about him!"
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Marius breathed freely once more.
She, Ursule or the Lark, he no longer knew what to call her, was safe.
While his exasperated wife vociferated, Thenardier had seated himself on the table.
For several minutes he uttered not a word, but swung his right foot, which hung down, and stared at the
brazier with an air of savage revery.
Finally, he said to the prisoner, with a slow and singularly ferocious tone:
"A false address? What did you expect to gain by that?"
"To gain time!" cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the same instant he shook off his bonds; they
were cut. The prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg.
Before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward, he had bent down into the fireplace,
had stretched out his hand to the brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Thenardier, the
female Thenardier, and the ruffians, huddled in amazement at the extremity of the hovel, stared at him in
stupefaction, as almost free and in a formidable attitude, he brandished above his head the redhot chisel,
which emitted a threatening glow.
The judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau house eventually gave rise, established the fact
that a large sou piece, cut and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the police made
their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those marvels of industry, which are engendered by the patience
of the galleys in the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing else than instruments of escape.
These hideous and delicate products of wonderful art are to jewellers' work what the metaphors of slang are
to poetry. There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there are Villons in language. The unhappy
wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means sometimes without tools, sometimes with a common
woodenhandled knife, to saw a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out these plates without affecting the
coinage stamp, and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere
again. This can be screwed together and unscrewed at will; it is a box. In this box he hides a watchspring,
and this watchspring, properly handled, cuts goodsized chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is
supposed to possess merely a sou; not at all, he possesses liberty. It was a large sou of this sort which, during
the subsequent search of the police, was found under the bed near the window. They also found a tiny saw of
blue steel which would fit the sou.
It is probable that the prisoner had this sou piece on his person at the moment when the ruffians searched him,
that he contrived to conceal it in his hand, and that afterward, having his right hand free, he unscrewed it, and
used it as a saw to cut the cords which fastened him, which would explain the faint noise and almost
imperceptible movements which Marius had observed.
As he had not been able to bend down, for fear of betraying himself, he had not cut the bonds of his left leg.
The ruffians had recovered from their first surprise.
"Be easy," said Bigrenaille to Thenardier. "He still holds by one leg, and he can't get away. I'll answer for
that. I tied that paw for him."
In the meanwhile, the prisoner had begun to speak:
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"You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it. When you think that you can make me
speak, that you can make me write what I do not choose to write, that you can make me say what I do not
choose to say"
He stripped up his left sleeve, and added:
"See here."
At the same moment he extended his arm, and laid the glowing chisel which he held in his left hand by its
wooden handle on his bare flesh.
The crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor peculiar to chambers of torture filled the
hovel.
Marius reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a muscle of the old man's face contracted,
and while the redhot iron sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on
Thenardier his beautiful glance, in which there was no hatred, and where suffering vanished in serene
majesty.
With grand and lofty natures, the revolts of the flesh and the senses when subjected to physical suffering
cause the soul to spring forth, and make it appear on the brow, just as rebellions among the soldiery force the
captain to show himself.
"Wretches!" said he, "have no more fear of me than I have for you!"
And, tearing the chisel from the wound, he hurled it through the window, which had been left open; the
horrible, glowing tool disappeared into the night, whirling as it flew, and fell far away on the snow.
The prisoner resumed:
"Do what you please with me." He was disarmed.
"Seize him!" said Thenardier.
Two of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder, and the masked man with the ventriloquist's voice took
up his station in front of him, ready to smash his skull at the slightest movement.
At the same time, Marius heard below him, at the base of the partition, but so near that he could not see who
was speaking, this colloquy conducted in a low tone:
"There is only one thing left to do."
"Cut his throat."
"That's it."
It was the husband and wife taking counsel together.
Thenardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife. Marius fretted with
the handle of his pistol. Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience,
the one enjoining him to respect his father's testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner. These
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two voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony. Up to that moment he had
cherished a vague hope that he should find some means of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within
the limits of possibility had presented itself.
However, the peril was urgent, the last bounds of delay had been reached; Thenardier was standing
thoughtfully a few paces distant from the prisoner.
Marius cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of despair. All at once a shudder ran
through him.
At his feet, on the table, a bright ray of light from the full moon illuminated and seemed to point out to him a
sheet of paper. On this paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large letters, by the
eldest of the Thenardier girls:
"THE BOBBIES ARE HERE."
An idea, a flash, crossed Marius' mind; this was the expedient of which he was in search, the solution of that
frightful problem which was torturing him, of sparing the assassin and saving the victim.
He knelt down on his commode, stretched out his arm, seized the sheet of paper, softly detached a bit of
plaster from the wall, wrapped the paper round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of
the den.
It was high time. Thenardier had conquered his last fears or his last scruples, and was advancing on the
prisoner.
"Something is falling!" cried the Thenardier woman.
"What is it?" asked her husband.
The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it to her husband.
"Where did this come from?" demanded Thenardier.
"Pardie!" ejaculated his wife, "where do you suppose it came from? Through the window, of course."
"I saw it pass," said Bigrenaille.
Thenardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle.
"It's in Eponine's handwriting. The devil!"
He made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the line written on the sheet of paper, then
he added in a subdued voice:
"Quick! The ladder! Let's leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!"
"Without cutting that man's throat?" asked, the Thenardier woman.
"We haven't the time."
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"Through what?" resumed Bigrenaille.
"Through the window," replied Thenardier. "Since Ponine has thrown the stone through the window, it
indicates that the house is not watched on that side."
The mask with the ventriloquist's voice deposited his huge key on the floor, raised both arms in the air, and
opened and clenched his fists, three times rapidly without uttering a word.
This was the signal like the signal for clearing the decks for action on board ship.
The ruffians who were holding the prisoner released him; in the twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was
unrolled outside the window, and solidly fastened to the sill by the two iron hooks.
The prisoner paid no attention to what was going on around him. He seemed to be dreaming or praying.
As soon as the ladder was arranged, Thenardier cried:
"Come! the bourgeoise first!"
And he rushed headlong to the window.
But just as he was about to throw his leg over, Bigrenaille seized him roughly by the collar.
"Not much, come now, you old dog, after us!"
"After us!" yelled the ruffians.
"You are children," said Thenardier, "we are losing time. The police are on our heels."
"Well, said the ruffians, "let's draw lots to see who shall go down first."
Thenardier exclaimed:
"Are you mad! Are you crazy! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste time, do you? Draw lots, do you?
By a wet finger, by a short straw! With written names! Thrown into a hat!"
"Would you like my hat?" cried a voice on the threshold.
All wheeled round. It was Javert.
He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile.
CHAPTER XXI. ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE
VICTIMS
At nightfall, Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself between the trees of the Rue de la
BarrieredesGobelins which faced the Gorbeau house, on the other side of the boulevard. He had begun
operations by opening "his pockets," and dropping into it the two young girls who were charged with keeping
a watch on the approaches to the den. But he had only "caged" Azelma. As for Eponine, she was not at her
post, she had disappeared, and he had not been able to seize her. Then Javert had made a point and had bent
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Page No 570
his ear to waiting for the signal agreed upon. The comings and goings of the fiacres had greatly agitated him.
At last, he had grown impatient, and, sure that there was a nest there, sure of being in "luck," having
recognized many of the ruffians who had entered, he had finally decided to go upstairs without waiting for
the pistolshot.
It will be remembered that he had Marius' passkey.
He had arrived just in the nick of time.
The terrified ruffians flung themselves on the arms which they had abandoned in all the corners at the
moment of flight. In less than a second, these seven men, horrible to behold, had grouped themselves in an
attitude of defence, one with his meataxe, another with his key, another with his bludgeon, the rest with
shears, pincers, and hammers. Thenardier had his knife in his fist. The Thenardier woman snatched up an
enormous pavingstone which lay in the angle of the window and served her daughters as an ottoman.
Javert put on his hat again, and advanced a couple of paces into the room, with arms folded, his cane under
one arm, his sword in its sheath.
"Halt there," said he. "You shall not go out by the window, you shall go through the door. It's less unhealthy.
There are seven of you, there are fifteen of us. Don't let's fall to collaring each other like men of Auvergne."
Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his blouse, and put it in Thenardier's hand,
whispering in the latter's ear:
"It's Javert. I don't dare fire at that man. Do you dare?"
"Parbleu!" replied Thenardier.
"Well, then, fire."
Thenardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.
Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and contented himself with saying:
"Come now, don't fire. You'll miss fire."
Thenardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.
"Didn't I tell you so!" ejaculated Javert.
Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert's feet.
"You're the emperor of the fiends! I surrender."
"And you?" Javert asked the rest of the ruffians.
They replied:
"So do we."
Javert began again calmly:
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"That's right, that's good, I said so, you are nice fellows.
"I only ask one thing," said Bigrenaille, "and that is, that I may not be denied tobacco while I am in
confinement."
"Granted," said Javert.
And turning round and calling behind him:
"Come in now!"
A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and cudgels, rushed in at Javert's
summons. They pinioned the ruffians.
This throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the den with shadows.
"Handcuff them all!" shouted Javert.
"Come on!" cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which no one would ever have said: "It is
a woman's voice."
The Thenardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she who had
just given vent to this roar.
The policemen and agents recoiled.
She had thrown off her shawl. but retained her bonnet; her husband, who was crouching behind her, was
almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the
pavingstone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.
"Beware!" she shouted.
All crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open space was cleared in the middle of the garret.
The Thenardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed themselves to be pinioned, and
muttered in hoarse and guttural accents:
"The cowards!"
Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thenardier was devouring with her eyes.
"Don't come near me," she cried, "or I'll crush you."
"What a grenadier!" ejaculated Javert; "you've got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a
woman."
And he continued to advance.
The Thenardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the
pavingstone at Javert's head. Javert ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a
huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty,
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rested at Javert's feet.
At the same moment, Javert reached the Thenardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman's
shoulder; the other on the husband's head.
"The handcuffs!" he shouted.
The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert's order had been executed.
The Thenardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and at those of her husband, who had
dropped to the floor, and exclaimed, weeping:
"My daughters!"
"They are in the jug," said Javert.
In the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep behind the door, and were shaking
him:
He awoke, stammering:
"Is it all over, Jondrette?"
"Yes," replied Javert.
The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with
black, all three masked.
"Keep on your masks," said Javert.
And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three
"chimneybuilders":
"Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!"
Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the meataxe:
"Good day, Gueulemer!"
And to the man with the cudgel:
"Good day, Babet!"
And to the ventriloquist:
"Your health, Claquesous."
At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians' prisoner. who, ever since the entrance of the police, had not
uttered a word, and had held his head down.
"Untie the gentleman!" said Javert, "and let no one go out!"
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That said, he seated himself with sovereign dignity before the table, where the candle and the
writingmaterials still remained, drew a stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report.
When he had written the first lines, which are formulas that never vary, he raised his eyes:
"Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward."
The policemen glanced round them.
"Well," said Javert, "where is he?"
The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of Ursule or the Lark, had disappeared.
The door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he had found himself released from his bonds,
and while Javert was drawing up his report, he had taken advantage of confusion, the crowd, the darkness,
and of a moment when the general attention was diverted from him, to dash out of the window.
An agent sprang to the opening and looked out. He saw no one outside.
The rope ladder was still shaking.
"The devil!" ejaculated Javert between his teeth, "he must have been the most valuable of the lot."
CHAPTER XXII. THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO
On the day following that on which these events took place in the house on the Boulevard de l'Hopital, a
child, who seemed to be coming from the direction of the bridge of Austerlitz, was ascending the sidealley
on the right in the direction of the Barriere de Fontainebleau.
Night had fully come.
This lad was pale, thin, clad in rags, with linen trousers in the month of February, and was singing at the top
of his voice.
At the corner of the Rue du PetitBanquier, a bent old woman was rummaging in a heap of refuse by the light
of a street lantern; the child jostled her as he passed, then recoiled, exclaiming:
"Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!"
He pronounced the word enormous the second time with a jeering swell of the voice which might be tolerably
well represented by capitals: "an enormous, ENORMOUS dog."
The old woman straightened herself up in a fury.
"Nasty brat!" she grumbled. "If I hadn't been bending over, I know well where I would have planted my foot
on you."
The boy was already far away.
"Kisss! kisss!" he cried. "After that, I don't think I was mistaken!"
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The old woman, choking with indignation, now rose completely upright, and the red gleam of the lantern
fully lighted up her livid face, all hollowed into angles and wrinkles, with crow'sfeet meeting the corners of
her mouth.
Her body was lost in the darkness, and only her head was visible. One would have pronounced her a mask of
Decrepitude carved out by a light from the night.
The boy surveyed her.
"Madame," said he, "does not possess that style of beauty which pleases me."
He then pursued his road, and resumed his song:
"Le roi Coupdesabot
S'en allait a la chasse,
A la chasse aux corbeaux"
At the end of these three lines he paused. He had arrived in front of No. 5052, and finding the door fastened,
he began to assault it with resounding and heroic kicks, which betrayed rather the man's shoes that he was
wearing than the child's feet which he owned.
In the meanwhile, the very old woman whom he had encountered at the corner of the Rue du PetitBanquier
hastened up behind him, uttering clamorous cries and indulging in lavish and exaggerated gestures.
"What's this? What's this? Lord God! He's battering the door down! He's knocking the house down."
The kicks continued.
The old woman strained her lungs.
"Is that the way buildings are treated nowadays?"
All at once she paused.
She had recognized the gamin.
"What! so it's that imp!"
"Why, it's the old lady," said the lad. "Good day, Bougonmuche. I have come to see my ancestors."
The old woman retorted with a composite grimace, and a wonderful improvisation of hatred taking advantage
of feebleness and ugliness, which was, unfortunately, wasted in the dark:
"There's no one here."
"Bah!" retorted the boy, "where's my father?"
"At La Force."
"Come, now! And my mother?"
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"At SaintLazare."
"Well! And my sisters?"
"At the Madelonettes."
The lad scratched his head behind his ear, stared at Ma'am Bougon, and said:
"Ah!"
Then he executed a pirouette on his heel; a moment later, the old woman, who had remained on the
doorstep, heard him singing in his clear, young voice, as he plunged under the black elmtrees, in the wintry
wind:
"Le roi Coupdesabot[31]
S'en allait a la chasse,
A la chasse aux corbeaux,
Monte sur deux echasses.
Quand on passait dessous,
On lui payait deux sous."
[31] King Bootkick went ahunting after crows, mounted on two stilts. When one passed beneath them, one
paid him two sous.
[The end of Volume III. "Marius"]
VOLUME IV. SAINTDENIS. THE IDYL IN THE RUE PLUMET AND THE
EPIC IN THE RUE SAINTDENIS
BOOK FIRST.A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
CHAPTER I. WELL CUT
1831 and 1832, the two years which are immediately connected with the Revolution of July, form one of the
most peculiar and striking moments of history. These two years rise like two mountains midway between
those which precede and those which follow them. They have a revolutionary grandeur. Precipices are to be
distinguished there. The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and
adhering interests, the centuryold profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them
every instant, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances and
disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the
human soul, can be descried shining there.
This remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is beginning to be sufficiently distant from us to allow
of our grasping the principal lines even at the present day.
We shall make the attempt.
The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing,
murmurs, sleep, tumult, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a haltingplace.
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These epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to convert them to profit. In the beginning,
the nation asks nothing but repose; it thirsts for but one thing, peace; it has but one ambition, to be small.
Which is the translation of remaining tranquil. Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men,
thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads. We would exchange Caesar
for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. "What a good little king was he!" We have marched since
daybreak, we have reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first change with
Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed.
Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which are sated, fortunes which are made,
seek, demand, implore, solicit, what? A shelter. They have it. They take possession of peace, of tranquillity,
of leisure; behold, they are content. But, at the same time certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at
the door in their turn. These facts are the products of revolutions and wars, they are, they exist, they have the
right to install themselves in society, and they do install themselves therein; and most of the time, facts are
the stewards of the household and fouriers[32] who do nothing but prepare lodgings for principles.
[32] In olden times, fouriers were the officials who preceded the Court and allotted the lodgings.
This, then, is what appears to philosophical politicians:
At the same time that weary men demand repose, accomplished facts demand guarantees. Guarantees are the
same to facts that repose is to men.
This is what England demanded of the Stuarts after the Protector; this is what France demanded of the
Bourbons after the Empire.
These guarantees are a necessity of the times. They must be accorded. Princes "grant" them, but in reality, it
is the force of things which gives them. A profound truth, and one useful to know, which the Stuarts did not
suspect in 1662 and which the Bourbons did not even obtain a glimpse of in 1814.
The predestined family, which returned to France when Napoleon fell, had the fatal simplicity to believe that
it was itself which bestowed, and that what it had bestowed it could take back again; that the House of
Bourbon possessed the right divine, that France possessed nothing, and that the political right conceded in the
charter of Louis XVIII. was merely a branch of the right divine, was detached by the House of Bourbon and
graciously given to the people until such day as it should please the King to reassume it. Still, the House of
Bourbon should have felt, from the displeasure created by the gift, that it did not come from it.
This house was churlish to the nineteenth century. It put on an illtempered look at every development of the
nation. To make use of a trivial word, that is to say, of a popular and a true word, it looked glum. The people
saw this.
It thought it possessed strength because the Empire had been carried away before it like a theatrical
stagesetting. It did not perceive that it had, itself, been brought in in the same fashion. It did not perceive
that it also lay in that hand which had removed Napoleon.
It thought that it had roots, because it was the past. It was mistaken; it formed a part of the past, but the whole
past was France. The roots of French society were not fixed in the Bourbons, but in the nations. These
obscure and lively roots constituted, not the right of a family, but the history of a people. They were
everywhere, except under the throne.
The House of Bourbon was to France the illustrious and bleeding knot in her history, but was no longer the
principal element of her destiny, and the necessary base of her politics. She could get along without the
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Bourbons; she had done without them for two and twenty years; there had been a break of continuity; they
did not suspect the fact. And how should they have suspected it, they who fancied that Louis XVII. reigned
on the 9th of Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII. was reigning at the battle of Marengo? Never, since the origin
of history, had princes been so blind in the presence of facts and the portion of divine authority which facts
contain and promulgate. Never had that pretension here below which is called the right of kings denied to
such a point the right from on high.
A capital error which led this family to lay its hand once more on the guarantees "granted" in 1814, on the
concessions, as it termed them. Sad. A sad thing! What it termed its concessions were our conquests; what it
termed our encroachments were our rights.
When the hour seemed to it to have come, the Restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte and
wellrooted in the country, that is to say, believing itself to be strong and deep, abruptly decided on its plan
of action, and risked its stroke. One morning it drew itself up before the face of France, and, elevating its
voice, it contested the collective title and the individual right of the nation to sovereignty, of the citizen to
liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made
him a citizen.
This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July. The Restoration fell.
It fell justly. But, we admit, it had not been absolutely hostile to all forms of progress. Great things had been
accomplished, with it alongside.
Under the Restoration, the nation had grown accustomed to calm discussion, which had been lacking under
the Republic, and to grandeur in peace, which had been wanting under the Empire. France free and strong had
offered an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of Europe. The Revolution had had the word under
Robespierre; the cannon had had the word under Bonaparte; it was under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. that it
was the turn of intelligence to have the word. The wind ceased, the torch was lighted once more. On the lofty
heights, the pure light of mind could be seen flickering. A magnificent, useful, and charming spectacle. For a
space of fifteen years, those great principles which are so old for the thinker, so new for the statesman, could
be seen at work in perfect peace, on the public square; equality before the law, liberty of conscience, liberty
of speech, liberty of the press, the accessibility of all aptitudes to all functions. Thus it proceeded until 1830.
The Bourbons were an instrument of civilization which broke in the hands of Providence.
The fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their side, but on the side of the nation. They quitted the
throne with gravity, but without authority; their descent into the night was not one of those solemn
disappearances which leave a sombre emotion in history; it was neither the spectral calm of Charles I., nor
the eagle scream of Napoleon. They departed, that is all. They laid down the crown, and retained no aureole.
They were worthy, but they were not august. They lacked, in a certain measure, the majesty of their
misfortune. Charles X. during the voyage from Cherbourg, causing a round table to be cut over into a square
table, appeared to be more anxious about imperilled etiquette than about the crumbling monarchy. This
diminution saddened devoted men who loved their persons, and serious men who honored their race. The
populace was admirable. The nation, attacked one morning with weapons, by a sort of royal insurrection, felt
itself in the possession of so much force that it did not go into a rage. It defended itself, restrained itself,
restored things to their places, the government to law, the Bourbons to exile, alas! and then halted! It took the
old king Charles X. from beneath that dais which had sheltered Louis XIV. and set him gently on the ground.
It touched the royal personages only with sadness and precaution. It was not one man, it was not a few men, it
was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her victory, who seemed to be coming to
herself, and who put into practice, before the eyes of the whole world, these grave words of Guillaume du
Vair after the day of the Barricades:
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"It is easy for those who are accustomed to skim the favors of the great, and to spring, like a bird from bough
to bough, from an afflicted fortune to a flourishing one, to show themselves harsh towards their Prince in his
adversity; but as for me, the fortune of my Kings and especially of my afflicted Kings, will always be
venerable to me."
The Bourbons carried away with them respect, but not regret. As we have just stated, their misfortune was
greater than they were. They faded out in the horizon.
The Revolution of July instantly had friends and enemies throughout the entire world. The first rushed toward
her with joy and enthusiasm, the others turned away, each according to his nature. At the first blush, the
princes of Europe, the owls of this dawn, shut their eyes, wounded and stupefied, and only opened them to
threaten. A fright which can be comprehended, a wrath which can be pardoned. This strange revolution had
hardly produced a shock; it had not even paid to vanquished royalty the honor of treating it as an enemy, and
of shedding its blood. In the eyes of despotic governments, who are always interested in having liberty
calumniate itself, the Revolution of July committed the fault of being formidable and of remaining gentle.
Nothing, however, was attempted or plotted against it. The most discontented, the most irritated, the most
trembling, saluted it; whatever our egotism and our rancor may be, a mysterious respect springs from events
in which we are sensible of the collaboration of some one who is working above man.
The Revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing the fact. A thing which is full of splendor.
Right overthrowing the fact. Hence the brilliancy of the Revolution of 1830, hence, also, its mildness. Right
triumphant has no need of being violent.
Right is the just and the true.
The property of right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure. The fact, even when most necessary to all
appearances, even when most thoroughly accepted by contemporaries, if it exist only as a fact, and if it
contain only too little of right, or none at all, is infallibly destined to become, in the course of time, deformed,
impure, perhaps, even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of hideousness the fact
can attain, viewed at the distance of centuries, let him look at Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not an evil genius,
nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian
fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence
of the moral idea of the nineteenth.
This conflict of right and fact has been going on ever since the origin of society. To terminate this duel, to
amalgamate the pure idea with the humane reality, to cause right to penetrate pacifically into the fact and the
fact into right, that is the task of sages.
CHAPTER II. BADLY SEWED
But the task of sages is one thing, the task of clever men is another. The Revolution of 1830 came to a sudden
halt.
As soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skilful make haste to prepare the shipwreck.
The skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of Statesmen; so that this word, statesmen,
has ended by becoming somewhat of a slang word. It must be borne in mind, in fact, that wherever there is
nothing but skill, there is necessarily pettiness. To say "the skilful" amounts to saying "the mediocre."
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In the same way, to say "statesmen" is sometimes equivalent to saying "traitors." If, then, we are to believe
the skilful, revolutions like the Revolution of July are severed arteries; a prompt ligature is indispensable. The
right, too grandly proclaimed, is shaken. Also, right once firmly fixed, the state must be strengthened. Liberty
once assured, attention must be directed to power.
Here the sages are not, as yet, separated from the skilful, but they begin to be distrustful. Power, very good.
But, in the first place, what is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skilful do not seem to hear the
murmured objection, and they continue their manoeuvres.
According to the politicians, who are ingenious in putting the mask of necessity on profitable fictions, the
first requirement of a people after a revolution, when this people forms part of a monarchical continent, is to
procure for itself a dynasty. In this way, say they, peace, that is to say, time to dress our wounds, and to repair
the house, can be had after a revolution. The dynasty conceals the scaffolding and covers the ambulance.
Now, it is not always easy to procure a dynasty.
If it is absolutely necessary, the first man of genius or even the first man of fortune who comes to hand
suffices for the manufacturing of a king. You have, in the first case, Napoleon; in the second, Iturbide.
But the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a dynasty. There is necessarily required a
certain modicum of antiquity in a race, and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised.
If we place ourselves at the point of view of the "statesmen," after making all allowances, of course, after a
revolution, what are the qualities of the king which result from it? He may be and it is useful for him to be a
revolutionary; that is to say, a participant in his own person in that revolution, that he should have lent a hand
to it, that he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein, that he should have touched
the axe or wielded the sword in it.
What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to say, revolutionary at a distance, not
through acts committed, but by reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be historic; be
composed of future and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon;
and why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of Orleans.
Royal houses resemble those Indian figtrees, each branch of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and
becomes a figtree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall bend down
to the people.
Such is the theory of the skilful.
Here, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those
who profit by it may tremble from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment the curve of
the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull that aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of
enthusiasm, to cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to envelop the giantpeople in
flannel, and to put it to bed very speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on the
treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that
nectar thinned out with a potion, to take one's precautions against too much success, to garnish the revolution
with a shade.
1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by 1688.
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1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress, quasiright. Now, logic knows not the "almost,"
absolutely as the sun knows not the candle.
Who arrests revolutions halfway? The bourgeoisie?
Why?
Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction. Yesterday it was appetite, today it is
plenitude, tomorrow it will be satiety.
The phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X.
The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the
contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a
caste.
But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often
been the fault of the bourgeoisie.
One is not a class because one has committed a fault. Selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social
order.
Moreover, we must be just to selfishness. The state to which that part of the nation which is called the
bourgeoisie aspired after the shock of 1830 was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and
laziness, and which contains a little shame; it was not the slumber which presupposes a momentary
forgetfulness accessible to dreams; it was the halt.
The halt is a word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory sense: a troop on the march, that is to
say, movement; a stand, that is to say, repose.
The halt is the restoration of forces; it is repose armed and on the alert; it is the accomplished fact which posts
sentinels and holds itself on its guard.
The halt presupposes the combat of yesterday and the combat of tomorrow.
It is the partition between 1830 and 1848.
What we here call combat may also be designated as progress.
The bourgeoisie then, as well as the statesmen, required a man who should express this word Halt. An
AlthoughBecause. A composite individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability, in other terms,
strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past with the future.
This man was "already found." His name was Louis Philippe d'Orleans.
The 221 made Louis Philippe King. Lafayette undertook the coronation.
He called it the best of republics. The townhall of Paris took the place of the Cathedral of Rheims.
This substitution of a halfthrone for a whole throne was "the work of 1830."
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When the skilful had finished, the immense vice of their solution became apparent. All this had been
accomplished outside the bounds of absolute right. Absolute right cried: "I protest!" then, terrible to say, it
retired into the darkness.
CHAPTER III. LOUIS PHILIPPE
Revolutions have a terrible arm and a happy hand, they strike firmly and choose well. Even incomplete, even
debased and abused and reduced to the state of a junior revolution like the Revolution of 1830, they nearly
always retain sufficient providential lucidity to prevent them from falling amiss. Their eclipse is never an
abdication.
Nevertheless, let us not boast too loudly; revolutions also may be deceived, and grave errors have been seen.
Let us return to 1830. 1830, in its deviation, had good luck. In the establishment which entitled itself order
after the revolution had been cut short, the King amounted to more than royalty. Louis Philippe was a rare
man.
The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of
esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his
health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of
a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in
his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the
regular sleepingapartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder
branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and
speaking them; an admirable representative of the "middle class," but outstripping it, and in every way
greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting
most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans
and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness,
but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not
proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty;
lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by
his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by
immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use
without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong
those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack
of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks;
making France fear Europe and Europe France! Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family;
assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this
unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate
baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from
fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable;
contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against
England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction,
inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to
Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at
Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling. brave as a grenadier,
courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for
great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in
order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with
divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge;
prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly
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on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts,
details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior
aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible
currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating
himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out
of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of
civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and
lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and
original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and
power in spite of the jealousy of Europe. Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his
century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little,
and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful.
Louis Philippe had been handsome, and in his old age he remained graceful; not always approved by the
nation, he always was so by the masses; he pleased. He had that gift of charming. He lacked majesty; he wore
no crown, although a king, and no white hair, although an old man; his manners belonged to the old regime
and his habits to the new; a mixture of the noble and the bourgeois which suited 1830; Louis Philippe was
transition reigning; he had preserved the ancient pronunciation and the ancient orthography which he placed
at the service of opinions modern; he loved Poland and Hungary, but he wrote les Polonois, and he
pronounced les Hongrais. He wore the uniform of the national guard, like Charles X., and the ribbon of the
Legion of Honor, like Napoleon.
He went a little to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by sacristans, by
whippersin, by balletdancers; this made a part of his bourgeois popularity. He had no heart. He went out
with his umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella long formed a part of his aureole. He was a bit of a mason,
a bit of a gardener, something of a doctor; he bled a postilion who had tumbled from his horse; Louis
Philippe no more went about without his lancet, than did Henri IV. without his poniard. The Royalists jeered
at this ridiculous king, the first who had ever shed blood with the object of healing.
For the grievances against Louis Philippe, there is one deduction to be made; there is that which accuses
royalty, that which accuses the reign, that which accuses the King; three columns which all give different
totals. Democratic right confiscated, progress becomes a matter of secondary interest, the protests of the
street violently repressed, military execution of insurrections, the rising passed over by arms, the Rue
Transnonain, the counsels of war, the absorption of the real country by the legal country, on half shares with
three hundred thousand privileged persons, these are the deeds of royalty; Belgium refused, Algeria too
harshly conquered, and, as in the case of India by the English, with more barbarism than civilization, the
breach of faith, to AbdelKader, Blaye, Deutz bought, Pritchard paid,these are the doings of the reign;
the policy which was more domestic than national was the doing of the King.
As will be seen, the proper deduction having been made, the King's charge is decreased.
This is his great fault; he was modest in the name of France.
Whence arises this fault?
We will state it.
Louis Philippe was rather too much of a paternal king; that incubation of a family with the object of founding
a dynasty is afraid of everything and does not like to be disturbed; hence excessive timidity, which is
displeasing to the people, who have the 14th of July in their civil and Austerlitz in their military tradition.
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Moreover, if we deduct the public duties which require to be fulfilled first of all, that deep tenderness of
Louis Philippe towards his family was deserved by the family. That domestic group was worthy of
admiration. Virtues there dwelt side by side with talents. One of Louis Philippe's daughters, Marie d'Orleans,
placed the name of her race among artists, as Charles d'Orleans had placed it among poets. She made of her
soul a marble which she named Jeanne d'Arc. Two of Louis Philippe's daughters elicited from Metternich this
eulogium: "They are young people such as are rarely seen, and princes such as are never seen."
This, without any dissimulation, and also without any exaggeration, is the truth about Louis Philippe.
To be Prince Equality, to bear in his own person the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to
have that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power, therein lay the
fortune of Louis Philippe in 1830; never was there a more complete adaptation of a man to an event; the one
entered into the other, and the incarnation took place. Louis Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover, he had in
his favor that great recommendation to the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a wanderer, poor. He had
lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old
horse in order to obtain bread. At Reichenau, he gave lessons in mathematics, while his sister Adelaide did
wool work and sewed. These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. He had,
with his own hands, demolished the iron cage of MontSaintMichel, built by Louis XI, and used by Louis
XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobins'
club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: "Young man!" At the age of four
and twenty, in '93, being then M. de Chartres, he had witnessed, from the depth of a box, the trial of Louis
XVI., so well named that poor tyrant. The blind clairvoyance of the Revolution, breaking royalty in the King
and the King with royalty, did so almost without noticing the man in the fierce crushing of the idea, the vast
storm of the AssemblyTribunal, the public wrath interrogating, Capet not knowing what to reply, the
alarming, stupefied vacillation by that royal head beneath that sombre breath, the relative innocence of all in
that catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of the man condemned,he had looked on those things,
he had contemplated that giddiness; he had seen the centuries appear before the bar of the
AssemblyConvention; he had beheld, behind Louis XVI., that unfortunate passerby who was made
responsible, the terrible culprit, the monarchy, rise through the shadows; and there had lingered in his soul the
respectful fear of these immense justices of the populace, which are almost as impersonal as the justice of
God.
The trace left in him by the Revolution was prodigious. Its memory was like a living imprint of those great
years, minute by minute. One day, in the presence of a witness whom we are not permitted to doubt, he
rectified from memory the whole of the letter A in the alphabetical list of the Constituent Assembly.
Louis Philippe was a king of the broad daylight. While he reigned the press was free, the tribune was free,
conscience and speech were free. The laws of September are open to sight. Although fully aware of the
gnawing power of light on privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light. History will do justice to him for
this loyalty.
Louis Philippe, like all historical men who have passed from the scene, is today put on his trial by the
human conscience. His case is, as yet, only in the lower court.
The hour when history speaks with its free and venerable accent, has not yet sounded for him; the moment
has not come to pronounce a definite judgment on this king; the austere and illustrious historian Louis Blanc
has himself recently softened his first verdict; Louis Philippe was elected by those two almosts which are
called the 221 and 1830, that is to say, by a halfParliament, and a halfrevolution; and in any case, from the
superior point of view where philosophy must place itself, we cannot judge him here, as the reader has seen
above, except with certain reservations in the name of the absolute democratic principle; in the eyes of the
absolute, outside these two rights, the right of man in the first place, the right of the people in the second, all
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is usurpation; but what we can say, even at the present day, that after making these reserves is, that to sum up
the whole, and in whatever manner he is considered, Louis Philippe, taken in himself, and from the point of
view of human goodness, will remain, to use the antique language of ancient history, one of the best princes
who ever sat on a throne.
What is there against him? That throne. Take away Louis Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the
man is good. He is good at times even to the point of being admirable. Often, in the midst of his gravest
souvenirs, after a day of conflict with the whole diplomacy of the continent, he returned at night to his
apartments, and there, exhausted with fatigue, overwhelmed with sleep, what did he do? He took a death
sentence and passed the night in revising a criminal suit, considering it something to hold his own against
Europe, but that it was a still greater matter to rescue a man from the executioner. He obstinately maintained
his opinion against his keeper of the seals; he disputed the ground with the guillotine foot by foot against the
crown attorneys, those chatterers of the law, as he called them. Sometimes the pile of sentences covered his
table; he examined them all; it was anguish to him to abandon these miserable, condemned heads. One day,
he said to the same witness to whom we have recently referred: "I won seven last night." During the early
years of his reign, the death penalty was as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold was a violence
committed against the King. The Greve having disappeared with the elder branch, a bourgeois place of
execution was instituted under the name of the BarriereSaintJacques; "practical men" felt the necessity of a
quasilegitimate guillotine; and this was one of the victories of Casimir Perier, who represented the narrow
sides of the bourgeoisie, over Louis Philippe, who represented its liberal sides. Louis Philippe annotated
Beccaria with his own hand. After the Fieschi machine, he exclaimed: "What a pity that I was not wounded!
Then I might have pardoned!" On another occasion, alluding to the resistance offered by his ministry, he
wrote in connection with a political criminal, who is one of the most generous figures of our day: "His pardon
is granted; it only remains for me to obtain it." Louis Philippe was as gentle as Louis IX. and as kindly as
Henri IV.
Now, to our mind, in history, where kindness is the rarest of pearls, the man who is kindly almost takes
precedence of the man who is great.
Louis Philippe having been severely judged by some, harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a
man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before
history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an
epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same
shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in
exile: "This one flattered the other."
CHAPTER IV. CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION
At the moment when the drama which we are narrating is on the point of penetrating into the depths of one of
the tragic clouds which envelop the beginning of Louis Philippe's reign, it was necessary that there should be
no equivoque, and it became requisite that this book should offer some explanation with regard to this king.
Louis Philippe had entered into possession of his royal authority without violence, without any direct action
on his part, by virtue of a revolutionary change, evidently quite distinct from the real aim of the Revolution,
but in which he, the Duc d'Orleans, exercised no personal initiative. He had been born a Prince, and he
believed himself to have been elected King. He had not served this mandate on himself; he had not taken it; it
had been offered to him, and he had accepted it; convinced, wrongly, to be sure, but convinced nevertheless,
that the offer was in accordance with right and that the acceptance of it was in accordance with duty. Hence
his possession was in good faith. Now, we say it in good conscience, Louis Philippe being in possession in
perfect good faith, and the democracy being in good faith in its attack, the amount of terror discharged by the
social conflicts weighs neither on the King nor on the democracy. A clash of principles resembles a clash of
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elements. The ocean defends the water, the hurricane defends the air, the King defends Royalty, the
democracy defends the people; the relative, which is the monarchy, resists the absolute, which is the republic;
society bleeds in this conflict, but that which constitutes its suffering today will constitute its safety later on;
and, in any case, those who combat are not to be blamed; one of the two parties is evidently mistaken; the
right is not, like the Colossus of Rhodes, on two shores at once, with one foot on the republic, and one in
Royalty; it is indivisible, and all on one side; but those who are in error are so sincerely; a blind man is no
more a criminal than a Vendean is a ruffian. Let us, then, impute to the fatality of things alone these
formidable collisions. Whatever the nature of these tempests may be, human irresponsibility is mingled with
them.
Let us complete this exposition.
The government of 1840 led a hard life immediately. Born yesterday, it was obliged to fight today.
Hardly installed, it was already everywhere conscious of vague movements of traction on the apparatus of
July so recently laid, and so lacking in solidity.
Resistance was born on the morrow; perhaps even, it was born on the preceding evening. From month to
month the hostility increased, and from being concealed it became patent.
The Revolution of July, which gained but little acceptance outside of France by kings, had been diversely
interpreted in France, as we have said.
God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men
immediately make translations of it; translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense.
Very few minds comprehend the divine language. The most sagacious, the calmest, the most profound,
decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the task has long been completed; there are already
twenty translations on the public place. From each remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation
a faction; and each party thinks that it alone has the true text, and each faction thinks that it possesses the
light.
Power itself is often a faction.
There are, in revolutions, swimmers who go against the current; they are the old parties.
For the old parties who clung to heredity by the grace of God, think that revolutions, having sprung from the
right to revolt, one has the right to revolt against them. Error. For in these revolutions, the one who revolts is
not the people; it is the king. Revolution is precisely the contrary of revolt. Every revolution, being a normal
outcome, contains within itself its legitimacy, which false revolutionists sometimes dishonor, but which
remains even when soiled, which survives even when stained with blood.
Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the
real. It is because it must be that it is.
None the less did the old legitimist parties assail the Revolution of 1830 with all the vehemence which arises
from false reasoning. Errors make excellent projectiles. They strike it cleverly in its vulnerable spot, in
default of a cuirass, in its lack of logic; they attacked this revolution in its royalty. They shouted to it:
"Revolution, why this king?" Factions are blind men who aim correctly.
This cry was uttered equally by the republicans. But coming from them, this cry was logical. What was
blindness in the legitimists was clearness of vision in the democrats. 1830 had bankrupted the people. The
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enraged democracy reproached it with this.
Between the attack of the past and the attack of the future, the establishment of July struggled. It represented
the minute at loggerheads on the one hand with the monarchical centuries, on the other hand with eternal
right.
In addition, and beside all this, as it was no longer revolution and had become a monarchy, 1830 was obliged
to take precedence of all Europe. To keep the peace, was an increase of complication. A harmony established
contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war. From this secret conflict, always muzzled, but always
growling, was born armed peace, that ruinous expedient of civilization which in the harness of the European
cabinets is suspicious in itself. The Royalty of July reared up, in spite of the fact that it caught it in the
harness of European cabinets. Metternich would gladly have put it in kickingstraps. Pushed on in France by
progress, it pushed on the monarchies, those loiterers in Europe. After having been towed, it undertook to
tow.
Meanwhile, within her, pauperism, the proletariat, salary, education, penal servitude, prostitution, the fate of
the woman, wealth, misery, production, consumption, division, exchange, coin, credit, the rights of capital,
the rights of labor, all these questions were multiplied above society, a terrible slope.
Outside of political parties properly so called, another movement became manifest. Philosophical
fermentation replied to democratic fermentation. The elect felt troubled as well as the masses; in another
manner, but quite as much.
Thinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the people, traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled
under them with indescribably vague epileptic shocks. These dreamers, some isolated, others united in
families and almost in communion, turned over social questions in a pacific but profound manner; impassive
miners, who tranquilly pushed their galleries into the depths of a volcano, hardly disturbed by the dull
commotion and the furnaces of which they caught glimpses.
This tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of this agitated epoch.
These men left to political parties the question of rights, they occupied themselves with the question of
happiness.
The wellbeing of man, that was what they wanted to extract from society.
They raised material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry, of commerce, almost to the dignity of a
religion. In civilization, such as it has formed itself, a little by the command of God, a great deal by the
agency of man, interests combine, unite, and amalgamate in a manner to form a veritable hard rock, in
accordance with a dynamic law, patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These men who
grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all be designated by the generic title of
socialists, endeavored to pierce that rock and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity.
From the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their works embraced everything. To the rights of
man, as proclaimed by the French Revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child.
The reader will not be surprised if, for various reasons, we do not here treat in a thorough manner, from the
theoretical point of view, the questions raised by socialism. We confine ourselves to indicating them.
All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic visions, revery and mysticism being
cast aside, can be reduced to two principal problems.
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First problem: To produce wealth.
Second problem: To share it.
The first problem contains the question of work.
The second contains the question of salary.
In the first problem the employment of forces is in question.
In the second, the distribution of enjoyment.
From the proper employment of forces results public power.
From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness.
By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood.
From these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social
prosperity.
Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.
England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she divides it badly. This
solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence,
monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say, for the people;
privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which sates
public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly
constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters.
Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division
kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the
butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions.
Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it.
The two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and
made but one.
Solve only the first of the two problems; you will be Venice, you will be England. You will have, like
Venice, an artificial power, or, like England, a material power; you will be the wicked rich man. You will die
by an act of violence, as Venice died, or by bankruptcy, as England will fall. And the world will allow to die
and fall all that is merely selfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either a virtue or an idea.
It is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, we designate not the peoples, but social
structures; the oligarchies superposed on nations, and not the nations themselves. The nations always have
our respect and our sympathy. Venice, as a people, will live again; England, the aristocracy, will fall, but
England, the nation, is immortal. That said, we continue.
Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the
unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is
making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to
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labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the
base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people
and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so
that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two
words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material
greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.
This is what socialism said outside and above a few sects which have gone astray; that is what it sought in
facts, that is what it sketched out in minds.
Efforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts!
These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseen necessity for the statesman to take
philosophers into account, confused evidences of which we catch a glimpse, a new system of politics to be
created, which shall be in accord with the old world without too much disaccord with the new revolutionary
ideal, a situation in which it became necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the intuition of progress
transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the competitions to be brought into equilibrium
around him, his faith in the Revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the vague
acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to remain of his race, his domestic spirit, his sincere
respect for the people, his own honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and there were
moments when strong and courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed by the difficulties of being a king.
He felt under his feet a formidable disaggregation, which was not, nevertheless, a reduction to dust, France
being more France than ever.
Piles of shadows covered the horizon. A strange shade, gradually drawing nearer, extended little by little over
men, over things, over ideas; a shade which came from wraths and systems. Everything which had been
hastily stifled was moving and fermenting. At times the conscience of the honest man resumed its breathing,
so great was the discomfort of that air in which sophisms were intermingled with truths. Spirits trembled in
the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of a storm. The electric tension was such that at certain instants,
the first comer, a stranger, brought light. Then the twilight obscurity closed in again. At intervals, deep and
dull mutterings allowed a judgment to be formed as to the quantity of thunder contained by the cloud.
Twenty months had barely elapsed since the Revolution of July, the year 1832 had opened with an aspect of
something impending and threatening.
The distress of the people, the laborers without bread, the last Prince de Conde engulfed in the shadows,
Brussels expelling the Nassaus as Paris did the Bourbons, Belgium offering herself to a French Prince and
giving herself to an English Prince, the Russian hatred of Nicolas, behind us the demons of the South,
Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel in Portugal, the earth quaking in Italy, Metternich extending his hand over
Bologna, France treating Austria sharply at Ancona, at the North no one knew what sinister sound of the
hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin, irritated glances watching France narrowly all over Europe, England,
a suspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to hurl herself on that which should fall,
the peerage sheltering itself behind Beccaria to refuse four heads to the law, the fleursdelys erased from
the King's carriage, the cross torn from Notre Dame, Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ruined, Benjamin Constant
dead in indigence, Casimir Perier dead in the exhaustion of his power; political and social malady breaking
out simultaneously in the two capitals of the kingdom, the one in the city of thought, the other in the city of
toil; at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cities, the same glare of the furnace; a craterlike
crimson on the brow of the people; the South rendered fanatic, the West troubled, the Duchesse de Berry in la
Vendee, plots, conspiracies, risings, cholera, added the sombre roar of tumult of events to the sombre roar of
ideas.
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CHAPTER V. FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH
HISTORY IGNORES
Towards the end of April, everything had become aggravated. The fermentation entered the boiling state.
Ever since 1830, petty partial revolts had been going on here and there, which were quickly suppressed, but
ever bursting forth afresh, the sign of a vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was in preparation.
Glimpses could be caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted, of a possible revolution.
France kept an eye on Paris; Paris kept an eye on the Faubourg SaintAntoine.
The Faubourg SaintAntoine, which was in a dull glow, was beginning its ebullition.
The wineshops of the Rue de Charonne were, although the union of the two epithets seems singular when
applied to wineshops, grave and stormy.
The government was there purely and simply called in question. There people publicly discussed the question
of fighting or of keeping quiet. There were back shops where workingmen were made to swear that they
would hasten into the street at the first cry of alarm, and "that they would fight without counting the number
of the enemy." This engagement once entered into, a man seated in the corner of the wineshop "assumed a
sonorous tone," and said, "You understand! You have sworn!"
Sometimes they went up stairs, to a private room on the first floor, and there scenes that were almost masonic
were enacted. They made the initiated take oaths to render service to himself as well as to the fathers of
families. That was the formula.
In the taprooms, "subversive" pamphlets were read. They treated the government with contempt, says a
secret report of that time.
Words like the following could be heard there:
"I don't know the names of the leaders. We folks shall not know the day until two hours beforehand." One
workman said: "There are three hundred of us, let each contribute ten sous, that will make one hundred and
fifty francs with which to procure powder and shot."
Another said: "I don't ask for six months, I don't ask for even two. In less than a fortnight we shall be parallel
with the government. With twentyfive thousand men we can face them." Another said: "I don't sleep at
night, because I make cartridges all night." From time to time, men "of bourgeois appearance, and in good
coats" came and "caused embarrassment," and with the air of "command," shook hands with the most
important, and then went away. They never stayed more than ten minutes. Significant remarks were
exchanged in a low tone: "The plot is ripe, the matter is arranged." "It was murmured by all who were there,"
to borrow the very expression of one of those who were present. The exaltation was such that one day, a
workingman exclaimed, efore the whole wineshop: "We have no arms!" One of his comrades replied: "The
soldiers have!" thus parodying without being aware of the fact, Bonaparte's proclamation to the army in Italy:
"When they had anything of a more secret nature on hand," adds one report, "they did not communicate it to
each other." It is not easy to understand what they could conceal after what they said.
These reunions were sometimes periodical. At certain ones of them, there were never more than eight or ten
persons present, and they were always the same. In others, any one entered who wished, and the room was so
full that they were forced to stand. Some went thither through enthusiasm and passion; others because it was
on their way to their work. As during the Revolution, there were patriotic women in some of these
wineshops who embraced newcomers.
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Other expressive facts came to light.
A man would enter a shop, drink, and go his way with the remark: "Winemerchant, the revolution will pay
what is due to you."
Revolutionary agents were appointed in a wineshop facing the Rue de Charonne. The balloting was carried
on in their caps.
Workingmen met at the house of a fencingmaster who gave lessons in the Rue de Cotte. There there was a
trophy of arms formed of wooden broadswords, canes, clubs, and foils. One day, the buttons were removed
from the foils.
A workman said: "There are twentyfive of us, but they don't count on me, because I am looked upon as a
machine." Later on, that machine became Quenisset.
The indefinite things which were brewing gradually acquired a strange and indescribable notoriety. A woman
sweeping off her doorsteps said to another woman: "For a long time, there has been a strong force busy
making cartridges." In the open street, proclamation could be seen addressed to the National Guard in the
departments. One of these proclamations was signed: Burtot, winemerchant.
One day a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian accent mounted a stone post at the door
of a liquorseller in the Marche Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from
an occult power. Groups formed around him, and applauded.
The passages which touched the crowd most deeply were collected and noted down. "Our doctrines are
trammelled, our proclamations torn, our billstickers are spied upon and thrown into prison.""The
breakdown which has recently taken place in cottons has converted to us many mediums.""The future of
nations is being worked out in our obscure ranks."" Here are the fixed terms: action or reaction, revolution
or counterrevolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in inertia or in immobility. For the
people against the people, that is the question. There is no other.""On the day when we cease to suit you,
break us, but up to that day, help us to march on." All this in broad daylight.
Other deeds, more audacious still, were suspicious in the eyes of the people by reason of their very audacity.
On the 4th of April, 1832, a passerby mounted the post on the corner which forms the angle of the Rue
SainteMarguerite and shouted: "I am a Babouvist!" But beneath Babeuf, the people scented Gisquet.
Among other things, this man said:
"Down with property! The opposition of the left is cowardly and treacherous. When it wants to be on the
right side, it preaches revolution, it is democratic in order to escape being beaten, and royalist so that it may
not have to fight. The republicans are beasts with feathers. Distrust the republicans, citizens of the laboring
classes."
"Silence, citizen spy!" cried an artisan.
This shout put an end to the discourse.
Mysterious incidents occurred.
At nightfall, a workingman encountered near the canal a "very well dressed man," who said to him: "Whither
are you bound, citizen?" "Sir," replied the workingman, "I have not the honor of your acquaintance." "I know
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you very well, however." And the man added: "Don't be alarmed, I am an agent of the committee. You are
suspected of not being quite faithful. You know that if you reveal anything, there is an eye fixed on you."
Then he shook hands with the workingman and went away, saying: "We shall meet again soon."
The police, who were on the alert, collected singular dialogues, not only in the wineshops, but in the street.
"Get yourself received very soon," said a weaver to a cabinetmaker.
"Why?"
"There is going to be a shot to fire."
Two ragged pedestrians exchanged these remarkable replies, fraught with evident Jacquerie:
"Who governs us?"
"M. Philippe."
"No, it is the bourgeoisie."
The reader is mistaken if he thinks that we take the word Jacquerie in a bad sense. The Jacques were the poor.
On another occasion two men were heard to say to each other as they passed by: "We have a good plan of
attack."
Only the following was caught of a private conversation between four men who were crouching in a ditch of
the circle of the Barriere du Trone:
"Everything possible will be done to prevent his walking about Paris any more."
Who was the he? Menacing obscurity.
"The principal leaders," as they said in the faubourg, held themselves apart. It was supposed that they met for
consultation in a wineshop near the point SaintEustache. A certain Aug, chief of the Society aid for
tailors, Rue Mondetour, had the reputation of serving as intermediary central between the leaders and the
Faubourg SaintAntoine.
Nevertheless, there was always a great deal of mystery about these leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate
the singular arrogance of this reply made later on by a man accused before the Court of Peers:
"Who was your leader?"
"I knew of none and I recognized none."
There was nothing but words, transparent but vague; sometimes idle reports, rumors, hearsay. Other
indications cropped up.
A carpenter, occupied in nailing boards to a fence around the ground on which a house was in process of
construction, in the Rue de Reuilly found on that plot the torn fragment of a letter on which were still legible
the following lines:
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The committee must take measures to prevent recruiting in the sections for the different societies.
And, as a postscript:
We have learned that there are guns in the Rue du FaubourgPoissonniere, No. 5 [bis], to the number of five
or six thousand, in the house of a gunsmith in that court. The section owns no arms.
What excited the carpenter and caused him to show this thing to his neighbors was the fact, that a few paces
further on he picked up another paper, torn like the first, and still more significant, of which we reproduce a
facsimile, because of the historical interest attaching to these strange documents:
++ | Q | C | D | E | Learn
this list by heart. After so doing | | | | | | you will tear it up. The men admitted | | | | | | will do the same when
you have transmitted | | | | | | their orders to them. | | | | | | Health and Fraternity, | | | | | | u og a fe L. |
++
It was only later on that the persons who were in the secret of this find at the time, learned the significance of
those four capital letters: quinturions, centurions, decurions, eclaireurs [scouts], and the sense of the letters: u
og a fe, which was a date, and meant April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names
followed by very characteristic notes. Thus: Q. Bannerel. 8 guns, 83 cartridges. A safe man.C. Boubiere. 1
pistol, 40 cartridges.D. Rollet. 1 foil, 1 pistol, 1 pound of powder. E. Tessier. 1 sword, 1 cartridgebox.
Exact.Terreur. 8 guns. Brave, etc.
Finally, this carpenter found, still in the same enclosure, a third paper on which was written in pencil, but
very legibly, this sort of enigmatical list:
Unite: Blanchard: ArbreSec. 6.
Barra. Soize. SalleauComte.
Kosciusko. Aubry the Butcher?
J. J. R.
Caius Gracchus.
Right of revision. Dufond. Four.
Fall of the Girondists. Derbac. Maubuee.
Washington. Pinson. 1 pistol, 86 cartridges.
Marseillaise.
Sovereignty of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sword.
Hoche.
Marceau. Plato. ArbreSec.
Warsaw. Tilly, crier of the Populaire.
The honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew its significance. It appears that this list was the
complete nomenclature of the sections of the fourth arondissement of the Society of the Rights of Man, with
the names and dwellings of the chiefs of sections. Today, when all these facts which were obscure are
nothing more than history, we may publish them. It should be added, that the foundation of the Society of the
Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the date when this paper was found. Perhaps this was only a
rough draft.
Still, according to all the remarks and the words, according to written notes, material facts begin to make their
appearance.
In the Rue Popincourt, in the house of a dealer in bricabrac, there were seized seven sheets of gray paper, all
folded alike lengthwise and in four; these sheets enclosed twentysix squares of this same gray paper folded
in the form of a cartridge, and a card, on which was written the following:
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Saltpetre . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ounces.
Sulphur . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.
Charcoal . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces and a half.
Water . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.
The report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled a strong smell of powder.
A mason returning from his day's work, left behind him a little package on a bench near the bridge of
Austerlitz. This package was taken to the police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed
dialogues, signed Lahautiere, a song entitled: "Workmen, band together," and a tin box full of cartridges.
One artisan drinking with a comrade made the latter feel him to see how warm he was; the other man felt a
pistol under his waistcoat.
In a ditch on the boulevard, between PereLachaise and the Barriere du Trone, at the most deserted spot,
some children, while playing, discovered beneath a mass of shavings and refuse bits of wood, a bag
containing a bulletmould, a wooden punch for the preparation of cartridges, a wooden bowl, in which there
were grains of huntingpowder, and a little castiron pot whose interior presented evident traces of melted
lead.
Police agents, making their way suddenly and unexpectedly at five o'clock in the morning, into the dwelling
of a certain Pardon, who was afterwards a member of the BarricadeMerry section and got himself killed in
the insurrection of April, 1834, found him standing near his bed, and holding in his hand some cartridges
which he was in the act of preparing.
Towards the hour when workingmen repose, two men were seen to meet between the Barriere Picpus and the
Barriere Charenton in a little lane between two walls, near a wineshop, in front of which there was a "Jeu de
Siam."[33] One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it to the other. As he was handing it to him,
he noticed that the perspiration of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and added more
powder to what was already in the pan. Then the two men parted.
[33] A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is smaller than the other, so that it does not roll
straight, but describes a curve on the ground.
A certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beaubourg in the affair of April, boasted of having in his house
seven hundred cartridges and twentyfour flints.
The government one day received a warning that arms and two hundred thousand cartridges had just been
distributed in the faubourg. On the following week thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. The
remarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize a single one.
An intercepted letter read: "The day is not far distant when, within four hours by the clock, eighty thousand
patriots will be under arms."
All this fermentation was public, one might almost say tranquil. The approaching insurrection was preparing
its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterranean crisis,
which was already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably to the workingclasses of what was in
preparation. They said: "How is the rising coming along?" in the same tone in which they would have said:
"How is your wife?"
A furnituredealer, of the Rue Moreau, inquired: "Well, when are you going to make the attack?"
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Another shopkeeper said:
"The attack will be made soon."
"I know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of you, now there are twentyfive thousand." He
offered his gun, and a neighbor offered a small pistol which he was willing to sell for seven francs.
Moreover, the revolutionary fever was growing. Not a point in Paris nor in France was exempt from it. The
artery was beating everywhere. Like those membranes which arise from certain inflammations and form in
the human body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over the country. From the associations of
the Friends of the People, which was at the same time public and secret, sprang the Society of the Rights of
Man, which also dated from one of the orders of the day: Pluviose, Year 40 of the republican era, which was
destined to survive even the mandate of the Court of Assizes which pronounced its dissolution, and which did
not hesitate to bestow on its sections significant names like the following:
Pikes.
Tocsin.
Signal cannon.
Phrygian cap.
January 21.
The beggars.
The vagabonds.
Forward march.
Robespierre.
Level.
Ca Ira.
The Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action. These were impatient individuals who
broke away and hastened ahead. Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother
societies. The members of sections complained that they were torn asunder. Thus, the Gallic Society, and the
committee of organization of the Municipalities. Thus the associations for the liberty of the press, for
individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal
Workingmen which was divided into three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers. Then the
Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a military footing, four men commanded by a corporal,
ten by a sergeant, twenty by a sublieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never more than five men who
knew each other. Creation where precaution is combined with audacity and which seemed stamped with the
genius of Venice.
The central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society of Action, and the Army of the
Bastilles.
A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about among these the republican affiliations. It
was denounced and repudiated there.
The Parisian societies had ramifications in the principal cities, Lyons, Nantes, Lille, Marseilles, and each had
its Society of the Rights of Man, the Charbonniere, and The Free Men. All had a revolutionary society which
was called the Cougourde. We have already mentioned this word.
In Paris, the Faubourg SaintMarceau kept up an equal buzzing with the Faubourg SaintAntoine, and the
schools were no less moved than the faubourgs. A cafe in the Rue SaintHyacinthe and the wineshop of the
Seven Billiards, Rue des MathurinsSaintJacques, served as rallying points for the students. The Society of
the Friends of the A B C affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, met, as we have
seen, in the Cafe Musain. These same young men assembled also, as we have stated already, in a restaurant
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wineshop of the Rue Mondetour which was called Corinthe. These meetings were secret. Others were as
public as possible, and the reader can judge of their boldness from these fragments of an interrogatory
undergone in one of the ulterior prosecutions: "Where was this meeting held?" "In the Rue de la Paix." "At
whose house?" "In the street." "What sections were there?" "Only one." "Which?" "The Manuel section."
"Who was its leader?" "I." "You are too young to have decided alone upon the bold course of attacking the
government. Where did your instructions come from?" "From the central committee."
The army was mined at the same time as the population, as was proved subsequently by the operations of
Beford, Luneville, and Epinard. They counted on the fiftysecond regiment, on the fifth, on the eighth, on the
thirtyseventh, and on the twentieth light cavalry. In Burgundy and in the southern towns they planted the
liberty tree; that is to say, a pole surmounted by a red cap.
Such was the situation.
The Faubourg SaintAntoine, more than any other group of the population, as we stated in the beginning,
accentuated this situation and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled like an
anthill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was quivering with expectation and with the
desire for a tumult. Everything was in a state of agitation there, without any interruption, however, of the
regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yet sombre physiognomy. In this faubourg
exists poignant distress hidden under attic roofs; there also exist rare and ardent minds. It is particularly in the
matter of distress and intelligence that it is dangerous to have extremes meet.
The Faubourg SaintAntoine had also other causes to tremble; for it received the countershock of
commercial crises, of failures, strikes, slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In times of
revolution misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it deals rebounds upon it. This population full of
proud virtue, capable to the highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt to explode,
irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting the fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on
the horizon chased by the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Faubourg SaintAntoine and of
the formidable chance which has placed at the very gates of Paris that powderhouse of suffering and ideas.
The wineshops of the Faubourg Antoine, which have been more than once drawn in the sketches which the
reader has just perused, possess historical notoriety. In troublous times people grow intoxicated there more on
words than on wine. A sort of prophetic spirit and an afflatus of the future circulates there, swelling hearts
and enlarging souls. The cabarets of the Faubourg SaintAntoine resemble those taverns of Mont Aventine
erected on the cave of the Sibyl and communicating with the profound and sacred breath; taverns where the
tables were almost tripods, and where was drunk what Ennius calls the sibylline wine.
The Faubourg SaintAntoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionary agitations create fissures there, through
which trickles the popular sovereignty. This sovereignty may do evil; it can be mistaken like any other; but,
even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it as of the blind cyclops, Ingens.
In '93, according as the idea which was floating about was good or evil, according as it was the day of
fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there leaped forth from the Faubourg SaintAntoine now savage legions, now
heroic bands.
Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the early days of the revolutionary chaos,
tattered, howling, wild, with uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris in an
uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work
for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all,
the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they
claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths.
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They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization.
They proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only with fear and trembling, to force the human race
to paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask of night.
Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends,
there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in
yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table, beside a marble chimneypiece,
insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism,
of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword,
the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of
civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.
But, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No perpendicular fall is necessary, in front any more than
in the rear.
Neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle slope.
God takes care of that. God's whole policy consists in rendering slopes less steep.
CHAPTER VI. ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS
It was about this epoch that Enjolras, in view of a possible catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census.
All were present at a secret meeting at the Cafe Musain.
Enjolras said, mixing his words with a few halfenigmatical but significant metaphors:
"It is proper that we should know where we stand and on whom we may count. If combatants are required,
they must be provided. It can do no harm to have something with which to strike. Passersby always have
more chance of being gored when there are bulls on the road than when there are none. Let us, therefore,
reckon a little on the herd. How many of us are there? There is no question of postponing this task until
tomorrow. Revolutionists should always be hurried; progress has no time to lose. Let us mistrust the
unexpected. Let us not be caught unprepared. We must go over all the seams that we have made and see
whether they hold fast. This business ought to be concluded today. Courfeyrac, you will see the polytechnic
students. It is their day to go out. Today is Wednesday. Feuilly, you will see those of the Glaciere, will you
not? Combeferre has promised me to go to Picpus. There is a perfect swarm and an excellent one there.
Bahorel will visit the Estrapade. Prouvaire, the masons are growing lukewarm; you will bring us news from
the lodge of the Rue de GrenelleSaintHonore. Joly will go to Dupuytren's clinical lecture, and feel the
pulse of the medical school. Bossuet will take a little turn in the court and talk with the young law licentiates.
I will take charge of the Cougourde myself."
"That arranges everything," said Courfeyrac.
"No."
"What else is there?"
"A very important thing."
"What is that?" asked Courfeyrac.
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"The Barriere du Maine," replied Enjolras.
Enjolras remained for a moment as though absorbed in reflection, then he resumed:
"At the Barriere du Maine there are marbleworkers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors.
They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don't know what has been the matter with them for
some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time
playing dominoes. There is urgent need that some one should go and talk with them a little, but with
firmness. They meet at Richefeu's. They are to be found there between twelve and one o'clock. Those ashes
must be fanned into a glow. For that errand I had counted on that abstracted Marius, who is a good fellow on
the whole, but he no longer comes to us. I need some one for the Barriere du Maine. I have no one."
"What about me?" said Grantaire. "Here am I."
"You?"
"I."
"You indoctrinate republicans! you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!"
"Why not?"
"Are you good for anything?"
"I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.
"You do not believe in everything."
"I believe in you."
"Grantaire will you do me a service?"
"Anything. I'll black your boots."
"Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe."
"You are an ingrate, Enjolras."
"You the man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You capable of it!"
"I am capable of descending the Rue de Gres, of crossing the Place SaintMichel, of sloping through the Rue
MonsieurlePrince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue
d'Assas, of reaching the Rue du ChercheMidi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the
Rue des Vielles Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chaussee du Maine, of passing
the barrier, and entering Richefeu's. I am capable of that. My shoes are capable of that."
"Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu's?"
"Not much. We only address each other as thou."
"What will you say to them?"
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"I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles."
"You?"
"I. But I don't receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social
Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. `The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty
of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bankbill of the Republic in my drawer.
The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hebertist. I can talk the most
superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand."
"Be serious," said Enjolras.
"I am wild," replied Grantaire.
Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution.
"Grantaire," he said gravely, "I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine."
Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Cafe Musain. He went out, and five minutes later he
returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.
"Red," said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he
laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.
And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear:
"Be easy."
He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.
A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Cafe Musain was deserted. All the friends of the A B C were
gone, each in his own direction, each to his own task. Enjolras, who had reserved the Cougourde of Aix for
himself, was the last to leave.
Those members of the Cougourde of Aix who were in Paris then met on the plain of Issy, in one of the
abandoned quarries which are so numerous in that side of Paris.
As Enjolras walked towards this place, he passed the whole situation in review in his own mind. The gravity
of events was selfevident. When facts, the premonitory symptoms of latent social malady, move heavily, the
slightest complication stops and entangles them. A phenomenon whence arises ruin and new births. Enjolras
descried a luminous uplifting beneath the gloomy skirts of the future. Who knows? Perhaps the moment was
at hand. The people were again taking possession of right, and what a fine spectacle! The revolution was
again majestically taking possession of France and saying to the world: "The sequel tomorrow!" Enjolras
was content. The furnace was being heated. He had at that moment a powder train of friends scattered all over
Paris. He composed, in his own mind, with Combeferre's philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Feuilly's
cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courfeyrac's dash, Bahorel's smile, Jean Prouvaire's melancholy, Joly's science,
Bossuet's sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly everywhere at once. All hands to work.
Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well. This made him think of Grantaire.
"Hold," said he to himself, "the Barriere du Maine will not take me far out of my way. What if I were to go
on as far as Richefeu's? Let us have a look at what Grantaire is about, and see how he is getting on."
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One o'clock was striking from the Vaugirard steeple when Enjolras reached the Richefeu smokingroom.
He pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall to and strike his shoulders, and gazed
at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke.
A voice broke forth from the mist of smoke, interrupted by another voice. It was Grantaire holding a dialogue
with an adversary.
Grantaire was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble SaintAnne table, strewn with grains of bran and
dotted with dominos. He was hammering the table with his fist, and this is what Enjolras heard:
"Doublesix."
"Fours."
"The pig! I have no more."
"You are dead. A two."
"Six."
"Three."
"One."
"It's my move."
"Four points."
"Not much."
"It's your turn."
"I have made an enormous mistake."
"You are doing well."
"Fifteen."
"Seven more."
"That makes me twentytwo." [Thoughtfully, "Twentytwo!"]
"You weren't expecting that doublesix. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been
changed."
"A two again."
"One."
"One! Well, five."
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"I haven't any."
"It was your play, I believe?"
"Yes."
"Blank."
"What luck he has! Ah! You are lucky! [Long revery.] Two."
"One."
"Neither five nor one. That's bad for you."
"Domino."
"Plague take it!"
BOOK SECOND.EPONINE
CHAPTER I. THE LARK'S MEADOW
Marius had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whose track he had set Javert; but
Javert had no sooner quitted the building, bearing off his prisoners in three hackneycoaches, than Marius
also glided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Marius betook himself to Courfeyrac.
Courfeyrac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter, he had gone to live in the Rue de
la Verrerie "for political reasons"; this quarter was one where, at that epoch, insurrection liked to install itself.
Marius said to Courfeyrac: "I have come to sleep with you." Courfeyrac dragged a mattress off his bed,
which was furnished with two, spread it out on the floor, and said: "There."
At seven o'clock on the following morning, Marius returned to the hovel, paid the quarter's rent which he
owed to Ma'am Bougon, had his books, his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a
handcart and went off without leaving his address, so that when Javert returned in the course of the
morning, for the purpose of questioning Marius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only
Ma'am Bougon, who answered: "Moved away!"
Ma'am Bougon was convinced that Marius was to some extent an accomplice of the robbers who had been
seized the night before. "Who would ever have said it?" she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, "a
young man like that, who had the air of a girl!"
Marius had two reasons for this prompt change of residence. The first was, that he now had a horror of that
house, where he had beheld, so close at hand, and in its most repulsive and most ferocious development, a
social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible than the wicked rich man, the wicked poor man. The
second was, that he did not wish to figure in the lawsuit which would insue in all probability, and be brought
in to testify against Thenardier.
Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was afraid, and had fled, or perhaps, had
not even returned home at the time of the ambush; he made some efforts to find him, however, but without
success.
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Page No 601
A month passed, then another. Marius was still with Courfeyrac. He had learned from a young licentiate in
law, an habitual frequenter of the courts, that Thenardier was in close confinement. Every Monday, Marius
had five francs handed in to the clerk's office of La Force for Thenardier.
As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his
life that he had ever borrowed money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyrac who
lent and to Thenardier who received them. "To whom can they go?" thought Courfeyrac. "Whence can this
come to me?" Thenardier asked himself.
Moreover, Marius was heartbroken. Everything had plunged through a trapdoor once more. He no longer
saw anything before him; his life was again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for a
moment beheld very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl whom he loved, the old man who seemed
to be her father, those unknown beings, who were his only interest and his only hope in this world; and, at the
very moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them, a gust had swept all these shadows
away. Not a spark of certainty and truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. No
conjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name that he thought he knew. It certainly was not
Ursule. And the Lark was a nickname. And what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding
from the police? The whitehaired workman whom Marius had encountered in the vicinity of the Invalides
recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable that that workingman and M. Leblanc were one and the same
person. So he disguised himself? That man had his heroic and his equivocal sides. Why had he not called for
help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Was he, in short, the man whom
Thenardier thought that he recognized? Thenardier might have been mistaken. These formed so many
insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the
Luxembourg. Heartrending distress; Marius bore a passion in his heart, and night over his eyes. He was
thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not stir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had lost the
instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame which burns us lights us also a little, and casts
some useful gleams without. But Marius no longer even heard these mute counsels of passion. He never said
to himself: "What if I were to go to such a place? What if I were to try such and such a thing?" The girl whom
he could no longer call Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what direction he should
seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words; absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.
To see her once again; he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it.
To crown all, his poverty had returned. He felt that icy breath close to him, on his heels. In the midst of his
torments, and long before this, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than
discontinued work; it is a habit which vanishes. A habit which is easy to get rid of, and difficult to take up
again.
A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind
at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects the
overharsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of
the ideas. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brainworker who allows himself to fall
entirely from thought into revery! He thinks that he can reascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that,
after all, it is the same thing. Error!
Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to
confound a poison with a food.
Marius had begun in that way, as the reader will remember. Passion had supervened and had finished the
work of precipitating him into chimaeras without object or bottom. One no longer emerges from one's self
except for the purpose of going off to dream. Idle production. Tumultuous and stagnant gulf. And, in
proportion as labor diminishes, needs increase. This is a law. Man, in a state of revery, is generally prodigal
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Page No 602
and slack; the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds.
There is, in that mode of life, good mingled with evil, for if enervation is baleful, generosity is good and
healthful. But the poor man who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost. Resources are
exhausted, needs crop up.
Fatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as the most feeble and most vicious are
drawn, and which ends in one of two holds, suicide or crime.
By dint of going outdoors to think, the day comes when one goes out to throw one's self in the water.
Excess of revery breeds men like Escousse and Lebras.
Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw.
What we have just written seems strange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being kindles in the
darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees
this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. Shethat was Marius' whole thought. He meditated of
nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, and that his
new coat was growing old, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that his boots were
giving out, and he said to himself: "If I could but see her once again before I die!"
One sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, that her glance had told him so, that she did not
know his name, but that she did know his soul, and that, wherever she was, however mysterious the place,
she still loved him perhaps. Who knows whether she were not thinking of him as he was thinking of her?
Sometimes, in those inexplicable hours such as are experienced by every heart that loves, though he had no
reasons for anything but sadness and yet felt an obscure quiver of joy, he said to himself: "It is her thoughts
that are coming to me!" Then he added: "Perhaps my thoughts reach her also."
This illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, was sufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which
at times resembled hope, into his soul. From time to time, especially at that evening hour which is the most
depressing to even the dreamy, he allowed the purest, the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries
which filled his brain, to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this "writing to her."
It must not be supposed that his reason was deranged. Quite the contrary. He had lost the faculty of working
and of moving firmly towards any fixed goal, but he was endowed with more clearsightedness and rectitude
than ever. Marius surveyed by a calm and real, although peculiar light, what passed before his eyes, even the
most indifferent deeds and men; he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sort of honest dejection
and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself
aloof and soared on high.
In this state of mind nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, and every moment he was discovering the
foundation of life, of humanity, and of destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has
given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart
of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true.
The soul which loves and suffers is in a state of sublimity.
However, day followed day, and nothing new presented itself. It merely seemed to him, that the sombre space
which still remained to be traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant. He thought that he
already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss.
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"What!" he repeated to himself, "shall I not see her again before then!"
When you have ascended the Rue SaintJacques, left the barrier on one side and followed the old inner
boulevard for some distance, you reach the Rue de la Sante, then the Glaciere, and, a little while before
arriving at the little river of the Gobelins, you come to a sort of field which is the only spot in the long and
monotonous chain of the boulevards of Paris, where Ruysdeel would be tempted to sit down.
There is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a green meadow traversed by tightly stretched
lines, from which flutter rags drying in the wind, and an old marketgardener's house, built in the time of
Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid
poplartrees, women, voices, laughter; on the horizon the Pantheon, the pole of the DeafMutes, the
ValdeGrace, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests
of the towers of Notre Dame.
As the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cart or wagoner passes in a quarter of an
hour.
It chanced that Marius' solitary strolls led him to this plot of ground, near the water. That day, there was a
rarity on the boulevard, a passerby. Marius, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of the place,
asked this passerby:"What is the name of this spot?"
The person replied: "It is the Lark's meadow."
And he added: "It was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry."
But after the word "Lark" Marius heard nothing more. These sudden congealments in the state of revery,
which a single word suffices to evoke, do occur. The entire thought is abruptly condensed around an idea, and
it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else.
The Lark was the appellation which had replaced Ursule in the depths of Marius' melancholy."Stop," said
he with a sort of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mysterious asides, "this is her meadow. I shall know
where she lives now."
It was absurd, but irresistible.
And every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.
CHAPTER II. EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE
INCUBATION OF PRISONS
Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been so.
In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Javert had not taken the prisoner prisoner. The
assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this personage, who
had been so precious a capture for the ruffians, would be no less fine a prize for the authorities.
And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.
Another opportunity of laying hands on that "devil's dandy" must be waited for. Montparnasse had, in fact,
encountered Eponine as she stood on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her off,
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Page No 604
preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter rather than Schinderhannes with the father. It was well that he
did so. He was free. As for Eponine, Javert had caused her to be seized; a mediocre consolation. Eponine had
joined Azelma at Les Madelonettes.
And finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had
been lost. It was not known how this had been effected, the police agents and the sergeants "could not
understand it at all." He had converted himself into vapor, he had slipped through the handcuffs, he had
trickled through the crevices of the carriage, the fiacre was cracked, and he had fled; all that they were able to
say was, that on arriving at the prison, there was no Claquesous. Either the fairies or the police had had a
hand in it. Had Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snowflake in water? Had there been unavowed
connivance of the police agents? Did this man belong to the double enigma of order and disorder? Was he
concentric with infraction and repression? Had this sphinx his fore paws in crime and his hind paws in
authority? Javert did not accept such comminations, and would have bristled up against such compromises;
but his squad included other inspectors besides himself, who were more initiated than he, perhaps, although
they were his subordinates in the secrets of the Prefecture, and Claquesous had been such a villain that he
might make a very good agent. It is an excellent thing for ruffianism and an admirable thing for the police to
be on such intimate juggling terms with the night. These doubleedged rascals do exist. However that may
be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found again. Javert appeared to be more irritated than amazed at
this.
As for Marius, "that booby of a lawyer," who had probably become frightened, and whose name Javert had
forgotten, Javert attached very little importance to him. Moreover, a lawyer can be hunted up at any time. But
was he a lawyer after all?
The investigation had begun.
The magistrate had thought it advisable not to put one of these men of the band of Patron Minette in close
confinement, in the hope that he would chatter. This man was Brujon, the longhaired man of the Rue du
PetitBanquier. He had been let loose in the Charlemagne courtyard, and the eyes of the watchers were fixed
on him.
This name of Brujon is one of the souvenirs of La Force. In that hideous courtyard, called the court of the
BatimentNeuf (New Building), which the administration called the court SaintBernard, and which the
robbers called the FosseauxLions (The Lion's Ditch), on that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which
rose on the left to a level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron which led to the ancient chapel of the
ducal residence of La Force, then turned in a dormitory for ruffians, there could still be seen, twelve years
ago, a sort of fortress roughly carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath it this signature:
BRUJON, 1811.
The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.
The latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the Gorbeau house, was a very cunning and very adroit
young spark, with a bewildered and plaintive air. It was in consequence of this plaintive air that the
magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in the Charlemagne yard than in close confinement.
Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands of justice. They do not let themselves
be put out by such a trifle as that. To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning on another
crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and who toil, none the less, on a new work in their
studios.
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Brujon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen standing by the hour together in front
of the sutler's window in the Charlemagne yard, staring like an idiot at the sordid list of prices which began
with: garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with: cigar, 5 centimes. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering
his teeth, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and twenty beds in the fever ward
was vacant.
All at once, towards the end of February, 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had
three different commissions executed by the errandmen of the establishment, not under his own name, but in
the name of three of his comrades; and they had cost him in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted
the attention of the prison corporal.
Inquiries were instituted, and on consulting the tariff of commissions posted in the convict's parlor, it was
learned that the fifty sous could be analyzed as follows: three commissions; one to the Pantheon, ten sous;
one to ValdeGrace, fifteen sous; and one to the Barriere de Grenelle, twentyfive sous. This last was the
dearest of the whole tariff. Now, at the Pantheon, at the ValdeGrace, and at the Barriere de Grenelle were
situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers, alias Bizarre,
Glorieux, an exconvict, and BarreCarosse, upon whom the attention of the police was directed by this
incident. It was thought that these men were members of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet and
Gueulemer, had been captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been addressed, not to houses,
but to people who were waiting for them in the street, must have contained information with regard to some
crime that had been plotted. They were in possession of other indications; they laid hand on the three
prowlers, and supposed that they had circumvented some one or other of Brujon's machinations.
About a week after these measures had been taken, one night, as the superintendent of the watch, who had
been inspecting the lower dormitory in the BatimentNeuf, was about to drop his chestnut in the boxthis
was the means adopted to make sure that the watchmen performed their duties punctually; every hour a
chestnut must be dropped into all the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories a watchman looked
through the peephole of the dormitory and beheld Brujon sitting on his bed and writing something by the
light of the halllamp. The guardian entered, Brujon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were not
able to seize what he had written. The police learned nothing further about it.
What is certain is, that on the following morning, a "postilion" was flung from the Charlemagne yard into the
Lions' Ditch, over the fivestory building which separated the two courtyards.
What prisoners call a "postilion" is a pallet of bread artistically moulded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to
say, over the roofs of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology: over England; from one land to
another; into Ireland. This little pellet falls in the yard. The man who picks it up opens it and finds in it a note
addressed to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds the treasure, he forwards the note to its
destination; if it is a keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold who are called sheep in prisons and foxes in
the galleys, the note is taken to the office and handed over to the police.
On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the person to whom it was addressed was, at that
moment, in solitary confinement. This person was no other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron
Minette.
The postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these two lines were written:
"Babet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden."
This is what Brujon had written the night before.
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In spite of male and female searchers, Babet managed to pass the note on from La Force to the Salpetriere, to
a "good friend" whom he had and who was shut up there. This woman in turn transmitted the note to another
woman of her acquaintance, a certain Magnon, who was strongly suspected by the police, though not yet
arrested. This Magnon, whose name the reader has already seen, had relations with the Thenardier, which
will be described in detail later on, and she could, by going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between the
Salpetriere and Les Madelonettes.
It happened, that at precisely that moment, as proofs were wanting in the investigation directed against
Thenardier in the matter of his daughters, Eponine and Azelma were released. When Eponine came out,
Magnon, who was watching the gate of the Madelonettes, handed her Brujon's note to Babet, charging her to
look into the matter.
Eponine went to the Rue Plumet, recognized the gate and the garden, observed the house, spied, lurked, and,
a few days later, brought to Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon
transmitted to Babet's mistress in the Salpetriere. A biscuit, in the shady symbolism of prisons, signifies:
Nothing to be done.
So that in less than a week from that time, as Brujon and Babet met in the circle of La Force, the one on his
way to the examination, the other on his way from it:
"Well?" asked Brujon, "the Rue P.?"
"Biscuit," replied Babet. Thus did the foetus of crime engendered by Brujon in La Force miscarry.
This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly distinct from Brujon's programme.
The reader will see what they were.
Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.
CHAPTER III. APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF
Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered Father Mabeuf by chance.
While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be called the cellar stairs, and which
lead to places without light, where the happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Mabeuf was descending on
his side.
The Flora of Cauteretz no longer sold at all. The experiments on indigo had not been successful in the little
garden of Austerlitz, which had a bad exposure. M. Mabeuf could cultivate there only a few plants which
love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not become discouraged. He had obtained a corner in the
Jardin des Plantes, with a good exposure, to make his trials with indigo "at his own expense." For this
purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the Flora. He had reduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left
one of these for his old servant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And often his
breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his infantile smile, he had grown morose and no
longer received visitors. Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour when M.
Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man and the young man passed each other on the
Boulevard de l'Hopital. They did not speak, and only exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. A
heartbreaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery looses bonds! Two men who have been
friends become two chance passersby.
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Page No 607
Royal the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books, his garden, or his indigo: these were
the three forms which happiness, pleasure, and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for his living.
He said to himself: "When I shall have made my balls of blueing, I shall be rich, I will withdraw my
copperplates from the pawnshop, I will put my Flora in vogue again with trickery, plenty of money and
advertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know well where, a copy of Pierre de Medine's Art de
Naviguer, with woodcuts, edition of 1655." In the meantime, he toiled all day over his plot of indigo, and at
night he returned home to water his garden, and to read his books. At that epoch, M. Mabeuf was nearly
eighty years of age.
One evening he had a singular apparition.
He had returned home while it was still broad daylight. Mother Plutarque, whose health was declining, was ill
and in bed. He had dined on a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that he had found on
the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturned stone post, which took the place of a bench in his
garden.
Near this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchardgardens, a sort of large chest, of beams and planks,
much dilapidated, a rabbithutch on the ground floor, a fruitcloset on the first. There was nothing in the
hutch, but there were a few apples in the fruitcloset,the remains of the winter's provision.
M. Mabeuf had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid of his glasses, two books of which he
was passionately fond and in which, a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidity
rendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certain degree. The first of these books was the
famous treatise of President Delancre, De l'inconstance des Demons; the other was a quarto by Mutor de la
Rubaudiere, Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de la Bievre. This lastmentioned old volume
interested him all the more, because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in former times.
The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to blacken all below. As he read, over the top of the
book which he held in his hand, Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others a magnificent
rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had
passed; the stalks were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling; all this needed water, the rhododendron
was particularly sad. Father Mabeuf was one of those persons for whom plants have souls. The old man had
toiled all day over his indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose, laid his books on the bench, and
walked, all bent over and with tottering footsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he could
not even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round and cast a glance of anguish toward heaven
which was becoming studded with stars.
The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man beneath an indescribably mournful and
eternal joy. The night promised to be as arid as the day had been.
"Stars everywhere!" thought the old man; "not the tiniest cloud! Not a drop of water!"
And his head, which had been upraised for a moment, fell back upon his breast.
He raised it again, and once more looked at the sky, murmuring:
"A tear of dew! A little pity!"
He tried again to unhook the chain of the well, and could not.
At that moment, he heard a voice saying:
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"Father Mabeuf, would you like to have me water your garden for you?"
At the same time, a noise as of a wild animal passing became audible in the hedge, and he beheld emerging
from the shrubbery a sort of tall, slender girl, who drew herself up in front of him and stared boldly at him.
She had less the air of a human being than of a form which had just blossomed forth from the twilight.
Before Father Mabeuf, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we have said, quick to take alarm, was able
to reply by a single syllable, this being, whose movements had a sort of odd abruptness in the darkness, had
unhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled the wateringpot, and the goodman
beheld this apparition, which had bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flowerbeds
distributing life around her. The sound of the wateringpot on the leaves filled Father Mabeuf's soul with
ecstasy. It seemed to him that the rhododendron was happy now.
The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She watered the whole garden.
There was something about her, as she thus ran about among paths, where her outline appeared perfectly
black, waving her angular arms, and with her fichu all in rags, that resembled a bat.
When she had finished, Father Mabeuf approached her with tears in his eyes, and laid his hand on her brow.
"God will bless you," said he, "you are an angel since you take care of the flowers."
"No," she replied. "I am the devil, but that's all the same to me."
The old man exclaimed, without either waiting for or hearing her response:
"What a pity that I am so unhappy and so poor, and that I can do nothing for you!"
"You can do something," said she.
"What?"
"Tell me where M. Marius lives."
The old man did not understand. "What Monsieur Marius?"
He raised his glassy eyes and seemed to be seeking something that had vanished.
"A young man who used to come here."
In the meantime, M. Mabeuf had searched his memory.
"Ah! yes" he exclaimed. "I know what you mean. Wait! Monsieur Mariusthe Baron Marius Pontmercy,
parbleu! He lives, or rather, he no longer lives,ah well, I don't know."
As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he continued:
"Hold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes in the direction of the Glaciere, Rue
Croulebarbe. The meadow of the Lark. Go there. It is not hard to meet him."
When M. Mabeuf straightened himself up, there was no longer any one there; the girl had disappeared.
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Page No 609
He was decidedly terrified.
"Really," he thought, "if my garden had not been watered, I should think that she was a spirit."
An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell asleep, at that confused moment when
thought, like that fabulous bird which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by little assumes
the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he said to himself in a bewildered way:
"In sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudiere narrates of the goblins. Could it have been a goblin?"
CHAPTER IV. AN APPARITION TO MARIUS
Some days after this visit of a "spirit" to Farmer Mabeuf, one morning, it was on a Monday, the day when
Marius borrowed the hundredsou piece from Courfeyrac for ThenardierMarius had put this coin in his
pocket, and before carrying it to the clerk's office, he had gone "to take a little stroll," in the hope that this
would make him work on his return. It was always thus, however. As soon as he rose, he seated himself
before a book and a sheet of paper in order to scribble some translation; his task at that epoch consisted in
turning into French a celebrated quarrel between Germans, the Gans and Savigny controversy; he took
Savigny, he took Gans, read four lines, tried to write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper,
and rose from his chair, saying: "I shall go out. That will put me in spirits."
And off he went to the Lark's meadow.
There he beheld more than ever the star, and less than ever Savigny and Gans.
He returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed; there was no means of reknotting a
single one of the threads which were broken in his brain; then he said to himself: "I will not go out
tomorrow. It prevents my working." And he went out every day.
He lived in the Lark's meadow more than in Courfeyrac's lodgings. That was his real address: Boulevard de la
Sante, at the seventh tree from the Rue Croulebarbe.
That morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on the parapet of the River des Gobelins.
A cheerful sunlight penetrated the freshly unfolded and luminous leaves.
He was dreaming of "Her." And his meditation turning to a reproach, fell back upon himself; he reflected
dolefully on his idleness, his paralysis of soul, which was gaining on him, and of that night which was
growing more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he no longer even saw the sun.
Nevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas which was not even a monologue, so feeble
had action become in him, and he had no longer the force to care to despair, athwart this melancholy
absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him, beneath him, on both banks of the
river, the laundresses of the Gobelins beating their linen, and above his head, the birds chattering and singing
in the elmtrees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty, the careless happiness of the leisure which has wings;
on the other, the sound of toil. What caused him to meditate deeply, and almost reflect, were two cheerful
sounds.
All at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar voice saying:
"Come! Here he is!"
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He raised his eyes, and recognized that wretched child who had come to him one morning, the elder of the
Thenardier daughters, Eponine; he knew her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier,
two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take. She had accomplished a double progress,
towards the light and towards distress. She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so
resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older now, the holes were larger, the tatters
more sordid. It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild,
and vacillating glance. She had besides, more than formerly, in her face that indescribably terrified and
lamentable something which sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness.
She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through having gone mad from the contagion of
Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in the loft of some stable.
And in spite of it all, she was beautiful. What a star art thou, O youth!
In the meantime, she had halted in front of Marius with a trace of joy in her livid countenance, and something
which resembled a smile.
She stood for several moments as though incapable of speech.
"So I have met you at last!" she said at length. "Father Mabeuf was right, it was on this boulevard! How I
have hunted for you! If you only knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight! They let me out!
seeing that there was nothing against me, and that, moreover, I had not reached years of discretion. I lack two
months of it. Oh! how I have hunted for you! These six weeks! So you don't live down there any more?"
"No," said Marius.
"Ah! I understand. Because of that affair. Those takedowns are disagreeable. You cleared out. Come now!
Why do you wear old hats like this! A young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you know,
Monsieur Marius, Father Mabeuf calls you Baron Marius, I don't know what. It isn't true that you are a
baron? Barons are old fellows, they go to the Luxembourg, in front of the chateau, where there is the most
sun, and they read the Quotidienne for a sou. I once carried a letter to a baron of that sort. He was over a
hundred years old. Say, where do you live now?"
Marius made no reply.
"Ah!" she went on, "you have a hole in your shirt. I must sew it up for you."
She resumed with an expression which gradually clouded over:
"You don't seem glad to see me."
Marius held his peace; she remained silent for a moment, then exclaimed:
"But if I choose, nevertheless, I could force you to look glad!"
"What?" demanded Marius. "What do you mean?"
"Ah! you used to call me thou," she retorted.
"Well, then, what dost thou mean?"
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She bit her lips; she seemed to hesitate, as though a prey to some sort of inward conflict. At last she appeared
to come to a decision.
"So much the worse, I don't care. You have a melancholy air, I want you to be pleased. Only promise me that
you will smile. I want to see you smile and hear you say: `Ah, well, that's good.' Poor Mr. Marius! you know?
You promised me that you would give me anything I like"
"Yes! Only speak!"
She looked Marius full in the eye, and said:
"I have the address."
Marius turned pale. All the blood flowed back to his heart.
"What address?"
"The address that you asked me to get!"
She added, as though with an effort:
"The addressyou know very well!"
"Yes!" stammered Marius.
"Of that young lady."
This word uttered, she sighed deeply.
Marius sprang from the parapet on which he had been sitting and seized her hand distractedly.
"Oh! Well! lead me thither! Tell me! Ask of me anything you wish! Where is it?"
"Come with me," she responded. "I don't know the street or number very well; it is in quite the other direction
from here, but I know the house well, I will take you to it."
She withdrew her hand and went on, in a tone which could have rent the heart of an observer, but which did
not even graze Marius in his intoxicated and ecstatic state:
"Oh! how glad you are!"
A cloud swept across Marius' brow. He seized Eponine by the arm:
"Swear one thing to me!"
"Swear!" said she, "what does that mean? Come! You want me to swear?"
And she laughed.
"Your father! promise me, Eponine! Swear to me that you will not give this address to your father!"
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She turned to him with a stupefied air.
"Eponine! How do you know that my name is Eponine?"
"Promise what I tell you!"
But she did not seem to hear him.
"That's nice! You have called me Eponine!"
Marius grasped both her arms at once.
"But answer me, in the name of Heaven! pay attention to what I am saying to you, swear to me that you will
not tell your father this address that you know!"
"My father!" said she. "Ah yes, my father! Be at ease. He's in close confinement. Besides, what do I care for
my father!"
"But you do not promise me!" exclaimed Marius.
"Let go of me!" she said, bursting into a laugh, "how you do shake me! Yes! Yes! I promise that! I swear that
to you! What is that to me? I will not tell my father the address. There! Is that right? Is that it?"
"Nor to any one?" said Marius.
"Nor to any one."
"Now," resumed Marius, "take me there."
"Immediately?"
"Immediately."
"Come along. Ah! how pleased he is!" said she.
After a few steps she halted.
"You are following me too closely, Monsieur Marius. Let me go on ahead, and follow me so, without
seeming to do it. A nice young man like you must not be seen with a woman like me."
No tongue can express all that lay in that word, woman, thus pronounced by that child.
She proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more; Marius joined her. She addressed him sideways, and
without turning towards him:
"By the way, you know that you promised me something?"
Marius fumbled in his pocket. All that he owned in the world was the five francs intended for Thenardier the
father. He took them and laid them in Eponine's hand.
She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground, and gazed at him with a gloomy air.
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"I don't want your money," said she.
BOOK THIRD.THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET
About the middle of the last century, a chief justice in the Parliament of Paris having a mistress and
concealing the fact, for at that period the grand seignors displayed their mistresses, and the bourgeois
concealed them, had "a little house" built in the Faubourg SaintGermain, in the deserted Rue Blomet, which
is now called Rue Plumet, not far from the spot which was then designated as Combat des Animaux.
This house was composed of a singlestoried pavilion; two rooms on the ground floor, two chambers on the
first floor, a kitchen down stairs, a boudoir up stairs, an attic under the roof, the whole preceded by a garden
with a large gate opening on the street. This garden was about an acre and a half in extent. This was all that
could be seen by passersby; but behind the pavilion there was a narrow courtyard, and at the end of the
courtyard a low building consisting of two rooms and a cellar, a sort of preparation destined to conceal a
child and nurse in case of need. This building communicated in the rear by a masked door which opened by a
secret spring, with a long, narrow, paved winding corridor, open to the sky, hemmed in with two lofty walls,
which, hidden with wonderful art, and lost as it were between garden enclosures and cultivated land, all of
whose angles and detours it followed, ended in another door, also with a secret lock which opened a quarter
of a league away, almost in another quarter, at the solitary extremity of the Rue du Babylone.
Through this the chief justice entered, so that even those who were spying on him and following him would
merely have observed that the justice betook himself every day in a mysterious way somewhere, and would
never have suspected that to go to the Rue de Babylone was to go to the Rue Blomet. Thanks to clever
purchasers of land, the magistrate had been able to make a secret, sewerlike passage on his own property,
and consequently, without interference. Later on, he had sold in little parcels, for gardens and market gardens,
the lots of ground adjoining the corridor, and the proprietors of these lots on both sides thought they had a
party wall before their eyes, and did not even suspect the long, paved ribbon winding between two walls amid
their flowerbeds and their orchards. Only the birds beheld this curiosity. It is probable that the linnets and
tomtits of the last century gossiped a great deal about the chief justice.
The pavilion, built of stone in the taste of Mansard, wainscoted and furnished in the Watteau style, rocaille on
the inside, oldfashioned on the outside, walled in with a triple hedge of flowers, had something discreet,
coquettish, and solemn about it, as befits a caprice of love and magistracy.
This house and corridor, which have now disappeared, were in existence fifteen years ago. In '93 a
coppersmith had purchased the house with the idea of demolishing it, but had not been able to pay the price;
the nation made him bankrupt. So that it was the house which demolished the coppersmith. After that, the
house remained uninhabited, and fell slowly to ruin, as does every dwelling to which the presence of man
does not communicate life. It had remained fitted with its old furniture, was always for sale or to let, and the
ten or a dozen people who passed through the Rue Plumet were warned of the fact by a yellow and illegible
bit of writing which had hung on the garden wall since 1819.
Towards the end of the Restoration, these same passersby might have noticed that the bill had disappeared,
and even that the shutters on the first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had
short curtains, a sign that there was a woman about.
In the month of October, 1829, a man of a certain age had presented himself and had hired the house just as it
stood, including, of course, the back building and the lane which ended in the Rue de Babylone. He had had
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the secret openings of the two doors to this passage repaired. The house, as we have just mentioned, was still
very nearly furnished with the justice's old fitting; the new tenant had ordered some repairs, had added what
was lacking here and there, had replaced the pavingstones in the yard, bricks in the floors, steps in the stairs,
missing bits in the inlaid floors and the glass in the lattice windows, and had finally installed himself there
with a young girl and an elderly maidservant, without commotion, rather like a person who is slipping in
than like a man who is entering his own house. The neighbors did not gossip about him, for the reason that
there were no neighbors.
This unobtrusive tenant was Jean Valjean, the young girl was Cosette. The servant was a woman named
Toussaint, whom Jean Valjean had saved from the hospital and from wretchedness, and who was elderly, a
stammerer, and from the provinces, three qualities which had decided Jean Valjean to take her with him. He
had hired the house under the name of M. Fauchelevent, independent gentleman. In all that has been related
heretofore, the reader has, doubtless, been no less prompt than Thenardier to recognize Jean Valjean.
Why had Jean Valjean quitted the convent of the PetitPicpus? What had happened?
Nothing had happened.
It will be remembered that Jean Valjean was happy in the convent, so happy that his conscience finally took
the alarm. He saw Cosette every day, he felt paternity spring up and develop within him more and more, he
brooded over the soul of that child, he said to himself that she was his, that nothing could take her from him,
that this would last indefinitely, that she would certainly become a nun, being thereto gently incited every
day, that thus the convent was henceforth the universe for her as it was for him, that he should grow old there,
and that she would grow up there, that she would grow old there, and that he should die there; that, in short,
delightful hope, no separation was possible. On reflecting upon this, he fell into perplexity. He interrogated
himself. He asked himself if all that happiness were really his, if it were not composed of the happiness of
another, of the happiness of that child which he, an old man, was confiscating and stealing; if that were not
theft? He said to himself, that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it, that to deprive her in
advance, and in some sort without consulting her, of all joys, under the pretext of saving her from all trials, to
take advantage of her ignorance of her isolation, in order to make an artificial vocation germinate in her, was
to rob a human creature of its nature and to lie to God. And who knows if, when she came to be aware of all
this some day, and found herself a nun to her sorrow, Cosette would not come to hate him? A last, almost
selfish thought, and less heroic than the rest, but which was intolerable to him. He resolved to quit the
convent.
He resolved on this; he recognized with anguish, the fact that it was necessary. As for objections, there were
none. Five years' sojourn between these four walls and of disappearance had necessarily destroyed or
dispersed the elements of fear. He could return tranquilly among men. He had grown old, and all had
undergone a change. Who would recognize him now? And then, to face the worst, there was danger only for
himself, and he had no right to condemn Cosette to the cloister for the reason that he had been condemned to
the galleys. Besides, what is danger in comparison with the right? Finally, nothing prevented his being
prudent and taking his precautions.
As for Cosette's education, it was almost finished and complete.
His determination once taken, he awaited an opportunity. It was not long in presenting itself. Old
Fauchelevent died.
Jean Valjean demanded an audience with the revered prioress and told her that, having come into a little
inheritance at the death of his brother, which permitted him henceforth to live without working, he should
leave the service of the convent and take his daughter with him; but that, as it was not just that Cosette, since
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she had not taken the vows, should have received her education gratuitously, he humbly begged the Reverend
Prioress to see fit that he should offer to the community, as indemnity, for the five years which Cosette had
spent there, the sum of five thousand francs.
It was thus that Jean Valjean quitted the convent of the Perpetual Adoration.
On leaving the convent, he took in his own arms the little valise the key to which he still wore on his person,
and would permit no porter to touch it. This puzzled Cosette, because of the odor of embalming which
proceeded from it.
Let us state at once, that this trunk never quitted him more. He always had it in his chamber. It was the first
and only thing sometimes, that he carried off in his moving when he moved about. Cosette laughed at it, and
called this valise his inseparable, saying: "I am jealous of it."
Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not reappear in the open air without profound anxiety.
He discovered the house in the Rue Plumet, and hid himself from sight there. Henceforth he was in the
possession of the name: Ultime Fauchelevent.
At the same time he hired two other apartments in Paris, in order that he might attract less attention than if he
were to remain always in the same quarter, and so that he could, at need, take himself off at the slightest
disquietude which should assail him, and in short, so that he might not again be caught unprovided as on the
night when he had so miraculously escaped from Javert. These two apartments were very pitiable, poor in
appearance, and in two quarters which were far remote from each other, the one in the Rue de l'Ouest, the
other in the Rue de l'Homme Arme.
He went from time to time, now to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, now to the Rue de l'Ouest, to pass a month or
six weeks, without taking Toussaint. He had himself served by the porters, and gave himself out as a
gentleman from the suburbs, living on his funds, and having a little temporary restingplace in town. This
lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris for the sake of escaping from the police.
CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD
However, properly speaking, he lived in the Rue Plumet, and he had arranged his existence there in the
following fashion:
Cosette and the servant occupied the pavilion; she had the big sleepingroom with the painted pierglasses,
the boudoir with the gilded fillets, the justice's drawingroom furnished with tapestries and vast armchairs;
she had the garden. Jean Valjean had a canopied bed of antique damask in three colors and a beautiful Persian
rug purchased in the Rue du FiguierSaintPaul at Mother Gaucher's, put into Cosette's chamber, and, in
order to redeem the severity of these magnificent old things, he had amalgamated with this bricabrac all
the gay and graceful little pieces of furniture suitable to young girls, an etagere, a bookcase filled with
giltedged books, an inkstand, a blottingbook, paper, a worktable incrusted with mother of pearl, a
silvergilt dressingcase, a toilet service in Japanese porcelain. Long damask curtains with a red foundation
and three colors, like those on the bed, hung at the windows of the first floor. On the ground floor, the
curtains were of tapestry. All winter long, Cosette's little house was heated from top to bottom. Jean Valjean
inhabited the sort of porter's lodge which was situated at the end of the back courtyard, with a mattress on a
foldingbed, a white wood table, two straw chairs, an earthenware waterjug, a few old volumes on a shelf,
his beloved valise in one corner, and never any fire. He dined with Cosette, and he had a loaf of black bread
on the table for his own use.
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When Toussaint came, he had said to her: "It is the young lady who is the mistress of this house.""And
you, monsieur?" Toussaint replied in amazement."I am a much better thing than the master, I am the
father."
Cosette had been taught housekeeping in the convent, and she regulated their expenditure, which was very
modest. Every day, Jean Valjean put his arm through Cosette's and took her for a walk. He led her to the
Luxembourg, to the least frequented walk, and every Sunday he took her to mass at
SaintJacquesduHautPas, because that was a long way off. As it was a very poor quarter, he bestowed
alms largely there, and the poor people surrounded him in church, which had drawn down upon him
Thenardier's epistle: "To the benevolent gentleman of the church of SaintJacquesduHautPas." He was
fond of taking Cosette to visit the poor and the sick. No stranger ever entered the house in the Rue Plumet.
Toussaint brought their provisions, and Jean Valjean went himself for water to a fountain near by on the
boulevard. Their wood and wine were put into a halfsubterranean hollow lined with rockwork which lay
near the Rue de Babylone and which had formerly served the chiefjustice as a grotto; for at the epoch of
follies and "Little Houses" no love was without a grotto.
In the door opening on the Rue de Babylone, there was a box destined for the reception of letters and papers;
only, as the three inhabitants of the pavilion in the Rue Plumet received neither papers nor letters, the entire
usefulness of that box, formerly the gobetween of a love affair, and the confidant of a lovelorn lawyer, was
now limited to the taxcollector's notices, and the summons of the guard. For M. Fauchelevent, independent
gentleman, belonged to the national guard; he had not been able to escape through the fine meshes of the
census of 1831. The municipal information collected at that time had even reached the convent of the
PetitPicpus, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud, whence Jean Valjean had emerged in venerable guise,
and, consequently, worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the townhall.
Three or four times a year, Jean Valjean donned his uniform and mounted guard; he did this willingly,
however; it was a correct disguise which mixed him with every one, and yet left him solitary. Jean Valjean
had just attained his sixtieth birthday, the age of legal exemption; but he did not appear to be over fifty;
moreover, he had no desire to escape his sergeantmajor nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he possessed
no civil status, he was concealing his name, he was concealing his identity, so he concealed his age, he
concealed everything; and, as we have just said, he willingly did his duty as a national guard; the sum of his
ambition lay in resembling any other man who paid his taxes. This man had for his ideal, within, the angel,
without, the bourgeois.
Let us note one detail, however; when Jean Valjean went out with Cosette, he dressed as the reader has
already seen, and had the air of a retired officer. When he went out alone, which was generally at night, he
was always dressed in a workingman's trousers and blouse, and wore a cap which concealed his face. Was
this precaution or humility? Both. Cosette was accustomed to the enigmatical side of her destiny, and hardly
noticed her father's peculiarities. As for Toussaint, she venerated Jean Valjean, and thought everything he did
right.
One day, her butcher, who had caught a glimpse of Jean Valjean, said to her: "That's a queer fish." She
replied: "He's a saint."
Neither Jean Valjean nor Cosette nor Toussaint ever entered or emerged except by the door on the Rue de
Babylone. Unless seen through the garden gate it would have been difficult to guess that they lived in the Rue
Plumet. That gate was always closed. Jean Valjean had left the garden uncultivated, in order not to attract
attention.
In this, possibly, he made a mistake.
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CHAPTER III. FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS
The garden thus left to itself for more than half a century had become extraordinary and charming. The
passersby of forty years ago halted to gaze at it, without a suspicion of the secrets which it hid in its fresh
and verdant depths. More than one dreamer of that epoch often allowed his thoughts and his eyes to penetrate
indiscreetly between the bars of that ancient, padlocked gate, twisted, tottering, fastened to two green and
mosscovered pillars, and oddly crowned with a pediment of undecipherable arabesque.
There was a stone bench in one corner, one or two mouldy statues, several lattices which had lost their nails
with time, were rotting on the wall, and there were no walks nor turf; but there was enough grass everywhere.
Gardening had taken its departure, and nature had returned. Weeds abounded, which was a great piece of luck
for a poor corner of land. The festival of gilliflowers was something splendid. Nothing in this garden
obstructed the sacred effort of things towards life; venerable growth reigned there among them. The trees had
bent over towards the nettles, the plant had sprung upward, the branch had inclined, that which crawls on the
earth had gone in search of that which expands in the air, that which floats on the wind had bent over towards
that which trails in the moss; trunks, boughs, leaves, fibres, clusters, tendrils, shoots, spines, thorns, had
mingled, crossed, married, confounded themselves in each other; vegetation in a deep and close embrace, had
celebrated and accomplished there, under the wellpleased eye of the Creator, in that enclosure three hundred
feet square, the holy mystery of fraternity, symbol of the human fraternity. This garden was no longer a
garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as peopled as a city,
quivering like a nest, sombre like a cathedral, fragrant like a bouquet, solitary as a tomb, living as a throng.
In Floreal[34] this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret
labor of germination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic
love, and which feels the sap of April rising and boiling in its veins, and shakes to the wind its enormous
wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the
pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity,
beauty, life, joy, perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine
spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay
shadows of verdure, a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul, and what the twittering forgot to
say the humming completed. In the evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a
shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and
convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals of the
woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches; one felt the sacred intimacy of
the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings.
[34] From April 19 to May 20.
In winter the thicket was black, dripping, bristling, shivering, and allowed some glimpse of the house. Instead
of flowers on the branches and dew in the flowers, the long silvery tracks of the snails were visible on the
cold, thick carpet of yellow leaves; but in any fashion, under any aspect, at all seasons, spring, winter,
summer, autumn, this tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence
of man, the presence of God; and the rusty old gate had the air of saying: "This garden belongs to me."
It was of no avail that the pavements of Paris were there on every side, the classic and splendid hotels of the
Rue de Varennes a couple of paces away, the dome of the Invalides close at hand, the Chamber of Deputies
not far off; the carriages of the Rue de Bourgogne and of the Rue SaintDominique rumbled luxuriously, in
vain, in the vicinity, in vain did the yellow, brown, white, and red omnibuses cross each other's course at the
neighboring crossroads; the Rue Plumet was the desert; and the death of the former proprietors, the
revolution which had passed over it, the crumbling away of ancient fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, forty
years of abandonment and widowhood, had sufficed to restore to this privileged spot ferns, mulleins,
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hemlock, yarrow, tall weeds, great crimped plants, with large leaves of pale green cloth, lizards, beetles,
uneasy and rapid insects; to cause to spring forth from the depths of the earth and to reappear between those
four walls a certain indescribable and savage grandeur; and for nature, which disconcerts the petty
arrangements of man, and which sheds herself always thoroughly where she diffuses herself at all, in the ant
as well as in the eagle, to blossom out in a petty little Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as
in a virgin forest of the New World.
Nothing is small, in fact; any one who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows
this. Although no absolute satisfaction is given to philosophy, either to circumscribe the cause or to limit the
effect, the contemplator falls into those unfathomable ecstasies caused by these decompositions of force
terminating in unity. Everything toils at everything.
Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm
that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a
molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who
knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes
in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is
little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are
marvellous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing
despises the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the
azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers.
All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting
forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an
earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two
possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of
stars. The same promiscuousness, and yet more unprecedented, exists between the things of the intelligence
and the facts of substance. Elements and principles mingle, combine, wed, multiply with each other, to such a
point that the material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is
perpetually returning upon itself. In the vast cosmic exchanges the universal life goes and comes in unknown
quantities, rolling entirely in the invisible mystery of effluvia, employing everything, not losing a single
dream, not a single slumber, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling to bits a planet there, oscillating and
winding, making of light a force and of thought an element, disseminated and invisible, dissolving all, except
that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soulatom; expanding everything in God,
entangling all activity, from summit to base, in the obscurity of a dizzy mechanism, attaching the flight of an
insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the
evolution of the comet in the firmament to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made
of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac.
CHAPTER IV. CHANGE OF GATE
It seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton mysteries, had been transformed and
become fitted to shelter chaste mysteries. There were no longer either arbors, or bowling greens, or tunnels,
or grottos; there was a magnificent, dishevelled obscurity falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made
over into Eden. It is impossible to say what element of repentance had rendered this retreat wholesome. This
flowergirl now offered her blossom to the soul. This coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised,
had returned to virginity and modesty. A justice assisted by a gardener, a goodman who thought that he was a
continuation of Lamoignon, and another goodman who thought that he was a continuation of Lenotre, had
turned it about, cut, ruffled, decked, moulded it to gallantry; nature had taken possession of it once more, had
filled it with shade, and had arranged it for love.
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There was, also, in this solitude, a heart which was quite ready. Love had only to show himself; he had here a
temple composed of verdure, grass, moss, the sight of birds, tender shadows, agitated branches, and a soul
made of sweetness, of faith, of candor, of hope, of aspiration, and of illusion.
Cosette had left the convent when she was still almost a child; she was a little more than fourteen, and she
was at the "ungrateful age"; we have already said, that with the exception of her eyes, she was homely rather
than pretty; she had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid and bold at once, a grownup
little girl, in short.
Her education was finished, that is to say, she has been taught religion, and even and above all, devotion; then
"history," that is to say the thing that bears that name in convents, geography, grammar, the participles, the
kings of France, a little music, a little drawing, etc.; but in all other respects she was utterly ignorant, which is
a great charm and a great peril. The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that
are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber. She should be gently and discreetly
enlightened, rather with the reflection of realities than with their harsh and direct light. A useful and
graciously austere halflight which dissipates puerile fears and obviates falls. There is nothing but the
maternal instinct, that admirable intuition composed of the memories of the virgin and the experience of the
woman, which knows how this halflight is to be created and of what it should consist.
Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in
the formation of a young girl's soul.
Cosette had had no mother. She had only had many mothers, in the plural.
As for Jean Valjean, he was, indeed, all tenderness, all solicitude; but he was only an old man and he knew
nothing at all.
Now, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing a woman for life, what science is required to
combat that vast ignorance which is called innocence!
Nothing prepares a young girl for passions like the convent. The convent turns the thoughts in the direction of
the unknown. The heart, thus thrown back upon itself, works downward within itself, since it cannot
overflow, and grows deep, since it cannot expand. Hence visions, suppositions, conjectures, outlines of
romances, a desire for adventures, fantastic constructions, edifices built wholly in the inner obscurity of the
mind, sombre and secret abodes where the passions immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open gate
permits them to enter. The convent is a compression which, in order to triumph over the human heart, should
last during the whole life.
On quitting the convent, Cosette could have found nothing more sweet and more dangerous than the house in
the Rue Plumet. It was the continuation of solitude with the beginning of liberty; a garden that was closed,
but a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous, and fragrant; the same dreams as in the convent, but with
glimpses of young men; a grating, but one that opened on the street.
Still, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child. Jean Valjean gave this neglected garden over to
her. "Do what you like with it," he said to her. This amused Cosette; she turned over all the clumps and all the
stones, she hunted for "beasts"; she played in it, while awaiting the time when she would dream in it; she
loved this garden for the insects that she found beneath her feet amid the grass, while awaiting the day when
she would love it for the stars that she would see through the boughs above her head.
And then, she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean, with all her soul, with an innocent filial passion
which made the goodman a beloved and charming companion to her. It will be remembered that M.
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Madeleine had been in the habit of reading a great deal. Jean Valjean had continued this practice; he had
come to converse well; he possessed the secret riches and the eloquence of a true and humble mind which has
spontaneously cultivated itself. He retained just enough sharpness to season his kindness; his mind was rough
and his heart was soft. During their conversations in the Luxembourg, he gave her explanations of everything,
drawing on what he had read, and also on what he had suffered. As she listened to him, Cosette's eyes
wandered vaguely about.
This simple man sufficed for Cosette's thought, the same as the wild garden sufficed for her eyes. When she
had had a good chase after the butterflies, she came panting up to him and said: "Ah! How I have run!" He
kissed her brow.
Cosette adored the goodman. She was always at his heels. Where Jean Valjean was, there happiness was.
Jean Valjean lived neither in the pavilion nor the garden; she took greater pleasure in the paved back
courtyard, than in the enclosure filled with flowers, and in his little lodge furnished with strawseated chairs
than in the great drawingroom hung with tapestry, against which stood tufted easychairs. Jean Valjean
sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in being importuned: "Do go to your own quarters! Leave me
alone a little!"
She gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are so graceful when they come from a daughter to
her father.
"Father, I am very cold in your rooms; why don't you have a carpet here and a stove?"
"Dear child, there are so many people who are better than I and who have not even a roof over their heads."
"Then why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything that is needed?"
"Because you are a woman and a child."
"Bah! must men be cold and feel uncomfortable?"
"Certain men."
"That is good, I shall come here so often that you will be obliged to have a fire."
And again she said to him:
"Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?"
"Because, my daughter."
"Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too."
Then, in order to prevent Cosette eating black bread, Jean Valjean ate white bread.
Cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood. She prayed morning and evening for her mother
whom she had never known. The Thenardiers had remained with her as two hideous figures in a dream. She
remembered that she had gone "one day, at night," to fetch water in a forest. She thought that it had been very
far from Paris. It seemed to her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and that it was Jean Valjean who had
rescued her from it. Her childhood produced upon her the effect of a time when there had been nothing
around her but millepeds, spiders, and serpents. When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as
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she had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean's daughter, and that he was her father, she fancied that
the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her.
When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair, and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself:
"Perhaps this man is my mother."
Cosette, although this is a strange statement to make, in the profound ignorance of a girl brought up in a
convent, maternity being also absolutely unintelligible to virginity, had ended by fancying that she had
had as little mother as possible. She did not even know her mother's name. Whenever she asked Jean Valjean,
Jean Valjean remained silent. If she repeated her question, he responded with a smile. Once she insisted; the
smile ended in a tear.
This silence on the part of Jean Valjean covered Fantine with darkness.
Was it prudence? Was it respect? Was it a fear that he should deliver this name to the hazards of another
memory than his own?
So long as Cosette had been small, Jean Valjean had been willing to talk to her of her mother; when she
became a young girl, it was impossible for him to do so. It seemed to him that he no longer dared. Was it
because of Cosette? Was it because of Fantine? He felt a certain religious horror at letting that shadow enter
Cosette's thought; and of placing a third in their destiny. The more sacred this shade was to him, the more did
it seem that it was to be feared. He thought of Fantine, and felt himself overwhelmed with silence.
Through the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which appeared to have its finger on its lips. Had all
the modesty which had been in Fantine, and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime, returned to
rest upon her after her death, to watch in indignation over the peace of that dead woman, and in its shyness, to
keep her in her grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We who believe in death,
are not among the number who will reject this mysterious explanation.
Hence the impossibility of uttering, even for Cosette, that name of Fantine.
One day Cosette said to him:
"Father, I saw my mother in a dream last night. She had two big wings. My mother must have been almost a
saint during her life."
"Through martyrdom," replied Jean Valjean.
However, Jean Valjean was happy.
When Cosette went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud and happy, in the plenitude of her heart. Jean
Valjean felt his heart melt within him with delight, at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive, so wholly
satisfied with himself alone. The poor man trembled, inundated with angelic joy; he declared to himself
ecstatically that this would last all their lives; he told himself that he really had not suffered sufficiently to
merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted him to be loved
thus, he, a wretch, by that innocent being.
CHAPTER V. THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR
One day, Cosette chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said to herself: "Really!" It seemed to her
almost that she was pretty. This threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she had
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never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she did not look at herself. And then, she had so
often been told that she was homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: "No indeed! no indeed!" At all events,
Cosette had always thought herself homely, and had grown up in that belief with the easy resignation of
childhood. And here, all at once, was her mirror saying to her, as Jean Valjean had said: "No indeed!" That
night, she did not sleep. "What if I were pretty!" she thought. "How odd it would be if I were pretty!" And
she recalled those of her companions whose beauty had produced a sensation in the convent, and she said to
herself: "What! Am I to be like Mademoiselle SoandSo?"
The next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time, and she was assailed with doubts:
"Where did I get such an idea?" said she; "no, I am ugly." She had not slept well, that was all, her eyes were
sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the preceding evening in the belief that she was
beautiful, but it made her very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at herself again,
and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hair with her back turned to the mirror.
In the evening, after dinner, she generally embroidered in wool or did some convent needlework in the
drawingroom, and Jean Valjean read beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was rendered
quite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her.
On another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemed to her that some one behind her, whom
she did not see, said: "A pretty woman! but badly dressed." "Bah!" she thought, "he does not mean me. I am
well dressed and ugly." She was then wearing a plush hat and her merino gown.
At last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard poor old Toussaint saying: "Do you notice how pretty
Cosette is growing, sir?" Cosette did not hear her father's reply, but Toussaint's words caused a sort of
commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up to her room, flew to the lookingglass,it was three
months since she had looked at herself,and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled herself.
She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was
formed, her skin had grown white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her
blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like the sudden advent of daylight;
other people noticed it also, Toussaint had said so, it was evidently she of whom the passerby had spoken,
there could no longer be any doubt of that; she descended to the garden again, thinking herself a queen,
imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among the
trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible delight.
Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppression at heart.
In fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror that beauty which seemed to grow more
radiant every day on Cosette's sweet face. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him.
Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became aware of it herself. But, from the very
first day, that unexpected light which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl's person,
wounded Jean Valjean's sombre eye. He felt that it was a change in a happy life, a life so happy that he did
not dare to move for fear of disarranging something. This man, who had passed through all manner of
distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who had been almost wicked and who had
become almost a saint, who, after having dragged the chain of the galleys, was now dragging the invisible but
heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the law had not released from its grasp and who could be
seized at any moment and brought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad daylight of public
opprobrium, this man accepted all, excused all, pardoned all, and merely asked of Providence, of man, of the
law, of society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love him!
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That Cosette might continue to love him! That God would not prevent the heart of the child from coming to
him, and from remaining with him! Beloved by Cosette, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loaded
with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was well with him! He asked nothing more!
Had any one said to him: "Do you want anything better?" he would have answered: "No." God might have
said to him: "Do you desire heaven?" and he would have replied: "I should lose by it."
Everything which could affect this situation, if only on the surface, made him shudder like the beginning of
something new. He had never known very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means; but he
understood instinctively, that it was something terrible.
He gazed with terror on this beauty, which was blossoming out ever more triumphant and superb beside him,
beneath his very eyes, on the innocent and formidable brow of that child, from the depths of her homeliness,
of his old age, of his misery, of his reprobation.
He said to himself: "How beautiful she is! What is to become of me?"
There, moreover, lay the difference between his tenderness and the tenderness of a mother. What he beheld
with anguish, a mother would have gazed upon with joy.
The first symptoms were not long in making their appearance.
On the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself: "Decidedly I am beautiful!" Cosette began
to pay attention to her toilet. She recalled the remark of that passerby: "Pretty, but badly dressed," the breath
of an oracle which had passed beside her and had vanished, after depositing in her heart one of the two germs
which are destined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other.
With faith in her beauty, the whole feminine soul expanded within her. She conceived a horror for her
merinos, and shame for her plush hat. Her father had never refused her anything. She at once acquired the
whole science of the bonnet, the gown, the mantle, the boot, the cuff, the stuff which is in fashion, the color
which is becoming, that science which makes of the Parisian woman something so charming, so deep, and so
dangerous. The words heady woman were invented for the Parisienne.
In less than a month, little Cosette, in that Thebaid of the Rue de Babylone, was not only one of the prettiest,
but one of the "best dressed" women in Paris, which means a great deal more.
She would have liked to encounter her "passerby," to see what he would say, and to "teach him a lesson!"
The truth is, that she was ravishing in every respect, and that she distinguished the difference between a
bonnet from Gerard and one from Herbaut in the most marvellous way.
Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he could never do anything but crawl,
walk at the most, beheld wings sprouting on Cosette.
Moreover, from the mere inspection of Cosette's toilet, a woman would have recognized the fact that she had
no mother. Certain little proprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed by Cosette. A
mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girl does not dress in damask.
The first day that Cosette went out in her black damask gown and mantle, and her white crape bonnet, she
took Jean Valjean's arm, gay, radiant, rosy, proud, dazzling. "Father," she said, "how do you like me in this
guise?" Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voice of an envious man: "Charming!" He
was the same as usual during their walk. On their return home, he asked Cosette:
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"Won't you put on that other gown and bonnet again,you know the ones I mean?"
This took place in Cosette's chamber. Cosette turned towards the wardrobe where her castoff schoolgirl's
clothes were hanging.
"That disguise!" said she. "Father, what do you want me to do with it? Oh no, the idea! I shall never put on
those horrors again. With that machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Maddog."
Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh.
From that moment forth, he noticed that Cosette, who had always heretofore asked to remain at home, saying:
"Father, I enjoy myself more here with you," now was always asking to go out. In fact, what is the use of
having a handsome face and a delicious costume if one does not display them?
He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste for the back garden. Now she preferred the garden,
and did not dislike to promenade back and forth in front of the railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy, never
set foot in the garden. He kept to his back yard, like a dog.
Cosette, in gaining the knowledge that she was beautiful, lost the grace of ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for
beauty enhanced by ingenuousness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a dazzling and innocent creature
who walks along, holding in her hand the key to paradise without being conscious of it. But what she had lost
in ingenuous grace, she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole person, permeated with the joy of
youth, of innocence, and of beauty, breathed forth a splendid melancholy.
It was at this epoch that Marius, after the lapse of six months, saw her once more at the Luxembourg.
CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE BEGUN
Cosette in her shadow, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal
patience, slowly drew together these two beings, all charged and all languishing with the stormy electricity of
passion, these two souls which were laden with love as two clouds are laden with lightning, and which were
bound to overflow and mingle in a look like the clouds in a flash of fire.
The glance has been so much abused in love romances that it has finally fallen into disrepute. One hardly
dares to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people
do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the rest comes afterwards. Nothing is
more real than these great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of that spark.
At that particular hour when Cosette unconsciously darted that glance which troubled Marius, Marius had no
suspicion that he had also launched a look which disturbed Cosette.
He caused her the same good and the same evil.
She had been in the habit of seeing him for a long time, and she had scrutinized him as girls scrutinize and
see, while looking elsewhere. Marius still considered Cosette ugly, when she had already begun to think
Marius handsome. But as he paid no attention to her, the young man was nothing to her.
Still, she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, handsome teeth, a
charming tone of voice when she heard him conversing with his comrades, that he held himself badly when
he walked, if you like, but with a grace that was all his own, that he did not appear to be at all stupid, that his
whole person was noble, gentle, simple, proud, and that, in short, though he seemed to be poor, yet his air
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was fine.
On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those first, obscure, and ineffable things which
the glance lisps, Cosette did not immediately understand. She returned thoughtfully to the house in the Rue
de l'Ouest, where Jean Valjean, according to his custom, had come to spend six weeks. The next morning, on
waking, she thought of that strange young man, so long indifferent and icy, who now seemed to pay attention
to her, and it did not appear to her that this attention was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on
the contrary, somewhat incensed at this handsome and disdainful individual. A substratum of war stirred
within her. It struck her, and the idea caused her a wholly childish joy, that she was going to take her revenge
at last.
Knowing that she was beautiful, she was thoroughly conscious, though in an indistinct fashion, that she
possessed a weapon. Women play with their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.
The reader will recall Marius' hesitations, his palpitations, his terrors. He remained on his bench and did not
approach. This vexed Cosette. One day, she said to Jean Valjean: "Father, let us stroll about a little in that
direction." Seeing that Marius did not come to her, she went to him. In such cases, all women resemble
Mahomet. And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl
it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each
other and assuming, each the other's qualities.
That day, Cosette's glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius' glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius
went away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other.
The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had
become black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young girls, which
is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is its sun.
Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. On the
books of profane music which entered the convent, amour (love) was replaced by tambour (drum) or
pandour. This created enigmas which exercised the imaginations of the big girls, such as: Ah, how delightful
is the drum! or, Pity is not a pandour. But Cosette had left the convent too early to have occupied herself
much with the "drum." Therefore, she did not know what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the
less ill because one does not know the name of one's malady?
She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good
thing or a bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved. She would
have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: "You do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not
eat? Why, that is very bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not be! You blush
and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears at the end of a certain green walk? But that is
abominable!" She would not have understood, and she would have replied: "What fault is there of mine in a
matter in which I have no power and of which I know nothing?"
It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of
admiration at a distance, a mute contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of youth to
youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet remaining a dream, the longedfor phantom realized and
made flesh at last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor defect; in a word, the
distant lover who lingered in the ideal, a chimaera with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting would
have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half immersed in the exaggerated mists of the
cloister. She had all the fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent, with
which she had been permeated for the space of five years, was still in the process of slow evaporation from
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her person, and made everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he was not even an
admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as something charming, luminous, and
impossible.
As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him with all frankness.
Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with impatience, she found Marius there, she felt
herself unspeakably happy, and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought when she
said to Jean Valjean:
"What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!"
Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute
each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated
by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other.
It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed, beautiful and loving, with a
consciousness of her beauty, and in ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to boot through her ignorance.
CHAPTER VII. TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF
All situations have their instincts. Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the
presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew
nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on
one side of him something in process of construction, and on the other, something which was crumbling
away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all
he could to keep out of sight of "the father." Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes espied
him. Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward
daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to
be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every
day; Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves;
in short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man.
Cosette allowed nothing to be divined. Without knowing just what was the matter with her she was convinced
that there was something in it, and that it must be concealed.
There was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had recently come to Cosette, and the habit of
new clothes developed by that stranger which was very repugnant to Jean Valjean. It might be accidental, no
doubt, certainly, but it was a menacing accident.
He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger. One day, however, he could not refrain from so
doing, and, with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair, he said to her:
"What a very pedantic air that young man has!"
Cosette, but a year before only an indifferent little girl, would have replied: "Why, no, he is charming." Ten
years later, with the love of Marius in her heart, she would have answered: "A pedant, and insufferable to the
sight! You are right!" At the moment in life and the heart which she had then attained, she contented
herself with replying, with supreme calmness: "That young man!"
As though she now beheld him for the first time in her life.
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"How stupid I am!" thought Jean Valjean. "She had not noticed him. It is I who have pointed him out to her."
Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!
It is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and trouble, of those vivacious conflicts between a first
love and the first obstacles, that the young girl does not allow herself to be caught in any trap whatever, and
that the young man falls into every one. Jean Valjean had instituted an undeclared war against Marius, which
Marius, with the sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean Valjean laid a host of
ambushes for him; he changed his hour, he changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came alone to
the Luxembourg; Marius dashed headlong into all these snares; and to all the interrogation marks planted by
Jean Valjean in his pathway, he ingenuously answered "yes." But Cosette remained immured in her apparent
unconcern and in her imperturbable tranquillity, so that Jean Valjean arrived at the following conclusion:
"That ninny is madly in love with Cosette, but Cosette does not even know that he exists."
None the less did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor. The minute when Cosette would love might strike at
any moment. Does not everything begin with indifference?
Only once did Cosette make a mistake and alarm him. He rose from his seat to depart, after a stay of three
hours, and she said: "What, already?"
Jean Valjean had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg, as he did not wish to do anything out of the
way, and as, above all things, he feared to arouse Cosette; but during the hours which were so sweet to the
lovers, while Cosette was sending her smile to the intoxicated Marius, who perceived nothing else now, and
who now saw nothing in all the world but an adored and radiant face, Jean Valjean was fixing on Marius
flashing and terrible eyes. He, who had finally come to believe himself incapable of a malevolent feeling,
experienced moments when Marius was present, in which he thought he was becoming savage and ferocious
once more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had formerly contained so much wrath, opening once
more and rising up against that young man. It almost seemed to him that unknown craters were forming in his
bosom.
What! he was there, that creature! What was he there for? He came creeping about, smelling out, examining,
trying! He came, saying: "Hey! Why not?" He came to prowl about his, Jean Valjean's, life! to prowl about
his happiness, with the purpose of seizing it and bearing it away!
Jean Valjean added: "Yes, that's it! What is he in search of? An adventure! What does he want? A love affair!
A love affair! And I? What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most unhappy, and I
have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown
old without having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives, without friends, without life,
without children, I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every milepost, along every
wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious,
I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done
and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the
moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what
I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I
shall lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has pleased a great booby to come and
lounge at the Luxembourg."
Then his eyes were filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam.
It was no longer a man gazing at a man; it was no longer an enemy surveying an enemy. It was a dog
scanning a thief.
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The reader knows the rest. Marius pursued his senseless course. One day he followed Cosette to the Rue de
l'Ouest. Another day he spoke to the porter. The porter, on his side, spoke, and said to Jean Valjean:
"Monsieur, who is that curious young man who is asking for you?" On the morrow Jean Valjean bestowed on
Marius that glance which Marius at last perceived. A week later, Jean Valjean had taken his departure. He
swore to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg or in the Rue de l'Ouest. He
returned to the Rue Plumet.
Cosette did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions, she did not seek to learn his reasons; she
had already reached the point where she was afraid of being divined, and of betraying herself. Jean Valjean
had no experience of these miseries, the only miseries which are charming and the only ones with which he
was not acquainted; the consequence was that he did not understand the grave significance of Cosette's
silence.
He merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy. On his side and on hers, inexperience had
joined issue.
Once he made a trial. He asked Cosette:
"Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?"
A ray illuminated Cosette's pale face.
"Yes," said she.
They went thither. Three months had elapsed. Marius no longer went there. Marius was not there.
On the following day, Jean Valjean asked Cosette again:
"Would you like to come to the Luxembourg?"
She replied, sadly and gently:
"No."
Jean Valjean was hurt by this sadness, and heartbroken at this gentleness.
What was going on in that mind which was so young and yet already so impenetrable? What was on its way
there within? What was taking place in Cosette's soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean
remained seated on his pallet, with his head in his hands, and he passed whole nights asking himself: "What
has Cosette in her mind?" and in thinking of the things that she might be thinking about.
Oh! at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast towards that cloister, that chaste peak, that abode of
angels, that inaccessible glacier of virtue! How he contemplated, with despairing ecstasy, that convent
garden, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where all perfumes and all souls mount straight to
heaven! How he adored that Eden forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily and madly emerged!
How he regretted his abnegation and his folly in having brought Cosette back into the world, poor hero of
sacrifice, seized and hurled to the earth by his very selfdevotion! How he said to himself, "What have I
done?"
However, nothing of all this was perceptible to Cosette. No illtemper, no harshness. His face was always
serene and kind. Jean Valjean's manners were more tender and more paternal than ever. If anything could
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have betrayed his lack of joy, it was his increased suavity.
On her side, Cosette languished. She suffered from the absence of Marius as she had rejoiced in his presence,
peculiarly, without exactly being conscious of it. When Jean Valjean ceased to take her on their customary
strolls, a feminine instinct murmured confusedly, at the bottom of her heart, that she must not seem to set
store on the Luxembourg garden, and that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her, her father would
take her thither once more. But days, weeks, months, elapsed. Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's
tacit consent. She regretted it. It was too late. So Marius had disappeared; all was over. The day on which she
returned to the Luxembourg, Marius was no longer there. What was to be done? Should she ever find him
again? She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day; she no
longer knew whether it was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were
singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than
the Tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not enough,
whether Toussaint had
done "her marketing" well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her
eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has
vanished.
However, she did not allow Jean Valjean to perceive anything of this, except her pallor.
She still wore her sweet face for him.
This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean. Sometimes he asked her:
"What is the matter with you?"
She replied: "There is nothing the matter with me."
And after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also, she would add:
"And you, fatheris there anything wrong with you?"
"With me? Nothing," said he.
These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching an affection, and who had
lived so long for each other now suffered side by side, each on the other's account; without acknowledging it
to each other, without anger towards each other, and with a smile.
CHAPTER VIII. THE CHAINGANG
Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar
radiance.
At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It is the property of grief to cause the
childish side of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him.
He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter.
These ideas, puerile, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very
childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once
chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant
of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that
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suit which was an incontestable thing; and if Cosette could behold him thus, she would be dazzled, and when
he had Cosette on his arm and passed the gates of the Tuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that
would suffice for Cosette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men.
An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections.
In the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwell in the Rue Plumet, they had contracted
one habit. They sometimes took a pleasure trip to see the sun rise, a mild species of enjoyment which befits
those who are entering life and those who are quitting it.
For those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalent to a stroll by night, with the
cheerfulness of nature added. The streets are deserted and the birds are singing. Cosette, a bird herself, liked
to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the preceding evening. He proposed, and she
agreed. It was arranged like a plot, they set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights
for Cosette. These innocent eccentricities please young people.
Jean Valjean's inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to
forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which
were almost confounded with the city, where grew in summer sickly grain, and which, in autumn, after the
harvest had been gathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, but peeled. Jean Valjean
loved to haunt these fields. Cosette was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she
became a little girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off her hat, laid it on Jean Valjean's
knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them;
gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling
and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her
head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a
crown of burning embers.
Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early strolls.
One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of the autumn of 1831, they set out, and
found themselves at break of day near the Barriere du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a delightful
and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens
all white, a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. A lark, which
seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a prodigious height, and one would have declared that that
hymn of pettiness calmed immensity. In the East, the ValdeGrace projected its dark mass on the clear
horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus dazzlingly brilliant was rising behind that dome and had the air of
a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice.
All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road; a few stray laborers, of whom they caught barely a
glimpse, were on their way to their work along the sidepaths.
Jean Valjean was sitting in a crosswalk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timberyard. His face was
turned towards the highway, his back towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point of
rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the mind becomes concentrated, which
imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be called
vertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return to earth. Jean Valjean had plunged into
one of these reveries. He was thinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between
him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a light which was but the emanation of her soul. He
was almost happy in his revery. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they
turned rosy.
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All at once Cosette exclaimed: "Father, I should think some one was coming yonder." Jean Valjean raised his
eyes.
Cosette was right. The causeway which leads to the ancient Barriere du Maine is a prolongation, as the reader
knows, of the Rue de Sevres, and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the causeway
and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard a noise which it was difficult to account for at
that hour, and a sort of confused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was coming from the
boulevard was turning into the road.
It grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was bristling and quivering; it seemed to be
a vehicle, but its load could not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts; whips were
cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although bathed in shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which
had just turned from the boulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towards the barrier
near which sat Jean Valjean; a second, of the same aspect, followed, then a third, then a fourth; seven chariots
made their appearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of the wagon in front. Figures
were moving on these vehicles, flashes were visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords
there, a clanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains, and as this something advanced, the
sound of voices waxed louder, and it turned into a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams.
As it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the trees with the pallid hue of an apparition;
the mass grew white; the day, which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap which was
at once both sepulchral and living, the heads of the figures turned into the faces of corpses, and this is what it
proved to be:
Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six were singularly constructed. They resembled
coopers' drays; they consisted of long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rear
extremities. Each dray, or rather let us say, each ladder, was attached to four horses harnessed tandem. On
these ladders strange clusters of men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divined rather
than seen. Twentyfour on each vehicle, twelve on a side, back to back, facing the passersby, their legs
dangling in the air,this was the manner in which these men were travelling, and behind their backs they
had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their necks something which shone, and which
was an iron collar. Each man had his collar, but the chain was for all; so that if these four and twenty men had
occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged
to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds. In the back
and front of each vehicle, two men armed with muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under
his foot. The iron necklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge racksided baggage wagon, without a
hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a sonorous pile of iron boilers, castiron pots, braziers, and
chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched at full length, and who
seemed to be ill. This wagon, all latticework, was garnished with dilapidated hurdles which appeared to
have served for former punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle of the road. On each side marched a
double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearing threecornered hats, like the soldiers under the
Directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and the trousers of
undertakers' men, half gray, half blue, which were almost hanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder
belts, short sabres, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldierblackguards. These myrmidons
seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the executioner. The one who appeared
to be their chief held a postilion's whip in his hand. All these details, blurred by the dimness of dawn, became
more and more clearly outlined as the light increased. At the head and in the rear of the convoy rode mounted
gendarmes, serious and with sword in fist.
This procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached the barrier, the last was barely debauching
from the boulevard. A throng, sprung, it is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, as is
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frequently the case in Paris, pressed forward from both sides of the road and looked on. In the neighboring
lanes the shouts of people calling to each other and the wooden shoes of marketgardeners hastening up to
gaze were audible.
The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. They were livid with the
chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of
their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were horribly incongruous; nothing is
more funereal than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps, and,
side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow; many wore women's headgear, others had
baskets on their heads; hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooed designs
could be descried; temples of Love, flaming hearts, Cupids; eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also
be seen. Two or three had a straw rope attached to the crossbar of the dray, and suspended under them like a
stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which
had the appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be gnawing; it was bread which he was eating.
There were no eyes there which were not either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop
cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow became audible as
the cudgels descended on shoulderblades or skulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags were
terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked,
their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the rear of
the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter.
This file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. It was evident that tomorrow, that an hour
hence, a pouring rain might descend, that it might be followed by another and another, and that their
dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked, these men would not get dry again, that once
chilled, they would not again get warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by the
downpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes from the whips would be able to prevent their
jaws from chattering, that the chain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs would continue
to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the sight of these human beings thus bound and passive
beneath the cold clouds of autumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all the furies of the air, like
trees and stones.
Blows from the cudgel were not omitted even in the case of the sick men, who lay there knotted with ropes
and motionless on the seventh wagon, and who appeared to have been tossed there like sacks filled with
misery.
Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said
that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins, oaths,
and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the file in two parts, illuminating heads and
bodies, leaving feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces; it was a
terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this
wild throng remained in gloom. Some, who were gay, had in their mouths quills through which they blew
vermin over the crowd, picking out the women; the dawn accentuated these lamentable profiles with the
blackness of its shadows; there was not one of these creatures who was not deformed by reason of
wretchedness; and the whole was so monstrous that one would have said that the sun's brilliancy had been
changed into the glare of the lightning. The wagonload which headed the line had struck up a song, and
were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality, a potpourri by Desaugiers, then famous,
called The Vestal; the trees shivered mournfully; in the crosslanes, countenances of bourgeois listened in an
idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned by spectres.
All sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos; here were to be found the facial angles of every sort of
beast, old men, youths, bald heads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation, savage grins,
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senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads like those of young girls with corkscrew curls on the
temples, infantile visages, and by reason of that, horrible thin skeleton faces, to which death alone was
lacking. On the first cart was a negro, who had been a slave, in all probability, and who could make a
comparison of his chains. The frightful leveller from below, shame, had passed over these brows; at that
degree of abasement, the last transformations were suffered by all in their extremest depths, and ignorance,
converted into dulness, was the equal of intelligence converted into despair. There was no choice possible
between these men who appeared to the eye as the flower of the mud. It was evident that the person who had
had the ordering of that unclean procession had not classified them. These beings had been fettered and
coupled pellmell, in alphabetical disorder, probably, and loaded haphazard on those carts. Nevertheless,
horrors, when grouped together, always end by evolving a result; all additions of wretched men give a sum
total, each chain exhaled a common soul, and each drayload had its own physiognomy. By the side of the
one where they were singing, there was one where they were howling; a third where they were begging; one
could be seen in which they were gnashing their teeth; another load menaced the spectators, another
blasphemed God; the last was as silent as the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven
circles of hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures, performed in sinister wise, not on the
formidable and flaming chariot of the Apocalypse, but, what was more mournful than that, on the gibbet cart.
One of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made a pretence from time to time, of stirring up
this mass of human filth. An old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five years old, and
said to him: "Rascal, let that be a warning to you!"
As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be the captain of the escort cracked his
whip, and at that signal a fearful dull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon the
seven drayloads; many roared and foamed at the mouth; which redoubled the delight of the street urchins
who had hastened up, a swarm of flies on these wounds.
Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes; they were those deep and
glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconscious of
reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he
was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move his feet. Sometimes, the
things that you see seize upon you and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking
himself, athwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this sepulchral persecution signified, and whence
had come that pandemonium which was pursuing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a gesture
habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns; he remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary,
that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the road
to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had himself passed through that barrier.
Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way. She did not understand; what she beheld did not seem to
her to be possible; at length she cried:
"Father! What are those men in those carts?"
Jean Valjean replied: "Convicts."
"Whither are they going?"
"To the galleys."
At that moment, the cudgelling, multiplied by a hundred hands, became zealous, blows with the flat of the
sword were mingled with it, it was a perfect storm of whips and clubs; the convicts bent before it, a hideous
obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like chained wolves.
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Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed:
"Father, are they still men?"
"Sometimes," answered the unhappy man.
It was the chaingang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from Bicetre, and had taken the road to
Mans in order to avoid Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This caused the horrible journey to last three
or four days longer; but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage a sight
of it.
Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are shocks, and the memory that they
leave behind them resembles a thorough shaking up.
Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his way back to the Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the
latter was plying him with other questions on the subject of what they had just seen; perhaps he was too much
absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to them. But when Cosette was leaving him in
the evening, to betake herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking to herself: "It
seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the
sight of him close at hand."
Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day, there was some official solemnity apropos
of I know not what, fetes in Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical
performances in the ChampsElysees, fireworks at the Arc de l'Etoile, illuminations everywhere. Jean
Valjean did violence to his habits, and took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her
from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abominable
thing which had passed before her. The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of
uniforms perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a national guard with the vague inward
feeling of a man who is betaking himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object. Cosette,
who made it her law to please her father, and to whom, moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this
diversion with the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout too disdainfully at that flutter of
enjoyment called a public fete; so that Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no
trace of that hideous vision remained.
Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to
the garden, another infraction of the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself, and to
the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had caused Cosette to adopt, Cosette, in a
wrapper, was standing erect in that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an
adorable way and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a star; and, with her head bathed in light,
rosy after a good sleep, submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking a daisy to
pieces. Cosette did not know the delightful legend, I love a little, passionately, etc.who was there who
could have taught her? She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion that to
pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. If there were a fourth, and smiling Grace called Melancholy,
she would have worn the air of that Grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of those tiny
fingers on that flower, and forgetful of everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A redbreast was
warbling in the thicket, on one side. White cloudlets floated across the sky, so gayly, that one would have
said that they had just been set at liberty. Cosette went on attentively tearing the leaves from her flower; she
seemed to be thinking about something; but whatever it was, it must be something charming; all at once she
turned her head over her shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean: "Father, what
are the galleys like?"
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BOOK FOURTH.SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE
SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
CHAPTER I. A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN
Thus their life clouded over by degrees.
But one diversion, which had formerly been a happiness, remained to them, which was to carry bread to those
who were hungry, and clothing to those who were cold. Cosette often accompanied Jean Valjean on these
visits to the poor, on which they recovered some remnants of their former free intercourse; and sometimes,
when the day had been a good one, and they had assisted many in distress, and cheered and warmed many
little children, Cosette was rather merry in the evening. It was at this epoch that they paid their visit to the
Jondrette den.
On the day following that visit, Jean Valjean made his appearance in the pavilion in the morning, calm as was
his wont, but with a large wound on his left arm which was much inflamed, and very angry, which resembled
a burn, and which he explained in some way or other. This wound resulted in his being detained in the house
for a month with fever. He would not call in a doctor. When Cosette urged him, "Call the dogdoctor," said
he.
Cosette dressed the wound morning and evening with so divine an air and such angelic happiness at being of
use to him, that Jean Valjean felt all his former joy returning, his fears and anxieties dissipating, and he gazed
at Cosette, saying: "Oh! what a kindly wound! Oh! what a good misfortune!"
Cosette on perceiving that her father was ill, had deserted the pavilion and again taken a fancy to the little
lodging and the back courtyard. She passed nearly all her days beside Jean Valjean and read to him the books
which he desired. Generally they were books of travel. Jean Valjean was undergoing a new birth; his
happiness was reviving in these ineffable rays; the Luxembourg, the prowling young stranger, Cosette's
coldness,all these clouds upon his soul were growing dim. He had reached the point where he said to
himself: "I imagined all that. I am an old fool."
His happiness was so great that the horrible discovery of the Thenardiers made in the Jondrette hovel,
unexpected as it was, had, after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making his
escape; all trace of him was lostwhat more did he care for! he only thought of those wretched beings to
pity them. "Here they are in prison, and henceforth they will be incapacitated for doing any harm," he
thought, "but what a lamentable family in distress!"
As for the hideous vision of the Barriere du Maine, Cosette had not referred to it again.
Sister SainteMechtilde had taught Cosette music in the convent; Cosette had the voice of a linnet with a
soul, and sometimes, in the evening, in the wounded man's humble abode, she warbled melancholy songs
which delighted Jean Valjean.
Spring came; the garden was so delightful at that season of the year, that Jean Valjean said to Cosette:
"You never go there; I want you to stroll in it."
"As you like, father," said Cosette.
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And for the sake of obeying her father, she resumed her walks in the garden, generally alone, for, as we have
mentioned, Jean Valjean, who was probably afraid of being seen through the fence, hardly ever went there.
Jean Valjean's wound had created a diversion.
When Cosette saw that her father was suffering less, that he was convalescing, and that he appeared to be
happy, she experienced a contentment which she did not even perceive, so gently and naturally had it come.
Then, it was in the month of March, the days were growing longer, the winter was departing, the winter
always bears away with it a portion of our sadness; then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn
always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to weep at times like the newborn being that it is. In that
month, nature has charming gleams which pass from the sky, from the trees, from the meadows and the
flowers into the heart of man.
Cosette was still too young to escape the penetrating influence of that April joy which bore so strong a
resemblance to herself. Insensibly, and without her suspecting the fact, the blackness departed from her spirit.
In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into cellars at midday. Cosette was no longer sad. However,
though this was so, she did not account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o'clock, after breakfast,
when she had succeeded in enticing her father into the garden for a quarter of an hour, and when she was
pacing up and down in the sunlight in front of the steps, supporting his left arm for him, she did not perceive
that she laughed every moment and that she was happy.
Jean Valjean, intoxicated, beheld her growing fresh and rosy once more.
"Oh! What a good wound!" he repeated in a whisper.
And he felt grateful to the Thenardiers.
His wound once healed, he resumed his solitary twilight strolls.
It is a mistake to suppose that a person can stroll alone in that fashion in the uninhabited regions of Paris
without meeting with some adventure.
CHAPTER II. MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN
EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON
One evening, little Gavroche had had nothing to eat; he remembered that he had not dined on the preceding
day either; this was becoming tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He strolled out
beyond the Salpetriere into deserted regions; that is where windfalls are to be found; where there is no one,
one always finds something. He reached a settlement which appeared to him to be the village of Austerlitz.
In one of his preceding lounges he had noticed there an old garden haunted by an old man and an old woman,
and in that garden, a passable appletree. Beside the appletree stood a sort of fruithouse, which was not
securely fastened, and where one might contrive to get an apple. One apple is a supper; one apple is life. That
which was Adam's ruin might prove Gavroche's salvation. The garden abutted on a solitary, unpaved lane,
bordered with brushwood while awaiting the arrival of houses; the garden was separated from it by a hedge.
Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane, he recognized the appletree, he verified
the fruithouse, he examined the hedge; a hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining, there was
not even a cat in the lane, the hour was propitious. Gavroche began the operation of scaling the hedge, then
suddenly paused. Some one was talking in the garden. Gavroche peeped through one of the breaks in the
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hedge.
A couple of paces distant, at the foot of the hedge on the other side, exactly at the point where the gap which
he was meditating would have been made, there was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench, and on
this bench was seated the old man of the garden, while the old woman was standing in front of him. The old
woman was grumbling. Gavroche, who was not very discreet, listened.
"Monsieur Mabeuf!" said the old woman.
"Mabeuf!" thought Gavroche, "that name is a perfect farce."
The old man who was thus addressed, did not stir. The old woman repeated:
"Monsieur Mabeuf!"
The old man, without raising his eyes from the ground, made up his mind to answer:
"What is it, Mother Plutarque?"
"Mother Plutarque!" thought Gavroche, "another farcical name."
Mother Plutarque began again, and the old man was forced to accept the conversation:
"The landlord is not pleased."
"Why?"
"We owe three quarters rent."
"In three months, we shall owe him for four quarters."
"He says that he will turn you out to sleep."
"I will go."
"The greengrocer insists on being paid. She will no longer leave her fagots. What will you warm yourself
with this winter? We shall have no wood."
"There is the sun."
"The butcher refuses to give credit; he will not let us have any more meat."
"That is quite right. I do not digest meat well. It is too heavy."
"What shall we have for dinner?"
"Bread."
"The baker demands a settlement, and says, `no money, no bread.'"
"That is well."
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"What will you eat?"
"We have apples in the appleroom."
"But, Monsieur, we can't live like that without money."
"I have none."
The old woman went away, the old man remained alone. He fell into thought. Gavroche became thoughtful
also. It was almost dark.
The first result of Gavroche's meditation was, that instead of scaling the hedge, he crouched down under it.
The branches stood apart a little at the foot of the thicket.
"Come," exclaimed Gavroche mentally, "here's a nook!" and he curled up in it. His back was almost in
contact with Father Mabeuf's bench. He could hear the octogenarian breathe.
Then, by way of dinner, he tried to sleep.
It was a catnap, with one eye open. While he dozed, Gavroche kept on the watch.
The twilight pallor of the sky blanched the earth, and the lane formed a livid line between two rows of dark
bushes.
All at once, in this whitish band, two figures made their appearance. One was in front, the other some
distance in the rear.
"There come two creatures," muttered Gavroche.
The first form seemed to be some elderly bourgeois, who was bent and thoughtful, dressed more than plainly,
and who was walking slowly because of his age, and strolling about in the open evening air.
The second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that of the first; but in the voluntary slowness
of its gait, suppleness and agility were discernible. This figure had also something fierce and disquieting
about it, the whole shape was that of what was then called an elegant; the hat was of good shape, the coat
black, well cut, probably of fine cloth, and well fitted in at the waist. The head was held erect with a sort of
robust grace, and beneath the hat the pale profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light. The
profile had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Gavroche; it was Montparnasse.
He could have told nothing about the other, except that he was a respectable old man.
Gavroche immediately began to take observations.
One of these two pedestrians evidently had a project connected with the other. Gavroche was well placed to
watch the course of events. The bedroom had turned into a hidingplace at a very opportune moment.
Montparnasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place, betokened something threatening. Gavroche felt
his gamin's heart moved with compassion for the old man.
What was he to do? Interfere? One weakness coming to the aid of another! It would be merely a laughing
matter for Montparnasse. Gavroche did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man, in the first place, and the
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child in the second, would make but two mouthfuls for that redoubtable ruffian eighteen years of age.
While Gavroche was deliberating, the attack took place, abruptly and hideously. The attack of the tiger on the
wild ass, the attack of the spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded upon the
old man, seized him by the collar, grasped and clung to him, and Gavroche with difficulty restrained a
scream. A moment later one of these men was underneath the other, groaning, struggling, with a knee of
marble upon his breast. Only, it was not just what Gavroche had expected. The one who lay on the earth was
Montparnasse; the one who was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant from
Gavroche.
The old man had received the shock, had returned it, and that in such a terrible fashion, that in a twinkling,
the assailant and the assailed had exchanged roles.
"Here's a hearty veteran!" thought Gavroche.
He could not refrain from clapping his hands. But it was applause wasted. It did not reach the combatants,
absorbed and deafened as they were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle.
Silence ensued. Montparnasse ceased his struggles. Gavroche indulged in this aside: "Can he be dead!"
The goodman had not uttered a word, nor given vent to a cry. He rose to his feet, and Gavroche heard him say
to Montparnasse:
"Get up."
Montparnasse rose, but the goodman held him fast. Montparnasse's attitude was the humiliated and furious
attitude of the wolf who has been caught by a sheep.
Gavroche looked on and listened, making an effort to reinforce his eyes with his ears. He was enjoying
himself immensely.
He was repaid for his conscientious anxiety in the character of a spectator. He was able to catch on the wing a
dialogue which borrowed from the darkness an indescribably tragic accent. The goodman questioned,
Montparnasse replied.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"You are strong and healthy. Why do you not work?"
"It bores me."
"What is your trade?"
"An idler."
"Speak seriously. Can anything be done for you? What would you like to be?"
"A thief."
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A pause ensued. The old man seemed absorbed in profound thought. He stood motionless, and did not relax
his hold on Montparnasse.
Every moment the vigorous and agile young ruffian indulged in the twitchings of a wild beast caught in a
snare. He gave a jerk, tried a crook of the knee, twisted his limbs desperately, and made efforts to escape.
The old man did not appear to notice it, and held both his arms with one hand, with the sovereign indifference
of absolute force.
The old man's revery lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at Montparnasse, he addressed to him in a
gentle voice, in the midst of the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue, of which Gavroche did not
lose a single syllable:
"My child, you are entering, through indolence, on one of the most laborious of lives. Ah! You declare
yourself to be an idler! prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is the
rollingmill. You must be on your guard against it, it is crafty and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of
your coat, you will be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time, and save
yourself! Otherwise, it is all over with you; in a short time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled,
hope for nothing more. Toil, lazybones! there is no more repose for you! The iron hand of implacable toil has
seized you. You do not wish to earn your living, to have a task, to fulfil a duty! It bores you to be like other
men? Well! You will be different. Labor is the law; he who rejects it will find ennui his torment. You do not
wish to be a workingman, you will be a slave. Toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the
other. You do not desire to be its friend, you shall be its negro slave. Ah! You would have none of the honest
weariness of men, you shall have the sweat of the damned. Where others sing, you will rattle in your throat.
You will see afar off, from below, other men at work; it will seem to you that they are resting. The laborer,
the harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What
radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind,
what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in
the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have
free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make
your muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep
acclivities. Life will become monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe, will be just so many terrible
labors. Your lungs will produce on you the effect of weighing a hundred pounds. Whether you shall walk
here rather than there, will become a problem that must be solved. Any one who wants to go out simply gives
his door a push, and there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged to pierce your wall.
What does every one who wants to step into the street do? He goes down stairs; you will tear up your sheets,
little by little you will make of them a rope, then you will climb out of your window, and you will suspend
yourself by that thread over an abyss, and it will be night, amid storm, rain, and the hurricane, and if the rope
is too short, but one way of descending will remain to you, to fall. To drop haphazard into the gulf, from an
unknown height, on what? On what is beneath, on the unknown. Or you will crawl up a chimneyflue, at the
risk of burning; or you will creep through a sewerpipe, at the risk of drowning; I do not speak of the holes
that you will be obliged to mask, of the stones which you will have to take up and replace twenty times a day,
of the plaster that you will have to hide in your straw pallet. A lock presents itself; the bourgeois has in his
pocket a key made by a locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you will be condemned to execute a terrible work
of art; you will take a large sou, you will cut it in two plates; with what tools? You will have to invent them.
That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking great care of the outside,
and you will make on the edges a thread, so that they can be adjusted one upon the other like a box and its
cover. The top and bottom thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected. To the overseers it will be only a
sou; to you it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A small bit of steel. A watchspring, in which you
will have cut teeth, and which will form a saw. With this saw, as long as a pin, and concealed in a sou, you
will cut the bolt of the lock, you will sever bolts, the padlock of your chain, and the bar at your window, and
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the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this prodigy accomplished, all these miracles of art, address,
skill, and patience executed, what will be your recompense if it becomes known that you are the author? The
dungeon. There is your future. What precipices are idleness and pleasure! Do you know that to do nothing is
a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on the property of society! to be useless, that is to say,
pernicious! This leads straight to the depth of wretchedness. Woe to the man who desires to be a parasite! He
will become vermin! Ah! So it does not please you to work? Ah! You have but one thought, to drink well, to
eat well, to sleep well. You will drink water, you will eat black bread, you will sleep on a plank with a fetter
whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those
fetters, you will flee. That is well. You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood, and you will eat
grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And then you will pass years in a dungeon,
riveted to a wall, groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs
would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a woodlouse in a cellar.
Ah! Have pity on yourself, you miserable young child, who were sucking at nurse less than twenty years ago,
and who have, no doubt, a mother still alive! I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You desire fine black
cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and sweetsmelling oils on your locks, to please low women,
to be handsome. You will be shaven clean, and you will wear a red blouse and wooden shoes. You want rings
on your fingers, you will have an iron necklet on your neck. If you glance at a woman, you will receive a
blow. And you will enter there at the age of twenty. And you will come out at fifty! You will enter young,
rosy, fresh, with brilliant eyes, and all your white teeth, and your handsome, youthful hair; you will come out
broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible, with white locks! Ah! my poor child, you are on the wrong road;
idleness is counselling you badly; the hardest of all work is thieving. Believe me, do not undertake that
painful profession of an idle man. It is not comfortable to become a rascal. It is less disagreeable to be an
honest man. Now go, and ponder on what I have said to you. By the way, what did you want of me? My
purse? Here it is."
And the old man, releasing Montparnasse, put his purse in the latter's hand; Montparnasse weighed it for a
moment, after which he allowed it to slide gently into the back pocket of his coat, with the same mechanical
precaution as though he had stolen it.
All this having been said and done, the goodman turned his back and tranquilly resumed his stroll.
"The blockhead!" muttered Montparnasse.
Who was this goodman? The reader has, no doubt, already divined.
Montparnasse watched him with amazement, as he disappeared in the dusk. This contemplation was fatal to
him.
While the old man was walking away, Gavroche drew near.
Gavroche had assured himself, with a sidelong glance, that Father Mabeuf was still sitting on his bench,
probably sound asleep. Then the gamin emerged from his thicket, and began to crawl after Montparnasse in
the dark, as the latter stood there motionless. In this manner he came up to Montparnasse without being seen
or heard, gently insinuated his hand into the back pocket of that frockcoat of fine black cloth, seized the
purse, withdrew his hand, and having recourse once more to his crawling, he slipped away like an adder
through the shadows. Montparnasse, who had no reason to be on his guard, and who was engaged in thought
for the first time in his life, perceived nothing. When Gavroche had once more attained the point where
Father Mabeuf was, he flung the purse over the hedge, and fled as fast as his legs would carry him.
The purse fell on Father Mabeuf's foot. This commotion roused him.
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He bent over and picked up the purse.
He did not understand in the least, and opened it.
The purse had two compartments; in one of them there was some small change; in the other lay six
napoleons.
M. Mabeuf, in great alarm, referred the matter to his housekeeper.
"That has fallen from heaven," said Mother Plutarque.
BOOK FIFTH.THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE
BEGINNING
CHAPTER I. SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED
Cosette's grief, which had been so poignant and lively four or five months previously, had, without her being
conscious of the fact, entered upon its convalescence. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of
the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling forgetfulness to filter gradually, drop by drop,
into that soul, which was so virgin and so young. Was the fire wholly extinct there? Or was it merely that
layers of ashes had formed? The truth is, that she hardly felt the painful and burning spot any longer.
One day she suddenly thought of Marius: "Why!" said she, "I no longer think of him."
That same week, she noticed a very handsome officer of lancers, with a wasplike waist, a delicious uniform,
the cheeks of a young girl, a sword under his arm, waxed mustaches, and a glazed schapka, passing the gate.
Moreover, he had light hair, prominent blue eyes, a round face, was vain, insolent and goodlooking; quite
the reverse of Marius. He had a cigar in his mouth. Cosette thought that this officer doubtless belonged to the
regiment in barracks in the Rue de Babylone.
On the following day, she saw him pass again. She took note of the hour.
From that time forth, was it chance? she saw him pass nearly every day.
The officer's comrades perceived that there was, in that "badly kept" garden, behind that malicious rococo
fence, a very pretty creature, who was almost always there when the handsome lieutenant,who is not
unknown to the reader, and whose name was Theodule Gillenormand, passed by.
"See here!" they said to him, "there's a little creature there who is making eyes at you, look."
"Have I the time," replied the lancer, "to look at all the girls who look at me?"
This was at the precise moment when Marius was descending heavily towards agony, and was saying: "If I
could but see her before I die!" Had his wish been realized, had he beheld Cosette at that moment gazing at
the lancer, he would not have been able to utter a word, and he would have expired with grief.
Whose fault was it? No one's.
Marius possessed one of those temperaments which bury themselves in sorrow and there abide; Cosette was
one of those persons who plunge into sorrow and emerge from it again.
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Cosette was, moreover, passing through that dangerous period, the fatal phase of feminine revery abandoned
to itself, in which the isolated heart of a young girl resembles the tendrils of the vine which cling, as chance
directs, to the capital of a marble column or to the post of a wineshop: A rapid and decisive moment, critical
for every orphan, be she rich or poor, for wealth does not prevent a bad choice; misalliances are made in very
high circles, real misalliance is that of souls; and as many an unknown young man, without name, without
birth, without fortune, is a marble column which bears up a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so
such and such a man of the world satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if
looked at not outside, but inside, a thing which is reserved for his wife, is nothing more than a block
obscurely haunted by violent, unclean, and vinous passions; the post of a drinkingshop.
What did Cosette's soul contain? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep; something limpid, brilliant, troubled to a
certain depth, and gloomy lower down. The image of the handsome officer was reflected in the surface. Did a
souvenir linger in the depths? Quite at the bottom?Possibly. Cosette did not know.
A singular incident supervened.
CHAPTER II. COSETTE'S APPREHENSIONS
During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, as the reader knows, happened from
time to time, at very long intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost. Where did he go? No
one knew, not even Cosette. Once only, on the occasion of one of these departures, she had accompanied him
in a hackneycoach as far as a little blindalley at the corner of which she read: Impasse de la Planchette.
There he alighted, and the coach took Cosette back to the Rue de Babylone. It was usually when money was
lacking in the house that Jean Valjean took these little trips.
So Jean Valjean was absent. He had said: "I shall return in three days."
That evening, Cosette was alone in the drawingroom. In order to get rid of her ennui, she had opened her
pianoorgan, and had begun to sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from Euryanthe: "Hunters
astray in the wood!" which is probably the most beautiful thing in all the sphere of music. When she had
finished, she remained wrapped in thought.
All at once, it seemed to her that she heard the sound of footsteps in the garden.
It could not be her father, he was absent; it could not be Toussaint, she was in bed, and it was ten o'clock at
night.
She stepped to the shutter of the drawingroom, which was closed, and laid her ear against it.
It seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was walking very softly.
She mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber, opened a small wicket in her shutter, and peeped
into the garden. The moon was at the full. Everything could be seen as plainly as by day.
There was no one there.
She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was visible was that the street was
deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she had heard a noise. It was a hallucination
produced by the melancholy and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified
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depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which one hears the crackling of dead
branches beneath the uneasy tread of the huntsmen of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight.
She thought no more about it.
Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the
bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a
dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.
On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was strolling in the garden. In the midst of the
confused thoughts which occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound similar to that of the
preceding evening, as though some one were walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her;
but she told herself that nothing so closely resembles a step on the grass as the friction of two branches which
have moved from side to side, and she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing.
She emerged from "the thicket"; she had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps.
The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette's shadow in front of her upon this lawn, as she came
out from the shrubbery.
Cosette halted in alarm.
Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another shadow, which was particularly
startling and terrible, a shadow which had a round hat.
It was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border of the clump of shrubbery, a few
paces in the rear of Cosette.
She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head.
Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely.
There was no one there.
She glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared.
She reentered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as the gate, and found nothing.
She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this another hallucination? What! Two days in succession!
One hallucination might pass, but two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was, that the shadow had
assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round hats.
On the following day Jean Valjean returned. Cosette told him what she thought she had heard and seen. She
wanted to be reassured and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her: "You are a little goose."
Jean Valjean grew anxious.
"It cannot be anything," said he.
He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great
attention.
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During the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she distinctly heard some one walking close to the
flight of steps beneath her window. She ran to her little wicket and opened it. In point of fact, there was a man
in the garden, with a large club in his hand. Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man's
profile. It was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself: "He is very uneasy!"
Jean Valjean passed that night and the two succeeding nights in the garden. Cosette saw him through the hole
in her shutter.
On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise later; at one o'clock in the morning,
possibly, she heard a loud burst of laughter and her father's voice calling her:
"Cosette!"
She jumped out of bed, threw on her dressinggown, and opened her window.
Her father was standing on the grassplot below.
"I have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you," said he; "look, there is your shadow with the round
hat."
And he pointed out to her on the turf a shadow cast by the moon, and which did indeed, bear considerable
resemblance to the spectre of a man wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimneypipe of
sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof.
Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were allayed, and the next morning, as she was
at breakfast with her father, she made merry over the sinister garden haunted by the shadows of iron
chimneypots.
Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more; as for Cosette, she did not pay much attention to the question
whether the chimneypot was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought she had
seen, and whether the moon had been in the same spot in the sky.
She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimneypot which is afraid of being caught in the act,
and which retires when some one looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken the alarm when Cosette had
turned round, and Cosette had thought herself very sure of this. Cosette's serenity was fully restored. The
proof appeared to her to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there could possibly be
any one walking in the garden during the evening or at night.
A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred.
CHAPTER III. ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT
In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench, screened from the eyes of the curious by
a plantation of yokeelms, but which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from the outside, past
the trees and the gate.
One evening during that same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out; Cosette had seated herself on this
bench after sundown. The breeze was blowing briskly in the trees, Cosette was meditating; an objectless
sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible sadness evoked by the evening, and which
arises, perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour.
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Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow.
Cosette rose, slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on the grass drenched in dew, and saying to herself,
through the species of melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged: "Really, one needs wooden
shoes for the garden at this hour. One takes cold."
She returned to the bench.
As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot which she had quitted, a tolerably large
stone which had, evidently, not been there a moment before.
Cosette gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once the idea occurred to her that the stone had
not reached the bench all by itself, that some one had placed it there, that an arm had been thrust through the
railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This time, the fear was genuine; the stone was there. No doubt
was possible; she did not touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in the house, and
immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar the doorlike window opening on the flight of steps. She
inquired of Toussaint:
"Has my father returned yet?"
"Not yet, Mademoiselle."
[We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it
for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us.]
Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, often returned quite late at night.
"Toussaint," went on Cosette, "are you careful to thoroughly barricade the shutters opening on the garden, at
least with bars, in the evening, and to put the little iron things in the little rings that close them?"
"Oh! be easy on that score, Miss."
Toussaint did not fail in her duty, and Cosette was well aware of the fact, but she could not refrain from
adding:
"It is so solitary here."
"So far as that is concerned," said Toussaint, "it is true. We might be assassinated before we had time to say
ouf! And Monsieur does not sleep in the house, to boot. But fear nothing, Miss, I fasten the shutters up like
prisons. Lone women! That is enough to make one shudder, I believe you! Just imagine, what if you were to
see men enter your chamber at night and say: `Hold your tongue!' and begin to cut your throat. It's not the
dying so much; you die, for one must die, and that's all right; it's the abomination of feeling those people
touch you. And then, their knives; they can't be able to cut well with them! Ah, good gracious!"
"Be quiet," said Cosette. "Fasten everything thoroughly."
Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and possibly, also, by the recollection of the
apparitions of the past week, which recurred to her memory, dared not even say to her: "Go and look at the
stone which has been placed on the bench!" for fear of opening the garden gate and allowing "the men" to
enter. She saw that all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the house
from garret to cellar, locked herself up in her own chamber, bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to
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bed and slept badly. All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain and full of caverns.
At sunrise,the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the past night, and our
laughter is in direct proportion to our terror which they have caused,at sunrise Cosette, when she woke,
viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself: "What have I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps
that I thought I heard a week or two ago in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the chimneypot! Am
I becoming a coward?" The sun, which was glowing through the crevices in her shutters, and turning the
damask curtains crimson, reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her thoughts, even
the stone.
"There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat in the garden; I dreamed about
the stone, as I did all the rest."
She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone
was there.
But this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night is curiosity by day.
"Bah!" said she, "come, let us see what it is."
She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was something which resembled a letter. It was a
white envelope. Cosette seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other. Yet the envelope,
though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen inside.
Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer curiosity; it was a beginning of anxiety.
Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper, each page of which was numbered
and bore a few lines in a very fine and rather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought.
Cosette looked for a name; there was none. To whom was this addressed? To her, probably, since a hand had
deposited the packet on her bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of
her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were trembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky,
the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof, and then her glance
suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what it contained.
This is what she read.
CHAPTER IV. A HEART BENEATH A STONE
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the
beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father
of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter
into the palace of dreams.
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God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being
is to render that being transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is
on its knees.
Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their
own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of
mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the
smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not?
All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its
messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and
fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is
incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and
infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very
marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.
Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which
exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not,
bliss! strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes dreamed that from time to
time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of
men.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of
love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity
which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of
heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside
you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for
lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.
When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been
discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the
same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one
thing remains for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.
What love commences can be finished by God alone.
True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for
its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.
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If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.
Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.
Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has
contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.
"Does she still come to the Luxembourg?" "No, sir." "This is the church where she attends mass, is it not?"
"She no longer comes here." "Does she still live in this house?" "She has moved away." "Where has she gone
to dwell?"
"She did not say."
What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul!
Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man!
Honor to the one which makes a child of him!
There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky
when she went away.
Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the
darkness, gently caressing a finger,that would suffice for my eternity!
Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.
Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.
Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing.
Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.
Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for
an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then
something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that
word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the
meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies,
forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his
elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.
What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint
of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not
elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene
and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this
world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels
anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of
earthquake.
If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.
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CHAPTER V. COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER
As Cosette read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment when she raised her eyes from the last
line of the notebook, the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate, it was his hour;
Cosette thought him hideous.
She resumed her contemplation of the book. It was written in the most charming of chirography, thought
Cosette; in the same hand, but with divers inks, sometimes very black, again whitish, as when ink has been
added to the inkstand, and consequently on different days. It was, then, a mind which had unfolded itself
there, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without object, haphazard. Cosette had never
read anything like it. This manuscript, in which she already perceived more light than obscurity, produced
upon her the effect of a halfopen sanctuary. Each one of these mysterious lines shone before her eyes and
inundated her heart with a strange radiance. The education which she had received had always talked to her
of the soul, and never of love, very much as one might talk of the firebrand and not of the flame. This
manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and sweetly revealed to her all of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity,
the beginning, the end. It was as if a hand had opened and suddenly flung upon her a handful of rays of light.
In these few lines she felt a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a sacred will, an immense sorrow,
and an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy fully expanded. What was this manuscript? A letter. A
letter without name, without address, without date, without signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma
composed of truths, a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, an appointment
made beyond the bounds of earth, the loveletter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and
dejected, who seemed ready to take refuge in death and who sent to the absent love, his lady, the secret of
fate, the key of life, love. This had been written with one foot in the grave and one finger in heaven. These
lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of soul.
Now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have penned them?
Cosette did not hesitate a moment. One man only.
He!
Day had dawned once more in her spirit; all had reappeared. She felt an unheardof joy, and a profound
anguish. It was he! he who had written! he was there! it was he whose arm had been thrust through that
railing! While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again! But had she forgotten him? No, never! She
was foolish to have thought so for a single moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire
had been smothered, and had smouldered for a time, but she saw all plainly now; it had but made headway,
and now it had burst forth afresh, and had inflamed her whole being. This notebook was like a spark which
had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration starting up once more.
She imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript: "Oh yes!" said she, "how perfectly I
recognize all that! That is what I had already read in his eyes." As she was finishing it for the third time,
Lieutenant Theodule passed the gate once more, and rattled his spurs upon the pavement. Cosette was forced
to raise her eyes. She thought him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent, and
extremely ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile at her.
She turned away as in shame and indignation. She would gladly have thrown something at his head.
She fled, reentered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to peruse the manuscript once more, to
learn it by heart, and to dream. When she had thoroughly mastered it she kissed it and put it in her bosom.
All was over, Cosette had fallen back into deep, seraphic love. The abyss of Eden had yawned once more.
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All day long, Cosette remained in a sort of bewilderment. She scarcely thought, her ideas were in the state of
a tangled skein in her brain, she could not manage to conjecture anything, she hoped through a tremor, what?
vague things. She dared make herself no promises, and she did not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of
pallor passed over her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame. It seemed to her, at intervals, that she
was entering the land of chimaeras; she said to herself: "Is this reality?" Then she felt of the dear paper within
her bosom under her gown, she pressed it to her heart, she felt its angles against her flesh; and if Jean Valjean
had seen her at the moment, he would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy,
which overflowed from beneath her eyelids."Oh yes!" she thought, "it is certainly he! This comes from
him, and is for me!"
And she told herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial chance, had given him back to her.
Oh transfiguration of love! Oh dreams! That celestial chance, that intervention of the angels, was a pellet of
bread tossed by one thief to another thief, from the Charlemagne Courtyard to the Lion's Ditch, over the roofs
of La Force.
CHAPTER VI. OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY
When evening came, Jean Valjean went out; Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the most
becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and
which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, "a
trifle indecent." It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual. She made her toilet thus without
knowing why she did so.
Did she mean to go out? No.
Was she expecting a visitor? No.
At dusk, she went down to the garden. Toussaint was busy in her kitchen, which opened on the back yard.
She began to stroll about under the trees, thrusting aside the branches from time to time with her hand,
because there were some which hung very low.
In this manner she reached the bench.
The stone was still there.
She sat down, and gently laid her white hand on this stone as though she wished to caress and thank it.
All at once, she experienced that indefinable impression which one undergoes when there is some one
standing behind one, even when she does not see the person.
She turned her head and rose to her feet.
It was he.
His head was bare. He appeared to have grown thin and pale. His black clothes were hardly discernible. The
twilight threw a wan light on his fine brow, and covered his eyes in shadows. Beneath a veil of incomparable
sweetness, he had something about him that suggested death and night. His face was illuminated by the light
of the dying day, and by the thought of a soul that is taking flight.
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He seemed to be not yet a ghost, and he was no longer a man.
He had flung away his hat in the thicket, a few paces distant.
Cosette, though ready to swoon, uttered no cry. She retreated slowly, for she felt herself attracted. He did not
stir. By virtue of something ineffable and melancholy which enveloped him, she felt the look in his eyes
which she could not see.
Cosette, in her retreat, encountered a tree and leaned against it. Had it not been for this tree, she would have
fallen.
Then she heard his voice, that voice which she had really never heard, barely rising above the rustle of the
leaves, and murmuring:
"Pardon me, here I am. My heart is full. I could not live on as I was living, and I have come. Have you read
what I placed there on the bench? Do you recognize me at all? Have no fear of me. It is a long time, you
remember the day, since you looked at me at the Luxembourg, near the Gladiator. And the day when you
passed before me? It was on the 16th of June and the 2d of July. It is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you
for a long time. I inquired of the woman who let the chairs, and she told me that she no longer saw you. You
lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, on the third floor, in the front apartments of a new house,you see that I know! I
followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you disappeared. I thought I saw you pass once,
while I was reading the newspapers under the arcade of the Odeon. I ran after you. But no. It was a person
who had a bonnet like yours. At night I came hither. Do not be afraid, no one sees me. I come to gaze upon
your windows near at hand. I walk very softly, so that you may not hear, for you might be alarmed. The other
evening I was behind you, you turned round, I fled. Once, I heard you singing. I was happy. Did it affect you
because I heard you singing through the shutters? That could not hurt you. No, it is not so? You see, you are
my angel! Let me come sometimes; I think that I am going to die. If you only knew! I adore you. Forgive me,
I speak to you, but I do not know what I am saying; I may have displeased you; have I displeased you?"
"Oh! my mother!" said she.
And she sank down as though on the point of death.
He grasped her, she fell, he took her in his arms, he pressed her close, without knowing what he was doing.
He supported her, though he was tottering himself. It was as though his brain were full of smoke; lightnings
darted between his lips; his ideas vanished; it seemed to him that he was accomplishing some religious act,
and that he was committing a profanation. Moreover, he had not the least passion for this lovely woman
whose force he felt against his breast. He was beside himself with love.
She took his hand and laid it on her heart. He felt the paper there, he stammered:
"You love me, then?"
She replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath:
"Hush! Thou knowest it!"
And she hid her blushing face on the breast of the superb and intoxicated young man.
He fell upon the bench, and she beside him. They had no words more. The stars were beginning to gleam.
How did it come to pass that their lips met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that the
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rose unfolds, that May expands, that the dawn grows white behind the black trees on the shivering crest of the
hills?
A kiss, and that was all.
Both started, and gazed into the darkness with sparkling eyes.
They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp earth, nor the wet grass; they looked at each
other, and their hearts were full of thoughts. They had clasped hands unconsciously.
She did not ask him, she did not even wonder, how he had entered there, and how he had made his way into
the garden. It seemed so simple to her that he should be there!
From time to time, Marius' knee touched Cosette's knee, and both shivered.
At intervals, Cosette stammered a word. Her soul fluttered on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
Little by little they began to talk to each other. Effusion followed silence, which is fulness. The night was
serene and splendid overhead. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams,
their intoxications, their ecstasies, their chimaeras, their weaknesses, how they had adored each other from
afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They confided
to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing could augment, their most secret and most mysterious
thoughts. They related to each other, with candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remains
of childhood which still lingered about them, suggested to their minds. Their two hearts poured themselves
out into each other in such wise, that at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it was the young man who had
the young girl's soul, and the young girl who had the young man's soul. Each became permeated with the
other, they were enchanted with each other, they dazzled each other.
When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and
asked him:
"What is your name?"
"My name is Marius," said he. "And yours?"
"My name is Cosette."
BOOK SIXTH.LITTLE GAVROCHE
CHAPTER I. THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND
Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed,
not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thenardier pair had had two other
children; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.
Madame Thenardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still young and very small, with remarkable
luck.
Got rid of is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in that woman. A phenomenon, by the way,
of which there is more than one example extant. Like the Marechale de La MotheHoudancourt, the
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Thenardier was a mother to her daughters only. There her maternity ended. Her hatred of the human race
began with her own sons. In the direction of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her heart
had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, she detested the eldest; she cursed the other two.
Why? Because. The most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retortsBecause. "I have no need of
a litter of squalling brats," said this mother.
Let us explain how the Thenardiers had succeeded in getting rid of their last two children; and even in
drawing profit from the operation.
The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the same one who had succeeded in
making old Gillenormand support the two children which she had had. She lived on the Quai des Celestins, at
the corner of this ancient street of the PetitMusc which afforded her the opportunity of changing her evil
repute into good odor. The reader will remember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged the river districts
of the Seine in Paris thirtyfive years ago, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a
grand scale as to the efficacy of inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the
external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Magnon lost both her boys, who were still very young,
one in the morning, the other in the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were precious
to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were punctually paid in the name
of M. Gillenormand, by collector of his rents, M. Barge, a retired tipstaff, in the Rue du RoideSicile. The
children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnon sought an expedient. In that dark freemasonry of evil
of which she formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend mutual aid. Magnon needed
two children; the Thenardiers had two. The same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good
investment for the other. The little Thenardiers became little Magnons. Magnon quitted the Quai des
Celestins and went to live in the Rue Clocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to himself
is broken between one street and another.
The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, and the substitution was effected in the
most simple manner in the world. Only, the Thenardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs a
month, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay. It is unnecessary to add that M.
Gillenormand continued to perform his compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not
perceive the change. "Monsieur," Magnon said to him, "how much they resemble you!"
Thenardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to become Jondrette. His two daughters and
Gavroche had hardly had time to discover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degree of misery is
reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectral indifference, and one regards human beings as though
they were spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague shadowy forms, barely
outlined against a nebulous background of life and easily confounded again with the invisible.
On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little ones to Magnon, with express intention of
renouncing them forever, the Thenardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to her husband:
"But this is abandoning our children!" Thenardier, masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this
saying: "Jean Jacques Rousseau did even better!" From scruples, the mother proceeded to uneasiness: "But
what if the police were to annoy us? Tell me, Monsieur Thenardier, is what we have done permissible?"
Thenardier replied: "Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true blue in it. Besides, no one
has any interest in looking closely after children who have not a sou."
Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was careful about her toilet. She shared
her lodgings, which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized English thief.
This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations,
intimately connected with the medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar's diamonds, became celebrated
later on in judicial accounts. She was called Mamselle Miss.
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The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to complain of their lot. Recommended by
the eighty francs, they were well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they were neither
badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like "little gentlemen,"better by their false mother
than by their real one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves' slang in their presence.
Thus passed several years. Thenardier augured well from the fact. One day, he chanced to say to Magnon as
she handed him his monthly stipend of ten francs: "The father must give them some education."
All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been protected tolerably well, even by their evil
fate, were abruptly hurled into life and forced to begin it for themselves.
A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret, necessarily complicated by investigations
and subsequent incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult countersociety which
pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes
in that sombre world. The Thenardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Magnon.
One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Eponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid
was made by the police in the Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and all the
inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were gathered into the net. While this was
going on, the two little boys were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they tried to
enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to
him, and delivered to them a paper which "their mother" had left for them. On this paper there was an
address: M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du RoideSicile, No. 8. The proprietor of the stall said to them:
"You cannot live here any longer. Go there. It is near by. The first street on the left. Ask your way from this
paper."
The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to guide
them. It was cold, and his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very
good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a gust of wind tore it from him, and as night
was falling, the child was not able to find it again.
They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM
NAPOLEON THE GREAT
Spring in Paris is often traversed by harsh and piercing breezes which do not precisely chill but freeze one;
these north winds which sadden the most beautiful days produce exactly the effect of those puffs of cold air
which enter a warm room through the cracks of a badly fitting door or window. It seems as though the
gloomy door of winter had remained ajar, and as though the wind were pouring through it. In the spring of
1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these north gales were
more harsh and piercing than ever. It was a door even more glacial than that of winter which was ajar. It was
the door of the sepulchre. In these winds one felt the breath of the cholera.
From a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed this peculiarity, that they did not preclude a
strong electric tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, burst forth at this epoch.
One evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such a degree that January seemed to have returned
and that the bourgeois had resumed their cloaks, Little Gavroche, who was always shivering gayly under his
rags, was standing as though in ecstasy before a wigmaker's shop in the vicinity of the
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OrmeSaintGervais. He was adorned with a woman's woollen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and
which he had converted into a neck comforter. Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent admiration
of a wax bride, in a lownecked dress, and crowned with orangeflowers, who was revolving in the window,
and displaying her smile to passersby, between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was taking an
observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he could not "prig" from the shopfront a cake of soap,
which he would then proceed to sell for a sou to a "hairdresser" in the suburbs. He had often managed to
breakfast off of such a roll. He called his species of work, for which he possessed special aptitude, "shaving
barbers."
While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: "Tuesday. It was
not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday."
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred.
Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three
days before, for it was now Friday.
The barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting a glance
from time to time at the enemy, that freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his
pockets, but whose mind was evidently unsheathed.
While Gavroche was scrutinizing the shopwindow and the cakes of windsor soap, two children of unequal
stature, very neatly dressed, and still smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age, the other
five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, alms possibly, in a
plaintive murmur which resembled a groan rather than a prayer. They both spoke at once, and their words
were unintelligible because sobs broke the voice of the younger, and the teeth of the elder were chattering
with cold. The barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without abandoning his razor, thrust back the
elder with his left hand and the younger with his knee, and slammed his door, saying: "The idea of coming in
and freezing everybody for nothing!"
The two children resumed their march in tears. In the meantime, a cloud had risen; it had begun to rain.
Little Gavroche ran after them and accosted them:
"What's the matter with you, brats?"
"We don't know where we are to sleep," replied the elder.
"Is that all?" said Gavroche. "A great matter, truly. The idea of bawling about that. They must be greenies!"
And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather bantering, an accent of tender authority and
gentle patronage:
"Come along with me, young 'uns!"
"Yes, sir," said the elder.
And the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop. They had stopped crying.
Gavroche led them up the Rue SaintAntoine in the direction of the Bastille.
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As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber's shop.
"That fellow has no heart, the whiting,"[35] he muttered. "He's an Englishman."
[35] Merlan: a sobriquet given to hairdressers because they are white with powder.
A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy
laughter. This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group.
"Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," said Gavroche to her.
An instant later, the wigmaker occurred to his mind once more, and he added:
"I am making a mistake in the beast; he's not a whiting, he's a serpent. Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith,
and I'll have a bell hung to your tail."
This wigmaker had rendered him aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress
who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom in her hand.
"Madam," said he, "so you are going out with your horse?"
And thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian.
"You scamp!" shouted the furious pedestrian.
Gavroche elevated his nose above his shawl.
"Is Monsieur complaining?"
"Of you!" ejaculated the man.
"The office is closed," said Gavroche, "I do not receive any more complaints."
In the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a beggargirl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and
clad in so short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a portecochere. The little
girl was getting to be too old for such a thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short at
the moment when nudity becomes indecent.
"Poor girl!" said Gavroche. "She hasn't even trousers. Hold on, take this."
And unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple
shoulders of the beggargirl, where the scarf became a shawl once more.
The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in silence. When a certain stage of distress
has been reached in his misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks for good.
That done: "Brrr!" said Gavroche, who was shivering more than Saint Martin, for the latter retained onehalf
of his cloak.
At this brrr! the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite, became furious. The wicked skies punish good
deeds.
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"Ah, come now!" exclaimed Gavroche, "what's the meaning of this? It's reraining! Good Heavens, if it goes
on like this, I shall stop my subscription."
And he set out on the march once more.
"It's all right," he resumed, casting a glance at the beggargirl, as she coiled up under the shawl, "she's got a
famous peel."
And looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:
"Caught!"
The two children followed close on his heels.
As they were passing one of these heavy grated lattices, which indicate a baker's shop, for bread is put behind
bars like gold, Gavroche turned round:
"Ah, by the way, brats, have we dined?"
"Monsieur," replied the elder, "we have had nothing to eat since this morning."
"So you have neither father nor mother?" resumed Gavroche majestically.
"Excuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don't know where they are."
"Sometimes that's better than knowing where they are," said Gavroche, who was a thinker.
"We have been wandering about these two hours," continued the elder, "we have hunted for things at the
corners of the streets, but we have found nothing."
"I know," ejaculated Gavroche, "it's the dogs who eat everything."
He went on, after a pause:
"Ah! we have lost our authors. We don't know what we have done with them. This should not be, gamins. It's
stupid to let old people stray off like that. Come now! we must have a snooze all the same."
However, he asked them no questions. What was more simple than that they should have no dwelling place!
The elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered the prompt heedlessness of childhood,
uttered this exclamation:
"It's queer, all the same. Mamma told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray on Palm Sunday."
"Bosh," said Gavroche.
"Mamma," resumed the elder, "is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss."
"Tanflute!" retorted Gavroche.
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Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks
which his rags contained.
At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied, but which was triumphant, in reality.
"Let us be calm, young 'uns. Here's supper for three."
And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou.
Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of them before him into the baker's
shop, and flung his sou on the counter, crying:
"Boy! five centimes' worth of bread."
The baker, who was the proprietor in person, took up a loaf and a knife.
"In three pieces, my boy!" went on Gavroche.
And he added with dignity:
"There are three of us."
And seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers, had taken down a black loaf, he thrust his
finger far up his nose with an inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of the great Frederick's
snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled this indignant apostrophe full in the baker's face:
"Keksekca?"
Those of our readers who might be tempted to espy in this interpellation of Gavroche's to the baker a Russian
or a Polish word, or one of those savage cries which the Yoways and the Botocudos hurl at each other from
bank to bank of a river, athwart the solitudes, are warned that it is a word which they [our readers] utter every
day, and which takes the place of the phrase: "Qu'estce que c'est que cela?" The baker understood perfectly,
and replied:
"Well! It's bread, and very good bread of the second quality."
"You mean larton brutal [black bread]!" retorted Gavroche, calmly and coldly disdainful. "White bread, boy!
white bread [larton savonne]! I'm standing treat."
The baker could not repress a smile, and as he cut the white bread he surveyed them in a compassionate way
which shocked Gavroche.
"Come, now, baker's boy!" said he, "what are you taking our measure like that for?"
All three of them placed end to end would have hardly made a measure.
When the bread was cut, the baker threw the sou into his drawer, and Gavroche said to the two children:
"Grub away."
The little boys stared at him in surprise.
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Gavroche began to laugh.
"Ah! hullo, that's so! they don't understand yet, they're too small."
And he repeated:
"Eat away."
At the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of them.
And thinking that the elder, who seemed to him the more worthy of his conversation, deserved some special
encouragement and ought to be relieved from all hesitation to satisfy his appetite, he added, as be handed him
the largest share:
"Ram that into your muzzle."
One piece was smaller than the others; he kept this for himself.
The poor children, including Gavroche, were famished. As they tore their bread apart in big mouthfuls, they
blocked up the shop of the baker, who, now that they had paid their money, looked angrily at them.
"Let's go into the street again," said Gavroche.
They set off once more in the direction of the Bastille.
From time to time, as they passed the lighted shopwindows, the smallest halted to look at the time on a
leaden watch which was suspended from his neck by a cord.
"Well, he is a very green 'un," said Gavroche.
Then, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth:
"All the same, if I had charge of the babes I'd lock 'em up better than that."
Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the angle of that gloomy Rue des Ballets, at
the other end of which the low and threatening wicket of La Force was visible:
"Hullo, is that you, Gavroche?" said some one.
"Hullo, is that you, Montparnasse?" said Gavroche.
A man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was no other than Montparnasse in disguise, with blue
spectacles, but recognizable to Gavroche.
"The bowwows!" went on Gavroche, "you've got a hide the color of a linseed plaster, and blue specs like a
doctor. You're putting on style, 'pon my word!"
"Hush!" ejaculated Montparnasse, "not so loud."
And he drew Gavroche hastily out of range of the lighted shops.
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The two little ones followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand.
When they were ensconced under the arch of a portecochere, sheltered from the rain and from all eyes:
"Do you know where I'm going?" demanded Montparnasse.
"To the Abbey of AscendwithRegret,"[36] replied Gavroche.
[36] The scaffold.
"Joker!"
And Montparnasse went on:
"I'm going to find Babet."
"Ah!" exclaimed Gavroche, "so her name is Babet."
Montparnasse lowered his voice:
"Not she, he."
"Ah! Babet."
"Yes, Babet."
"I thought he was buckled."
"He has undone the buckle," replied Montparnasse.
And he rapidly related to the gamin how, on the morning of that very day, Babet, having been transferred to
La Conciergerie, had made his escape, by turning to the left instead of to the right in "the police office."
Gavroche expressed his admiration for this skill.
"What a dentist!" he cried.
Montparnasse added a few details as to Babet's flight, and ended with:
"Oh! That's not all."
Gavroche, as he listened, had seized a cane that Montparnasse held in his hand, and mechanically pulled at
the upper part, and the blade of a dagger made its appearance.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, pushing the dagger back in haste, "you have brought along your gendarme disguised as a
bourgeois."
Montparnasse winked.
"The deuce!" resumed Gavroche, "so you're going to have a bout with the bobbies?"
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"You can't tell," replied Montparnasse with an indifferent air. "It's always a good thing to have a pin about
one."
Gavroche persisted:
"What are you up to tonight?"
Again Montparnasse took a grave tone, and said, mouthing every syllable: "Things."
And abruptly changing the conversation:
"By the way!"
"What?"
"Something happened t'other day. Fancy. I meet a bourgeois. He makes me a present of a sermon and his
purse. I put it in my pocket. A minute later, I feel in my pocket. There's nothing there."
"Except the sermon," said Gavroche.
"But you," went on Montparnasse, "where are you bound for now?"
Gavroche pointed to his two proteges, and said:
"I'm going to put these infants to bed."
"Whereabouts is the bed?"
"At my house."
"Where's your house?"
"At my house."
"So you have a lodging?"
"Yes, I have."
"And where is your lodging?"
"In the elephant," said Gavroche.
Montparnasse, though not naturally inclined to astonishment, could not restrain an exclamation.
"In the elephant!"
"Well, yes, in the elephant!" retorted Gavroche. "Kekcaa?"
This is another word of the language which no one writes, and which every one speaks.
Kekcaa signifies: Quest que c'est que cela a? [What's the matter with that?]
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The urchin's profound remark recalled Montparnasse to calmness and good sense. He appeared to return to
better sentiments with regard to Gavroche's lodging.
"Of course," said he, "yes, the elephant. Is it comfortable there?"
"Very," said Gavroche. "It's really bully there. There ain't any draughts, as there are under the bridges."
"How do you get in?"
"Oh, I get in."
"So there is a hole?" demanded Montparnasse.
"Parbleu! I should say so. But you mustn't tell. It's between the fore legs. The bobbies haven't seen it."
"And you climb up? Yes, I understand."
"A turn of the hand, cric, crac, and it's all over, no one there."
After a pause, Gavroche added:
"I shall have a ladder for these children."
Montparnasse burst out laughing:
"Where the devil did you pick up those young 'uns?"
Gavroche replied with great simplicity:
"They are some brats that a wigmaker made me a present of."
Meanwhile, Montparnasse had fallen to thinking:
"You recognized me very readily," he muttered.
He took from his pocket two small objects which were nothing more than two quills wrapped in cotton, and
thrust one up each of his nostrils. This gave him a different nose.
"That changes you," remarked Gavroche, "you are less homely so, you ought to keep them on all the time."
Montparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Gavroche was a tease.
"Seriously," demanded Montparnasse, "how do you like me so?"
The sound of his voice was different also. In a twinkling, Montparnasse had become unrecognizable.
"Oh! Do play Porrichinelle for us!" exclaimed Gavroche.
The two children, who had not been listening up to this point, being occupied themselves in thrusting their
fingers up their noses, drew near at this name, and stared at Montparnasse with dawning joy and admiration.
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Unfortunately, Montparnasse was troubled.
He laid his hand on Gavroche's shoulder, and said to him, emphasizing his words: "Listen to what I tell you,
boy! if I were on the square with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and if you were to squander ten sous on
me, I wouldn't refuse to work, but this isn't Shrove Tuesday."
This odd phrase produced a singular effect on the gamin. He wheeled round hastily, darted his little sparkling
eyes about him with profound attention, and perceived a police sergeant standing with his back to them a few
paces off. Gavroche allowed an: "Ah! good!" to escape him, but immediately suppressed it, and shaking
Montparnasse's hand:
"Well, good evening," said he, "I'm going off to my elephant with my brats. Supposing that you should need
me some night, you can come and hunt me up there. I lodge on the entresol. There is no porter. You will
inquire for Monsieur Gavroche."
"Very good," said Montparnasse.
And they parted, Montparnasse betaking himself in the direction of the Greve, and Gavroche towards the
Bastille. The little one of five, dragged along by his brother who was dragged by Gavroche, turned his head
back several times to watch "Porrichinelle" as he went.
The ambiguous phrase by means of which Montparnasse had warned Gavroche of the presence of the
policeman, contained no other talisman than the assonance dig repeated five or six times in different forms.
This syllable, dig, uttered alone or artistically mingled with the words of a phrase, means: "Take care, we can
no longer talk freely." There was besides, in Montparnasse's sentence, a literary beauty which was lost upon
Gavroche, that is mon dogue, ma dague et ma digue, a slang expression of the Temple, which signifies my
dog, my knife, and my wife, greatly in vogue among clowns and the redtails in the great century when
Moliere wrote and Callot drew.
Twenty years ago, there was still to be seen in the southwest corner of the Place de la Bastille, near the basin
of the canal, excavated in the ancient ditch of the fortressprison, a singular monument, which has already
been effaced from the memories of Parisians, and which deserved to leave some trace, for it was the idea of a
"member of the Institute, the Generalinchief of the army of Egypt."
We say monument, although it was only a rough model. But this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the
grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleon's, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown,
on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had acquired a certain definiteness which
contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry,
bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green by some dauber, and now
painted black by heaven, the wind, and time. In this deserted and unprotected corner of the place, the broad
brow of the colossus, his trunk, his tusks, his tower, his enormous crupper, his four feet, like columns
produced, at night, under the starry heavens, a surprising and terrible form. It was a sort of symbol of popular
force. It was sombre, mysterious, and immense. It was some mighty, visible phantom, one knew not what,
standing erect beside the invisible spectre of the Bastille.
Few strangers visited this edifice, no passerby looked at it. It was falling into ruins; every season the plaster
which detached itself from its sides formed hideous wounds upon it. "The aediles," as the expression ran in
elegant dialect, had forgotten it ever since 1814. There it stood in its corner, melancholy, sick, crumbling,
surrounded by a rotten palisade, soiled continually by drunken coachmen; cracks meandered athwart its belly,
a lath projected from its tail, tall grass flourished between its legs; and, as the level of the place had been
rising all around it for a space of thirty years, by that slow and continuous movement which insensibly
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elevates the soil of large towns, it stood in a hollow, and it looked as though the ground were giving way
beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb, ugly in the eyes of the bourgeois, melancholy in
the eyes of the thinker. There was something about it of the dirt which is on the point of being swept out, and
something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As we have said, at night, its aspect
changed. Night is the real element of everything that is dark. As soon as twilight descended, the old elephant
became transfigured; he assumed a tranquil and redoubtable appearance in the formidable serenity of the
shadows. Being of the past, he belonged to night; and obscurity was in keeping with his grandeur.
This rough, squat, heavy, hard, austere, almost misshapen, but assuredly majestic monument, stamped with a
sort of magnificent and savage gravity, has disappeared, and left to reign in peace, a sort of gigantic stove,
ornamented with its pipe, which has replaced the sombre fortress with its nine towers, very much as the
bourgeoisie replaces the feudal classes. It is quite natural that a stove should be the symbol of an epoch in
which a pot contains power. This epoch will pass away, people have already begun to understand that, if there
can be force in a boiler, there can be no force except in the brain; in other words, that which leads and drags
on the world, is not locomotives, but ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas, that is well done; but do not
mistake the horse for the rider.
At all events, to return to the Place de la Bastille, the architect of this elephant succeeded in making a grand
thing out of plaster; the architect of the stove has succeeded in making a pretty thing out of bronze.
This stovepipe, which has been baptized by a sonorous name, and called the column of July, this monument
of a revolution that miscarried, was still enveloped in 1832, in an immense shirt of woodwork, which we
regret, for our part, and by a vast plank enclosure, which completed the task of isolating the elephant.
It was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection of a distant street lamp, that the gamin
guided his two "brats."
The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here and to remind him that we are dealing with simple
reality, and that twenty years ago, the tribunals were called upon to judge, under the charge of vagabondage,
and mutilation of a public monument, a child who had been caught asleep in this very elephant of the
Bastille. This fact noted, we proceed.
On arriving in the vicinity of the colossus, Gavroche comprehended the effect which the infinitely great
might produce on the infinitely small, and said:
"Don't be scared, infants."
Then he entered through a gap in the fence into the elephant's enclosure and helped the young ones to
clamber through the breach. The two children, somewhat frightened, followed Gavroche without uttering a
word, and confided themselves to this little Providence in rags which had given them bread and had promised
them a shelter.
There, extended along the fence, lay a ladder which by day served the laborers in the neighboring
timberyard. Gavroche raised it with remarkable vigor, and placed it against one of the elephant's forelegs.
Near the point where the ladder ended, a sort of black hole in the belly of the colossus could be distinguished.
Gavroche pointed out the ladder and the hole to his guests, and said to them:
"Climb up and go in."
The two little boys exchanged terrified glances.
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"You're afraid, brats!" exclaimed Gavroche.
And he added:
"You shall see!"
He clasped the rough leg of the elephant, and in a twinkling, without deigning to make use of the ladder, he
had reached the aperture. He entered it as an adder slips through a crevice, and disappeared within, and an
instant later, the two children saw his head, which looked pale, appear vaguely, on the edge of the shadowy
hole, like a wan and whitish spectre.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "climb up, young 'uns! You'll see how snug it is here! Come up, you!" he said to the
elder, "I'll lend you a hand."
The little fellows nudged each other, the gamin frightened and inspired them with confidence at one and the
same time, and then, it was raining very hard. The elder one undertook the risk. The younger, on seeing his
brother climbing up, and himself left alone between the paws of this huge beast, felt greatly inclined to cry,
but he did not dare.
The elder lad climbed, with uncertain steps, up the rungs of the ladder; Gavroche, in the meanwhile,
encouraging him with exclamations like a fencingmaster to his pupils, or a muleteer to his mules.
"Don't be afraid!That's it!Come on!Put your feet there! Give us your hand here!Boldly!"
And when the child was within reach, he seized him suddenly and vigorously by the arm, and pulled him
towards him.
"Nabbed!" said he.
The brat had passed through the crack.
"Now," said Gavroche, "wait for me. Be so good as to take a seat, Monsieur."
And making his way out of the hole as he had entered it, he slipped down the elephant's leg with the agility of
a monkey, landed on his feet in the grass, grasped the child of five round the body, and planted him fairly in
the middle of the ladder, then he began to climb up behind him, shouting to the elder:
"I'm going to boost him, do you tug."
And in another instant, the small lad was pushed, dragged, pulled, thrust, stuffed into the hole, before he had
time to recover himself, and Gavroche, entering behind him, and repulsing the ladder with a kick which sent
it flat on the grass, began to clap his hands and to cry:
"Here we are! Long live General Lafayette!"
This explosion over, he added:
"Now, young 'uns, you are in my house."
Gavroche was at home, in fact.
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Oh, unforeseen utility of the useless! Charity of great things! Goodness of giants! This huge monument,
which had embodied an idea of the Emperor's, had become the box of a street urchin. The brat had been
accepted and sheltered by the colossus. The bourgeois decked out in their Sunday finery who passed the
elephant of the Bastille, were fond of saying as they scanned it disdainfully with their prominent eyes:
"What's the good of that?" It served to save from the cold, the frost, the hail, and rain, to shelter from the
winds of winter, to preserve from slumber in the mud which produces fever, and from slumber in the snow
which produces death, a little being who had no father, no mother, no bread, no clothes, no refuge. It served
to receive the innocent whom society repulsed. It served to diminish public crime. It was a lair open to one
against whom all doors were shut. It seemed as though the miserable old mastodon, invaded by vermin and
oblivion, covered with warts, with mould, and ulcers, tottering, wormeaten, abandoned, condemned, a sort
of mendicant colossus, asking alms in vain with a benevolent look in the midst of the crossroads, had taken
pity on that other mendicant, the poor pygmy, who roamed without shoes to his feet, without a roof over his
head, blowing on his fingers, clad in rags, fed on rejected scraps. That was what the elephant of the Bastille
was good for. This idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken back by God. That which had been
merely illustrious, had become august. In order to realize his thought, the Emperor should have had porphyry,
brass, iron, gold, marble; the old collection of planks, beams and plaster sufficed for God. The Emperor had
had the dream of a genius; in that Titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, with trunk uplifted, bearing its tower
and scattering on all sides its merry and vivifying waters, he wished to incarnate the people. God had done a
grander thing with it, he had lodged a child there.
The hole through which Gavroche had entered was a breach which was hardly visible from the outside, being
concealed, as we have stated, beneath the elephant's belly, and so narrow that it was only cats and homeless
children who could pass through it.
"Let's begin," said Gavroche, "by telling the porter that we are not at home."
And plunging into the darkness with the assurance of a person who is well acquainted with his apartments, he
took a plank and stopped up the aperture.
Again Gavroche plunged into the obscurity. The children heard the crackling of the match thrust into the
phosphoric bottle. The chemical match was not yet in existence; at that epoch the Fumade steel represented
progress.
A sudden light made them blink; Gavroche had just managed to ignite one of those bits of cord dipped in
resin which are called cellar rats. The cellar rat, which emitted more smoke than light, rendered the interior of
the elephant confusedly visible.
Gavroche's two guests glanced about them, and the sensation which they experienced was something like that
which one would feel if shut up in the great tun of Heidelberg, or, better still, like what Jonah must have felt
in the biblical belly of the whale. An entire and gigantic skeleton appeared enveloping them. Above, a long
brown beam, whence started at regular distances, massive, arching ribs, represented the vertebral column
with its sides, stalactites of plaster depended from them like entrails, and vast spiders' webs stretching from
side to side, formed dirty diaphragms. Here and there, in the corners, were visible large blackish spots which
had the appearance of being alive, and which changed places rapidly with an abrupt and frightened
movement.
Fragments which had fallen from the elephant's back into his belly had filled up the cavity, so that it was
possible to walk upon it as on a floor.
The smaller child nestled up against his brother, and whispered to him:
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"It's black."
This remark drew an exclamation from Gavroche. The petrified air of the two brats rendered some shock
necessary.
"What's that you are gabbling about there?" he exclaimed. "Are you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your
noses? Do you want the tuileries? Are you brutes? Come, say! I warn you that I don't belong to the regiment
of simpletons. Ah, come now, are you brats from the Pope's establishment?"
A little roughness is good in cases of fear. It is reassuring. The two children drew close to Gavroche.
Gavroche, paternally touched by this confidence, passed from grave to gentle, and addressing the smaller:
"Stupid," said he, accenting the insulting word, with a caressing intonation, "it's outside that it is black.
Outside it's raining, here it does not rain; outside it's cold, here there's not an atom of wind; outside there are
heaps of people, here there's no one; outside there ain't even the moon, here there's my candle, confound it!"
The two children began to look upon the apartment with less terror; but Gavroche allowed them no more time
for contemplation.
"Quick," said he.
And he pushed them towards what we are very glad to be able to call the end of the room.
There stood his bed.
Gavroche's bed was complete; that is to say, it had a mattress, a blanket, and an alcove with curtains.
The mattress was a straw mat, the blanket a rather large strip of gray woollen stuff, very warm and almost
new. This is what the alcove consisted of:
Three rather long poles, thrust into and consolidated, with the rubbish which formed the floor, that is to say,
the belly of the elephant, two in front and one behind, and united by a rope at their summits, so as to form a
pyramidal bundle. This cluster supported a trelliswork of brass wire which was simply placed upon it, but
artistically applied, and held by fastenings of iron wire, so that it enveloped all three holes. A row of very
heavy stones kept this network down to the floor so that nothing could pass under it. This grating was nothing
else than a piece of the brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries. Gavroche's bed stood as
in a cage, behind this net. The whole resembled an Esquimaux tent.
This trelliswork took the place of curtains.
Gavroche moved aside the stones which fastened the net down in front, and the two folds of the net which
lapped over each other fell apart.
"Down on all fours, brats!" said Gavroche.
He made his guests enter the cage with great precaution, then he crawled in after them, pulled the stones
together, and closed the opening hermetically again.
All three had stretched out on the mat. Gavroche still had the cellar rat in his hand.
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"Now," said he, "go to sleep! I'm going to suppress the candelabra."
"Monsieur," the elder of the brothers asked Gavroche, pointing to the netting, "what's that for?"
"That," answered Gavroche gravely, "is for the rats. Go to sleep!"
Nevertheless, he felt obliged to add a few words of instruction for the benefit of these young creatures, and he
continued:
"It's a thing from the Jardin des Plantes. It's used for fierce animals. There's a whole shopful of them there.
All you've got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass through a door. You can get as
much as you want."
As he spoke, he wrapped the younger one up bodily in a fold of the blanket, and the little one murmured:
"Oh! how good that is! It's warm!"
Gavroche cast a pleased eye on the blanket.
"That's from the Jardin des Plantes, too," said he. "I took that from the monkeys."
And, pointing out to the eldest the mat on which he was lying, a very thick and admirably made mat, he
added:
"That belonged to the giraffe."
After a pause he went on:
"The beasts had all these things. I took them away from them. It didn't trouble them. I told them: `It's for the
elephant.'"
He paused, and then resumed:
"You crawl over the walls and you don't care a straw for the government. So there now!"
The two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like
themselves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable and allpowerful
about him, who seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of
an old mountebank, mingled with the most ingenuous and charming smiles.
"Monsieur," ventured the elder timidly, "you are not afraid of the police, then?"
Gavroche contented himself with replying:
"Brat! Nobody says `police,' they say `bobbies.'"
The smaller had his eyes wide open, but he said nothing. As he was on the edge of the mat, the elder being in
the middle, Gavroche tucked the blanket round him as a mother might have done, and heightened the mat
under his head with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the child. Then he turned to the elder:
"Hey! We're jolly comfortable here, ain't we?"
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"Ah, yes!" replied the elder, gazing at Gavroche with the expression of a saved angel.
The two poor little children who had been soaked through, began to grow warm once more.
"Ah, by the way," continued Gavroche, "what were you bawling about?"
And pointing out the little one to his brother:
"A mite like that, I've nothing to say about, but the idea of a big fellow like you crying! It's idiotic; you
looked like a calf."
"Gracious, replied the child, "we have no lodging."
"Bother!" retorted Gavroche, "you don't say `lodgings,' you say `crib.'"
"And then, we were afraid of being alone like that at night."
"You don't say `night,' you say `darkmans.'"
"Thank you, sir," said the child.
"Listen," went on Gavroche, "you must never bawl again over anything. I'll take care of you. You shall see
what fun we'll have. In summer, we'll go to the Glaciere with Navet, one of my pals, we'll bathe in the Gare,
we'll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Austerlitz,that makes the laundresses raging.
They scream, they get mad, and if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We'll go and see the
manskeleton. And then I'll take you to the play. I'll take you to see Frederick Lemaitre. I have tickets, I
know some of the actors, I even played in a piece once. There were a lot of us fellers, and we ran under a
cloth, and that made the sea. I'll get you an engagement at my theatre. We'll go to see the savages. They ain't
real, those savages ain't. They wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see where their elbows
have been darned with white. Then, we'll go to the Opera. We'll get in with the hired applauders. The Opera
claque is well managed. I wouldn't associate with the claque on the boulevard. At the Opera, just fancy! some
of them pay twenty sous, but they're ninnies. They're called dishclouts. And then we'll go to see the guillotine
work. I'll show you the executioner. He lives in the Rue des Marais. Monsieur Sanson. He has a letterbox at
his door. Ah! we'll have famous fun!"
At that moment a drop of wax fell on Gavroche's finger, and recalled him to the realities of life.
"The deuce!" said he, "there's the wick giving out. Attention! I can't spend more than a sou a month on my
lighting. When a body goes to bed, he must sleep. We haven't the time to read M. Paul de Kock's romances.
And besides, the light might pass through the cracks of the portecochere, and all the bobbies need to do is to
see it."
"And then," remarked the elder timidly,he alone dared talk to Gavroche, and reply to him, "a spark might
fall in the straw, and we must look out and not burn the house down."
"People don't say `burn the house down,'" remarked Gavroche, "they say `blaze the crib.'"
The storm increased in violence, and the heavy downpour beat upon the back of the colossus amid claps of
thunder. "You're taken in, rain!" said Gavroche. "It amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the
house. Winter is a stupid; it wastes its merchandise, it loses its labor, it can't wet us, and that makes it kick up
a row, old watercarrier that it is."
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This allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of which Gavroche, in his character of a philosopher of the
nineteenth century, accepted, was followed by a broad flash of lightning, so dazzling that a hint of it entered
the belly of the elephant through the crack. Almost at the same instant, the thunder rumbled with great fury.
The two little creatures uttered a shriek, and started up so eagerly that the network came near being displaced,
but Gavroche turned his bold face to them, and took advantage of the clap of thunder to burst into a laugh.
"Calm down, children. Don't topple over the edifice. That's fine, firstclass thunder; all right. That's no
slouch of a streak of lightning. Bravo for the good God! Deuce take it! It's almost as good as it is at the
Ambigu."
That said, he restored order in the netting, pushed the two children gently down on the bed, pressed their
knees, in order to stretch them out at full length, and exclaimed:
"Since the good God is lighting his candle, I can blow out mine. Now, babes, now, my young humans, you
must shut your peepers. It's very bad not to sleep. It'll make you swallow the strainer, or, as they say, in
fashionable society, stink in the gullet. Wrap yourself up well in the hide! I'm going to put out the light. Are
you ready?"
"Yes," murmured the elder, "I'm all right. I seem to have feathers under my head."
"People don't say `head,'" cried Gavroche, "they say `nut'."
The two children nestled close to each other, Gavroche finished arranging them on the mat, drew the blanket
up to their very ears, then repeated, for the third time, his injunction in the hieratical tongue:
"Shut your peepers!"
And he snuffed out his tiny light.
Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the
three children lay.
It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were
gnawing at the copper wire. This was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.
The little fiveyearold boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and chilled with terror, jogged his brother's
elbow; but the elder brother had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little one, who
could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in a very low tone, and with bated breath:
"Sir?"
"Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes.
"What is that?"
"It's the rats," replied Gavroche.
And he laid his head down on the mat again.
The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant, and who were the living black
spots which we have already mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as it had
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been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting
what the good storyteller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves in throngs on Gavroche's
tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this
newfangled trap.
Still the little one could not sleep.
"Sir?" he began again.
"Hey?" said Gavroche.
"What are rats?"
"They are mice."
This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in the course of his life, and he was not
afraid of them. Nevertheless, he lifted up his voice once more.
"Sir?"
"Hey?" said Gavroche again.
"Why don't you have a cat?"
"I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ate her."
This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the little fellow began to tremble again.
The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:
"Monsieur?"
"Hey?"
"Who was it that was eaten?"
"The cat."
"And who ate the cat?"
"The rats."
"The mice?"
"Yes, the rats."
The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats, pursued:
"Sir, would those mice eat us?"
"Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche.
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The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:
"Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and
shut your peepers!"
At the same time Gavroche grasped the little fellow's hand across his brother. The child pressed the hand
close to him, and felt reassured. Courage and strength have these mysterious ways of communicating
themselves. Silence reigned round them once more, the sound of their voices had frightened off the rats; at
the expiration of a few minutes, they came raging back, but in vain, the three little fellows were fast asleep
and heard nothing more.
The hours of the night fled away. Darkness covered the vast Place de la Bastille. A wintry gale, which
mingled with the rain, blew in gusts, the patrol searched all the doorways, alleys, enclosures, and obscure
nooks, and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds they passed in silence before the elephant; the monster,
erect, motionless, staring openeyed into the shadows, had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good
deed; and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children.
In order to understand what is about to follow, the reader must remember, that, at that epoch, the Bastille
guardhouse was situated at the other end of the square, and that what took place in the vicinity of the
elephant could neither be seen nor heard by the sentinel.
Towards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn, a man turned from the Rue
SaintAntoine at a run, made the circuit of the enclosure of the column of July, and glided between the
palings until he was underneath the belly of the elephant. If any light had illuminated that man, it might have
been divined from the thorough manner in which he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain.
Arrived beneath the elephant, he uttered a peculiar cry, which did not belong to any human tongue, and which
a paroquet alone could have imitated. Twice he repeated this cry, of whose orthography the following barely
conveys an idea:
"Kirikikiou!"
At the second cry, a clear, young, merry voice responded from the belly of the elephant:
"Yes!"
Almost immediately, the plank which closed the hole was drawn aside, and gave passage to a child who
descended the elephant's leg, and fell briskly near the man. It was Gavroche. The man was Montparnasse.
As for his cry of Kirikikiou,that was, doubtless, what the child had meant, when he said:
"You will ask for Monsieur Gavroche."
On hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his "alcove," pushing apart the netting a little,
and carefully drawing it together again, then he had opened the trap, and descended.
The man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gloom: Montparnasse confined himself to the
remark:
"We need you. Come, lend us a hand."
The lad asked for no further enlightenment.
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"I'm with you," said he.
And both took their way towards the Rue SaintAntoine, whence Montparnasse had emerged, winding
rapidly through the long file of marketgardeners' carts which descend towards the markets at that hour.
The marketgardeners, crouching, halfasleep, in their wagons, amid the salads and vegetables, enveloped to
their very eyes in their mufflers on account of the beating rain, did not even glance at these strange
pedestrians.
CHAPTER III. THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT
This is what had taken place that same night at the La Force:
An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, and Thenardier, although Thenardier was in
close confinement. Babet had arranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the reader has seen
from Montparnasse's account to Gavroche. Montparnasse was to help them from outside.
Brujon, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had had time, in the first place, to weave a rope,
in the second, to mature a plan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the prison
delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged
pavement, a camp bed, a grated window, and a door lined with iron, and were called dungeons; but the
dungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of an iron door, a grated window, a
camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called chambers of punishment.
A little light penetrates towards midday. The inconvenient point about these chambers which, as the reader
sees, are not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think.
So Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with a rope. As he had the name of
being very dangerous in the Charlemagne courtyard, he was placed in the New Building. The first thing he
found in the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that is to say, crime; a nail, that
is to say, liberty. Brujon, of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an
appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent sprig, and a thief,
who had a caressing glance, and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his
nature. His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the
men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the process called double pickings.
The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape,
was that the roofers were relaying and rejointing, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on the prison.
The SaintBernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and the SaintLouis
courts. Up above there were scaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges and stairs in the direction of
liberty.
The New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world, was the
weak point in the prison. The walls were eaten by saltpetre to such an extent that the authorities had been
obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood, because stones were in the habit of
becoming detached and falling on the prisoners in their beds. In spite of this antiquity, the authorities
committed the error of confining in the New Building the most troublesome prisoners, of placing there "the
hard cases," as they say in prison parlance.
The New Building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and a top story which was called the
BelAir (FineAir). A large chimneyflue, probably from some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de la Force,
started from the groundfloor, traversed all four stories, cut the dormitories, where it figured as a flattened
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pillar, into two portions, and finally pierced the roof.
Guelemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory. They had been placed, by way of precaution, on the lower
story. Chance ordained that the heads of their beds should rest against the chimney.
Thenardier was directly over their heads in the top story known as FineAir. The pedestrian who halts on the
Rue CultureSainteCatherine, after passing the barracks of the firemen, in front of the portecochere of the
bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubs in wooden boxes, at the extremity of which
spreads out a little white rotunda with two wings, brightened up with green shutters, the bucolic dream of
Jean Jacques.
Not more than ten years ago, there rose above that rotunda an enormous black, hideous, bare wall by which it
was backed up.
This was the outer wall of La Force.
This wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin.
Lofty as it was, this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof, which could be seen beyond. This was the
roof of the New Building. There one could descry four dormerwindows, guarded with bars; they were the
windows of the FineAir.
A chimney pierced the roof; this was the chimney which traversed the dormitories.
The BelAir, that top story of the New Building, was a sort of large hall, with a Mansard roof, guarded with
triple gratings and double doors of sheet iron, which were studded with enormous bolts. When one entered
from the north end, one had on one's left the four dormerwindows, on one's right, facing the windows, at
regular intervals, four square, tolerably vast cages, separated by narrow passages, built of masonry to about
the height of the elbow, and the rest, up to the roof, of iron bars.
Thenardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since the night of the 3d of February. No
one was ever able to discover how, and by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring, and secreting a bottle
of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the
Endormeurs, or Sleepcompellers, rendered famous.
There are, in many prisons, treacherous employees, halfjailers, halfthieves, who assist in escapes, who sell
to the police an unfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can.
On that same night, then, when Little Gavroche picked up the two lost children, Brujon and Guelemer, who
knew that Babet, who had escaped that morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse,
rose softly, and with the nail which Brujon had found, began to pierce the chimney against which their beds
stood. The rubbish fell on Brujon's bed, so that they were not heard. Showers mingled with thunder shook the
doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who
woke, pretended to fall asleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices. Brujon was adroit;
Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell
which opened into the dormitory, the wall had, been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating which
barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on the roof. The wind and
rain redoubled, the roof was slippery.
"What a good night to leg it!" said Brujon.
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An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall. At the bottom of this
abyss, they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom. They fastened one end of the rope
which Brujon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars which they had just wrenched off, flung
the other over the outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the wall, got astride of it,
let themselves slip, one after the other, along the rope, upon a little roof which touches the bathhouse, pulled
their rope after them, jumped down into the courtyard of the bathhouse, traversed it, pushed open the
porter's wicket, beside which hung his rope, pulled this, opened the portecochere, and found themselves in
the street.
Threequarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed in the dark, nail in hand, and their
project in their heads.
A few moments later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse, who were prowling about the neighborhood.
They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it remained attached to the chimney on the
roof. They had sustained no other damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin off their hands.
That night, Thenardier was warned, without any one being able to explain how, and was not asleep.
Towards one o'clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw two shadows pass along the roof, in
the rain and squalls, in front of the dormerwindow which was opposite his cage. One halted at the window,
long enough to dart in a glance. This was Brujon.
Thenardier recognized him, and understood. This was enough.
Thenardier, rated as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a
nocturnal ambush, with armed force, was kept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours,
marched up and down in front of his cage with loaded musket. The FineAir was lighted by a skylight. The
prisoner had on his feet fetters weighing fifty pounds. Every day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a jailer,
escorted by two dogs,this was still in vogue at that time,entered his cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf
of black bread weighing two pounds, a jug of water, a bowl filled with rather thin bouillon, in which swam a
few Mayagan beans, inspected his irons and tapped the bars. This man and his dogs made two visits during
the night.
Thenardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in
the wall, "in order to preserve it from the rats," as he said. As Thenardier was kept in sight, no objection had
been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered afterwards, that one of the jailers had said: "It would be
better to let him have only a wooden spike."
At two o'clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, was relieved, and replaced by a conscript.
A few moments later, the man with the dogs paid his visit, and went off without noticing anything, except,
possibly, the excessive youth and "the rustic air" of the "raw recruit." Two hours afterwards, at four o'clock,
when they came to relieve the conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a log near Thenardier's
cage. As for Thenardier, he was no longer there. There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and, above it,
another hole in the roof. One of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off, and probably carried away with
him, as it was not found. They also seized in his cell a halfempty bottle which contained the remains of the
stupefying wine with which the soldier had been drugged. The soldier's bayonet had disappeared.
At the moment when this discovery was made, it was assumed that Thenardier was out of reach. The truth is,
that he was no longer in the New Building, but that he was still in great danger.
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Thenardier, on reaching the roof of the New Building, had found the remains of Brujon's rope hanging to the
bars of the upper trap of the chimney, but, as this broken fragment was much too short, he had not been able
to escape by the outer wall, as Brujon and Guelemer had done.
When one turns from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du RoideSicile, one almost immediately encounters
a repulsive ruin. There stood on that spot, in the last century, a house of which only the back wall now
remains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of the third story between the adjoining
buildings. This ruin can be recognized by two large square windows which are still to be seen there; the
middle one, that nearest the right gable, is barred with a wormeaten beam adjusted like a prop. Through
these windows there was formerly visible a lofty and lugubrious wall, which was a fragment of the outer wall
of La Force.
The empty space on the street left by the demolished house is halffilled by a fence of rotten boards, shored
up by five stone posts. In this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against the portion of the ruin
which has remained standing. The fence has a gate, which, a few years ago, was fastened only by a latch.
It was the crest of this ruin that Thenardier had succeeded in reaching, a little after one o'clock in the
morning.
How had he got there? That is what no one has ever been able to explain or understand. The lightning must,
at the same time, have hindered and helped him. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the
slaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, from compartment to compartment, to the
buildings of the Charlemagne court, then to the buildings of the SaintLouis court, to the outer wall, and
thence to the hut on the Rue du RoideSicile? But in that itinerary there existed breaks which seemed to
render it an impossibility. Had he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the FineAir to
the outer wall, and crawled flat, on his belly on the coping of the outer wall the whole distance round the
prison as far as the hut? But the outer wall of La Force formed a crenellated and unequal line; it mounted and
descended, it dropped at the firemen's barracks, it rose towards the bathhouse, it was cut in twain by
buildings, it was not even of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as on the Rue Pavee; everywhere
occurred falls and right angles; and then, the sentinels must have espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence,
the route taken by Thenardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had
Thenardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles
of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into
intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Thenardier invented a third mode? No one has ever found out.
The marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makes his escape, we repeat, is
inspired; there is something of the star and of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort
towards deliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime, and one says of the escaped
thief: "How did he contrive to scale that wall?" in the same way that one says of Corneille: "Where did he
find the means of dying?"
At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands
flayed, his elbows bleeding, his knees torn, Thenardier had reached what children, in their figurative
language, call the edge of the wall of the ruin, there he had stretched himself out at full length, and there his
strength had failed him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the pavement of the street.
The rope which he had was too short.
There he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair which he had undergone, still hidden by the
night, but telling himself that the day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing the
neighboring clock of SaintPaul strike four within a few minutes, an hour when the sentinel was relieved and
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when the latter would be found asleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth, at the light
of the street lanterns, the wet, black pavement, that pavement longed for yet frightful, which meant death, and
which meant liberty.
He asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded, if they had heard him, and if they
would come to his assistance. He listened. With the exception of the patrol, no one had passed through the
street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent of the marketgardeners from Montreuil, from
Charonne, from Vincennes, and from Bercy to the markets was accomplished through the Rue
SaintAntoine.
Four o'clock struck. Thenardier shuddered. A few moments later, that terrified and confused uproar which
follows the discovery of an escape broke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, the
creaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guardhouse, the hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock
of musketbutts on the pavement of the courts, reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended past the
grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridgepole of the top story of the New Building, the
firemen belonging in the barracks on the right had been summoned. Their helmets, which the torch lighted up
in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the same time, Thenardier perceived in the direction of the
Bastille a wan whiteness lighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise.
He was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavy rains, with two gulfs to right and left,
unable to stir, subject to the giddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest, and his thoughts,
like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these ideas to the other: "Dead if I fall, caught if I stay." In
the midst of this anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still dark, a man who was gliding along the walls
and coming from the Rue Pavee, halt in the recess above which Thenardier was, as it were, suspended. Here
this man was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then by a third, then by a fourth. When
these men were reunited, one of them lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four entered the
enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly under Thenardier. These men had evidently chosen
this vacant space in order that they might consult without being seen by the passersby or by the sentinel who
guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. It must be added, that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in
his box. Thenardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear to their words with the desperate
attention of a wretch who feels himself lost.
Thenardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before his eyes,these men conversed in slang.
The first said in a low but distinct voice:
"Let's cut. What are we up to here?"
The second replied: "It's raining hard enough to put out the very devil's fire. And the bobbies will be along
instanter. There's a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here."
These two words, icigo and icicaille, both of which mean ici, and which belong, the first to the slang of the
barriers, the second to the slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Thenardier. By the icigo he
recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, by the icicaille he knew Babet, who, among his other
trades, had been an oldclothes broker at the Temple.
The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in the Temple, and Babet was really the
only person who spoke it in all its purity. Had it not been for the icicaille, Thenardier would not have
recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.
In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.
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"There's no hurry yet, let's wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn't stand in need of us?"
By this, which was nothing but French, Thenardier recognized Montparnasse, who made it a point in his
elegance to understand all slangs and to speak none of them.
As for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayed him. Thenardier did not hesitate. It was
Guelemer.
Brujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:
"What are you jabbering about? The tavernkeeper hasn't managed to cut his stick. He don't tumble to the
racket, that he don't! You have to be a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make a
rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys, file your irons, hang out your cord, hide
yourself, and disguise yourself! The old fellow hasn't managed to play it, he doesn't understand how to work
the business."
Babet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken by Poulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the
bold, new, highly colored and risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to the language of
Andre Chenier:
"Your tavernkeeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be knowing. He's only a greenhorn. He
must have let himself be taken in by a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal.
Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have seen all those lights. He's recaptured,
there! He'll get off with twenty years. I ain't afraid, I ain't a coward, but there ain't anything more to do, or
otherwise they'd lead us a dance. Don't get mad, come with us, let's go drink a bottle of old wine together."
"One doesn't desert one's friends in a scrape," grumbled Montparnasse.
"I tell you he's nabbed!" retorted Brujon. "At the present moment, the innkeeper ain't worth a ha'penny. We
can't do nothing for him. Let's be off. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist."
Montparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance; the fact is, that these four men, with the
fidelity of ruffians who never abandon each other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as was
their peril, in the hope of seeing Thenardier make his appearance on the top of some wall. But the night,
which was really growing too fine,for the downpour was such as to render all the streets deserted,the
cold which was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their holeridden shoes, the alarming noise
which had just burst forth in the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered,
the hope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps,
almost Thenardier's soninlaw, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Thenardier was panting
on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the Meduse on their raft when they beheld the vessel which had
appeared in sight vanish on the horizon.
He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. An idea occurred to him, a last idea, a
flash of inspiration; he drew from his pocket the end of Brujon's rope, which he had detached from the
chimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by the fence.
This rope fell at their feet.
"A widow,"[37] said Babet.
[37] Argot of the Temple.
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"My tortouse!"[38] said Brujon.
[38] Argot of the barriers.
"The tavernkeeper is there," said Montparnasse.
They raised their eyes. Thenardier thrust out his head a very little.
"Quick!" said Montparnasse, "have you the other end of the rope, Brujon?"
"Yes."
"Knot the two pieces together, we'll fling him the rope, he can fasten it to the wall, and he'll have enough of it
to get down with."
Thenardier ran the risk, and spoke:
"I am paralyzed with cold."
"We'll warm you up."
"I can't budge."
"Let yourself slide, we'll catch you."
"My hands are benumbed."
"Only fasten the rope to the wall."
"I can't."
"Then one of us must climb up," said Montparnasse.
"Three stories!" ejaculated Brujon.
An ancient plaster flue, which had served for a stove that had been used in the shanty in former times, ran
along the wall and mounted almost to the very spot where they could see Thenardier. This flue, then much
damaged and full of cracks, has since fallen, but the marks of it are still visible.
It was very narrow.
"One might get up by the help of that," said Montparnasse.
"By that flue?" exclaimed Babet, "a grownup cove, never! it would take a brat."
"A brat must be got," resumed Brujon.
"Where are we to find a young 'un?" said Guelemer.
"Wait," said Montparnasse. "I've got the very article."
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Page No 681
He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was passing along the street, stepped out
cautiously, shut the gate behind him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.
Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Thenardier; Babet, Brujon, and Guelemer did not
open their lips; at last the gate opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed by
Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.
Little Gavroche entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these ruffians with a tranquil air. The water
was dripping from his hair. Guelemer addressed him:
"Are you a man, young 'un?"
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied:
"A young 'un like me's a man, and men like you are babes."
"The brat's tongue's well hung!" exclaimed Babet.
"The Paris brat ain't made of straw," added Brujon.
"What do you want?" asked Gavroche.
Montparnasse answered:
"Climb up that flue."
"With this rope," said Babet.
"And fasten it," continued Brujon.
"To the top of the wall," went on Babet.
"To the crossbar of the window," added Brujon.
"And then?" said Gavroche.
"There!" said Guelemer.
The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made that indescribable and disdainful
noise with his lips which signifies:
"Is that all!"
"There's a man up there whom you are to save," resumed Montparnasse.
"Will you?" began Brujon again.
"Greenhorn!" replied the lad, as though the question appeared a most unprecedented one to him.
And he took off his shoes.
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Guelemer seized Gavroche by one arm, set him on the roof of the shanty, whose wormeaten planks bent
beneath the urchin's weight, and handed him the rope which Brujon had knotted together during
Montparnasse's absence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it was easy to enter, thanks to a
large crack which touched the roof. At the moment when he was on the point of ascending, Thenardier, who
saw life and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first light of dawn struck white upon his
brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid cheekbones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard,
and Gavroche recognized him.
"Hullo! it's my father! Oh, that won't hinder."
And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent.
He reached the summit of the hut, bestrode the old wall as though it had been a horse. and knotted the rope
firmly to the upper crossbar of the window.
A moment later, Thenardier was in the street.
As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of danger, he was no longer either
weary, or chilled or trembling; the terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke, all that
strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free, ready to march onward.
These were this man's first words:
"Now, whom are we to eat?"
It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent remark, which signifies both to kill, to
assassinate, and to plunder. To eat, true sense: to devour.
"Let's get well into a corner," said Brujon. "Let's settle it in three words, and part at once. There was an affair
that promised well in the Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on a garden, and
lone women."
"Well! why not?" demanded Thenardier.
"Your girl, Eponine, went to see about the matter," replied Babet.
"And she brought a biscuit to Magnon," added Guelemer. "Nothing to be made there."
"The girl's no fool," said Thenardier. "Still, it must be seen to."
"Yes, yes," said Brujon, "it must be looked up."
In the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to see Gavroche, who, during this colloquy, had seated himself on
one of the fenceposts; he waited a few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him,
then he put on his shoes again, and said:
"Is that all? You don't want any more, my men? Now you're out of your scrape. I'm off. I must go and get my
brats out of bed."
And off he went.
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Page No 683
The five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure.
When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets, Babet took Thenardier aside.
"Did you take a good look at that young 'un?" he asked.
"What young 'un?"
"The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope."
"Not particularly."
"Well, I don't know, but it strikes me that it was your son."
"Bah!" said Thenardier, "do you think so?"
BOOK SEVENTH.SLANG
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN
Pigritia is a terrible word.
It engenders a whole world, la pegre, for which read theft, and a hell, la pegrenne, for which read hunger.
Thus, idleness is the mother.
She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.
Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang.
What is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect; it is theft in its two kinds; people and
language.
When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre history introduced into a work written
with the same aim as this[39] a thief who talked argot, there arose amazement and clamor."What! How!
Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything that is most
abominable in society!" etc., etc.
[39] The Last Day of a Condemned Man.
We have never understood this sort of objections.
Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound observer of the human heart, the other
an intrepid friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, having represented their ruffians as talking their
natural language, as the author of The Last Day of a Condemned Man did in 1828, the same objections have
been raised. People repeated: "What do authors mean by that revolting dialect? Slang is odious! Slang makes
one shudder!"
Who denies that? Of course it does.
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Page No 684
When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since when has it been considered wrong to go
too far? to go to the bottom? We have always thought that it was sometimes a courageous act, and, at least, a
simple and useful deed, worthy of the sympathetic attention which duty accepted and fulfilled merits. Why
should one not explore everything, and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The halt is a
matter depending on the soundingline, and not on the leadsman.
Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to undertake an investigation into the lowest depths
of the social order, where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in those vague,
murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which
is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an
unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation
thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming of slang. It seems, in fact, to be a
sort of horrible beast made for the night which has just been torn from its cesspool. One thinks one beholds a
frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers, rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares.
One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and such a phrase seems to move
like the claw of a crab. All this is alive with the hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of
disorganization.
Now, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banished medicine? Can one imagine a
naturalist refusing to study the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who would
cast them back into their darkness, saying: "Oh! how ugly that is!" The thinker who should turn aside from
slang would resemble a surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a
philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity.
For, it must be stated to those who are ignorant of the case, that argot is both a literary phenomenon and a
social result. What is slang, properly speaking? It is the language of wretchedness.
We may be stopped; the fact may be put to us in general terms, which is one way of attenuating it; we may be
told, that all trades, professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy and all forms of
intelligence, have their own slang. The merchant who says: "Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality,"
the broker on 'change who says: "Assets at end of current month," the gambler who says: "Tiers et tout, refait
de pique," the sheriff of the Norman Isles who says: The holder in fee reverting to his landed estate cannot
claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of the real estate by the mortgagor," the playwright
who says: "The piece was hissed," the comedian who says: "I've made a hit," the philosopher who says:
"Phenomenal triplicity," the huntsman who says: "Voileci allais, Voileci fuyant," the phrenologist who says:
"Amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness," the infantry soldier who says: "My shootingiron," the
cavalryman who says: "My turkeycock," the fencingmaster who says: "Tierce, quarte, break," the printer
who says: "My shootingstick and galley,"all, printer, fencingmaster, cavalry dragoon, infantryman,
phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler, stockbroker, and merchant,
speak slang. The painter who says: "My grinder," the notary who says: "My SkiptheGutter," the
hairdresser who says: "My mealyback," the cobbler who says: "My cub," talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one
absolutely insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left, the sailor's port and
starboard, the sceneshifter's courtside, and gardenside, the beadle's Gospelside and Epistleside, are
slang. There is the slang of the affected lady as well as of the precieuses. The Hotel Rambouillet nearly
adjoins the Cour des Miracles. There is a slang of duchesses, witness this phrase contained in a loveletter
from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the Restoration: "You will find in this gossip a fultitude of
reasons why I should libertize."[40] Diplomatic ciphers are slang; the pontifical chancellery by using 26 for
Rome, grkztntgzyal for despatch, and abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI. for the Due de Modena, speaks slang. The
physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and turnip, said Opoponach, perfroschinum,
reptitalmus, dracatholicum, angelorum, postmegorum, talked slang. The sugarmanufacturer who says:
"Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,"this honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of
criticism twenty years ago, which used to say: "Half of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays upon
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words and puns,"talked slang. The poet, and the artist who, with profound understanding, would designate
M. de Montmorency as "a bourgeois," if he were not a judge of verses and statues, speak slang. The classic
Academician who calls flowers "Flora," fruits, "Pomona," the sea, "Neptune," love, "fires," beauty, "charms,"
a horse, "a courser," the white or tricolored cockade, "the rose of Bellona," the threecornered hat, "Mars'
triangle,"that classical Academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The
tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea, which is so complete and so
picturesque, which was spoken by Jean Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperre, which mingles with the
whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speakingtrumpets, the shock of the boardingirons, the roll of the
sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the
thieves what the lion is to the jackal.
[40] "Vous trouverez dans ces potainsla, une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise."
No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word slang is an extension which every
one will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed and determined
significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable slang and the slang that is preeminently slang, if
the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat,
than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of
wretchedness. There exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a last misery which revolts
and makes up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rights; a
fearful conflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy and ferocious at one and the same time, it
attacks the social order with pinpricks through vice, and with clubblows through crime. To meet the needs
of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang.
To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were it but a fragment of some language
which man has spoken and which would, otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad,
of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend the records of social observation;
is to serve civilization itself. This service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two
Carthaginian soldiers talk Phoenician; that service Moliere rendered, by making so many of his characters
talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Phoenician, very good! Levantine,
quite right! Even dialect, let that pass! They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces; but
slang! What is the use of preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang "to survive"?
To this we reply in one word, only. Assuredly, if the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is
worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and
study.
It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for more than four centuries, not only by a
misery, but by every possible human misery.
And then, we insist upon it, the study of social deformities and infirmities, and the task of pointing them out
with a view to remedy, is not a business in which choice is permitted. The historian of manners and ideas has
no less austere a mission than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of
crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in
the daylight, everything on the exterior; the other historian has the interior, the depths, the people who toil,
suffer, wait, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret war between man and man, obscure
ferocities, prejudices, plotted iniquities, the subterranean, the indistinct tremors of multitudes, the
dieofhunger, the counterblows of the law, the secret evolution of souls, the gobarefoot, the
barearmed, the disinherited, the orphans, the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through
the darkness. He must descend with his heart full of charity, and severity at the same time, as a brother and as
a judge, to those impenetrable casemates where crawl, pellmell, those who bleed and those who deal the
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blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and
those who inflict it. Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians of external
facts? Does any one think that Alighieri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli? Is the under side of
civilization any less important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and more sombre? Do we
really know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern?
Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words of what precedes a marked separation might be
inferred between the two classes of historians which does not exist in our mind. No one is a good historian of
the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the
historian of their deep and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he understands
how, at need, to be the historian of the exterior also. The history of manners and ideas permeates the history
of events, and this is true reciprocally. They constitute two different orders of facts which correspond to each
other, which are always interlaced, and which often bring forth results. All the lineaments which providence
traces on the surface of a nation have their parallels, sombre but distinct, in their depths, and all convulsions
of the depths produce ebullitions on the surface. True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian
mingles in everything.
Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with a double focus. Facts form one of these, and
ideas the other.
Slang is nothing but a dressingroom where the tongue having some bad action to perform, disguises itself.
There it clothes itself in wordmasks, in metaphorrags. In this guise it becomes horrible.
One finds it difficult to recognize. Is it really the French tongue, the great human tongue? Behold it ready to
step upon the stage and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory of evil. It
no longer walks, it hobbles; it limps on the crutch of the Court of Miracles, a crutch metamorphosable into a
club; it is called vagrancy; every sort of spectre, its dressers, have painted its face, it crawls and rears, the
double gait of the reptile. Henceforth, it is apt at all roles, it is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered
with verdigris by the forger, blacked by the soot of the incendiary; and the murderer applies its rouge.
When one listens, by the side of honest men, at the portals of society, one overhears the dialogues of those
who are on the outside. One distinguishes questions and replies. One perceives, without understanding it, a
hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate
word. It is slang. The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable and fantastic bestiality. One
thinks one hears hydras talking.
It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completing the gloom with mystery. It is black in
misfortune, it is blacker still in crime; these two blacknesses amalgamated, compose slang. Obscurity in the
atmosphere, obscurity in acts, obscurity in voices. Terrible, toadlike tongue which goes and comes, leaps,
crawls, slobbers, and stirs about in monstrous wise in that immense gray fog composed of rain and night, of
hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation, and of winter, the high noonday of the
miserable.
Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you?
Who are you who are listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were
born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender
against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.
Are you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief or its little
care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow
it will be anxiety about money, the day after tomorrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the
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misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a
pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course of public
affairs. This without reckoning in the pains of the heart. And so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another
forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred which is wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that
small class who are happy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.
Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate and the unfortunate. In this world, evidently
the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate.
The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to
augment the number of the luminous,that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach
reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.
However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light; excess burns. The flame
is the enemy of the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly,therein lies the marvel of genius.
When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The
luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.
CHAPTER II. ROOTS
Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness.
Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is bidden to its most poignant meditations, in
the presence of that enigmatic dialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisement made
visible. Every syllable has an air of being marked. The words of the vulgar tongue appear therein wrinkled
and shrivelled, as it were, beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking. Such and
such a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of a thief branded with the fleurdelys, which
has suddenly been laid bare. Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which are fugitives
from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that one feels that it has worn the iron neckfetter.
Moreover, in spite of all this, and because of all this, this strange dialect has by rights, its own compartment
in that great impartial case of pigeonholes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well as for the gold
medal, and which is called literature. Slang, whether the public admit the fact or not has its syntax and its
poetry. It is a language. Yes, by the deformity of certain terms, we recognize the fact that it was chewed by
Mandrin, and by the splendor of certain metonymies, we feel that Villon spoke it.
That exquisite and celebrated verse
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
But where are the snows of years gone by?
is a verse of slang. Antamante annumis a word of Thunes slang, which signified the past year, and by
extension, formerly. Thirtyfive years ago, at the epoch of the departure of the great chaingang, there could
be read in one of the cells at Bicetre, this maxim engraved with a nail on the wall by a king of Thunes
condemned to the galleys: Les dabs d'antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coesre. This means Kings in
days gone by always went and had themselves anointed. In the opinion of that king, anointment meant the
galleys.
The word decarade, which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles at a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it
is worthy of him. This word, which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterly onomatopoeia
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the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse:
Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche.
Six stout horses drew a coach.
From a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove more curious and fruitful than the study of
slang. It is a whole language within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graft which has
produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in the old Gallic trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls
all over one side of the language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar aspect of slang. But, for
those who study the tongue as it should be studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears
like a veritable alluvial deposit. According as one digs a longer or shorter distance into it, one finds in slang,
below the old popular French, Provencal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the Mediterranean
ports, English and German, the Romance language in its three varieties, French, Italian, and Romance
Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic. A profound and unique formation. A subterranean edifice
erected in common by all the miserable. Each accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering has
dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed its pebble. A throng of evil, base, or irritated souls, who
have traversed life and have vanished into eternity, linger there almost entirely visible still beneath the form
of some monstrous word.
Do you want Spanish? The old Gothic slang abounded in it. Here is boffete, a box on the ear, which is
derived from bofeton; vantane, window (later on vanterne), which comes from vantana; gat, cat, which comes
from gato; acite, oil, which comes from aceyte. Do you want Italian? Here is spade, sword, which comes
from spada; carvel, boat, which comes from caravella. Do you want English? Here is bichot, which comes
from bishop; raille, spy, which comes from rascal, rascalion; pilche, a case, which comes from pilcher, a
sheath. Do you want German? Here is the caleur, the waiter, kellner; the hers, the master, herzog (duke). Do
you want Latin? Here is frangir, to break, frangere; affurer, to steal, fur; cadene, chain, catena. There is one
word which crops up in every language of the continent, with a sort of mysterious power and authority. It is
the word magnus; the Scotchman makes of it his mac, which designates the chief of the clan; MacFarlane,
MacCallumore, the great Farlane, the great Callumore[41]; slang turns it into meck and later le meg, that is
to say, God. Would you like Basque? Here is gahisto, the devil, which comes from gaiztoa, evil; sorgabon,
good night, which comes from gabon, good evening. Do you want Celtic? Here is blavin, a handkerchief,
which comes from blavet, gushing water; menesse, a woman (in a bad sense), which comes from meinec, full
of stones; barant, brook, from baranton, fountain; goffeur, locksmith, from goff, blacksmith; guedouze, death,
which comes from guenndu, blackwhite. Finally, would you like history? Slang calls crowns les malteses,
a souvenir of the coin in circulation on the galleys of Malta.
[41] It must be observed, however, that mac in Celtic means son.
In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses other and still more natural roots, which
spring, so to speak, from the mind of man itself.
In the first place, the direct creation of words. Therein lies the mystery of tongues. To paint with words,
which contains figures one knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation of all human languages, what
may be called their granite.
Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words created instantaneously no one knows
either where or by whom, without etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous,
sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power of expression and which live. The
executioner, le taule; the forest, le sabri; fear, flight, taf; the lackey, le larbin; the mineral, the prefect, the
minister, pharos; the devil, le rabouin. Nothing is stranger than these words which both mask and reveal.
Some, le rabouin, for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and produce on you the effect of a
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cyclopean grimace.
ln the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is desirous of saying all yet concealing all
is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who
is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew
the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine,
it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of
rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular
expression: it rains halberds. Sometimes, in proportion as slang progresses from the first epoch to the second,
words pass from the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be le rabouin,
and becomes le boulanger (the baker), who puts the bread into the oven. This is more witty, but less grand,
something like Racine after Corneille, like Euripides after AEschylus. Certain slang phrases which participate
in the two epochs and have at once the barbaric character and the metaphorical character resemble
phantasmagories. Les sorgueuers vont solliciter des gails a la lunethe prowlers are going to steal horses by
night, this passes before the mind like a group of spectres. One knows not what one sees.
In the third place, the expedient. Slang lives on the language. It uses it in accordance with its fancy, it dips
into it haphazard, and it often confines itself, when occasion arises, to alter it in a gross and summary
fashion. Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with words of pure slang,
picturesque phrases are formed, in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements, the
direct creation and the metaphor: le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri, the
dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Le dab est sinve, la dabuge
est merloussiere, la fee est bative, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the daughter is pretty.
Generally, to throw listeners off the track, slang confines itself to adding to all the words of the language
without distinction, an ignoble tail, a termination in aille, in orgue, in iergue, or in uche. Thus: Vousiergue
trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche? Do you think that leg of mutton good? A phrase addressed by Cartouche
to a turnkey in order to find out whether the sum offered for his escape suited him.
The termination in mar has been added recently.
Slang, being the dialect of corruption, quickly becomes corrupted itself. Besides this, as it is always seeking
concealment, as soon as it feels that it is understood, it changes its form. Contrary to what happens with every
other vegetation, every ray of light which falls upon it kills whatever it touches. Thus slang is in constant
process of decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which never pauses. It passes over
more ground in ten years than a language in ten centuries. Thus le larton (bread) becomes le lartif; le gail
(horse) becomes le gaye; la fertanche (straw) becomes la fertille; le momignard (brat), le momacque; les
fiques (duds), frusques; la chique (the church), l'egrugeoir; le colabre (neck), le colas. The devil is at first,
gahisto, then le rabouin, then the baker; the priest is a ratichon, then the boar (le sanglier); the dagger is le
vingtdeux (twentytwo), then le surin, then le lingre; the police are railles, then roussins, then rousses, then
marchands de lacets (dealers in staylaces), then coquers, then cognes; the executioner is le taule, then
Charlot, l'atigeur, then le becquillard. In the seventeenth century, to fight was "to give each other snuff"; in
the nineteenth it is "to chew each other's throats." There have been twenty different phrases between these
two extremes. Cartouche's talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire. All the words of this language are
perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utter them.
Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement, the ancient slang crops up again and
becomes new once more. It has its headquarters where it maintains its sway. The Temple preserved the slang
of the seventeenth century; Bicetre, when it was a prison, preserved the slang of Thunes. There one could
hear the termination in anche of the old Thuneurs. Boyanchestu (boistu), do you drink? But perpetual
movement remains its law, nevertheless.
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If the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes of observation, this language which is
incessantly evaporating, he falls into doleful and useful meditation. No study is more efficacious and more
fecund in instruction. There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson.
Among these men, to beat means to feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength.
For them, the idea of the man is not separated from the idea of darkness. The night is called la sorgue; man,
l'orgue. Man is a derivative of the night.
They have taken up the practice of considering society in the light of an atmosphere which kills them, of a
fatal force, and they speak of their liberty as one would speak of his health. A man under arrest is a sick man;
one who is condemned is a dead man.
The most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls in which he is buried, is a sort of glacial
chastity, and he calls the dungeon the castus. In that funereal place, life outside always presents itself under
its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons on his feet; you think, perhaps, that his thought is that it is
with the feet that one walks? No; he is thinking that it is with the feet that one dances; so, when he has
succeeded in severing his fetters, his first idea is that now he can dance, and he calls the saw the bastringue
(publichouse ball).A name is a centre; profound assimilation.The ruffian has two heads, one of which
reasons out his actions and leads him all his life long, and the other which he has upon his shoulders on the
day of his death; he calls the head which counsels him in crime la sorbonne, and the head which expiates it la
tronche.When a man has no longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart, when he has
arrived at that double moral and material degradation which the word blackguard characterizes in its two
acceptations, he is ripe for crime; he is like a wellwhetted knife; he has two cutting edges, his distress and
his malice; so slang does not say a blackguard, it says un reguise.What are the galleys? A brazier of
damnation, a hell. The convict calls himself a fagot. And finally, what name do malefactors give to their
prison? The college. A whole penitentiary system can be evolved from that word.
Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the galleys, those refrains called in the
special vocabulary lirlonfa, have had their birth?
Let him listen to what follows:
There existed at the Chatelet in Paris a large and long cellar. This cellar was eight feet below the level of the
Seine. It had neither windows nor airholes, its only aperture was the door; men could enter there, air could
not. This vault had for ceiling a vault of stone, and for floor ten inches of mud. It was flagged; but the
pavement had rotted and cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the floor, a long and
massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side to side; from this beam hung, at short
distances apart, chains three feet long, and at the end of these chains there were rings for the neck. In this
vault, men who had been condemned to the galleys were incarcerated until the day of their departure for
Toulon. They were thrust under this beam, where each one found his fetters swinging in the darkness and
waiting for him.
The chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands, caught the unhappy wretches by the
throat. They were rivetted and left there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. They remained
motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam, almost hanging, forced to unheardof efforts to
reach their bread, jug, or their vault overhead, mud even to midleg, filth flowing to their very calves, broken
asunder with fatigue, with thighs and knees giving way, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to
obtain some rest, unable to sleep except when standing erect, and awakened every moment by the strangling
of the collar; some woke no more. In order to eat, they pushed the bread, which was flung to them in the mud,
along their leg with their heel until it reached their hand.
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How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the
antechamber of the galleys. Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this sepulchrehell, what
did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they went through the agonies of death, and what can man do
in hell, they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters of Malta, when a galley
was approaching, the song could be heard before the sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who
had gone through the prisoncellar of the Chatelet, said: "It was the rhymes that kept me up." Uselessness of
poetry. What is the good of rhyme?
It is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had their birth. It is from the dungeon of the GrandChatelet
of Paris that comes the melancholy refrain of the Montgomery galley: "Timaloumisaine, timaloumison." The
majority of these
Icicaille est la theatre Here is the theatre
Du petit dardant. Of the little archer (Cupid).
Do what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heart of man, love.
In this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret is the thing above all others. The secret, in
the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each
member of this fierce community something of his own personality. To inform against, in the energetic slang
dialect, is called: "to eat the bit." As though the informer drew to himself a little of the substance of all and
nourished himself on a bit of each one's flesh.
What does it signify to receive a box on the ear? Commonplace metaphor replies: "It is to see thirtysix
candles."
Here slang intervenes and takes it up: Candle, camoufle. Thereupon, the ordinary tongue gives camouflet[42]
as the synonym for soufflet. Thus, by a sort of infiltration from below upwards, with the aid of metaphor, that
incalculable, trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the Academy; and Poulailler saying: "I light my
camoufle," causes Voltaire to write: "Langleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred camouflets."
[42] Smoke puffed in the face of a person asleep.
Researches in slang mean discoveries at every step. Study and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the
mysterious point of intersection of regular society with society which is accursed.
The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I, whoever passes by; le pantre. (Pan,
everybody.)
Slang is language turned convict.
That the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low, that it can be dragged and pinioned there by
obscure tyrannies of fatality, that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, is sufficient to
create consternation.
Oh, poor thought of miserable wretches!
Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness? Is it her destiny there to await
forever the mind, the liberator, the immense rider of Pegasi and hippogriffs, the combatant of heroes of the
dawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings, the radiant knight of the future? Will she forever
summon in vain to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful
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approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the
hideous water of that dragon's head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of claws,
swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that terrible
approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms, forever chained to
the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and naked amid the shadows!
CHAPTER III. SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS
As the reader perceives, slang in its entirety, slang of four hundred years ago, like the slang of today, is
permeated with that sombre, symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mien which is now mournful, now
menacing. One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played
at cards with packs of their own, some of which have come down to us. The eight of clubs, for instance,
represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous trefoil leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest.
At the foot of this tree a fire was burning, over which three hares were roasting a huntsman on a spit, and
behind him, on another fire, hung a steaming pot, whence emerged the head of a dog. Nothing can be more
melancholy than these reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of
smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the
realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character.
All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point
of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse,
the flying bird. He hardly complains, he contents himself with sighing; one of his moans has come down to
us: "I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear
them cry, without himself suffering torture."[43] The wretch, whenever he has time to think, makes himself
small before the low, and frail in the presence of society; he lies down flat on his face, he entreats, he appeals
to the side of compassion; we feel that he is conscious of his guilt.
[43] Je n'entrave que le dail comment meck, le daron des orgues, peut atiger ses momes et ses momignards et
les locher criblant sans etre agite luimeme.
Towards the middle of the last century a change took place, prison songs and thieves' ritournelles assumed, so
to speak, an insolent and jovial mien. The plaintive malure was replaced by the larifla. We find in the
eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety. We
hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and
which seems to have been flung into the forest by a willo'thewisp playing the fife:
Miralabi suslababo
Mirliton ribonribette
Surlababi mirlababo
Mirliton ribonribo.
This was sung in a cellar or in a nook of the forest while cutting a man's throat.
A serious symptom. In the eighteenth century, the ancient melancholy of the dejected classes vanishes. They
began to laugh. They rally the grand meg and the grand dab. Given Louis XV. they call the King of France
"le Marquis de Pantin." And behold, they are almost gay. A sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable
wretches, as though their consciences were not heavy within them any more. These lamentable tribes of
darkness have no longer merely the desperate audacity of actions, they possess the heedless audacity of mind.
A sign that they are losing the sense of their criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers and
dreamers, some indefinable support which the latter themselves know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are
beginning to filter into doctrines and sophisms, in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness, while
communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines. A sign, in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious
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and near unless some diversion shall arise.
Let us pause a moment. Whom are we accusing here? Is it the eighteenth century? Is it philosophy? Certainly
not. The work of the eighteenth century is healthy and good and wholesome. The encyclopedists, Diderot at
their head; the physiocrates, Turgot at their head; the philosophers, Voltaire at their head; the Utopians,
Rousseau at their head,these are four sacred legions. Humanity's immense advance towards the light is due
to them. They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of
progress. Diderot towards the beautiful, Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau
towards the just. But by the side of and above the philosophers, there were the sophists, a venomous
vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest. While the executioner was burning
the great books of the liberators of the century on the grand staircase of the courthouse, writers now
forgotten were publishing, with the King's sanction, no one knows what strangely disorganizing writings,
which were eagerly read by the unfortunate. Some of these publications, odd to say, which were patronized
by a prince, are to be found in the Secret Library. These facts, significant but unknown, were imperceptible
on the surface. Sometimes, in the very obscurity of a fact lurks its danger. It is obscure because it is
underhand. Of all these writers, the one who probably then excavated in the masses the most unhealthy
gallery was Restif de La Bretonne.
This work, peculiar to the whole of Europe, effected more ravages in Germany than anywhere else. In
Germany, during a given period, summed up by Schiller in his famous drama The Robbers, theft and pillage
rose up in protest against property and labor, assimilated certain specious and false elementary ideas, which,
though just in appearance, were absurd in reality, enveloped themselves in these ideas, disappeared within
them, after a fashion, assumed an abstract name, passed into the state of theory, and in that shape circulated
among the laborious, suffering, and honest masses, unknown even to the imprudent chemists who had
prepared the mixture, unknown even to the masses who accepted it. Whenever a fact of this sort presents
itself, the case is grave. Suffering engenders wrath; and while the prosperous classes blind themselves or fall
asleep, which is the same thing as shutting one's eyes, the hatred of the unfortunate classes lights its torch at
some aggrieved or illmade spirit which dreams in a corner, and sets itself to the scrutiny of society. The
scrutiny of hatred is a terrible thing.
Hence, if the illfortune of the times so wills it, those fearful commotions which were formerly called
jacqueries, beside which purely political agitations are the merest child's play, which are no longer the
conflict of the oppressed and the oppressor, but the revolt of discomfort against comfort. Then everything
crumbles.
Jacqueries are earthquakes of the people.
It is this peril, possibly imminent towards the close of the eighteenth century, which the French Revolution,
that immense act of probity, cut short.
The French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed with the sword, rose erect, and, with the
same abrupt movement, closed the door of ill and opened the door of good.
It put a stop to torture, promulgated the truth, expelled miasma, rendered the century healthy, crowned the
populace.
It may be said of it that it created man a second time, by giving him a second soul, the right.
The nineteenth century has inherited and profited by its work, and today, the social catastrophe to which we
lately alluded is simply impossible. Blind is he who announces it! Foolish is he who fears it! Revolution is
the vaccine of Jacquerie.
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Thanks to the Revolution, social conditions have changed. Feudal and monarchical maladies no longer run in
our blood. There is no more of the Middle Ages in our constitution. We no longer live in the days when
terrible swarms within made irruptions, when one heard beneath his feet the obscure course of a dull rumble,
when indescribable elevations from molelike tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the soil
cracked open, where the roofs of caverns yawned, and where one suddenly beheld monstrous heads emerging
from the earth.
The revolutionary sense is a moral sense. The sentiment of right, once developed, develops the sentiment of
duty. The law of all is liberty, which ends where the liberty of others begins, according to Robespierre's
admirable definition. Since '89, the whole people has been dilating into a sublime individual; there is not a
poor man, who, possessing his right, has not his ray of sun; the dieofhunger feels within him the honesty of
France; the dignity of the citizen is an internal armor; he who is free is scrupulous; he who votes reigns.
Hence incorruptibility; hence the miscarriage of unhealthy lusts; hence eyes heroically lowered before
temptations. The revolutionary wholesomeness is such, that on a day of deliverance, a 14th of July, a 10th of
August, there is no longer any populace. The first cry of the enlightened and increasing throngs is: death to
thieves! Progress is an honest man; the ideal and the absolute do not filch pockethandkerchiefs. By whom
were the wagons containing the wealth of the Tuileries escorted in 1848? By the ragpickers of the Faubourg
SaintAntoine. Rags mounted guard over the treasure. Virtue rendered these tatterdemalions resplendent. In
those wagons in chests, hardly closed, and some, even, halfopen, amid a hundred dazzling caskets, was that
ancient crown of France, studded with diamonds, surmounted by the carbuncle of royalty, by the Regent
diamond, which was worth thirty millions. Barefooted, they guarded that crown.
Hence, no more Jacquerie. I regret it for the sake of the skilful. The old fear has produced its last effects in
that quarter; and henceforth it can no longer be employed in politics. The principal spring of the red spectre is
broken. Every one knows it now. The scarecrow scares no longer. The birds take liberties with the
mannikin, foul creatures alight upon it, the bourgeois laugh at it.
CHAPTER IV. THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE
This being the case, is all social danger dispelled? Certainly not. There is no Jacquerie; society may rest
assured on that point; blood will no longer rush to its head. But let society take heed to the manner in which it
breathes. Apoplexy is no longer to be feared, but phthisis is there. Social phthisis is called misery.
One can perish from being undermined as well as from being struck by lightning.
Let us not weary of repeating, and sympathetic souls must not forget that this is the first of fraternal
obligations, and selfish hearts must understand that the first of political necessities consists in thinking first of
all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs, in solacing, airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging their
horizon to a magnificent extent, in lavishing upon them education in every form, in offering them the
example of labor, never the example of idleness, in diminishing the individual burden by enlarging the notion
of the universal aim, in setting a limit to poverty without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast fields of
public and popular activity, in having, like Briareus, a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the
oppressed and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that grand duty of opening workshops for all
arms, schools for all aptitudes, and laboratories for all degrees of intelligence, in augmenting salaries,
diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, that is to say, in proportioning enjoyment to effort
and a glut to need; in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more comfort for the
benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant.
And, let us say it, all this is but the beginning. The true question is this: labor cannot be a law without being a
right.
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We will not insist upon this point; this is not the proper place for that.
If nature calls itself Providence, society should call itself foresight.
Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. To know is a sacrament, to
think is the prime necessity, truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science and
wisdom grows thin. Let us enter equal complaint against stomachs and minds which do not eat. If there is
anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger
for the light.
The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race
mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be
accomplished by a simple elevation of level.
We should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation.
The past is very strong, it is true, at the present moment. It censures. This rejuvenation of a corpse is
surprising. Behold, it is walking and advancing. It seems a victor; this dead body is a conqueror. He arrives
with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism, with his banner, ignorance; a while ago, he won ten
battles. He advances, he threatens, he laughs, he is at our doors. Let us not despair, on our side. Let us sell the
field on which Hannibal is encamped.
What have we to fear, we who believe?
No such thing as a backflow of ideas exists any more than there exists a return of a river on its course.
But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say "no" to progress, it is not the
future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are
inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting Tomorrow, and that is to die.
Now, no death, that of the body as late as possible, that of the soul never,this is what we desire.
Yes, the enigma will utter its word, the sphinx will speak, the problem will be solved.
Yes, the people, sketched out by the eighteenth century, will be finished by the nineteenth. He who doubts
this is an idiot! The future blossoming, the near blossoming forth of universal wellbeing, is a divinely fatal
phenomenon.
Immense combined propulsions direct human affairs and conduct them within a given time to a logical state,
that is to say, to a state of equilibrium; that is to say, to equity. A force composed of earth and heaven results
from humanity and governs it; this force is a worker of miracles; marvellous issues are no more difficult to it
than extraordinary vicissitudes. Aided by science, which comes from one man, and by the event, which
comes from another, it is not greatly alarmed by these contradictions in the attitude of problems, which seem
impossibilities to the vulgar herd. It is no less skilful at causing a solution to spring forth from the
reconciliation of ideas, than a lesson from the reconciliation of facts, and we may expect anything from that
mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident face to face one fine day, in the
depths of a sepulchre, and made the imaums converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid.
In the meantime, let there be no halt, no hesitation, no pause in the grandiose onward march of minds. Social
philosophy consists essentially in science and peace. Its object is, and its result must be, to dissolve wrath by
the study of antagonisms. It examines, it scrutinizes, it analyzes; then it puts together once more, it proceeds
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by means of reduction, discarding all hatred.
More than once, a society has been seen to give way before the wind which is let loose upon mankind; history
is full of the shipwrecks of nations and empires; manners, customs, laws, religions,and some fine day that
unknown force, the hurricane, passes by and bears them all away. The civilizations of India, of Chaldea, of
Persia, of Syria, of Egypt, have disappeared one after the other. Why? We know not. What are the causes of
these disasters? We do not know. Could these societies have been saved? Was it their fault? Did they persist
in the fatal vice which destroyed them? What is the amount of suicide in these terrible deaths of a nation and
a race? Questions to which there exists no reply. Darkness enwraps condemned civilizations. They sprung a
leak, then they sank. We have nothing more to say; and it is with a sort of terror that we look on, at the
bottom of that sea which is called the past, behind those colossal waves, at the shipwreck of those immense
vessels, Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, Rome, beneath the fearful gusts which emerge from all the
mouths of the shadows. But shadows are there, and light is here. We are not acquainted with the maladies of
these ancient civilizations, we do not know the infirmities of our own. Everywhere upon it we have the right
of light, we contemplate its beauties, we lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once
diagnosed, the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy. Our civilization, the work of twenty
centuries, is its law and its prodigy; it is worth the trouble of saving. It will be saved. It is already much to
have solaced it; its enlightenment is yet another point. All the labors of modern social philosophies must
converge towards this point. The thinker of today has a great duty to auscultate civilization.
We repeat, that this auscultation brings encouragement; it is by this persistence in encouragement that we
wish to conclude these pages, an austere interlude in a mournful drama. Beneath the social mortality, we feel
human imperishableness. The globe does not perish, because it has these wounds, craters, eruptions, sulphur
pits, here and there, nor because of a volcano which ejects its pus. The maladies of the people do not kill man.
And yet, any one who follows the course of social clinics shakes his head at times. The strongest, the
tenderest, the most logical have their hours of weakness.
Will the future arrive? It seems as though we might almost put this question, when we behold so much
terrible darkness. Melancholy facetoface encounter of selfish and wretched. On the part of the selfish, the
prejudices, shadows of costly education, appetite increasing through intoxication, a giddiness of prosperity
which dulls, a fear of suffering which, in some, goes as far as an aversion for the suffering, an implacable
satisfaction, the I so swollen that it bars the soul; on the side of the wretched covetousness, envy, hatred of
seeing others enjoy, the profound impulses of the human beast towards assuaging its desires, hearts full of
mist, sadness, need, fatality, impure and simple ignorance.
Shall we continue to raise our eyes to heaven? is the luminous point which we distinguish there one of those
which vanish? The ideal is frightful to behold, thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible, brilliant,
but surrounded by those great, black menaces, monstrously heaped around it; yet no more in danger than a
star in the maw of the clouds.
BOOK EIGHTH.ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
CHAPTER I. FULL LIGHT
The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized through the gate, the inhabitant of that
Rue Plumet whither Magnon had sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from the Rue Plumet, and
had then conducted Marius thither, and that, after many days spent in ecstasy before that gate, Marius, drawn
on by that force which draws the iron to the magnet and a lover towards the stones of which is built the house
of her whom he loves, had finally entered Cosette's garden as Romeo entered the garden of Juliet. This had
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even proved easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to use a
little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old
people's teeth. Marius was slender and readily passed through.
As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never entered the garden except at night, he ran no
risk of being seen.
Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed these two souls, Marius was there every
evening. If, at that period of her existence, Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least unscrupulous or
debauched, she would have been lost; for there are generous natures which yield themselves, and Cosette was
one of them. One of woman's magnanimities is to yield. Love, at the height where it is absolute, is
complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble
souls! Often you give the heart, and we take the body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the
gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this
dilemma. This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any fatality than by love. Love is
life, if it is not death. Cradle; also coffin. The same sentiment says "yes" and "no" in the human heart. Of all
the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most
darkness.
God willed that Cosette's love should encounter one of the loves which save.
Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor,
neglected garden, beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings
composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels
than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It seemed to
Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to Marius that Cosette had a nimbus. They touched each other, they
gazed at each other, they clasped each other's hands, they pressed close to each other; but there was a distance
which they did not pass. Not that they respected it; they did not know of its existence. Marius was conscious
of a barrier, Cosette's innocence; and Cosette of a support, Marius' loyalty. The first kiss had also been the
last. Marius, since that time, had not gone further than to touch Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of
her hair, with his lips. For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She refused nothing,
and he asked nothing. Cosette was happy, and Marius was satisfied. They lived in this ecstatic state which
can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden
souls in the ideal. Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.
At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute, beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy,
Marius, the pure and seraphic Marius, would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised
Cosette's robe to the height of her ankle. Once, in the moonlight, Cosette stooped to pick up something on the
ground, her bodice fell apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Marius turned away his
eyes.
What took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each other.
At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a sacred spot. All flowers unfolded around
them and sent them incense; and they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The wanton and
vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength and intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered
words of love which set the trees to trembling.
What words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. These breaths sufficed to trouble and to touch all nature
round about. Magic power which we should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these
conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke wreaths by the breeze beneath the
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leaves. Take from those murmurs of two lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which
accompanies them like a lyre, and what remains is nothing more than a shade; you say: "What! is that all!"
eh! yes, childish prattle, repetitions, laughter at nothing, nonsense, everything that is deepest and most
sublime in the world! The only things which are worth the trouble of saying and hearing!
The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an
imbecile and a malicious fellow. Cosette said to Marius:
"Dost thou know?"
[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without either of them being able to say how it had
come about, they had begun to call each other thou.]
"Dost thou know? My name is Euphrasie."
"Euphrasie? Why, no, thy name is Cosette."
"Oh! Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was a little thing. But my real name is
Euphrasie. Dost thou like that nameEuphrasie?"
"Yes. But Cosette is not ugly."
"Do you like it better than Euphrasie?"
"Why, yes."
"Then I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me Cosette."
And the smile that she added made of this dialogue an idyl worthy of a grove situated in heaven. On another
occasion she gazed intently at him and exclaimed:
"Monsieur, you are handsome, you are goodlooking, you are witty, you are not at all stupid, you are much
more learned than I am, but I bid you defiance with this word: I love you!"
And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a star.
Or she bestowed on him a gentle tap because he coughed, and she said to him:
"Don't cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my domain without my permission. It's very naughty to
cough and to disturb me. I want you to be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I should be
very unhappy. What should I do then?"
And this was simply divine.
Once Marius said to Cosette:
"Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule."
This made both of them laugh the whole evening.
In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:
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"Oh! One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran!" But he stopped short,
and went no further. He would have been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter, and that was impossible.
This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort
of sacred fright.
Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without anything else; to come every evening to the
Rue Plumet, to displace the old and accommodating bar of the chiefjustice's gate, to sit elbow to elbow on
that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillation of the oncoming night, to fit a fold of the knee of his
trousers into the ample fall of Cosette's gown, to caress her thumbnail, to call her thou, to smell of the same
flower, one after the other, forever, indefinitely. During this time, clouds passed above their heads. Every
time that the wind blows it bears with it more of the dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven.
This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry, by any means. To pay compliments to the woman
whom a man loves is the first method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it. A
compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Voluptuousness mingles there with its sweet tiny point,
while it hides itself. The heart draws back before voluptuousness only to love the more. Marius'
blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue. The birds when they fly up yonder,
in the direction of the angels, must hear such words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life,
humanity, all the positiveness of which Marius was capable. It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to
what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of
cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable
twitter of heart to heart.
"Oh!" murmured Marius, "how beautiful you are! I dare not look at you. It is all over with me when I
contemplate you. You are a grace. I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown, when the
tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me. And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your
thought even but a little! You talk astonishingly good sense. It seems to me at times that you are a dream.
Speak, I listen, I admire. Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how charming! I am really beside myself. You are
adorable, Mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope."
And Cosette answered:
"I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since this morning."
Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which always turned with mutual consent
upon love, as the little pith figures always turn on their peg.
Cosette's whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency, whiteness, candor, radiance. It might
have been said of Cosette that she was clear. She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April and
dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of the auroral light in the form of a woman.
It was quite simple that Marius should admire her, since he adored her. But the truth is, that this little
schoolgirl, fresh from the convent, talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts of true
and delicate sayings. Her prattle was conversation. She never made a mistake about anything, and she saw
things justly. The woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible.
No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep. Sweetness
and depth, they are the whole of woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.
In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant. A crushed ladybug, a feather fallen from a
nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with melancholy,
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seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at
times, almost unbearable.
And, in addition to this,all these contradictions are the lightning play of love,they were fond of
laughing, they laughed readily and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they sometimes presented
the air of two boys.
Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always present and will not be forgotten.
She is there with her brutal and sublime object; and however great may be the innocence of souls, one feels in
the most modest private interview, the adorable and mysterious shade which separates a couple of lovers
from a pair of friends.
They idolized each other.
The permanent and the immutable are persistent. People live, they smile, they laugh, they make little
grimaces with the tips of their lips, they interlace their fingers, they call each other thou, and that does not
prevent eternity.
Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they
fascinate each other in the darkness with their hearts which they throw into their eyes, they murmur, they
whisper, and in the meantime, immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.
CHAPTER II. THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS
They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness. They did not notice the cholera which decimated Paris
precisely during that very month. They had confided in each other as far as possible, but this had not
extended much further than their names. Marius had told Cosette that he was an orphan, that his name was
Marius Pontmercy, that he was a lawyer, that he lived by writing things for publishers, that his father had
been a colonel, that the latter had been a hero, and that he, Marius, was on bad terms with his grandfather
who was rich. He had also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced no effect on Cosette. She did not
know the meaning of the word. Marius was Marius. On her side, she had confided to him that she had been
brought up at the PetitPicpus convent, that her mother, like his own, was dead, that her father's name was M.
Fauchelevent, that he was very good, that he gave a great deal to the poor, but that he was poor himself, and
that he denied himself everything though he denied her nothing.
Strange to say, in the sort of symphony which Marius had lived since he had been in the habit of seeing
Cosette, the past, even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Cosette
told him satisfied him completely. It did not even occur to him to tell her about the nocturnal adventure in the
hovel, about Thenardier, about the burn, and about the strange attitude and singular flight of her father.
Marius had momentarily forgotten all this; in the evening he did not even know that there had been a
morning, what he had done, where he had breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him; he had songs in his ears
which rendered him deaf to every other thought; he only existed at the hours when he saw Cosette. Then, as
he was in heaven, it was quite natural that he should forget earth. Both bore languidly the indefinable burden
of immaterial pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called lovers.
Alas! Who is there who has not felt all these things? Why does there come an hour when one emerges from
this azure, and why does life go on afterwards?
Loving almost takes the place of thinking. Love is an ardent forgetfulness of all the rest. Then ask logic of
passion if you will. There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than there is a perfect
geometrical figure in the celestial mechanism. For Cosette and Marius nothing existed except Marius and
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Cosette. The universe around them had fallen into a hole. They lived in a golden minute. There was nothing
before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Marius that Cosette had a father. His brain was dazzled
and obliterated. Of what did these lovers talk then? We have seen, of the flowers, and the swallows, the
setting sun and the rising moon, and all sorts of important things. They had told each other everything except
everything. The everything of lovers is nothing. But the father, the realities, that lair, the ruffians, that
adventure, to what purpose? And was he very sure that this nightmare had actually existed? They were two,
and they adored each other, and beyond that there was nothing. Nothing else existed. It is probable that this
vanishing of hell in our rear is inherent to the arrival of paradise. Have we beheld demons? Are there any?
Have we trembled? Have we suffered? We no longer know. A rosy cloud hangs over it.
So these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with all that improbability which is in nature; neither at
the nadir nor at the zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether, in the clouds; hardly
flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head to foot; already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily
charged with humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated;
apparently beyond the bounds of destiny; ignorant of that rut; yesterday, today, tomorrow; amazed,
rapturous, floating, soaring; at times so light that they could take their flight out into the infinite; almost
prepared to soar away to all eternity. They slept wideawake, thus sweetly lulled. Oh! splendid lethargy of
the real overwhelmed by the ideal.
Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in her presence. The best way to look at the soul is
through closed eyes.
Marius and Cosette never asked themselves whither this was to lead them. They considered that they had
already arrived. It is a strange claim on man's part to wish that love should lead to something.
CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW
Jean Valjean suspected nothing.
Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay, and that sufficed for Jean Valjean's happiness.
The thoughts which Cosette cherished, her tender preoccupations, Marius' image which filled her heart, took
away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow. She was at the age
when the virgin bears her love as the angel his lily. So Jean Valjean was at ease. And then, when two lovers
have come to an understanding, things always go well; the third party who might disturb their love is kept in
a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the same in the case of all
lovers. Thus, Cosette never objected to any of Jean Valjean's proposals. Did she want to take a walk? "Yes,
dear little father." Did she want to stay at home? Very good. Did he wish to pass the evening with Cosette?
She was delighted. As he always went to bed at ten o'clock, Marius did not come to the garden on such
occasions until after that hour, when, from the street, he heard Cosette open the long glass door on the
veranda. Of course, no one ever met Marius in the daytime. Jean Valjean never even dreamed any longer that
Marius was in existence. Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Cosette: "Why, you have whitewash
on your back!" On the previous evening, Marius, in a transport, had pushed Cosette against the wall.
Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep, and was as ignorant of the whole matter as
Jean Valjean.
Marius never set foot in the house. When he was with Cosette, they hid themselves in a recess near the steps,
in order that they might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat, frequently contenting
themselves, by way of conversation, with pressing each other's hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at
the branches of the trees. At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces from them, and they
would not have noticed it, so deeply was the revery of the one absorbed and sunk in the revery of the other.
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Limpid purity. Hours wholly white; almost all alike. This sort of love is a recollection of lily petals and the
plumage of the dove.
The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street. Every time that Marius entered and left, he
carefully adjusted the bar of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible.
He usually went away about midnight, and returned to Courfeyrac's lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:
"Would you believe it? Marius comes home nowadays at one o'clock in the morning."
Bahorel replied:
"What do you expect? There's always a petard in a seminary fellow."
At times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious air, and said to Marius:
"You are getting irregular in your habits, young man."
Courfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part this reflection of an invisible paradise upon
Marius; he was not much in the habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient, and now and then he
called upon Marius to come back to reality.
One morning, he threw him this admonition:
"My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the
province of illusions, capital, soapbubble. Come, be a good boy, what's her name?"
But nothing could induce Marius "to talk." They might have torn out his nails before one of the two sacred
syllables of which that ineffable name, Cosette, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and as
silent as the tomb. Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order.
During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned to know these immense delights. To dispute
and to say you for thou, simply that they might say thou the better afterwards. To talk at great length with
very minute details, of persons in whom they took not the slightest interest in the world; another proof that in
that ravishing opera called love, the libretto counts for almost nothing;
For Marius, to listen to Cosette discussing finery;
For Cosette, to listen to Marius talk in politics;
To listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling along the Rue de Babylone;
To gaze upon the same planet in space, or at the same glowworm gleaming in the grass;
To hold their peace together; a still greater delight than conversation;
Etc., etc.
In the meantime, divers complications were approaching.
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One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the Boulevard des Invalides. He habitually
walked with drooping head. As he was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard some
one quite close to him say:
"Good evening, Monsieur Marius."
He raised his head and recognized Eponine.
This produced a singular effect upon him. He had not thought of that girl a single time since the day when she
had conducted him to the Rue Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had gone completely out of his
mind. He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her, he owed her his happiness, and yet, it was
embarrassing to him to meet her.
It is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and happy, leads man to a state of perfection; it simply
leads him, as we have noted, to a state of oblivion. In this situation, man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets
to be good. Gratitude, duty, matters essential and important to be remembered, vanish. At any other time,
Marius would have behaved quite differently to Eponine. Absorbed in Cosette, he had not even clearly put it
to himself that this Eponine was named Eponine Thenardier, and that she bore the name inscribed in his
father's will, that name, for which, but a few months before, he would have so ardently sacrificed himself. We
show Marius as he was. His father himself was fading out of his soul to some extent, under the splendor of
his love.
He replied with some embarrassment:
"Ah! so it's you, Eponine?"
"Why do you call me you? Have I done anything to you?"
"No," he answered.
Certainly, he had nothing against her. Far from it. Only, he felt that he could not do otherwise, now that he
used thou to Cosette, than say you to Eponine.
As he remained silent, she exclaimed:
"Say"
Then she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly so heedless and so bold. She tried
to smile and could not. Then she resumed:
"Well?"
Then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes.
"Good evening, Mr. Marius," said she suddenly and abruptly; and away she went.
CHAPTER IV. A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG
The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it is necessary to indicate on account of the grave
events which at that epoch hung on the horizon of Paris in the state of lightningcharged clouds. Marius, at
nightfall, was pursuing the same road as on the preceding evening, with the same thoughts of delight in his
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heart, when he caught sight of Eponine approaching, through the trees of the boulevard. Two days in
succession this was too much. He turned hastily aside, quitted the boulevard, changed his course and went
to the Rue Plumet through the Rue Monsieur.
This caused Eponine to follow him to the Rue Plumet, a thing which she had not yet done. Up to that time,
she had contented herself with watching him on his passage along the boulevard without ever seeking to
encounter him. It was only on the evening before that she had attempted to address him.
So Eponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact. She saw him displace the bar and slip into the
garden.
She approached the railing, felt of the bars one after the other, and readily recognized the one which Marius
had moved.
She murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:
"None of that, Lisette!"
She seated herself on the underpinning of the railing, close beside the bar, as though she were guarding it. It
was precisely at the point where the railing touched the neighboring wall. There was a dim nook there, in
which Eponine was entirely concealed.
She remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring and without breathing, a prey to her thoughts.
Towards ten o'clock in the evening, one of the two or three persons who passed through the Rue Plumet, an
old, belated bourgeois who was making haste to escape from this deserted spot of evil repute, as he skirted
the garden railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall, heard a dull and threatening voice
saying:
"I'm no longer surprised that he comes here every evening."
The passerby cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into the black niche, and was greatly
alarmed. He redoubled his pace.
This passerby had reason to make haste, for a very few instants later, six men, who were marching
separately and at some distance from each other, along the wall, and who might have been taken for a gray
patrol, entered the Rue Plumet.
The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited for the others; a second later, all six were reunited.
These men began to talk in a low voice.
"This is the place," said one of them.
"Is there a cab [dog] in the garden?" asked another.
"I don't know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that we'll make him eat."
"Have you some putty to break the pane with?"
"Yes."
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"The railing is old," interpolated a fifth, who had the voice of a ventriloquist.
"So much the better," said the second who had spoken. "It won't screech under the saw, and it won't be hard
to cut."
The sixth, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to inspect the gate, as Eponine had done an hour
earlier, grasping each bar in succession, and shaking them cautiously.
Thus he came to the bar which Marius had loosened. As he was on the point of grasping this bar, a hand
emerged abruptly from the darkness, fell upon his arm; he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push in the
middle of his breast, and a hoarse voice said to him, but not loudly:
"There's a dog."
At the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing before him.
The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He bristled up in hideous wise; nothing
is so formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy; their terrified air evokes terror.
He recoiled and stammered:
"What jade is this?"
"Your daughter."
It was, in fact, Eponine, who had addressed Thenardier.
At the apparition of Eponine, the other five, that is to say, Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, and
Montparnasse had noiselessly drawn near, without precipitation, without uttering a word, with the sinister
slowness peculiar to these men of the night.
Some indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands. Guelemer held one of those pairs of curved
pincers which prowlers call fanchons.
"Ah, see here, what are you about there? What do you want with us? Are you crazy?" exclaimed Thenardier,
as loudly as one can exclaim and still speak low; "what have you come here to hinder our work for?"
Eponine burst out laughing, and threw herself on his neck.
"I am here, little father, because I am here. Isn't a person allowed to sit on the stones nowadays? It's you who
ought not to be here. What have you come here for, since it's a biscuit? I told Magnon so. There's nothing to
be done here. But embrace me, my good little father! It's a long time since I've seen you! So you're out?"
Thenardier tried to disentangle himself from Eponine's arms, and grumbled:
"That's good. You've embraced me. Yes, I'm out. I'm not in. Now, get away with you."
But Eponine did not release her hold, and redoubled her caresses.
"But how did you manage it, little pa? You must have been very clever to get out of that. Tell me about it!
And my mother? Where is mother? Tell me about mamma."
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Thenardier replied:
"She's well. I don't know, let me alone, and be off, I tell you.
"I won't go, so there now," pouted Eponine like a spoiled child; "you send me off, and it's four months since I
saw you, and I've hardly had time to kiss you."
And she caught her father round the neck again.
"Come, now, this is stupid!" said Babet.
"Make haste!" said Guelemer, "the cops may pass."
The ventriloquist's voice repeated his distich:
"Nous n' sommes pas le jour de l'an, "This isn't New Year's day
A becoter papa, maman." To peck at pa and ma."
Eponine turned to the five ruffians.
"Why, it's Monsieur Brujon. Good day, Monsieur Babet. Good day, Monsieur Claquesous. Don't you know
me, Monsieur Guelemer? How goes it, Montparnasse?"
"Yes, they know you!" ejaculated Thenardier. "But good day, good evening, sheer off! leave us alone!"
"It's the hour for foxes, not for chickens," said Montparnasse.
"You see the job we have on hand here," added Babet.
Eponine caught Montparnasse's hand.
"Take care," said he, "you'll cut yourself, I've a knife open."
"My little Montparnasse," responded Eponine very gently, "you must have confidence in people. I am the
daughter of my father, perhaps. Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Guelemer, I'm the person who was charged to
investigate this matter."
It is remarkable that Eponine did not talk slang. That frightful tongue had become impossible to her since she
had known Marius.
She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton, Guelemer's huge, coarse fingers, and
continued:
"You know well that I'm no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have rendered you service on various occasions.
Well, I have made inquiries; you will expose yourselves to no purpose, you see. I swear to you that there is
nothing in this house."
"There are lone women," said Guelemer.
"No, the persons have moved away."
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"The candles haven't, anyway!" ejaculated Babet.
And he pointed out to Eponine, across the tops of the trees, a light which was wandering about in the mansard
roof of the pavilion. It was Toussaint, who had stayed up to spread out some linen to dry.
Eponine made a final effort.
"Well," said she, "they're very poor folks, and it's a hovel where there isn't a sou."
"Go to the devil!" cried Thenardier. "When we've turned the house upside down and put the cellar at the top
and the attic below, we'll tell you what there is inside, and whether it's francs or sous or halffarthings."
And he pushed her aside with the intention of entering.
"My good friend, Mr. Montparnasse," said Eponine, "I entreat you, you are a good fellow, don't enter."
"Take care, you'll cut yourself," replied Montparnasse.
Thenardier resumed in his decided tone:
"Decamp, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs!"
Eponine released Montparnasse's hand, which she had grasped again, and said:
"So you mean to enter this house?"
"Rather!" grinned the ventriloquist.
Then she set her back against the gate, faced the six ruffians who were armed to the teeth, and to whom the
night lent the visages of demons, and said in a firm, low voice:
"Well, I don't mean that you shall."
They halted in amazement. The ventriloquist, however, finished his grin. She went on:
"Friends! Listen well. This is not what you want. Now I'm talking. In the first place, if you enter this garden,
if you lay a hand on this gate, I'll scream, I'll beat on the door, I'll rouse everybody, I'll have the whole six of
you seized, I'll call the police."
"She'd do it, too," said Thenardier in a low tone to Brujon and the ventriloquist.
She shook her head and added:
"Beginning with my father!"
Thenardier stepped nearer.
"Not so close, my good man!" said she.
He retreated, growling between his teeth:
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"Why, what's the matter with her?"
And he added:
"Bitch!"
She began to laugh in a terrible way:
"As you like, but you shall not enter here. I'm not the daughter of a dog, since I'm the daughter of a wolf.
There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I'm a woman. You don't frighten me. I tell
you that you shan't enter this house, because it doesn't suit me. If you approach, I'll bark. I told you, I'm the
dog, and I don't care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you please, but don't come here, I
forbid it! You can use your knives. I'll use kicks; it's all the same to me, come on!"
She advanced a pace nearer the ruffians, she was terrible, she burst out laughing:
"Pardine! I'm not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be cold this winter. Aren't they ridiculous,
these ninnies of men, to think they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you have finical
poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put on a big voice, forsooth! I ain't afraid of
anything, that I ain't!"
She fastened her intent gaze upon Thenardier and said:
"Not even of you, father!"
Then she continued, as she cast her bloodshot, spectrelike eyes upon the ruffians in turn:
"What do I care if I'm picked up tomorrow morning on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows
of my father's club, or whether I'm found a year from now in the nets at SaintCloud or the Isle of Swans in
the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?"
She was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath came from her weak and narrow chest
like the deathrattle.
She resumed:
"I have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang! There are six of you; I represent the whole
world."
Thenardier made a movement towards her.
"Don't approach!" she cried.
He halted, and said gently:
"Well, no; I won't approach, but don't speak so loud. So you intend to hinder us in our work, my daughter?
But we must earn our living all the same. Have you no longer any kind feeling for your father?"
"You bother me," said Eponine.
"But we must live, we must eat"
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"Burst!"
So saying, she seated herself on the underpinning of the fence and hummed:
"Mon bras si dodu, "My arm so plump,
Ma jambe bien faite My leg well formed,
Et le temps perdu." And time wasted."
She had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and she swung her foot with an air of
indifference. Her tattered gown permitted a view of her thin shoulderblades. The neighboring street lantern
illuminated her profile and her attitude. Nothing more resolute and more surprising could be seen.
The six rascals, speechless and gloomy at being held in check by a girl, retreated beneath the shadow cast by
the lantern, and held counsel with furious and humiliated shrugs.
In the meantime she stared at them with a stern but peaceful air.
"There's something the matter with her," said Babet. "A reason. Is she in love with the dog? It's a shame to
miss this, anyway. Two women, an old fellow who lodges in the backyard, and curtains that ain't so bad at
the windows. The old cove must be a Jew. I think the job's a good one."
"Well, go in, then, the rest of you," exclaimed Montparnasse. "Do the job. I'll stay here with the girl, and if
she fails us"
He flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light of the lantern.
Thenardier said not a word, and seemed ready for whatever the rest pleased.
Brujon, who was somewhat of an oracle, and who had, as the reader knows, "put up the job," had not as yet
spoken. He seemed thoughtful. He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known that he
had plundered a police post simply out of bravado. Besides this he made verses and songs, which gave him
great authority.
Babet interrogated him:
"You say nothing, Brujon?"
Brujon remained silent an instant longer, then he shook his head in various ways, and finally concluded to
speak:
"See here; this morning I came across two sparrows fighting, this evening I jostled a woman who was
quarrelling. All that's bad. Let's quit."
They went away.
As they went, Montparnasse muttered:
"Never mind! if they had wanted, I'd have cut her throat."
Babet responded
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"I wouldn't. I don't hit a lady."
At the corner of the street they halted and exchanged the following enigmatical dialogue in a low tone:
"Where shall we go to sleep tonight?"
"Under Pantin [Paris]."
"Have you the key to the gate, Thenardier?"
"Pardi."
Eponine, who never took her eyes off of them, saw them retreat by the road by which they had come. She
rose and began to creep after them along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus as far as the
boulevard.
There they parted, and she saw these six men plunge into the gloom, where they appeared to melt away.
CHAPTER V. THINGS OF THE NIGHT
After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just
taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses, the heaths, the
branches rudely interlaced, the tall grass, exist in a sombre manner; the savage swarming there catches
glimpses of sudden apparitions of the invisible; that which is below man distinguishes, through the mists, that
which is beyond man; and the things of which we living beings are ignorant there meet face to face in the
night. Nature, bristling and wild, takes alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she feels the
supernatural. The forces of the gloom know each other, and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and
claws fear what they cannot grasp. Blooddrinking bestiality, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey,
the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the
impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem
to them to live with a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused fear
of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being. A black figure barring the
way stops the wild beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts that which
emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.
CHAPTER VI. MARIUS BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE
EXTENT OF GIVING COSETTE HIS ADDRESS
While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the gate, and while the six ruffians were
yielding to a girl, Marius was by Cosette's side.
Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the
grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had all
the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had
Marius been more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic.
But he had found Cosette sad; Cosette had been weeping. Her eyes were red.
This was the first cloud in that wonderful dream.
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Marius' first word had been: "What is the matter?"
And she had replied: "This."
Then she had seated herself on the bench near the steps, and while he tremblingly took his place beside her,
she had continued:
"My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness, because he has business, and we may go away
from here."
Marius shivered from head to foot.
When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away
means to die.
For the last six weeks, Marius had little by little, slowly, by degrees, taken possession of Cosette each day. As
we have already explained, in the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the body; later on, one takes
the body long before the soul; sometimes one does not take the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes
add: "Because there is none"; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy. So Marius possessed Cosette, as
spirits possess, but he enveloped her with all his soul, and seized her jealously with incredible conviction. He
possessed her smile, her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance of her blue eyes, the sweetness of her
skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts. Therefore, he
possessed all Cosette's dreams.
He incessantly gazed at, and he sometimes touched lightly with his breath, the short locks on the nape of her
neck, and he declared to himself that there was not one of those short hairs which did not belong to him,
Marius. He gazed upon and adored the things that she wore, her knot of ribbon, her gloves, her sleeves, her
shoes, her cuffs, as sacred objects of which he was the master. He dreamed that he was the lord of those
pretty shell combs which she wore in her hair, and he even said to himself, in confused and suppressed
stammerings of voluptuousness which did not make their way to the light, that there was not a ribbon of her
gown, not a mesh in her stockings, not a fold in her bodice, which was not his. Beside Cosette he felt himself
beside his own property, his own thing, his own despot and his slave. It seemed as though they had so
intermingled their souls, that it would have been impossible to tell them apart had they wished to take them
back again."This is mine." "No, it is mine." "I assure you that you are mistaken. This is my property."
"What you are taking as your own is myself." Marius was something that made a part of Cosette, and
Cosette was something which made a part of Marius. Marius felt Cosette within him. To have Cosette, to
possess Cosette, this, to him, was not to be distinguished from breathing. It was in the midst of this faith, of
this intoxication, of this virgin possession, unprecedented and absolute, of this sovereignty, that these words:
"We are going away," fell suddenly, at a blow, and that the harsh voice of reality cried to him: "Cosette is not
yours!"
Marius awoke. For six weeks Marius had been living, as we have said, outside of life; those words, going
away! caused him to reenter it harshly.
He found not a word to say. Cosette merely felt that his hand was very cold. She said to him in her turn:
"What is the matter?"
He replied in so low a tone that Cosette hardly heard him:
"I did not understand what you said."
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She began again:
"This morning my father told me to settle all my little affairs and to hold myself in readiness, that he would
give me his linen to put in a trunk, that he was obliged to go on a journey, that we were to go away, that it is
necessary to have a large trunk for me and a small one for him, and that all is to be ready in a week from now,
and that we might go to England."
"But this is outrageous!" exclaimed Marius.
It is certain, that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence, not one of the abominations of the worst
tyrants, no action of Busiris, of Tiberius, or of Henry VIII., could have equalled this in atrocity, in the opinion
of Marius; M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter off to England because he had business there.
He demanded in a weak voice:
"And when do you start?"
"He did not say when."
"And when shall you return?"
"He did not say when."
Marius rose and said coldly:
"Cosette, shall you go?"
Cosette turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish, and replied in a sort of bewilderment:
"Where?"
"To England. Shall you go?"
"Why do you say you to me?"
"I ask you whether you will go?"
"What do you expect me to do?" she said, clasping her hands.
"So, you will go?"
"If my father goes."
"So, you will go?"
Cosette took Marius' hand, and pressed it without replying.
"Very well," said Marius, "then I will go elsewhere."
Cosette felt rather than understood the meaning of these words. She turned so pale that her face shone white
through the gloom. She stammered:
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"What do you mean?"
Marius looked at her, then raised his eyes to heaven, and answered: "Nothing."
When his eyes fell again, he saw Cosette smiling at him. The smile of a woman whom one loves possesses a
visible radiance, even at night.
"How silly we are! Marius, I have an idea."
"What is it?"
"If we go away, do you go too! I will tell you where! Come and join me wherever I am."
Marius was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into reality. He cried to Cosette:
"Go away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I have none! Go to England? But
I am in debt now, I owe, I don't know how much, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends with
whom you are not acquainted! I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks
buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I
have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your
love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou! Go to England! Eh! I haven't enough to
pay for a passport!"
He threw himself against a tree which was close at hand, erect, his brow pressed close to the bark, feeling
neither the wood which flayed his skin, nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples, and there he stood
motionless, on the point of falling, like the statue of despair.
He remained a long time thus. One could remain for eternity in such abysses. At last he turned round. He
heard behind him a faint stifled noise, which was sweet yet sad.
It was Cosette sobbing.
She had been weeping for more than two hours beside Marius as he meditated.
He came to her, fell at her knees, and slowly prostrating himself, he took the tip of her foot which peeped out
from beneath her robe, and kissed it.
She let him have his way in silence. There are moments when a woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned
goddess, the religion of love.
"Do not weep," he said.
She murmured:
"Not when I may be going away, and you cannot come!"
He went on:
"Do you love me?"
She replied, sobbing, by that word from paradise which is never more charming than amid tears:
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"I adore you!"
He continued in a tone which was an indescribable caress:
"Do not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me, and cease to weep?"
"Do you love me?" said she.
He took her hand.
"Cosette, I have never given my word of honor to any one, because my word of honor terrifies me. I feel that
my father is by my side. Well, I give you my most sacred word of honor, that if you go away I shall die."
In the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy so solemn and so tranquil, that Cosette
trembled. She felt that chill which is produced by a true and gloomy thing as it passes by. The shock made
her cease weeping.
"Now, listen," said he, "do not expect me tomorrow."
"Why?"
"Do not expect me until the day after tomorrow."
"Oh! Why?"
"You will see."
"A day without seeing you! But that is impossible!"
"Let us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps."
And Marius added in a low tone and in an aside:
"He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received any one except in the evening."
"Of what man are you speaking?" asked Cosette.
"I? I said nothing."
"What do you hope, then?"
"Wait until the day after tomorrow."
"You wish it?"
"Yes, Cosette."
She took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe in order to be on a level with him, and tried to
read his hope in his eyes.
Marius resumed:
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"Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might happen, one never knows; I live with
that friend named Courfeyrac, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16."
He searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the blade he wrote on the plaster of the wall:
"16 Rue de la Verrerie."
In the meantime, Cosette had begun to gaze into his eyes once more.
"Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh! tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant
night."
"This is my idea: that it is impossible that God should mean to part us. Wait; expect me the day after
tomorrow."
"What shall I do until then?" said Cosette. "You are outside, you go, and come! How happy men are! I shall
remain entirely alone! Oh! How sad I shall be! What is it that you are going to do tomorrow evening? tell
me."
"I am going to try something."
"Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may be successful. I will question you no
further, since you do not wish it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening tomorrow in singing that
music from Euryanthe that you love, and that you came one evening to listen to, outside my shutters. But day
after tomorrow you will come early. I shall expect you at dusk, at nine o'clock precisely, I warn you. Mon
Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the stroke of nine, do you understand, I shall be in the
garden."
"And I also."
And without having uttered it, moved by the same thought, impelled by those electric currents which place
lovers in continual communication, both being intoxicated with delight even in their sorrow, they fell into
each other's arms, without perceiving that their lips met while their uplifted eyes, overflowing with rapture
and full of tears, gazed upon the stars.
When Marius went forth, the street was deserted. This was the moment when Eponine was following the
ruffians to the boulevard.
While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an idea had crossed his mind; an idea,
alas! that he himself judged to be senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision.
CHAPTER VII. THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE
PRESENCE OF EACH OTHER
At that epoch, Father Gillenormand was well past his ninetyfirst birthday. He still lived with Mademoiselle
Gillenormand in the Rue des FillesduCalvaire, No. 6, in the old house which he owned. He was, as the
reader will remember, one of those antique old men who await death perfectly erect, whom age bears down
without bending, and whom even sorrow cannot curve.
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Still, his daughter had been saying for some time: "My father is sinking." He no longer boxed the maids' ears;
he no longer thumped the landingplace so vigorously with his cane when Basque was slow in opening the
door. The Revolution of July had exasperated him for the space of barely six months. He had viewed, almost
tranquilly, that coupling of words, in the Moniteur: M. HumblotConte, peer of France. The fact is, that the
old man was deeply dejected. He did not bend, he did not yield; this was no more a characteristic of his
physical than of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving way internally. For four years he had been
waiting for Marius, with his foot firmly planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction that that
goodfornothing young scamp would ring at his door some day or other; now he had reached the point,
where, at certain gloomy hours, he said to himself, that if Marius made him wait much longerIt was not
death that was insupportable to him; it was the idea that perhaps he should never see Marius again. The idea
of never seeing Marius again had never entered his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to
him, and it chilled him. Absence, as is always the case in genuine and natural sentiments, had only served to
augment the grandfather's love for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash. It is during December
nights, when the cold stands at ten degrees, that one thinks oftenest of the son.
M. Gillenormand was, or thought himself, above all things, incapable of taking a single step, hethe
grandfather, towards his grandson; "I would die rather," he said to himself. He did not consider himself as the
least to blame; but he thought of Marius only with profound tenderness, and the mute despair of an elderly,
kindly old man who is about to vanish in the dark.
He began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.
M. Gillenormand, without however acknowledging it to himself, for it would have rendered him furious and
ashamed, had never loved a mistress as he loved Marius.
He had had placed in his chamber, opposite the head of his bed, so that it should be the first thing on which
his eyes fell on waking, an old portrait of his other daughter, who was dead, Madame Pontmercy, a portrait
which had been taken when she was eighteen. He gazed incessantly at that portrait. One day, he happened to
say, as he gazed upon it:
"I think the likeness is strong."
"To my sister?" inquired Mademoiselle Gillenormand. "Yes, certainly."
"The old man added:
"And to him also."
Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost closed, in a despondent attitude, his
daughter ventured to say to him:
"Father, are you as angry with him as ever?"
She paused, not daring to proceed further.
"With whom?" he demanded.
"With that poor Marius."
He raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on the table, and exclaimed in his most irritated
and vibrating tone:
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"Poor Marius, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless,
soulless, haughty, and wicked man!"
And he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear that stood in his eye.
Three days later he broke a silence which had lasted four hours, to say to his daughter pointblank:
"I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him to me."
Aunt Gillenormand renounced every effort, and pronounced this acute diagnosis: "My father never cared very
much for my sister after her folly. It is clear that he detests Marius."
"After her folly" meant: "after she had married the colonel."
However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to
substitute her favorite, the officer of lancers, for Marius. The substitute, Theodule, had not been a success. M.
Gillenormand had not accepted the quid pro quo. A vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a
stopgap. Theodule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted at the task of pleasing. The
goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer shocked the goodman. Lieutenant Theodule was gay, no doubt, but
a chatterbox, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver, but a frequenter of bad company; he had mistresses, it is
true, and he had a great deal to say about them, it is true also; but he talked badly. All his good qualities had a
defect. M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity
of the barracks in the Rue de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came in his uniform,
with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him downright intolerable. Finally, Father Gillenormand had said
to his daughter: "I've had enough of that Theodule. I haven't much taste for warriors in time of peace. Receive
him if you choose. I don't know but I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords. The clash of blades in
battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the scabbard on the pavement. And then, throwing out your
chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass, is doubly ridiculous. When one
is a veritable man, one holds equally aloof from swagger and from affected airs. He is neither a blusterer nor
a finnickyhearted man. Keep your Theodule for yourself."
It was in vain that his daughter said to him: "But he is your grandnephew, nevertheless,"it turned out that
M. Gillenormand, who was a grandfather to the very fingertips, was not in the least a granduncle.
In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Theodule had only served to make him regret
Marius all the more.
One evening,it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father Gillenormand having a rousing fire on
the hearth,he had dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment. He was alone in his
chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his feet propped on the andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of
coromandel lacquer, with its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two candles under a
green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in his hand a book which he was not reading. He was
dressed, according to his wont, like an incroyable, and resembled an antique portrait by Garat. This would
have made people run after him in the street, had not his daughter covered him up, whenever he went out, in a
vast bishop's wadded cloak, which concealed his attire. At home, he never wore a dressing gown, except
when he rose and retired. "It gives one a look of age," said he.
Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly; and, as usual, bitterness predominated. His
tenderness once soured always ended by boiling and turning to indignation. He had reached the point where a
man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends his heart. He was explaining to himself that
there was no longer any reason why Marius should return, that if he intended to return, he should have done it
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long ago, that he must renounce the idea. He was trying to accustom himself to the thought that all was over,
and that he should die without having beheld "that gentleman" again. But his whole nature revolted; his aged
paternity would not consent to this. "Well!" said he, this was his doleful refrain,"he will not return!" His
bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated gaze upon the ashes on his
hearth.
In the very midst of his revery, his old servant Basque entered, and inquired:
"Can Monsieur receive M. Marius?"
The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under the influence of a galvanic shock. All his
blood had retreated to his heart. He stammered:
"M. Marius what?"
"I don't know," replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance by his master's air; "I have not seen
him. Nicolette came in and said to me: `There's a young man here; say that it is M. Marius.'"
Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice:
"Show him in."
And he remained in the same attitude, with shaking head, and his eyes fixed on the door. It opened once
more. A young man entered. It was Marius.
Marius halted at the door, as though waiting to be bidden to enter.
His almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity caused by the shade. Nothing could be seen but
his calm, grave, but strangely sad face.
It was several minutes before Father Gillenormand, dulled with amazement and joy, could see anything
except a brightness as when one is in the presence of an apparition. He was on the point of swooning; he saw
Marius through a dazzling light. It certainly was he, it certainly was Marius.
At last! After the lapse of four years! He grasped him entire, so to speak, in a single glance. He found him
noble, handsome, distinguished, wellgrown, a complete man, with a suitable mien and a charming air. He
felt a desire to open his arms, to call him, to fling himself forward; his heart melted with rapture, affectionate
words swelled and overflowed his breast; at length all his tenderness came to the light and reached his lips,
and, by a contrast which constituted the very foundation of his nature, what came forth was harshness. He
said abruptly:
"What have you come here for?"
Marius replied with embarrassment:
"Monsieur"
M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with
Marius and with himself. He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the
goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be
hard outside. Bitterness returned. He interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:
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"Then why did you come?"
That "then" signified: If you do not come to embrace me. Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave
him a face of marble.
"Monsieur"
"Have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?"
He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that "the child" would yield. Marius shivered; it was
the denial of his father that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:
"No, sir."
"Then," exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was poignant and full of wrath, "what do you
want of me?"
Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice:
"Sir, have pity on me."
These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner, they would have rendered him tender, but they
came too late. The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane; his lips were white,
his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Marius as he bowed.
"Pity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man of ninetyone! You are entering into life, I am
leaving it; you go to the play, to balls, to the cafe, to the billiardhall; you have wit, you please the women,
you are a handsome fellow; as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of summer; you are rich with the only
riches that are really such, I possess all the poverty of age; infirmity, isolation! You have your thirtytwo
teeth, a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I have no longer
even white hair, I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory; there are three names of
streets that I confound incessantly, the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue SaintClaude, that is
what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my
sight, so far am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am beloved by no one
in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the
courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll."
And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:
"Come, now, what do you want of me?"
"Sir," said Marius, "I know that my presence is displeasing to you, but I have come merely to ask one thing of
you, and then I shall go away immediately."
"You are a fool!" said the old man. "Who said that you were to go away?"
This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of his heart:
"Ask my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!"
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M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments, that his harsh reception had repelled
the lad, that his hardness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and as
his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased his harshness. He would have liked to have
Marius understand, and Marius did not understand, which made the goodman furious.
He began again:
"What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no one knows whither, you drove your
aunt to despair, you went off, it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it's more convenient, to play the
dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted
debts without even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows and a blusterer, and, at
the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say to me!"
This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive only of silence on the part of Marius.
M. Gillenormand folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophized
Marius bitterly:
"Let us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me, you say? Well, what? What is it?
Speak!"
"Sir," said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling over a precipice, "I have come to ask
your permission to marry."
M. Gillenormand rang the bell. Basque opened the door halfway.
"Call my daughter."
A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand did not enter, but showed
herself; Marius was standing, mute, with pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was
pacing back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her:
"Nothing. It is Monsieur Marius. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes to marry. That's all. Go away."
The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at
Marius with a frightened air, hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable to escape
her, and disappeared at her father's breath more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane.
In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his back against the chimneypiece once
more.
"You marry! At one and twenty! You have arranged that! You have only a permission to ask! a formality. Sit
down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last. The Jacobins got the upper
hand. You must have been delighted. Are you not a Republican since you are a Baron? You can make that
agree. The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you
taken the Louvre at all, sir? Quite near here, in the Rue SaintAntoine, opposite the Rue des Nonamdieres,
there is a cannonball incrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription: `July 28th,
1830.' Go take a look at that. It produces a good effect. Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things. By the
way, aren't they erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le Duc de Berry? So you want to
marry? Whom? Can one inquire without indiscretion?"
He paused, and, before Marius had time to answer, he added violently:
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"Come now, you have a profession? A fortune made? How much do you earn at your trade of lawyer?"
"Nothing," said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was almost fierce.
"Nothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred livres that I allow you?"
Marius did not reply. M. Gillenormand continued:
"Then I understand the girl is rich?"
"As rich as I am."
"What! No dowry?"
"No."
"Expectations?"
"I think not."
"Utterly naked! What's the father?"
"I don't know."
"And what's her name?"
"Mademoiselle Fauchelevent."
"Fauchewhat?"
"Fauchelevent."
"Pttt!" ejaculated the old gentleman.
"Sir!" exclaimed Marius.
M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is speaking to himself:
"That's right, one and twenty years of age, no profession, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne
de Pontmercy will go and purchase a couple of sous' worth of parsley from the fruiterer."
"Sir," repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope, which was vanishing, "I entreat you! I conjure you in
the name of Heaven, with clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet, permit me to marry her!"
The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, coughing and laughing at the same time.
"Ah! ah! ah! You said to yourself: `Pardine! I'll go hunt up that old blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a
shame that I'm not twentyfive! How I'd treat him to a nice respectful summons! How nicely I'd get along
without him! It's nothing to me, I'd say to him: "You're only too happy to see me, you old idiot, I want to
marry, I desire to wed Mamselle Nomatterwhom, daughter of Monsieur Nomatterwhat, I have no shoes,
she has no chemise, that just suits; I want to throw my career, my future, my youth, my life to the dogs; I
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wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with a woman around my neck, that's an idea, and you must consent
to it!" and the old fossil will consent.' Go, my lad, do as you like, attach your pavingstone, marry your
Pousselevent, your Coupelevent Never, sir, never!"
"Father"
"Never!"
At the tone in which that "never" was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He traversed the chamber with slow steps,
with bowed head, tottering and more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure. M.
Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and at the moment when the door opened, and Marius was on the
point of going out, he advanced four paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and spoiled old gentlemen,
seized Marius by the collar, brought him back energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair and
said to him:
"Tell me all about it!"
"It was that single word "father" which had effected this revolution.
Marius stared at him in bewilderment. M. Gillenormand's mobile face was no longer expressive of anything
but rough and ineffable goodnature. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.
"Come, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber, tell me everything! Sapristi! how stupid
young folks are!"
"Father" repeated Marius.
The old man's entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance.
"Yes, that's right, call me father, and you'll see!"
There was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted, and so paternal in this brusqueness, that
Marius, in the sudden transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated by it, as it were.
He was seated near the table, the light from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume, which
Father Gillenormand regarded with amazement.
"Well, father" said Marius.
"Ah, by the way," interrupted M. Gillenormand, "you really have not a penny then? You are dressed like a
pickpocket."
He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid on the table: "Here are a hundred louis, buy
yourself a hat."
"Father," pursued Marius, "my good father, if you only knew! I love her. You cannot imagine it; the first time
I saw her was at the Luxembourg, she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and then,
I don't know how it came about, I fell in love with her. Oh! how unhappy that made me! Now, at last, I see
her every day, at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are going away, it is in the
garden that we meet, in the evening, her father means to take her to England, then I said to myself: `I'll go
and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair. I should go mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I
should throw myself into the water. I absolutely must marry her, since I should go mad otherwise.' This is the
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Page No 723
whole truth, and I do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence, in the
Rue Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of the Invalides."
Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance, beside Marius. As he listened to him
and drank in the sound of his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the words
"Rue Plumet" he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.
"The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?Let us see!Are there not barracks in that
vicinity?Why, yes, that's it. Your cousin Theodule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay
girl, my good friend, a gay girl!Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be called the Rue
Blomet.It all comes back to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In
a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves, I think
that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit. I don't know where he did it. However, that's not to the
purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think it quite proper that a young man like you
should be in love. It's the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a Jacobin. I like you better
in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do
myself the justice to say, that in the line of sansculottes, I have never loved any one but women. Pretty girls
are pretty girls, the deuce! There's no objection to that. As for the little one, she receives you without her
father's knowledge. That's in the established order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself.
More than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not
precipitate himself into the tragic; one does not make one's mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf.
One simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals; don't marry. You
come and look up your grandfather, who is a goodnatured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls
of louis in an old drawer; you say to him: `See here, grandfather.' And the grandfather says: `That's a simple
matter. Youth must amuse itself, and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my
boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!'
Nothing better! That's the way the affair should be treated. You don't marry, but that does no harm. You
understand me?"
Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign with his head that he did not.
The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face
with a mysterious and beaming air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder:
"Booby! make her your mistress."
Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had just said. This twaddle about the
Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of all
that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was a lily. The good man was wandering in his mind. But this
wandering terminated in words which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette.
Those words, "make her your mistress," entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword.
He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. There he
turned round, bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said:
"Five years ago you insulted my father; today you have insulted my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir.
Farewell."
Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he
could utter a word, the door closed once more, and Marius had disappeared.
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The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though struck by lightning, without the power to
speak or breathe, as though a clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his armchair, ran,
so far as a man can run at ninetyone, to the door, opened it, and cried:
"Help! Help!"
His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again, with a pitiful rattle: "Run after him!
Bring him back! What have I done to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God! This
time he will not come back!"
He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open with his aged and palsied hands, leaned
out more than halfway, while Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:
"Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!"
But Marius could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was turning the corner of the Rue SaintLouis.
The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times with an expression of anguish, recoiled
tottering, and fell back into an armchair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering head and lips which
moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes and nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and
profound something which resembled night.
BOOK NINTH.WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
CHAPTER I. JEAN VALJEAN
That same day, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was sitting alone on the back side of one
of the most solitary slopes in the ChampdeMars. Either from prudence, or from a desire to meditate, or
simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habit which gradually introduce themselves into
the existence of every one, he now rarely went out with Cosette. He had on his workman's waistcoat, and
trousers of gray linen; and his longvisored cap concealed his countenance.
He was calm and happy now beside Cosette; that which had, for a time, alarmed and troubled him had been
dissipated; but for the last week or two, anxieties of another nature had come up. One day, while walking on
the boulevard, he had caught sight of Thenardier; thanks to his disguise, Thenardier had not recognized him;
but since that day, Jean Valjean had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain that Thenardier was
prowling about in their neighborhood.
This had been sufficient to make him come to a decision.
Moreover, Paris was not tranquil: political troubles presented this inconvenient feature, for any one who had
anything to conceal in his life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and that while
seeking to ferret out a man like Pepin or Morey, they might very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had made up his mind to quit Paris, and even France, and go over to England.
He had warned Cosette. He wished to set out before the end of the week.
He had seated himself on the slope in the ChampdeMars, turning over all sorts of thoughts in his
mind,Thenardier, the police, the journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport.
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He was troubled from all these points of view.
Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted his attention, and from which he had not yet
recovered, had added to his state of alarm.
On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was stirring, while strolling in the garden
before Cosette's shutters were open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall, the following line, engraved,
probably with a nail:
16 Rue de la Verrerie.
This was perfectly fresh, the grooves in the ancient black mortar were white, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the
wall was powdered with the fine, fresh plaster.
This had probably been written on the preceding night.
What was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself?
In any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated, and that strangers had made their way into it.
He recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household.
His mind was now filling in this canvas.
He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written on the wall, for fear of alarming her.
In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow cast by the sun, that some one had halted on
the crest of the slope immediately behind him.
He was on the point of turning round, when a paper folded in four fell upon his knees as though a hand had
dropped it over his head.
He took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written in large characters, with a pencil:
"MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE."
Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope; he gazed all around him and perceived
a creature larger than a child, not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of dustcolored cotton
velvet, who was jumping over the parapet and who slipped into the moat of the ChampdeMars.
Jean Valjean returned home at once, in a very thoughtful mood.
CHAPTER II. MARIUS
Marius had left M. Gillenormand in despair. He had entered the house with very little hope, and quitted it
with immense despair.
However, and those who have observed the depths of the human heart will understand this, the officer, the
lancer, the ninny, Cousin Theodule, had left no trace in his mind. Not the slightest. The dramatic poet might,
apparently, expect some complications from this revelation made pointblank by the grandfather to the
grandson. But what the drama would gain thereby, truth would lose. Marius was at an age when one believes
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nothing in the line of evil; later on comes the age when one believes everything. Suspicions are nothing else
than wrinkles. Early youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous over
Candide. Suspect Cosette! There are hosts of crimes which Marius could sooner have committed.
He began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer. He thought of nothing, so far as he
could afterwards remember. At two o'clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac's quarters and flung
himself, without undressing, on his mattress. The sun was shining brightly when he sank into that frightful
leaden slumber which permits ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac,
Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre standing in the room with their hats on and all ready to go out.
Courfeyrac said to him:
"Are you coming to General Lamarque's funeral?"
It seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.
He went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols which Javert had given him at the time of
the adventure on the 3d of February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still loaded. It
would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his mind when he took them with him.
All day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going; it rained at times, he did not perceive
it; for his dinner, he purchased a penny roll at a baker's, put it in his pocket and forgot it. It appears that he
took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it. There are moments when a man has a furnace within his
skull. Marius was passing through one of those moments. He no longer hoped for anything; this step he had
taken since the preceding evening. He waited for night with feverish impatience, he had but one idea clearly
before his mind;this was, that at nine o'clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness now constituted his
whole future; after that, gloom. At intervals, as he roamed through the most deserted boulevards, it seemed to
him that he heard strange noises in Paris. He thrust his head out of his revery and said: "Is there fighting on
hand?"
At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, as he had promised Cosette, he was in the Rue Plumet. When he
approached the grating he forgot everything. It was fortyeight hours since he had seen Cosette; he was about
to behold her once more; every other thought was effaced, and he felt only a profound and unheardof joy.
Those minutes in which one lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that at the
moment when they are passing they fill the heart completely.
Marius displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden. Cosette was not at the spot where she
ordinarily waited for him. He traversed the thicket, and approached the recess near the flight of steps: "She is
waiting for me there," said he. Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes, and saw that the shutters of the
house were closed. He made the tour of the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the house,
and, rendered senseless by love, intoxicated, terrified, exasperated with grief and uneasiness, like a master
who returns home at an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked again, at the risk of
seeing the window open, and her father's gloomy face make its appearance, and demand: "What do you
want?" This was nothing in comparison with what he dimly caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he
lifted up his voice and called Cosette."Cosette!" he cried; "Cosette!" he repeated imperiously. There was
no reply. All was over. No one in the garden; no one in the house.
Marius fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as black and as silent as a tomb and far
more empty. He gazed at the stone seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette. Then
he seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness and resolution, he blessed his love in
the depths of his thought, and he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone, all that there was left for him
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was to die.
All at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street, and which was calling to him through
the trees:
"Mr. Marius!"
He started to his feet.
"Hey?" said he.
"Mr. Marius, are you there?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Marius," went on the voice, "your friends are waiting for you at the barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie."
This voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him. It resembled the hoarse, rough voice of Eponine. Marius
hastened to the gate, thrust aside the movable bar, passed his head through the aperture, and saw some one
who appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at a run into the gloom.
CHAPTER III. M. MABEUF
Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf, in his venerable, infantile austerity, had not
accepted the gift of the stars; he had not admitted that a star could coin itself into louis d'or. He had not
divined that what had fallen from heaven had come from Gavroche. He had taken the purse to the police
commissioner of the quarter, as a lost article placed by the finder at the disposal of claimants. The purse was
actually lost. It is unnecessary to say that no one claimed it, and that it did not succor M. Mabeuf.
Moreover, M. Mabeuf had continued his downward course.
His experiments on indigo had been no more successful in the Jardin des Plantes than in his garden at
Austerlitz. The year before he had owed his housekeeper's wages; now, as we have seen, he owed three
quarters of his rent. The pawnshop had sold the plates of his Flora after the expiration of thirteen months.
Some coppersmith had made stewpans of them. His copper plates gone, and being unable to complete even
the incomplete copies of his Flora which were in his possession, he had disposed of the text, at a miserable
price, as waste paper, to a secondhand bookseller. Nothing now remained to him of his life's work. He set to
work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that this wretched resource was becoming
exhausted, he gave up his garden and allowed it to run to waste. Before this, a long time before, he had given
up his two eggs and the morsel of beef which he ate from time to time. He dined on bread and potatoes. He
had sold the last of his furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding, his clothing and his blankets, then his
herbariums and prints; but he still retained his most precious books, many of which were of the greatest
rarity, among others, Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, edition of 1560; La Concordance des Bibles, by
Pierre de Besse; Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, of Jean de La Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of
Navarre; the book de la Charge et Dignite de l'Ambassadeur, by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a Florilegium
Rabbinicum of 1644; a Tibullus of 1567, with this magnificent inscription: Venetiis, in aedibus Manutianis;
and lastly, a Diogenes Laertius, printed at Lyons in 1644, which contained the famous variant of the
manuscript 411, thirteenth century, of the Vatican, and those of the two manuscripts of Venice, 393 and 394,
consulted with such fruitful results by Henri Estienne, and all the passages in Doric dialect which are only
found in the celebrated manuscript of the twelfth century belonging to the Naples Library. M. Mabeuf never
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had any fire in his chamber, and went to bed at sundown, in order not to consume any candles. It seemed as
though he had no longer any neighbors: people avoided him when he went out; he perceived the fact. The
wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the
wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses, the coldest. Still, Father Mabeuf had not
entirely lost his childlike serenity. His eyes acquired some vivacity when they rested on his books, and he
smiled when he gazed at the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy. His bookcase with glass doors was
the only piece of furniture which he had kept beyond what was strictly indispensable.
One day, Mother Plutarque said to him:
"I have no money to buy any dinner."
What she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes.
"On credit?" suggested M. Mabeuf.
"You know well that people refuse me."
M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase, took a long look at all his books, one after another, as a father obliged to
decimate his children would gaze upon them before making a choice, then seized one hastily, put it in under
his arm and went out. He returned two hours later, without anything under his arm, laid thirty sous on the
table, and said:
"You will get something for dinner."
From that moment forth, Mother Plutarque saw a sombre veil, which was never more lifted, descend over the
old man's candid face.
On the following day, on the day after, and on the day after that, it had to be done again.
M. Mabeuf went out with a book and returned with a coin. As the secondhand dealers perceived that he was
forced to sell, they purchased of him for twenty sous that for which he had paid twenty francs, sometimes at
those very shops. Volume by volume, the whole library went the same road. He said at times: "But I am
eighty;" as though he cherished some secret hope that he should arrive at the end of his days before reaching
the end of his books. His melancholy increased. Once, however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a
Robert Estienne, which he had sold for thirtyfive sous under the Quai Malaquais, and he returned with an
Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue des Gres."I owe five sous," he said, beaming on
Mother Plutarque. That day he had no dinner.
He belonged to the Horticultural Society. His destitution became known there. The president of the society
came to see him, promised to speak to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce about him, and did
so."Why, what!" exclaimed the Minister, "I should think so! An old savant! a botanist! an inoffensive
man! Something must be done for him!" On the following day, M. Mabeuf received an invitation to dine with
the Minister. Trembling with joy, he showed the letter to Mother Plutarque. "We are saved!" said he. On the
day appointed, he went to the Minister's house. He perceived that his ragged cravat, his long, square coat, and
his waxed shoes astonished the ushers. No one spoke to him, not even the Minister. About ten o'clock in the
evening, while he was still waiting for a word, he heard the Minister's wife, a beautiful woman in a
lownecked gown whom he had not ventured to approach, inquire: "Who is that old gentleman?" He returned
home on foot at midnight, in a driving rainstorm. He had sold an Elzevir to pay for a carriage in which to go
thither.
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Page No 729
He had acquired the habit of reading a few pages in his Diogenes Laertius every night, before he went to bed.
He knew enough Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he owned. He had now no other
enjoyment. Several weeks passed. All at once, Mother Plutarque fell ill. There is one thing sadder than having
no money with which to buy bread at the baker's and that is having no money to purchase drugs at the
apothecary's. One evening, the doctor had ordered a very expensive potion. And the malady was growing
worse; a nurse was required. M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase; there was nothing there. The last volume had
taken its departure. All that was left to him was Diogenes Laertius. He put this unique copy under his arm,
and went out. It was the 4th of June, 1832; he went to the Porte SaintJacques, to Royal's successor, and
returned with one hundred francs. He laid the pile of fivefranc pieces on the old servingwoman's
nightstand, and returned to his chamber without saying a word.
On the following morning, at dawn, he seated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and he could be
seen over the top of the hedge, sitting the whole morning motionless, with drooping head, his eyes vaguely
fixed on the withered flowerbeds. It rained at intervals; the old man did not seem to perceive the fact.
In the afternoon, extraordinary noises broke out in Paris. They resembled shots and the clamors of a
multitude.
Father Mabeuf raised his head. He saw a gardener passing, and inquired:
"What is it?"
The gardener, spade on back, replied in the most unconcerned tone:
"It is the riots."
"What riots?"
"Yes, they are fighting."
"Why are they fighting?"
"Ah, good Heavens!" ejaculated the gardener.
"In what direction?" went on M. Mabeuf.
"In the neighborhood of the Arsenal."
Father Mabeuf went to his room, took his hat, mechanically sought for a book to place under his arm, found
none, said: "Ah! truly!" and went off with a bewildered air.
BOOK TENTH.THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832
CHAPTER I. THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION
Of what is revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything. Of an electricity disengaged, little by little, of a
flame suddenly darting forth, of a wandering force, of a passing breath. This breath encounters heads which
speak, brains which dream, souls which suffer, passions which burn, wretchedness which howls, and bears
them away.
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Page No 730
Whither?
At random. Athwart the state, the laws, athwart prosperity and the insolence of others.
Irritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, agitated indignations, instincts of war which have been
repressed, youthful courage which has been exalted, generous blindness; curiosity, the taste for change, the
thirst for the unexpected, the sentiment which causes one to take pleasure in reading the posters for the new
play, and love, the prompter's whistle, at the theatre; the vague hatreds, rancors, disappointments, every
vanity which thinks that destiny has bankrupted it; discomfort, empty dreams, ambitious that are hedged
about, whoever hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short, at the very bottom, the rabble, that mud which
catches fire, such are the elements of revolt. That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings
who prowl outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, vagabonds of the crossroads,
those who sleep at night in a desert of houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who,
each day, demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown of poverty and nothingness, the
barearmed, the barefooted, belong to revolt. Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against any deed
whatever on the part of the state, of life or of fate, is ripe for riot, and, as soon as it makes its appearance, he
begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away with the whirlwind.
Revolt is a sort of waterspout in the social atmosphere which forms suddenly in certain conditions of
temperature, and which, as it eddies about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes,
uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the feeble mind, the tree trunk and the
stalk of straw. Woe to him whom it bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks the one against
the other.
It communicates to those whom it seizes an indescribable and extraordinary power. It fills the firstcomer
with the force of events; it converts everything into projectiles. It makes a cannonball of a rough stone, and
a general of a porter.
If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little revolt is desirable from the point of view
of power. System: revolt strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow. It puts the army to the
test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the
social framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics; it is almost hygiene. Power is in better health after a revolt,
as a man is after a good rubbing down.
Revolt, thirty years ago, was regarded from still other points of view.
There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself "good sense"; Philintus against Alcestis; mediation
offered between the false and the true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which, because it
is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and is often only pedantry. A whole political school
called "the golden mean" has been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, it is the
lukewarm water party. This school with its false depth, all on the surface, which dissects effects without
going back to first causes, chides from its height of a demiscience, the agitation of the public square.
If we listen to this school, "The riots which complicated the affair of 1830 deprived that great event of a
portion of its purity. The Revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by blue sky.
They made the cloudy sky reappear. They caused that revolution, at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to
degenerate into a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by fits and starts, there
had been secret fractures; these riots rendered them perceptible. It might have been said: `Ah! this is broken.'
After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance; after the riots, one was conscious of a
catastrophe.
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Page No 731
"All revolt closes the shops, depresses the funds, throws the Exchange into consternation, suspends
commerce, clogs business, precipitates failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy, public
credit shaken, industry disconcerted, capital withdrawing, work at a discount, fear everywhere;
countershocks in every town. Hence gulfs. It has been calculated that the first day of a riot costs France
twenty millions, the second day forty, the third sixty, a three days' uprising costs one hundred and twenty
millions, that is to say, if only the financial result be taken into consideration, it is equivalent to a disaster, a
shipwreck or a lost battle, which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line.
"No doubt, historically, uprisings have their beauty; the war of the pavements is no less grandiose, and no
less pathetic, than the war of thickets: in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities; the
one has Jean Chouan, the other has a Jeanne. Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original
points of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety, students proving that bravery forms part
of intelligence, the National Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, contempt
of death on the part of passersby. Schools and legions clashed together. After all, between the combatants,
there was only a difference of age; the race is the same; it is the same stoical men who died at the age of
twenty for their ideas, at forty for their families. The army, always a sad thing in civil wars, opposed
prudence to audacity. Uprisings, while proving popular intrepidity, also educated the courage of the
bourgeois.
"This is well. But is all this worth the bloodshed? And to the bloodshed add the future darkness, progress
compromised, uneasiness among the best men, honest liberals in despair, foreign absolutism happy in these
wounds dealt to revolution by its own hand, the vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying: `We told you so!'
Add Paris enlarged, possibly, but France most assuredly diminished. Add, for all must needs be told, the
massacres which have too often dishonored the victory of order grown ferocious over liberty gone mad. To
sum up all, uprisings have been disastrous."
Thus speaks that approximation to wisdom with which the bourgeoisie, that approximation to the people, so
willingly contents itself.
For our parts, we reject this word uprisings as too large, and consequently as too convenient. We make a
distinction between one popular movement and another popular movement. We do not inquire whether an
uprising costs as much as a battle. Why a battle, in the first place? Here the question of war comes up. Is war
less of a scourge than an uprising is of a calamity? And then, are all uprisings calamities? And what if the
revolt of July did cost a hundred and twenty millions? The establishment of Philip V. in Spain cost France
two milliards. Even at the same price, we should prefer the 14th of July. However, we reject these figures,
which appear to be reasons and which are only words. An uprising being given, we examine it by itself. In all
that is said by the doctrinarian objection above presented, there is no question of anything but effect, we seek
the cause.
We will be explicit.
CHAPTER II. THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
There is such a thing as an uprising, and there is such a thing as insurrection; these are two separate phases of
wrath; one is in the wrong, the other is in the right. In democratic states, the only ones which are founded on
justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction usurps; then the whole rises and the necessary claim of its
rights may proceed as far as resort to arms. In all questions which result from collective sovereignty, the war
of the whole against the fraction is insurrection; the attack of the fraction against the whole is revolt;
according as the Tuileries contain a king or the Convention, they are justly or unjustly attacked. The same
cannon, pointed against the populace, is wrong on the 10th of August, and right on the 14th of Vendemiaire.
Alike in appearance, fundamentally different in reality; the Swiss defend the false, Bonaparte defends the
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true. That which universal suffrage has effected in its liberty and in its sovereignty cannot be undone by the
street. It is the same in things pertaining purely to civilization; the instinct of the masses, clearsighted
today, may be troubled tomorrow. The same fury legitimate when directed against Terray and absurd when
directed against Turgot. The destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of rails, the
demolition of docks, the false routes of multitudes, the refusal by the people of justice to progress, Ramus
assassinated by students, Rousseau driven out of Switzerland and stoned,that is revolt. Israel against
Moses, Athens against Phocian, Rome against Cicero,that is an uprising; Paris against the Bastille,that
is insurrection. The soldiers against Alexander, the sailors against Christopher Columbus, this is the same
revolt; impious revolt; why? Because Alexander is doing for Asia with the sword that which Christopher
Columbus is doing for America with the compass; Alexander like Columbus, is finding a world. These gifts
of a world to civilization are such augmentations of light, that all resistance in that case is culpable.
Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to itself. The masses are traitors to the people. Is there, for
example, anything stranger than that long and bloody protest of dealers in contraband salt, a legitimate
chronic revolt, which, at the decisive moment, on the day of salvation, at the very hour of popular victory,
espouses the throne, turns into chouannerie, and, from having been an insurrection against, becomes an
uprising for, sombre masterpieces of ignorance! The contraband salt dealer escapes the royal gibbets, and
with a rope's end round his neck, mounts the white cockade. "Death to the salt duties," brings forth, "Long
live the King!" The assassins of SaintBarthelemy, the cutthroats of September, the manslaughterers of
Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, the assassins of Madam Lamballe, the assassins of Brune, Miquelets,
Verdets, Cadenettes, the companions of Jehu, the chevaliers of Brassard, behold an uprising. La Vendee is
a grand, catholic uprising. The sound of right in movement is recognizable, it does not always proceed from
the trembling of excited masses; there are mad rages, there are cracked bells, all tocsins do not give out the
sound of bronze. The brawl of passions and ignorances is quite another thing from the shock of progress.
Show me in what direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great. There is no
insurrection except in a forward direction. Any other sort of rising is bad; every violent step towards the rear
is a revolt; to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human race. Insurrection is a fit of rage on
the part of truth; the pavements which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These pavements
bequeath to the uprising only their mud. Danton against Louis XIV. is insurrection; Hebert against Danton is
revolt.
Hence it results that if insurrection in given cases may be, as Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an
uprising may be the most fatal of crimes.
There is also a difference in the intensity of heat; insurrection is often a volcano, revolt is often only a fire of
straw.
Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found among those in power. Polignac is a rioter; Camille Desmoulins
is one of the governing powers.
Insurrection is sometimes resurrection.
The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely modern fact, and all history anterior to
this fact being, for the space of four thousand years, filled with violated right, and the suffering of peoples,
each epoch of history brings with it that protest of which it is capable. Under the Caesars, there was no
insurrection, but there was Juvenal.
The facit indignatio replaces the Gracchi.
Under the Caesars, there is the exile to Syene; there is also the man of the Annales. We do not speak of the
immense exile of Patmos who, on his part also, overwhelms the real world with a protest in the name of the
ideal world, who makes of his vision an enormous satire and casts on RomeNineveh, on RomeBabylon, on
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RomeSodom, the flaming reflection of the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we
may understand him, he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew; but the man who writes the Annales is of the Latin race,
let us rather say he is a Roman.
As the Neros reign in a black way, they should be painted to match. The work of the gravingtool alone
would be too pale; there must be poured into the channel a concentrated prose which bites.
Despots count for something in the question of philosophers. A word that is chained is a terrible word. The
writer doubles and trebles his style when silence is imposed on a nation by its master. From this silence there
arises a certain mysterious plenitude which filters into thought and there congeals into bronze. The
compression of history produces conciseness in the historian. The granite solidity of such and such a
celebrated prose is nothing but the accumulation effected by the tyrant.
Tyranny constrains the writer to conditions of diameter which are augmentations of force. The Ciceronian
period, which hardly sufficed for Verres, would be blunted on Caligula. The less spread of sail in the phrase,
the more intensity in the blow. Tacitus thinks with all his might.
The honesty of a great heart, condensed in justice and truth, overwhelms as with lightning.
Be it remarked, in passing, that Tacitus is not historically superposed upon Caesar. The Tiberii were reserved
for him. Caesar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, a meeting between whom seems to be
mysteriously avoided, by the One who, when He sets the centuries on the stage, regulates the entrances and
the exits. Caesar is great, Tacitus is great; God spares these two greatnesses by not allowing them to clash
with one another. The guardian of justice, in striking Caesar, might strike too hard and be unjust. God does
not will it. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization introduced into
Gaul, into Britanny, into Germany,all this glory covers the Rubicon. There is here a sort of delicacy of the
divine justice, hesitating to let loose upon the illustrious usurper the formidable historian, sparing Caesar
Tacitus, and according extenuating circumstances to genius.
Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under all
illustrious tyrants, but the moral pest is still more hideous under infamous tyrants. In such reigns, nothing
veils the shame; and those who make examples, Tacitus as well as Juvenal, slap this ignominy which cannot
reply, in the face, more usefully in the presence of all humanity.
Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla. Under Claudius and under Domitian, there is a
deformity of baseness corresponding to the repulsiveness of the tyrant. The villainy of slaves is a direct
product of the despot; a miasma exhales from these cowering consciences wherein the master is reflected;
public powers are unclean; hearts are small; consciences are dull, souls are like vermin; thus it is under
Caracalla, thus it is under Commodus, thus it is under Heliogabalus, while, from the Roman Senate, under
Caesar, there comes nothing but the odor of the dung which is peculiar to the eyries of the eagles.
Hence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals; it is in the hour for evidence, that the
demonstrator makes his appearance.
But Juvenal and Tacitus, like Isaiah in Biblical times, like Dante in the Middle Ages, is man; riot and
insurrection are the multitude, which is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.
In the majority of cases, riot proceeds from a material fact; insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot
is Masaniello; insurrection, Spartacus. Insurrection borders on mind, riot on the stomach; Gaster grows
irritated; but Gaster, assuredly, is not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, Buzancais, for
example, holds a true, pathetic, and just point of departure. Nevertheless, it remains a riot. Why? It is
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because, right at bottom, it was wrong in form. Shy although in the right, violent although strong, it struck at
random; it walked like a blind elephant; it left behind it the corpses of old men, of women, and of children; it
wished the blood of inoffensive and innocent persons without knowing why. The nourishment of the people
is a good object; to massacre them is a bad means.
All armed protests, even the most legitimate, even that of the 10th of August, even that of July 14th, begin
with the same troubles. Before the right gets set free, there is foam and tumult. In the beginning, the
insurrection is a riot, just as a river is a torrent. Ordinarily it ends in that ocean: revolution. Sometimes,
however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason,
right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky
in its transparency and increased by a hundred affluents in the majestic mien of triumph, insurrection is
suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp.
All this is of the past, the future is another thing. Universal suffrage has this admirable property, that it
dissolves riot in its inception, and, by giving the vote to insurrection, it deprives it of its arms. The
disappearance of wars, of street wars as well as of wars on the frontiers, such is the inevitable progression.
Whatever Today may be, Tomorrow will be peace.
However, insurrection, riot, and points of difference between the former and the latter,the bourgeois,
properly speaking, knows nothing of such shades. In his mind, all is sedition, rebellion pure and simple, the
revolt of the dog against his master, an attempt to bite whom must be punished by the chain and the kennel,
barking, snapping, until such day as the head of the dog, suddenly enlarged, is outlined vaguely in the gloom
face to face with the lion.
Then the bourgeois shouts: "Long live the people!"
This explanation given, what does the movement of June, 1832, signify, so far as history is concerned? Is it a
revolt? Is it an insurrection?
It may happen to us, in placing this formidable event on the stage, to say revolt now and then, but merely to
distinguish superficial facts, and always preserving the distinction between revolt, the form, and insurrection,
the foundation.
This movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its melancholy extinction, so much grandeur, that
even those who see in it only an uprising, never refer to it otherwise than with respect. For them, it is like a
relic of 1830. Excited imaginations, say they, are not to be calmed in a day. A revolution cannot be cut off
short. It must needs undergo some undulations before it returns to a state of rest, like a mountain sinking into
the plain. There are no Alps without their Jura, nor Pyrenees without the Asturias.
This pathetic crisis of contemporary history which the memory of Parisians calls "the epoch of the riots," is
certainly a characteristic hour amid the stormy hours of this century. A last word, before we enter on the
recital.
The facts which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and living reality, which the historian
sometimes neglects for lack of time and space. There, nevertheless, we insist upon it, is life, palpitation,
human tremor. Petty details, as we think we have already said, are, so to speak, the foliage of great events,
and are lost in the distance of history. The epoch, surnamed "of the riots," abounds in details of this nature.
Judicial inquiries have not revealed, and perhaps have not sounded the depths, for another reason than
history. We shall therefore bring to light, among the known and published peculiarities, things which have
not heretofore been known, about facts over which have passed the forgetfulness of some, and the death of
others. The majority of the actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared; beginning with the very next day
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they held their peace; but of what we shall relate, we shall be able to say: "We have seen this." We alter a few
names, for history relates and does not inform against, but the deed which we shall paint will be genuine. In
accordance with the conditions of the book which we are now writing, we shall show only one side and one
episode, and certainly, the least known at that, of the two days, the 5th and the 6th of June, 1832, but we shall
do it in such wise that the reader may catch a glimpse, beneath the gloomy veil which we are about to lift, of
the real form of this frightful public adventure.
CHAPTER III. A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN
In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all minds for the last three months and had cast
over their agitation an indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long been ripe for
commotion. As we have said, the great city resembles a piece of artillery; when it is loaded, it suffices for a
spark to fall, and the shot is discharged. In June, 1832, the spark was the death of General Lamarque.
Lamarque was a man of renown and of action. He had had in succession, under the Empire and under the
Restoration, the sorts of bravery requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battlefield and the bravery
of the tribune. He was as eloquent as he had been valiant; a sword was discernible in his speech. Like Foy,
his predecessor, after upholding the command, he upheld liberty; he sat between the left and the extreme left,
beloved of the people because he accepted the chances of the future, beloved of the populace because he had
served the Emperor well; he was, in company with Comtes Gerard and Drouet, one of Napoleon's marshals in
petto. The treaties of 1815 removed him as a personal offence. He hated Wellington with a downright hatred
which pleased the multitude; and, for seventeen years, he majestically preserved the sadness of Waterloo,
paying hardly any attention to intervening events. In his death agony, at his last hour, he clasped to his breast
a sword which had been presented to him by the officers of the Hundred Days. Napoleon had died uttering
the word army, Lamarque uttering the word country.
His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a loss, and by the government as an occasion.
This death was an affliction. Like everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what took
place.
On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June, the day appointed for Lamarque's burial,
the Faubourg SaintAntoine, which the procession was to touch at, assumed a formidable aspect. This
tumultuous network of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as best they might. Joiners
carried off doorweights of their establishment "to break down doors." One of them had made himself a
dagger of a stockingweaver's hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was in
a fever "to attack," slept wholly dressed for three days. A carpenter named Lombier met a comrade, who
asked him: "Whither are you going?" "Eh! well, I have no weapons." "What then?" "I'm going to my
timberyard to get my compasses." "What for?" "I don't know," said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an
expeditious man, accosted some passing artisans: "Come here, you!" He treated them to ten sous' worth of
wine and said: "Have you work?" "No." "Go to Filspierre, between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere
Montreuil, and you will find work." At Filspierre's they found cartridges and arms. Certain wellknown
leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from one house to another, to collect their men. At
Barthelemy's, near the Barriere du Trone, at Capel's, near the PetitChapeau, the drinkers accosted each other
with a grave air. They were heard to say: "Have you your pistol?" "Under my blouse." "And you?" "Under
my shirt." In the Rue Traversiere, in front of the Bland workshop, and in the yard of the MaisonBrulee, in
front of toolmaker Bernier's, groups whispered together. Among them was observed a certain Mavot, who
never remained more than a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged him "because they were
obliged to dispute with him every day." Mavot was killed on the following day at the barricade of the Rue
Menilmontant. Pretot, who was destined to perish also in the struggle, seconded Mavot, and to the question:
"What is your object?" he replied: "Insurrection." Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bercy,
waited for a certain Lemarin, the revolutionary agent for the Faubourg SaintMarceau. Watchwords were
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exchanged almost publicly.
On the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarque's funeral procession
traversed Paris with official military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution. Two battalions, with
draped drums and reversed arms, ten thousand National Guards, with their swords at their sides, escorted the
coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. The officers of the Invalides came immediately behind it,
bearing laurel branches. Then came an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the
Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical School, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian,
German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner, children waving green
boughs, stonecutters and carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by
their paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries, nearly all of them brandishing sticks,
some brandishing sabres, without order and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column.
Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host in
review, and the files separated before him. On the side alleys of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees,
on balconies, in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children; all eyes were filled
with anxiety. An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.
The Government, on its side, was taking observations. It observed with its hand on its sword. Four squadrons
of carabineers could be seen in the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head,
cartridgeboxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march; in the Latin country and at the Jardin
des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned from street to street; at the HalleauxVins, a squadron of
dragoons; at the Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons at
the Celestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops were confined to
their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris. Power being uneasy, held suspended
over the menacing multitude twentyfour thousand soldiers in the city and thirty thousand in the banlieue.
Divers reports were in circulation in the cortege. Legitimist tricks were hinted at; they spoke of the Duc de
Reichstadt, whom God had marked out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating
him for the Empire. One personage, whose name has remained unknown, announced that at a given hour two
overseers who had been won over, would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people. That which
predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority of those present was enthusiasm mingled with
dejection. Here and there, also, in that multitude given over to such violent but noble emotions, there were
visible genuine visages of criminals and ignoble mouths which said: "Let us plunder!" There are certain
agitations which stir up the bottoms of marshes and make clouds of mud rise through the water. A
phenomenon to which "well drilled" policemen are no strangers.
The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the deceased, by way of the boulevards
as far as the Bastille. It rained from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many incidents, the
coffin borne round the Vendome column, stones thrown at the Duc de FitzJames, who was seen on a
balcony with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the mire, a
policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Porte SaintMartin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry
saying aloud: "I am a Republican," the Polytechnic School coming up unexpectedly against orders to remain
at home, the shouts of: "Long live the Polytechnique! Long live the Republic!" marked the passage of the
funeral train. At the Bastille, long files of curious and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg
SaintAntoine, effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible seething began to agitate the
throng.
One man was heard to say to another: "Do you see that fellow with a red beard, he's the one who will give the
word when we are to fire." It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot, the Quenisset affair,
entrusted with this same function.
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The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of
Austerlitz. There it halted. The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird'seye view, would have presented
the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the Quai Bourdon,
covered the Bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as the Porte SaintMartin. A circle was
traced around the hearse. The vast rout held their peace. Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell. This
was a touching and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.
All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance in the middle of the group with a red
flag, others say, with a pike surmounted with a red libertycap. Lafayette turned aside his head. Exelmans
quitted the procession.
This red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of it. From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of
Austerlitz one of those clamors which resemble billows stirred the multitude. Two prodigious shouts went up:
"Lamarque to the Pantheon! Lafayette to the Townhall!" Some young men, amid the declamations of the
throng, harnessed themselves and began to drag Lamarque in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and
Lafayette in a hackneycoach along the Quai Morland.
In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed that a German showed himself named
Ludwig Snyder, who died a centenarian afterwards, who had also been in the war of 1776, and who had
fought at Trenton under Washington, and at Brandywine under Lafayette.
In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been set in motion, and came to bar the bridge,
on the right bank the dragoons emerged from the Celestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The men
who were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay and shouted: "The
dragoons!" The dragoons advanced at a walk, in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in
their scabbards, their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.
They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge. The carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them,
their ranks opened and allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it. At that moment the dragoons and the
crowd touched. The women fled in terror. What took place during that fatal minute? No one can say. It is the
dark moment when two clouds come together. Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was
heard in the direction of the Arsenal others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child to a dragoon. The
fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged: the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second
killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window, the third singed the shoulder of an
officer; a woman screamed: "They are beginning too soon!" and all at once, a squadron of dragoons which
had remained in the barracks up to this time, was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the
Rue Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.
Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves
to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timberyards of the Isle
Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistolshots fired, a
barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and
the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd disperses in all
directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris, men shout: "To arms!" they run, tumble down,
flee, resist. Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.
CHAPTER IV. THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS
Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot. Everything bursts forth everywhere at
once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was it prepared? No. Whence comes it? From the pavements. Whence falls it?
From the clouds. Here insurrection assumes the character of a plot; there of an improvisation. The first comer
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seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills. A beginning full of terror, in which is mingled a
sort of formidable gayety. First come clamors, the shops are closed, the displays of the merchants disappear;
then come isolated shots; people flee; blows from gunstocks beat against portes cocheres, servants can be
heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying: "There's going to be a row!"
A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place at twenty different spots in Paris at
once.
In the Rue SainteCroixdelaBretonnerie, twenty young men, bearded and with long hair, entered a
dramshop and emerged a moment later, carrying a horizontal tricolored flag covered with crape, and having
at their head three men armed, one with a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike.
In the Rue des Nonaindieres, a very welldressed bourgeois, who had a prominent belly, a sonorous voice, a
bald head, a lofty brow, a black beard, and one of these stiff mustaches which will not lie flat, offered
cartridges publicly to passersby.
In the Rue SaintPierreMontmartre, men with bare arms carried about a black flag, on which could be read
in white letters this inscription: "Republic or Death!" In the Rue des Jeuneurs, Rue du Cadran, Rue
Montorgueil, Rue Mandar, groups appeared waving flags on which could be distinguished in gold letters, the
word section with a number. One of these flags was red and blue with an almost imperceptible stripe of white
between.
They pillaged a factory of smallarms on the Boulevard SaintMartin, and three armorers' shops, the first in
the Rue Beaubourg, the second in the Rue MichelleComte, the other in the Rue du Temple. In a few
minutes, the thousand hands of the crowd had seized and carried off two hundred and thirty guns, nearly all
doublebarrelled, sixtyfour swords, and eightythree pistols. In order to provide more arms, one man took
the gun, the other the bayonet.
Opposite the Quai de la Greve, young men armed with muskets installed themselves in the houses of some
women for the purpose of firing. One of them had a flintlock. They rang, entered, and set about making
cartridges. One of these women relates: "I did not know what cartridges were; it was my husband who told
me."
One cluster broke into a curiosity shop in the Rue des Vielles Haudriettes, and seized yataghans and Turkish
arms.
The body of a mason who had been killed by a gunshot lay in the Rue de la Perle.
And then on the right bank, the left bank, on the quays, on the boulevards, in the Latin country, in the quarter
of the Halles, panting men, artisans, students, members of sections read proclamations and shouted: "To
arms!" broke street lanterns, unharnessed carriages, unpaved the streets, broke in the doors of houses,
uprooted trees, rummaged cellars, rolled out hogsheads, heaped up pavingstones, rough slabs, furniture and
planks, and made barricades.
They forced the bourgeois to assist them in this. They entered the dwellings of women, they forced them to
hand over the swords and guns of their absent husbands, and they wrote on the door, with whiting: "The arms
have been delivered"; some signed "their names" to receipts for the guns and swords and said: "Send for them
tomorrow at the Mayor's office." They disarmed isolated sentinels and National Guardsmen in the streets on
their way to the Townhall. They tore the epaulets from officers. In the Rue du CimitiereSaintNicholas, an
officer of the National Guard, on being pursued by a crowd armed with clubs and foils, took refuge with
difficulty in a house, whence he was only able to emerge at nightfall and in disguise.
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In the Quartier SaintJacques, the students swarmed out of their hotels and ascended the Rue
SaintHyacinthe to the Cafe du Progress, or descended to the Cafe des SeptBillards, in the Rue des
Mathurins. There, in front of the door, young men mounted on the stone cornerposts, distributed arms. They
plundered the timberyard in the Rue Transnonain in order to obtain material for barricades. On a single
point the inhabitants resisted, at the corner of the Rue SainteAvoye and the Rue SimonLeFranc, where
they destroyed the barricade with their own hands. At a single point the insurgents yielded; they abandoned a
barricade begun in the Rue de Temple after having fired on a detachment of the National Guard, and fled
through the Rue de la Corderie. The detachment picked up in the barricade a red flag, a package of cartridges,
and three hundred pistolballs. The National Guardsmen tore up the flag, and carried off its tattered remains
on the points of their bayonets.
All that we are here relating slowly and successively took place simultaneously at all points of the city in the
midst of a vast tumult, like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder. In less than an hour,
twentyseven barricades sprang out of the earth in the quarter of the Halles alone. In the centre was that
famous house No. 50, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her six hundred companions, and which, flanked
on the one hand by a barricade at SaintMerry, and on the other by a barricade of the Rue Maubuee,
commanded three streets, the Rue des Arcis, the Rue SaintMartin, and the Rue AubryleBoucher, which it
faced. The barricades at right angles fell back, the one of the Rue Montorgueil on the GrandeTruanderie, the
other of the Rue GeoffroyLangevin on the Rue SainteAvoye. Without reckoning innumerable barricades in
twenty other quarters of Paris, in the Marais, at MontSainteGenevieve; one in the Rue Menilmontant,
where was visible a porte cochere torn from its hinges; another near the little bridge of the HotelDieu made
with an "ecossais," which had been unharnessed and overthrown, three hundred paces from the Prefecture of
Police.
At the barricade of the Rue des Menetriers, a welldressed man distributed money to the workmen. At the
barricade of the Rue Grenetat, a horseman made his appearance and handed to the one who seemed to be the
commander of the barricade what had the appearance of a roll of silver. "Here," said he, "this is to pay
expenses, wine, et caetera." A lighthaired young man, without a cravat, went from barricade to barricade,
carrying passwords. Another, with a naked sword, a blue police cap on his head, placed sentinels. In the
interior, beyond the barricades, the wineshops and porters' lodges were converted into guardhouses.
Otherwise the riot was conducted after the most scientific military tactics. The narrow, uneven, sinuous
streets, full of angles and turns, were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular, a
network of streets more intricate than a forest. The Society of the Friends of the People had, it was said,
undertaken to direct the insurrection in the Quartier SainteAvoye. A man killed in the Rue du Ponceau who
was searched had on his person a plan of Paris.
That which had really undertaken the direction of the uprising was a sort of strange impetuosity which was in
the air. The insurrection had abruptly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seized nearly all the
posts of the garrison. In less than three hours, like a train of powder catching fire, the insurgents had invaded
and occupied, on the right bank, the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, the whole of the Marais, the
Popincourt arms manufactory, la Galiote, the Chateaud'Eau, and all the streets near the Halles; on the left
bank, the barracks of the Veterans, SaintePelagie, the Place Maubert, the powder magazine of the
DeuxMoulins, and all the barriers. At five o'clock in the evening, they were masters of the Bastille, of the
Lingerie, of the BlancsManteaux; their scouts had reached the Place des Victoires, and menaced the Bank,
the PetitsPeres barracks, and the PostOffice. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters.
The conflict had been begun on a gigantic scale at all points; and, as a result of the disarming domiciliary
visits, and armorers' shops hastily invaded, was, that the combat which had begun with the throwing of stones
was continued with gunshots.
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About six o'clock in the evening, the Passage du Saumon became the field of battle. The uprising was at one
end, the troops were at the other. They fired from one gate to the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of
this book, who had gone to get a near view of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two
fires. All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two halfcolumns which separate
the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour.
Meanwhile the call to arms was beaten, the National Guard armed in haste, the legions emerged from the
Mayoralities, the regiments from their barracks. Opposite the passage de l'Ancre a drummer received a blow
from a dagger. Another, in the Rue du Cygne, was assailed by thirty young men who broke his instrument,
and took away his sword. Another was killed in the Rue GrenierSaintLazare. In the RueMichelleComte,
three officers fell dead one after the other. Many of the Municipal Guards, on being wounded, in the Rue des
Lombards, retreated.
In front of the CourBatave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag bearing the following
inscription: Republican revolution, No. 127. Was this a revolution, in fact?
The insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort of inextricable, tortuous, colossal citadel.
There was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question. All the rest was nothing but skirmishes. The proof
that all would be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet.
In some regiments, the soldiers were uncertain, which added to the fearful uncertainty of the crisis. They
recalled the popular ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53d of the Line in July, 1830. Two
intrepid men, tried in great wars, the Marshal Lobau and General Bugeaud, were in command, Bugeaud
under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the Line, enclosed in entire companies of the
National Guard, and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoitre the
streets in rebellion. The insurgents, on their side, placed videttes at the corners of all open spaces, and
audaciously sent their patrols outside the barricades. Each side was watching the other. The Government,
with an army in its hand, hesitated; the night was almost upon them, and the SaintMerry tocsin began to
make itself heard. The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult, who had seen Austerlitz, regarded this
with a gloomy air.
These old sailors, accustomed to correct manoeuvres and having as resource and guide only tactics, that
compass of battles, are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam which is called public
wrath.
The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder. A battalion of the 12th Light came at a
run from SaintDenis, the 14th of the Line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of the Military School had
taken up their position on the Carrousel; cannons were descending from Vincennes.
Solitude was formed around the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was perfectly serene.
CHAPTER V. ORIGINALITY OF PARIS
During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed more than one insurrection. Nothing is,
generally, more singularly calm than the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the bounds of the
rebellious quarters. Paris very speedily accustoms herself to anything,it is only a riot,and Paris has so
many affairs on hand, that she does not put herself out for so small a matter. These colossal cities alone can
offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and
indescribable tranquillity. Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the shopkeeper hears the
drum, the call to arms, the general alarm, he contents himself with the remark:
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"There appears to be a squabble in the Rue SaintMartin."
Or:
"In the Faubourg SaintAntoine."
Often he adds carelessly:
"Or somewhere in that direction."
Later on, when the heartrending and mournful hubbub of musketry and firing by platoons becomes audible,
the shopkeeper says:
"It's getting hot! Hullo, it's getting hot!"
A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his shop precipitately, hastily dons his
uniform, that is to say, he places his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.
Men fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take and retake the barricade; blood flows, the
grapeshot riddles the fronts of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the streets. A
few streets away, the shock of billiardballs can be heard in the cafes.
The theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious laugh and chat a couple of paces distant
from these streets filled with war. Hackneycarriages go their way; passersby are going to a dinner
somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is going on.
In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.
At the time of the insurrection of 1839, in the Rue SaintMartin a little, infirm old man, pushing a handcart
surmounted by a tricolored rag, in which he had carafes filled with some sort of liquid, went and came from
barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade, offering his glasses of cocoa impartially,now to the
Government, now to anarchy.
Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of uprisings in Paris, which cannot be found in any
other capital. To this end, two things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety. The city of Voltaire and
Napoleon is necessary.
On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 25th, 1832, the great city felt something which was,
perhaps, stronger than itself. It was afraid.
Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere, in the most distant and most "disinterested"
quarters. The courageous took to arms, the poltroons hid. The busy and heedless passerby disappeared.
Many streets were empty at four o'clock in the morning.
Alarming details were hawked about, fatal news was disseminated, that they were masters of the
Bank;that there were six hundred of them in the Cloister of SaintMerry alone, entrenched and embattled
in the church; that the line was not to be depended on; that Armand Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel
and that the Marshal had said: "Get a regiment first"; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them,
nevertheless: "I am with you. I will follow you wherever there is room for a chair"; that one must be on one's
guard; that at night there would be people pillaging isolated dwellings in the deserted corners of Paris (there
the imagination of the police, that Anne Radcliffe mixed up with the Government was recognizable); that a
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Page No 742
battery had been established in the Rue Aubry le Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were putting their heads
together, and that, at midnight, or at daybreak at latest, four columns would march simultaneously on the
centre of the uprising, the first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Porte SaintMartin, the third
from the Greve, the fourth from the Halles; that perhaps, also, the troops would evacuate Paris and withdraw
to the ChampdeMars; that no one knew what would happen, but that this time, it certainly was serious.
People busied themselves over Marshal Soult's hesitations. Why did not he attack at once? It is certain that he
was profoundly absorbed. The old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in that gloom.
Evening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols circulated with an air of irritation; passersby were
searched; suspicious persons were arrested. By nine o'clock, more than eight hundred persons had been
arrested, the Prefecture of Police was encumbered with them, so was the Conciergerie, so was La Force.
At the Conciergerie in particular, the long vault which is called the Rue de Paris was littered with trusses of
straw upon which lay a heap of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. All that
straw rustled by all these men, produced the sound of a heavy shower. Elsewhere prisoners slept in the open
air in the meadows, piled on top of each other.
Anxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor which was not habitual with Paris.
People barricaded themselves in their houses; wives and mothers were uneasy; nothing was to be heard but
this: "Ah! my God! He has not come home!" There was hardly even the distant rumble of a vehicle to be
heard.
People listened on their thresholds, to the rumors, the shouts, the tumult, the dull and indistinct sounds, to the
things that were said: "It is cavalry," or: "Those are the caissons galloping," to the trumpets, the drums, the
firing, and, above all, to that lamentable alarm peal from SaintMerry.
They waited for the first cannonshot. Men sprang up at the corners of the streets and disappeared, shouting:
"Go home!" And people made haste to bolt their doors. They said: "How will all this end?" From moment to
moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on a more mournful hue from the
formidable flaming of the revolt.
BOOK ELEVENTH.THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
CHAPTER I. SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF
GAVROCHE'S POETRY. THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN ON
THIS POETRY
At the instant when the insurrection, arising from the shock of the populace and the military in front of the
Arsenal, started a movement in advance and towards the rear in the multitude which was following the hearse
and which, through the whole length of the boulevards, weighed, so to speak, on the head of the procession,
there arose a frightful ebb. The rout was shaken, their ranks were broken, all ran, fled, made their escape,
some with shouts of attack, others with the pallor of flight. The great river which covered the boulevards
divided in a twinkling, overflowed to right and left, and spread in torrents over two hundred streets at once
with the roar of a sewer that has broken loose.
At that moment, a ragged child who was coming down through the Rue Menilmontant, holding in his hand a
branch of blossoming laburnum which he had just plucked on the heights of Belleville, caught sight of an old
holsterpistol in the showwindow of a bricabrac merchant's shop.
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Page No 743
"Mother What'syourname, I'm going to borrow your machine."
And off he ran with the pistol.
Two minutes later, a flood of frightened bourgeois who were fleeing through the Rue Amelot and the Rue
Basse, encountered the lad brandishing his pistol and singing:
La nuit on ne voit rien,
Le jour on voit tres bien,
D'un ecrit apocrypha
Le bourgeois s'ebouriffe,
Pratiquez la vertu,
Tutu, chapeau pointu![44]
[44] At night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well; the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal
scrawl, practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!
It was little Gavroche on his way to the wars.
On the boulevard he noticed that the pistol had no trigger.
Who was the author of that couplet which served to punctuate his march, and of all the other songs which he
was fond of singing on occasion? We know not. Who does know? Himself, perhaps. However, Gavroche was
well up in all the popular tunes in circulation, and he mingled with them his own chirpings. An observing
urchin and a rogue, he made a potpourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris. He combined the
repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops. He was acquainted with thieves, a tribe contiguous
to his own. He had, it appears, been for three months apprenticed to a printer. He had one day executed a
commission for M. BaourLormian, one of the Forty. Gavroche was a gamin of letters.
Moreover, Gavroche had no suspicion of the fact that when he had offered the hospitality of his elephant to
two brats on that villainously rainy night, it was to his own brothers that he had played the part of Providence.
His brothers in the evening, his father in the morning; that is what his night had been like. On quitting the
Rue des Ballets at daybreak, he had returned in haste to the elephant, had artistically extracted from it the two
brats, had shared with them some sort of breakfast which he had invented, and had then gone away, confiding
them to that good mother, the street, who had brought him up, almost entirely. On leaving them, he had
appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening, and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell:
"I break a cane, otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court, I file off. If you don't find
papa and mamma, young 'uns, come back here this evening. I'll scramble you up some supper, and I'll give
you a shakedown." The two children, picked up by some policeman and placed in the refuge, or stolen by
some mountebank, or having simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris, did not return.
The lowest depths of the actual social world are full of these lost traces. Gavroche did not see them again.
Ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched the back of his head and
said: "Where the devil are my two children?"
In the meantime, he had arrived, pistol in hand, in the Rue du PontauxChoux. He noticed that there was
but one shop open in that street, and, a matter worthy of reflection, that was a pastrycook's shop. This
presented a providential occasion to eat another appleturnover before entering the unknown. Gavroche
halted, fumbled in his fob, turned his pocket inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began to shout:
"Help!"
It is hard to miss the last cake.
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Page No 744
Nevertheless, Gavroche pursued his way.
Two minutes later he was in the Rue SaintLouis. While traversing the Rue du ParcRoyal, he felt called
upon to make good the loss of the appleturnover which had been impossible, and he indulged himself in the
immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight.
A little further on, on catching sight of a group of comfortablelooking persons, who seemed to be landed
proprietors, he shrugged his shoulders and spit out at random before him this mouthful of philosophical bile
as they passed:
"How fat those moneyed men are! They're drunk! They just wallow in good dinners. Ask 'em what they do
with their money. They don't know. They eat it, that's what they do! As much as their bellies will hold."
CHAPTER II. GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH
The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one's hand in the open street, is so much of a public
function that Gavroche felt his fervor increasing with every moment. Amid the scraps of the Marseillaise
which he was singing, he shouted:
"All goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I'm all broken up with rheumatism, but I'm satisfied,
citizens. All that the bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well, I'll sneeze them out subversive couplets.
What are the police spies? Dogs. And I'd just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol. I'm just from
the boulevard, my friends. It's getting hot there, it's getting into a little boil, it's simmering. It's time to skim
the pot. Forward march, men! Let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days to my country, I
shall never see my concubine more, Nini, finished, yes, Nini? But never mind! Long live joy! Let's fight,
crebleu! I've had enough of despotism."
At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the
pavement, and picked up the man, then he assisted in raising the horse. After which he picked up his pistol
and resumed his way. In the Rue de Thorigny, all was peace and silence. This apathy, peculiar to the Marais,
presented a contrast with the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips were chatting in a doorway.
Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping hags; and the "Thou shalt be King" could
be quite as mournfully hurled at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of Armuyr.
The croak would be almost identical.
The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were
portresses, and the fourth was a ragpicker with her basket on her back.
All four of them seemed to be standing at the four corners of old age, which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and
sadness.
The ragpicker was humble. In this openair society, it is the ragpicker who salutes and the portress who
patronizes. This is caused by the corner for refuse, which is fat or lean, according to the will of the portresses,
and after the fancy of the one who makes the heap. There may be kindness in the broom.
This ragpicker was a grateful creature, and she smiled, with what a smile! on the three portresses. Things of
this nature were said:
"Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross?"
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Page No 745
"Good gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It's the dogs who complain."
"And people also."
"But the fleas from a cat don't go after people."
"That's not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that it was
necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries great sheep that
drew the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?"
"I liked the Duc de Bordeau better."
"I knew Louis XVIII. I prefer Louis XVIII."
"Meat is awfully dear, isn't it, Mother Patagon?"
"Ah! don't mention it, the butcher's shop is a horror. A horrible horrorone can't afford anything but the
poor cuts nowadays."
Here the ragpicker interposed:
"Ladies, business is dull. The refuse heaps are miserable. No one throws anything away any more. They eat
everything."
"There are poorer people than you, la Vargouleme."
"Ah, that's true," replied the ragpicker, with deference, "I have a profession."
A pause succeeded, and the ragpicker, yielding to that necessity for boasting which lies at the bottom of
man, added:
"In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my things. This makes heaps in my room. I
put the rags in a basket, the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen stuff in my
commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of
glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed."
Gavroche had stopped behind her and was listening.
"Old ladies," said he, "what do you mean by talking politics?"
He was assailed by a broadside, composed of a quadruple howl.
"Here's another rascal."
"What's that he's got in his paddle? A pistol?"
"Well, I'd like to know what sort of a beggar's brat this is?"
"That sort of animal is never easy unless he's overturning the authorities."
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Page No 746
Gavroche disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal, with elevating the tip of his nose with his thumb
and opening his hand wide.
The ragpicker cried:
"You malicious, barepawed little wretch!"
The one who answered to the name of Patagon clapped her hands together in horror.
"There's going to be evil doings, that's certain. The errandboy next door has a little pointed beard, I have
seen him pass every day with a young person in a pink bonnet on his arm; today I saw him pass, and he had
a gun on his arm. Mame Bacheux says, that last week there was a revolution atatatwhere's the
calf!at Pontoise. And then, there you see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol! It seems that the Celestins
are full of pistols. What do you suppose the Government can do with goodfornothings who don't know
how to do anything but contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun to get a little quiet after
all the misfortunes that have happened, good Lord! to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril! And
all this is going to make tobacco dearer. It's infamous! And I shall certainly go to see him beheaded on the
guillotine, the wretch!"
"You've got the sniffles, old lady," said Gavroche. "Blow your promontory."
And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavee, the ragpicker occurred to his mind, and he indulged in
this soliloquy:
"You're in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother DustHeapCorner. This pistol is in your interests.
It's so that you may have more good things to eat in your basket."
All at once, he heard a shout behind him; it was the portress Patagon who had followed him, and who was
shaking her fist at him in the distance and crying:
"You're nothing but a bastard."
"Oh! Come now," said Gavroche, "I don't care a brass farthing for that!"
Shortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon. There he uttered this appeal:
"Forward march to the battle!"
And he was seized with a fit of melancholy. He gazed at his pistol with an air of reproach which seemed an
attempt to appease it:
"I'm going off," said he, "but you won't go off!"
One dog may distract the attention from another dog.[45] A very gaunt poodle came along at the moment.
Gavroche felt compassion for him.
[45] Chien, dog, trigger.
"My poor doggy," said he, "you must have gone and swallowed a cask, for all the hoops are visible."
Then he directed his course towards l'OrmeSaintGervais.
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Page No 747
CHAPTER III. JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIRDRESSER
The worthy hairdresser who had chased from his shop the two little fellows to whom Gavroche had opened
the paternal interior of the elephant was at that moment in his shop engaged in shaving an old soldier of the
legion who had served under the Empire. They were talking. The hairdresser had, naturally, spoken to the
veteran of the riot, then of General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had passed to the Emperor. Thence
sprang up a conversation between barber and soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have
enriched with arabesques, and which he would have entitled: "Dialogue between the razor and the sword."
"How did the Emperor ride, sir?" said the barber.
"Badly. He did not know how to fallso he never fell."
"Did he have fine horses? He must have had fine horses!"
"On the day when he gave me my cross, I noticed his beast. It was a racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears
were very wide apart, her saddle deep, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, strongly
articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders and a powerful crupper. A little more than fifteen hands
in height."
"A pretty horse," remarked the hairdresser.
"It was His Majesty's beast."
The hairdresser felt, that after this observation, a short silence would be fitting, so he conformed himself to
it, and then went on:
"The Emperor was never wounded but once, was he, sir?"
The old soldier replied with the calm and sovereign tone of a man who had been there:
"In the heel. At Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that day. He was as neat as a new sou."
"And you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?"
"I?" said the soldier, "ah! not to amount to anything. At Marengo, I received two sabreblows on the back of
my neck, a bullet in the right arm at Austerlitz, another in the left hip at Jena. At Friedland, a thrust from a
bayonet, there,at the Moskowa seven or eight lancethrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter of a shell
crushed one of my fingers. Ah! and then at Waterloo, a ball from a biscaien in the thigh, that's all."
"How fine that is!" exclaimed the hairdresser, in Pindaric accents, "to die on the field of battle! On my word
of honor, rather than die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms, syringes,
medicines, I should prefer to receive a cannonball in my belly!"
"You're not over fastidious," said the soldier.
He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The showwindow had suddenly been fractured.
The wigmaker turned pale.
"Ah, good God!" he exclaimed, "it's one of them!"
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Page No 748
"What?"
"A cannonball."
"Here it is," said the soldier.
And he picked up something that was rolling about the floor. It was a pebble.
The hairdresser ran to the broken window and beheld Gavroche fleeing at the full speed, towards the
Marche SaintJean. As he passed the hairdresser's shop Gavroche, who had the two brats still in his mind,
had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him, and had flung a stone through his panes.
"You see!" shrieked the hairdresser, who from white had turned blue, "that fellow returns and does mischief
for the pure pleasure of it. What has any one done to that gamin?"
CHAPTER IV. THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN
In the meantime, in the Marche SaintJean, where the post had already been disarmed, Gavroche had just
"effected a junction" with a band led by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were armed
after a fashion. Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire had found them and swelled the group. Enjolras had a
doublebarrelled huntinggun, Combeferre the gun of a National Guard bearing the number of his legion,
and in his belt, two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen, Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry
musket, Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac was brandishing an unsheathed swordcane. Feuilly, with a naked sword
in his hand, marched at their head shouting: "Long live Poland!"
They reached the Quai Morland. Cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked by the rain, with lightning in their
eyes. Gavroche accosted them calmly:
"Where are we going?"
"Come along," said Courfeyrac.
Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish in water in a riot. He wore a scarlet
waistcoat, and indulged in the sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a passerby,
who cried in bewilderment:
"Here are the reds!"
"The reds, the reds!" retorted Bahorel. "A queer kind of fear, bourgeois. For my part I don't tremble before a
poppy, the little red hat inspires me with no alarm. Take my advice, bourgeois, let's leave fear of the red to
horned cattle."
He caught sight of a corner of the wall on which was placarded the most peaceable sheet of paper in the
world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock."
Bahorel exclaimed:
"`Flock'; a polite way of saying geese."
And he tore the charge from the nail. This conquered Gavroche. From that instant Gavroche set himself to
study Bahorel.
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Page No 749
"Bahorel," observed Enjolras, "you are wrong. You should have let that charge alone, he is not the person
with whom we have to deal, you are wasting your wrath to no purpose. Take care of your supply. One does
not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with a gun."
"Each one in his own fashion, Enjolras," retorted Bahorel. "This bishop's prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs
without being permitted. Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself. Besides, I'm not wasting
myself, I'm getting a start; and if I tore down that charge, Hercle! 'twas only to whet my appetite."
This word, Hercle, struck Gavroche. He sought all occasions for learning, and that tearerdown of posters
possessed his esteem. He inquired of him:
"What does Hercle mean?"
Bahorel answered:
"It means cursed name of a dog, in Latin."
Here Bahorel recognized at a window a pale young man with a black beard who was watching them as they
passed, probably a Friend of the A B C. He shouted to him:
"Quick, cartridges, para bellum."
"A fine man! that's true," said Gavroche, who now understood Latin.
A tumultuous retinue accompanied them,students, artists, young men affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix,
artisans, longshoremen, armed with clubs and bayonets; some, like Combeferre, with pistols thrust into their
trousers.
An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band.
He had no arms, and he made great haste, so that he might not be left behind, although he had a thoughtful
air.
Gavroche caught sight of him:
"Keksekca?" said he to Courfeyrac.
"He's an old duffer."
It was M. Mabeuf.
CHAPTER V. THE OLD MAN
Let us recount what had taken place.
Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the public storehouses, at the moment
when the dragoons had made their charge. Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who had
taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting: "To the barricades!" In the Rue Lesdiguieres they had met an old
man walking along. What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a zigzag, as
though he were intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the
morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the very time. Courfeyrac had recognized Father Mabeuf. He knew
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Page No 750
him through having many times accompanied Marius as far as his door. As he was acquainted with the
peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beadlebookcollector, and was amazed at the sight of him in
the midst of that uproar, a couple of paces from the cavalry charges, almost in the midst of a fusillade, hatless
in the rain, and strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him, and the following dialogue had been
exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian:
"M. Mabeuf, go to your home."
"Why?"
"There's going to be a row."
"That's well."
"Thrusts with the sword and firing, M. Mabeuf."
"That is well."
"Firing from cannon."
"That is good. Where are the rest of you going?"
"We are going to fling the government to the earth."
"That is good."
And he had set out to follow them. From that moment forth he had not uttered a word. His step had suddenly
become firm; artisans had offered him their arms; he had refused with a sign of the head. He advanced nearly
to the front rank of the column, with the movement of a man who is marching and the countenance of a man
who is sleeping.
"What a fierce old fellow!" muttered the students. The rumor spread through the troop that he was a former
member of the Convention, an old regicide. The mob had turned in through the Rue de la Verrerie.
Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song which made of him a sort of trumpet.
He sang:
"Voici la lune qui paratt,
Quand ironsnous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tou tou tou
Pour Chatou.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
"Pour avoir bu de grand matin
La rosee a meme le thym,
Deux moineaux etaient en ribotte.
Zi zi zi
Pour Passy.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
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"Et ces deux pauvres petits loups,
Comme deux grives estaient souls;
Une tigre en riait dans sa grotte.
Don don don
Pour Meudon.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
"L'un jurait et l'autre sacrait.
Quand irons nous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tin tin tin
Pour Pantin.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte."[46]
They directed their course towards SaintMerry.
[46] Here is the morn appearing. When shall we go to the forest, Charlot asked Charlotte. Tou, tou, tou, for
Chatou, I have but one God, one King, one halffarthing, and one boot. And these two poor little wolves
were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very early in the morning. And these two poor
little things were as drunk as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave. The one cursed, the
other swore. When shall we go to the forest? Charlot asked Charlotte.
CHAPTER VI. RECRUITS
The band augmented every moment. Near the Rue des Billettes, a man of lofty stature, whose hair was
turning gray, and whose bold and daring mien was remarked by Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre, but
whom none of them knew, joined them. Gavroche, who was occupied in singing, whistling, humming,
running on ahead and pounding on the shutters of the shops with the butt of his triggerless pistol; paid no
attention to this man.
It chanced that in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed in front of Courfeyrac's door.
"This happens just right," said Courfeyrac, "I have forgotten my purse, and I have lost my hat."
He quitted the mob and ran up to his quarters at full speed. He seized an old hat and his purse.
He also seized a large square coffer, of the dimensions of a large valise, which was concealed under his soiled
linen.
As he descended again at a run, the portress hailed him:
"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"
"What's your name, portress?"
The portress stood bewildered.
"Why, you know perfectly well, I'm the concierge; my name is Mother Veuvain."
"Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak, what's
the matter? What do you want?"
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Page No 752
"There is some one who wants to speak with you."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know."
"Where is he?"
"In my lodge."
"The devil!" ejaculated Courfeyrac.
"But the person has been waiting your return for over an hour," said the portress.
At the same time, a sort of pale, thin, small, freckled, and youthful artisan, clad in a tattered blouse and
patched trousers of ribbed velvet, and who had rather the air of a girl accoutred as a man than of a man,
emerged from the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world like a woman's
voice:
"Monsieur Marius, if you please."
"He is not here."
"Will he return this evening?"
"I know nothing about it."
And Courfeyrac added:
"For my part, I shall not return."
The young man gazed steadily at him and said:
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Where are you going, then?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you?"
"I am going to the barricades."
"Would you like to have me go with you?"
"If you like!" replied Courfeyrac. "The street is free, the pavements belong to every one."
And he made his escape at a run to join his friends. When he had rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of
them to carry. It was only a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man, who had actually
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Page No 753
followed them.
A mob does not go precisely where it intends. We have explained that a gust of wind carries it away. They
overshot SaintMerry and found themselves, without precisely knowing how, in the Rue SaintDenis.
BOOK TWELFTH.CORINTHE
CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION
The Parisians who nowadays on entering on the Rue Rambuteau at the end near the Halles, notice on their
right, opposite the Rue Mondetour, a basketmaker's shop having for its sign a basket in the form of
Napoleon the Great with this inscription:
NAPOLEON IS MADE
WHOLLY OF WILLOW,
have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot witnessed hardly thirty years ago.
It was there that lay the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which ancient deeds spell Chanverrerie, and the celebrated
publichouse called Corinthe.
The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the
way, by the barricade SaintMerry. It was on this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen
into profound obscurity, that we are about to shed a little light.
May we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital, to the simple means which we have
already employed in the case of Waterloo. Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a tolerably exact
manner the constitution of the houses which stood at that epoch near the Pointe SaintEustache, at the
northeast angle of the Halles of Paris, where today lies the embouchure of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to
imagine an N touching the Rue SaintDenis with its summit and the Halles with its base, and whose two
vertical bars should form the Rue de la GrandeTruanderie, and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and whose
transverse bar should be formed by the Rue de la PetiteTruanderie. The old Rue Mondetour cut the three
strokes of the N at the most crooked angles. So that the labyrinthine confusion of these four streets sufficed to
form, on a space three fathoms square, between the Halles and the Rue SaintDenis on the one hand, and
between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Precheurs on the other, seven islands of houses, oddly cut up, of
varying sizes, placed crosswise and haphazard, and barely separated, like the blocks of stone in a dock, by
narrow crannies.
We say narrow crannies, and we can give no more just idea of those dark, contracted, manyangled alleys,
lined with eightstory buildings. These buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the
Rue de la PetiteTruanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams running from one house to another. The
street was narrow and the gutter broad, the pedestrian there walked on a pavement that was always wet,
skirting little stalls resembling cellars, big posts encircled with iron hoops, excessive heaps of refuse, and
gates armed with enormous, centuryold gratings. The Rue Rambuteau has devastated all that.
The name of Mondetour paints marvellously well the sinuosities of that whole set of streets. A little further
on, they are found still better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondetour.
The passerby who got entangled from the Rue SaintDenis in the Rue de la Chanvrerie beheld it gradually
close in before him as though he had entered an elongated funnel. At the end of this street, which was very
short, he found further passage barred in the direction of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he would
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Page No 754
have thought himself in a blind alley, had he not perceived on the right and left two dark cuts through which
he could make his escape. This was the Rue Mondetour, which on one side ran into the Rue de Precheurs, and
on the other into the Rue du Cygne and the PetiteTruanderie. At the bottom of this sort of culdesac, at the
angle of the cutting on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall as the rest, and which
formed a sort of cape in the street. It is in this house, of two stories only, that an illustrious wineshop had
been merrily installed three hundred years before. This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which
old Theophilus described in the following couplet:
La branle le squelette horrible
D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit.[47]
[47] There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.
The situation was good, and tavernkeepers succeeded each other there, from father to son.
In the time of Mathurin Regnier, this cabaret was called the PotauxRoses, and as the rebus was then in
fashion, it had for its signboard, a post (poteau) painted rosecolor. In the last century, the worthy Natoire,
one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this
wineshop at the very table where Regnier had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of gratitude, a bunch of
Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had caused
to be placed in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words: "At the Bunch of Corinth Grapes" ("Au Raisin de
Corinthe"). Hence the name of Corinthe. Nothing is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is
the zigzag of the phrase. Corinthe gradually dethroned the PotauxRoses. The last proprietor of the
dynasty, Father Hucheloup, no longer acquainted even with the tradition, had the post painted blue.
A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first floor containing a billiardtable, a
wooden spiral staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad
daylight,this was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a trapdoor in the lower room led to the cellar.
On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hucheloup family. They were reached by a staircase which was
a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in the large room on the first
floor. Under the roof, in two mansard attics, were the nests for the servants. The kitchen shared the
groundfloor with the taproom.
Father Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact is that he was a cook; people did not
confine themselves to drinking alone in his wineshop, they also ate there. Hucheloup had invented a capital
thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps, which he called carpes au gras. These
were eaten by the light of a tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., on tables to which were
nailed waxed cloths in lieu of tablecloths. People came thither from a distance. Hucheloup, one fine
morning, had seen fit to notify passersby of this "specialty"; he had dipped a brush in a pot of black paint,
and as he was an orthographer on his own account, as well as a cook after his own fashion, he had improvised
on his wall this remarkable inscription:
CARPES HO GRAS.
One winter, the rainstorms and the showers had taken a fancy to obliterate the S which terminated the first
word, and the G which began the third; this is what remained:
CARPE HO RAS.
Time and rain assisting, a humble gastronomical announcement had become a profound piece of advice.
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Page No 755
In this way it came about, that though he knew no French, Father Hucheloup understood Latin, that he had
evoked philosophy from his kitchen, and that, desirous simply of effacing Lent, he had equalled Horace. And
the striking thing about it was, that that also meant: "Enter my wineshop."
Nothing of all this is in existence now. The Mondetour labyrinth was disembowelled and widely opened in
1847, and probably no longer exists at the present moment. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinthe have
disappeared beneath the pavement of the Rue Rambuteau.
As we have already said, Corinthe was the meetingplace if not the rallyingpoint, of Courfeyrac and his
friends. It was Grantaire who had discovered Corinthe. He had entered it on account of the Carpe horas, and
had returned thither on account of the Carpes au gras. There they drank, there they ate, there they shouted;
they did not pay much, they paid badly, they did not pay at all, but they were always welcome. Father
Hucheloup was a jovial host.
Hucheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wineshopkeeper with a mustache; an amusing
variety. He always had an illtempered air, seemed to wish to intimidate his customers, grumbled at the
people who entered his establishment, and had rather the mien of seeking a quarrel with them than of serving
them with soup. And yet, we insist upon the word, people were always welcome there. This oddity had
attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men, who said to each other: "Come hear Father
Hucheloup growl." He had been a fencingmaster. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big voice,
a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten
you, very much like those snuffboxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes one sneeze.
Mother Hucheloup, his wife, was a bearded and a very homely creature.
About 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him disappeared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable
widow continued to keep the wineshop. But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable; the wine,
which had always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends continued to go
to Corinthe, out of pity, as Bossuet said.
The Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen and given to rustic recollections. She deprived them of
their flatness by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things, which spiced her
reminiscences of the village and of her springtime. It had formerly been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear
the loupsdegorge (rougesgorges) chanter dans les ogrepines (aubepines)to hear the redbreasts sing in
the hawthorntrees.
The hall on the first floor, where "the restaurant" was situated, was a large and long apartment encumbered
with stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and with a crippled, lame, old billiardtable. It was reached by a
spiral staircase which terminated in the corner of the room at a square hole like the hatchway of a ship.
This room, lighted by a single narrow window, and by a lamp that was always burning, had the air of a garret.
All the fourfooted furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs the whitewashed walls had
for their only ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup:
Elle etonne a dix pas, elle epouvente a deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble a chaque instant qu'elle ne vous la mouche
Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.[48]
[48] She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart inhabits her hazardous nose; you tremble every
instant lest she should blow it at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her mouth.
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Page No 756
This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.
Mame Hucheloup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till night before this quatrain with the most
perfect tranquillity. Two servingmaids, named Matelote and Gibelotte,[49] and who had never been known
by any other names, helped Mame Hucheloup to set on the tables the jugs of poor wine, and the various
broths which were served to the hungry patrons in earthenware bowls. Matelote, large, plump, redhaired, and
noisy, the favorite exsultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was homelier than any mythological monster, be it
what it may; still, as it becomes the servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress, she was less homely
than Mame Hucheloup. Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with a lymphatic pallor, with circles round her eyes,
and drooping lids, always languid and weary, afflicted with what may be called chronic lassitude, the first up
in the house and the last in bed, waited on every one, even the other maid, silently and gently, smiling
through her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile.
[49] Matelote: a culinary preparation of various fishes. Gibelotte: stewed rabbits.
Before entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door the following line written there in chalk by
Courfeyrac:
Regale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses.[50]
[50] Treat if you can, and eat if you dare.
CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARY GAYETIES
Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has
one on a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common,
even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called,
bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly, who was all stuffed up, had
a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle's coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning, when they opened the door of Corinthe.
They ascended to the first floor.
Matelote and Gibelotte received them.
"Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle.
And they seated themselves at a table.
The wineshop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.
Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.
While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice
said:
"I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter." It was Grantaire.
Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.
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Page No 757
At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the table.
That made three.
"Are you going to drink those two bottles?" Laigle inquired of Grantaire.
Grantaire replied:
"All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man."
The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down.
"So you have a hole in your stomach?" began Laigle again.
"You have one in your elbow," said Grantaire.
And after having emptied his glass, he added:
"Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old."
"I should hope so," retorted Laigle. "That's why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my
folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am
only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends."
"That's true," ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, "an old goat is an old abi" (ami, friend).
"Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up," said Grantaire.
"Grantaire," demanded Laigle, "have you just come from the boulevard?"
"No."
"We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I."
"It's a marvellous sight," said Joly.
"How quiet this street is!" exclaimed Laigle. "Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How
plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du
Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbe Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly
swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins,
Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustinesthere was no end of them."
"Don't let's talk of monks," interrupted Grantaire, "it makes one want to scratch one's self."
Then he exclaimed:
"Bouh! I've just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are
spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in front of the
big public library. That pile of oystershells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What
paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a
featherless biped?[51] And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring,
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Page No 758
worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch
yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with smallpox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps
on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds. Two months ago that
young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyeletholes of corsets, what do
you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here
she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The
hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty today as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in
her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by
caterpillars are visible. Ah! there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the
laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the appletree which came nearest
rangling Adam with its pips, and the figtree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for right, do you know what
right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to
them. Brennus answers: `The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenae did to you, the wrong that
the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The Clusians are ours.
We understand neighborliness just as you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.' Rome said: `You
shall not take Clusium.' Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: `Vae victis!' That is what right is. Ah! what
beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep."
[51] Bipede sans plume: biped without featherspen.
He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went on, having hardly been interrupted by this
glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice:
"Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more
modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink. Whatever
your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the
Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et caetera, et
caetera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good
God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won't
work. Quick, a revolution! The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cartgrease. If I were in
his place, I'd be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I'd lead the
human race in a straightforward way, I'd weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would
have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory. What the rest of you call
progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the
exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event nor for men: among men
geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do
without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself
finds actors needed for its performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor
on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the
death of Caesar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an
aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; '93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of
1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum!
Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama.
Good God, it is too much and not enough. These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and
poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is in
a quandry. He effects a coup d'etat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this
confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah's fortune; and when I see so much distress in heaven and on
earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income,
when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the
Prince de Conde hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind
blows, when I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, when I
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see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart
and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much
misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard
up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose moneybox is empty gives a ball. God must not be judged
from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a povertystricken universe. Creation is
bankrupt. That is why I am discontented. Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning
I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won't come all day. This is the
inexactness of an illpaid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world
is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It's like
children, those who want them have none, and those who don't want them have them. Total: I'm vexed.
Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that baldhead, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same
age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil
intent and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.
Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to
say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the
group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing those
exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian
gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a footsoldier to the
Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his
frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not
understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the
inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only
religion which is ornamented with a henroost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of
stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other's profiles
and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a
creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of newmown hay in the meadows! Really, people do
commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bricabrac merchant's
suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That's
what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more.
Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used
to it!"
And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which was well earned.
"A propos of revolution," said Joly, "it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub."
"Does any one know with whom?" demanded Laigle.
"Do."
"No?"
"Do! I tell you."
"Marius' love affairs!" exclaimed Grantaire. "I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a
vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbraeus Apollo. Marius and
his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just
what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls
possessed of senses. They lie among the stars."
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Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second harangue, when a new personage emerged
from the square aperture of the stairs. It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with
an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.
The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.
"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?"
"That is my nickname," replied Laigle. "What do you want with me?"
"This. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: `Do you know Mother Hucheloup?' I said: `Yes, Rue
Chanvrerie, the old man's widow;' he said to me: `Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from
me: "A B C".' It's a joke that they're playing on you, isn't it. He gave me ten sous."
"Joly, lend me ten sous," said Laigle; and, turning to Grantaire: "Grantaire, lend me ten sous."
This made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad.
"Thank you, sir," said the urchin.
"What is your name?" inquired Laigle.
"Navet, Gavroche's friend."
"Stay with us," said Laigle.
"Breakfast with us," said Grantaire,
The child replied:
"I can't, I belong in the procession, I'm the one to shout `Down with Polignac!'"
And executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible salutes,
he took his departure.
The child gone, Grantaire took the word:
"That is the purebred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the gamin species. The notary's gamin is
called SkiptheGutter, the cook's gamin is called a scullion, the baker's gamin is called a mitron, the
lackey's gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the cabinboy, the soldier's gamin is called the
drummerboy, the painter's gamin is called paintgrinder, the tradesman's gamin is called an errandboy, the
courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the
bambino."
In the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection; he said half aloud:
"A B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque."
"The tall blonde," remarked Grantaire, "is Enjolras, who is sending you a warning."
"Shall we go?" ejaculated Bossuet.
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"It's raiding," said Joly. "I have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don't wand to ged a gold."
"I shall stay here," said Grantaire. "I prefer a breakfast to a hearse."
"Conclusion: we remain," said Laigle. "Well, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without
missing the riot."
"Ah! the riot, I am with you!" cried Joly.
Laigle rubbed his hands.
"Now we're going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the
seams."
"I don't think much of your revolution," said Grantaire. "I don't execrate this Government. It is the crown
tempered by the cotton nightcap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that today, with the
present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the
sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven."
The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of daylight. There was no one in the
wineshop, or in the street, every one having gone off "to watch events."
"Is it midday or midnight?" cried Bossuet. "You can't see your hand before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a
light."
Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.
"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered. "Enjolras said: `Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.' It was to Bossuet that he
sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't go to
his funeral."
This resolution once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wineshop. By two o'clock
in the afternoon, the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning on it,
one in a flat copper candlestick which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire
had seduced Joly and Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness.
As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer of dreams, ever since midday.
Wine enjoys only a conventional popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of inebriety,
white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The
blackness of a terrible fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him, attracted him. He had
abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass. The beerglass is the abyss. Having neither opium nor
hashish on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had recourse to that fearful
mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe, which produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors,
beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three grooms; the celestial
butterfly is drowned in them; and there are formed there in a membranous smoke, vaguely condensed into the
wing of the bat, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the slumbering Psyche.
Grantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it. He was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and
Joly retorted. They clinked glasses. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas, a
peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and, with
cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he hurled solemn words at the big
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maidservant Matelote:
"Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the
right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink."
And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added:
"Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!"
And Joly exclaimed:
"Matelote and Gibelotte, dod't gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this
bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninetyfive centibes."
And Grantaire began again:
"Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of
candles?"
Bossuet, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity.
He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain, and gazing at his two
friends.
All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of "To arms!" He turned round and saw in
the Rue SaintDenis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, gun in hand, and Gavroche
with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword, Courfeyrac with his sword, and Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss,
Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following
them.
The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long. Bossuet improvised a speakingtrumpet from
his two hands placed around his mouth, and shouted:
"Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hohee!"
Courfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie,
shouting: "What do you want?" which crossed a "Where are you going?"
"To make a barricade," replied Courfeyrac.
"Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here!"
"That's true, Aigle," said Courfeyrac.
And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
CHAPTER III. NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE
The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street widened out, the other extremity narrowed
together into a pocket without exit. Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mondetour was easily barricaded on
the right and the left, no attack was possible except from the Rue SaintDenis, that is to say, in front, and in
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full sight. Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.
Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob. There was not a passerby who did not get
out of sight. In the space of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right and left, shops, stables, areadoors,
windows, blinds, attic skylights, shutters of every description were closed, from the ground floor to the roof.
A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothespoles for drying linen, in order
to deaden the effect of musketry. The wineshop alone remained open; and that for a very good reason, that
the mob had rushed into it."Ah my God! Ah my God!" sighed Mame Hucheloup.
Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.
Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:
"Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch gold."
In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrenched from the grated front of
the wineshop, ten fathoms of street had been unpaved; Gavroche and Bahorel had seized in its passage, and
overturned, the dray of a limedealer named Anceau; this dray contained three barrels of lime, which they
placed beneath the piles of pavingstones: Enjolras raised the cellar trap, and all the widow Hucheloup's
empty casks were used to flank the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate
sticks of fans, had backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of rough stone.
Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured no one knows where. The beams which served as
props were torn from the neighboring housefronts and laid on the casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac
turned round, half the street was already barred with a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the
hand of the populace for building everything that is built by demolishing.
Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers. Gibelotte went and came loaded with rubbish. Her
lassitude helped on the barricade. She served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.
An omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.
Bossuet strode over the pavingstones, ran to it, stopped the driver, made the passengers alight, offered his
hand to "the ladies," dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the bridle.
"Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum."
An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the
omnibus lying on its side completed the bar across the street.
Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.
Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks
did not dare to emerge from her throat.
"The end of the world has come," she muttered.
Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck, and said to Grantaire: "My dear fellow, I
have always regarded a woman's neck as an infinitely delicate thing."
But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more,
Grantaire seized her round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window.
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"Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret
of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the
most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her,
citizens! She has chromateofleadcolored hair, like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee
that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior. Look
at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two
alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as
there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of
perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand
mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any
money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich,
there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses,
how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune! How much good
he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of
a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover."
"Hold your tongue, you cask!" said Courfeyrac.
Grantaire retorted:
"I am the capitoul[52] and the master of the floral games!"
[52] Municipal officer of Toulouse.
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face.
Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would
have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.
"Grantaire," he shouted, "go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here. This is the place for
enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don't disgrace the barricade!"
This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would have said that he had had a glass of
cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.
He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with indescribable gentleness,
and said to him:
"Let me sleep here."
"Go and sleep somewhere else," cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied:
"Let me sleep here,until I die."
Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:
"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying."
Grantaire replied in a grave tone:
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"You will see."
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual
effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant
later he had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER IV. AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP
Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted:
"Here's the street in its lownecked dress! How well it looks!"
Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wineshop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress.
"Mother Hucheloup, weren't you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for
infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?"
"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your
horror, too? And it was for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from the attic window
into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs. If that isn't an abomination, what is!"
"Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you."
Mother Hucheloup did not appear to understand very clearly the benefit which she was to derive from these
reprisals made on her account. She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received
a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying: "Father,
you owe my husband affront for affront." The father asked: "On which cheek did you receive the blow?" "On
the left cheek." The father slapped her right cheek and said: "Now you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that
he boxed my daughter's ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife's."
The rain had ceased. Recruits had arrived. Workmen had brought under their blouses a barrel of powder, a
basket containing bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with firepots, "left over
from the King's festival." This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May. It was said that
these munitions came from a grocer in the Faubourg SaintAntoine named Pepin. They smashed the only
street lantern in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the lantern corresponding to one in the Rue SaintDenis, and all
the lanterns in the surrounding streets, de Mondetour, du Cygne, des Precheurs, and de la Grande and de la
PetiteTruanderie.
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac directed everything. Two barricades were now in process of
construction at once, both of them resting on the Corinthe house and forming a right angle; the larger shut off
the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the other closed the Rue Mondetour, on the side of the Rue de Cygne. This last
barricade, which was very narrow, was constructed only of casks and pavingstones. There were about fifty
workers on it; thirty were armed with guns; for, on their way, they had effected a wholesale loan from an
armorer's shop.
Nothing could be more bizarre and at the same time more motley than this troop. One had a roundjacket, a
cavalry sabre, and two holsterpistols, another was in his shirtsleeves, with a round hat, and a powderhorn
slung at his side, a third wore a plastron of nine sheets of gray paper and was armed with a saddler's awl.
There was one who was shouting: "Let us exterminate them to the last man and die at the point of our
bayonet." This man had no bayonet. Another spread out over his coat the crossbelt and cartridgebox of a
National Guardsman, the cover of the cartridgebox being ornamented with this inscription in red worsted:
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Public Order. There were a great many guns bearing the numbers of the legions, few hats, no cravats, many
bare arms, some pikes. Add to this, all ages, all sorts of faces, small, pale young men, and bronzed
longshoremen. All were in haste; and as they helped each other, they discussed the possible chances. That
they would receive succor about three o'clock in the morningthat they were sure of one regiment, that Paris
would rise. Terrible sayings with which was mingled a sort of cordial joviality. One would have pronounced
them brothers, but they did not know each other's names. Great perils have this fine characteristic, that they
bring to light the fraternity of strangers. A fire had been lighted in the kitchen, and there they were engaged in
moulding into bullets, pewter mugs, spoons, forks, and all the brass tableware of the establishment. In the
midst of it all, they drank. Caps and buckshot were mixed pellmell on the tables with glasses of wine. In the
billiardhall, Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously modified by terror, which had stupefied
one, rendered another breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old dishcloths and making lint; three
insurgents were assisting them, three bushyhaired, jolly blades with beards and moustaches, who plucked
away at the linen with the fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble.
The man of lofty stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras had observed at the moment when he
joined the mob at the corner of the Rue des Billettes, was at work on the smaller barricade and was making
himself useful there. Gavroche was working on the larger one. As for the young man who had been waiting
for Courfeyrac at his lodgings, and who had inquired for M. Marius, he had disappeared at about the time
when the omnibus had been overturned.
Gavroche, completely carried away and radiant, had undertaken to get everything in readiness. He went,
came, mounted, descended, remounted, whistled, and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the
encouragement of all. Had he any incentive? Yes, certainly, his poverty; had he wings? yes, certainly, his joy.
Gavroche was a whirlwind. He was constantly visible, he was incessantly audible. He filled the air, as he was
everywhere at once. He was a sort of almost irritating ubiquity; no halt was possible with him. The enormous
barricade felt him on its haunches. He troubled the loungers, he excited the idle, he reanimated the weary, he
grew impatient over the thoughtful, he inspired gayety in some, and breath in others, wrath in others,
movement in all, now pricking a student, now biting an artisan; he alighted, paused, flew off again, hovered
over the tumult, and the effort, sprang from one party to another, murmuring and humming, and harassed the
whole company; a fly on the immense revolutionary coach.
Perpetual motion was in his little arms and perpetual clamor in his little lungs.
"Courage! more pavingstones! more casks! more machines! Where are you now? A hod of plaster for me to
stop this hole with! Your barricade is very small. It must be carried up. Put everything on it, fling everything
there, stick it all in. Break down the house. A barricade is Mother Gibou's tea. Hullo, here's a glass door."
This elicited an exclamation from the workers.
"A glass door? what do you expect us to do with a glass door, tubercle?"
"Hercules yourselves!" retorted Gavroche. "A glass door is an excellent thing in a barricade. It does not
prevent an attack, but it prevents the enemy taking it. So you've never prigged apples over a wall where there
were broken bottles? A glass door cuts the corns of the National Guard when they try to mount on the
barricade. Pardi! glass is a treacherous thing. Well, you haven't a very wildly lively imagination, comrades."
However, he was furious over his triggerless pistol. He went from one to another, demanding: "A gun, I want
a gun! Why don't you give me a gun?"
"Give you a gun!" said Combeferre.
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"Come now!" said Gavroche, "why not? I had one in 1830 when we had a dispute with Charles X."
Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.
"When there are enough for the men, we will give some to the children."
Gavroche wheeled round haughtily, and answered:
"If you are killed before me, I shall take yours."
"Gamin!" said Enjolras.
"Greenhorn!" said Gavroche.
A dandy who had lost his way and who lounged past the end of the street created a diversion! Gavroche
shouted to him:
"Come with us, young fellow! well now, don't we do anything for this old country of ours?"
The dandy fled.
CHAPTER V. PREPARATIONS
The journals of the day which said that that nearly impregnable structure, of the barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, as they call it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact is, that it did not
exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It was built in such a manner that the combatants could, at their
will, either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale its crest by means of a quadruple row of
pavingstones placed on top of each other and arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, the front of
the barricade, composed of piles of pavingstones and casks bound together by beams and planks, which
were entangled in the wheels of Anceau's dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable
aspect.
An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been made between the wall of the houses and
the extremity of the barricade which was furthest from the wineshop, so that an exit was possible at this
point. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright and held up with ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this
pole, floated over the barricade.
The little Mondetour barricade, hidden behind the wineshop building, was not visible. The two barricades
united formed a veritable redoubt. Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other fragment
of the Rue Mondetour which opens through the Rue des Precheurs an issue into the Halles, wishing, no
doubt, to preserve a possible communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of an attack
through the dangerous and difficult street of the Rue des Precheurs.
With the exception of this issue which was left free, and which constituted what Folard in his strategical style
would have termed a branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged on the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the wineshop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular
square, closed on all sides. There existed an interval of twenty paces between the grand barrier and the lofty
houses which formed the background of the street, so that one might say that the barricade rested on these
houses, all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.
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All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an hour, and without this handful of bold
men seeing a single bearskin cap or a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois who still
ventured at this hour of riot to enter the Rue SaintDenis cast a glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, caught
sight of the barricade, and redoubled their pace.
The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was dragged out of the wineshop; and
Courfeyrac mounted on the table. Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This coffer
was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a tremor ran through the bravest, and a
momentary silence ensued.
Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.
Each one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder, and set about making others with the bullets which
they had run. As for the barrel of powder, it stood on a table on one side, near the door, and was held in
reserve.
The alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it had finally come to be nothing more than a
monotonous noise to which they no longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again drew
near, with melancholy undulations.
They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with solemn gravity. Enjolras went and
stationed three sentinels outside the barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des
Precheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.
Then, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned, the guns loaded, the sentinels stationed, they
waited, alone in those redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded by those
dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human movement palpitated, enveloped in the deepening
shades of twilight which was drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which something could be felt
advancing, and which had about it something tragic and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.
CHAPTER VI. WAITING
During those hours of waiting, what did they do?
We must needs tell, since this is a matter of history.
While the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan of melted brass and lead, destined to
the bulletmould smoked over a glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand, on the
barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was impossible to divert, kept an eye on the sentinels, Combeferre,
Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and
united as in the most peaceful days of their conversations in their student life, and, in one corner of this
wineshop which had been converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt which they
had built, with their carbines loaded and primed resting against the backs of their chairs, these fine young
fellows, so close to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses.
What verses? These:
Vous rappelezvous notre douce vie,
Lorsque nous etions si jeunes tous deux,
Et que nous n'avions au coeur d'autre envie
Que d'etre bien mis et d'etre amoureux,
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Page No 769
Lorsqu'en ajoutant votre age a mon age,
Nous ne comptions pas a deux quarante ans,
Et que, dans notre humble et petit menage,
Tout, meme l'hiver, nous etait printemps?
Beaux jours! Manuel etait fier et sage,
Paris s'asseyait a de saints banquets,
Foy lancait la foudre, et votre corsage
Avait une epingle ou je me piquais.
Tout vous contemplait. Avocat sans causes,
Quand je vous menais au Prado diner,
Vous etiez jolie au point que les roses
Me faisaient l'effet de se retourner.
Je les entendais dire: Est elle belle!
Comme elle sent bon! Quels cheveux a flots!
Sous son mantelet elle cache une aile,
Son bonnet charmant est a peine eclos.
J'errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple.
Les passants crovaient que l'amour charme
Avait marie, dans notre heureux couple,
Le doux mois d'avril au beau mois de mai.
Nous vivions caches, contents, porte close,
Devorant l'amour, bon fruit defendu,
Ma bouche n'avait pas dit une chose
Que deja ton coeur avait repondu.
La Sorbonne etait l'endroit bucolique
Ou je t'adorais du soir au matin.
C'est ainsi qu'une ame amoureuse applique
La carte du Tendre au pays Latin.
O place Maubert! o place Dauphine!
Quand, dans le taudis frais et printanier,
Tu tirais ton bas sur ton jambe fine,
Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier.
J'ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m'en reste;
Mieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais,
Tu me demontrais la bonte celeste
Avec une fleur que tu me donnais.
Je t'obeissais, tu m' etais soumise;
O grenier dore! te lacer! te voir
Aller et venir des l'aube en chemise,
Mirant ton jeune front a ton vieux miroir.
Et qui done pourrait perde la memoire
De ces temps d'aurore et de firmament,
De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire,
Ou l'amour begaye un argot charmant?
Nos jardins etaient un pot de tulipe;
Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;
Je prenais le bol de terre de pipe,
Et je te donnais le tasse en japon.
Et ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire!
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Page No 770
Ton manchon brule, ton boa perdu!
Et ce cher portrait du divin Shakespeare
Qu'un soir pour souper nons avons vendu!
J'etais mendiant et toi charitable.
Je baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds.
Dante in folio nous servait de table
Pour manger gaiment un cent de marrons.
La premiere fois qu'en mon joyeux bouge
Je pris un baiser a ton levre en feu,
Quand tu t'en allais decoiffee et rouge,
Je restai tout pale et je crus en Dieu!
Te rappellestu nos bonheurs sans nombre,
Et tous ces fichus changes en chiffons?
Oh que de soupirs, de nos coeurs pleins d'ombre,
Se sont envoles dans les cieux profonds![53]
[53] Do you remember our sweet life, when we were both so young, and when we had no other desire in our
hearts than to be well dressed and in love? When, by adding your age to my age, we could not count forty
years between us, and when, in our humble and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter.
Fair days! Manuel was proud and wise, Paris sat at sacred banquets, Foy launched thunderbolts, and your
corsage had a pin on which I pricked myself. Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took
you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them
say: Is she not beautiful! How good she smells! What billowing hair! Beneath her mantle she hides a wing.
Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded. I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm. The passersby
thought that love bewitched had wedded, in our happy couple, the gentle month of April to the fair month of
May. We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love, that sweet forbidden fruit. My mouth
had not uttered a thing when thy heart had already responded. The Sorbonne was the bucolic spot where I
adored thee from eve till morn. 'Tis thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin
country. O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine! When in the fresh springlike hut thou didst draw thy stocking
on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret. I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it
remains by me; better than Malebranche and then Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness
with a flower which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee!
to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient
mirror! And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora and the firmament, of flowers, of
gauze and of moire, when love stammers a charming slang? Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; thou
didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup. And
those great misfortunes which made us laugh! Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost! And that dear portrait of the
divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening that we might sup! I was a beggar and thou wert charitable. I
kissed thy fresh round arms in haste. A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centime's
worth of chestnuts. The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy fiery lip, when thou
wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God. Dost thou recall our
innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags? Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered
forth to the heavenly depths!
The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars which began to twinkle in the sky, the
funeral repose of those deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in preparation,
gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low tone in the dusk by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we have
said, was a gentle poet.
In the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in the small barricade, and in the large one, one of those wax
torches such as are to be met with on ShroveTuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks, on their way to
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Page No 771
la Courtille. These torches, as the reader has seen, came from the Faubourg SaintAntoine.
The torch had been placed in a sort of cage of pavingstones closed on three sides to shelter it from the wind,
and disposed in such a fashion that all the light fell on the flag. The street and the barricade remained sunk in
gloom, and nothing was to be seen except the red flag formidably illuminated as by an enormous
darklantern.
This light enhanced the scarlet of the flag, with an indescribable and terrible purple.
CHAPTER VII. THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES
Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance. All that they heard was confused noises, and at intervals,
fusillades; but these were rare, badly sustained and distant. This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a
sign that the Government was taking its time, and collecting its forces. These fifty men were waiting for sixty
thousand.
Enjolras felt attacked by that impatience which seizes on strong souls on the threshold of redoubtable events.
He went in search of Gavroche, who had set to making cartridges in the taproom, by the dubious light of
two candles placed on the counter by way of precaution, on account of the powder which was scattered on the
tables. These two candles cast no gleam outside. The insurgents had, moreover, taken pains not to have any
light in the upper stories.
Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely with his cartridges. The man of the Rue
des Billettes had just entered the taproom and had seated himself at the table which was the least lighted. A
musket of large model had fallen to his share, and he held it between his legs. Gavroche, who had been, up to
that moment, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things, had not even seen this man.
When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes, admiring his gun; then, all at once,
when the man was seated, the street urchin sprang to his feet. Any one who had spied upon that man up to
that moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in the barricade and in the band of
insurgents, with singular attention; but, from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a
sort of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on. The gamin approached this
pensive personage, and began to step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one
is afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish countenance which was, at once so impudent and so
serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so heartbreaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man
which signify: Ah bah! impossible! My sight is bad! I am dreaming! can this be? no, it is not! but yes! why,
no! etc. Gavroche balanced on his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a bird,
expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous,
convinced, dazzled. He had the mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart, discovering a Venus
among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur recognizing a Raphael in a heap of daubs. His whole
being was at work, the instinct which scents out, and the intelligence which combines. It was evident that a
great event had happened in Gavroche's life.
It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras accosted him.
"You are small," said Enjolras, "you will not be seen. Go out of the barricade, slip along close to the houses,
skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on."
Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.
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Page No 772
"So the little chaps are good for something! that's very lucky! I'll go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little
fellows, and distrust the big ones." And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as he
indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: "Do you see that big fellow there?"
"Well?"
"He's a police spy."
"Are you sure of it?"
"It isn't two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my
ear."
Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the
winedocks who chanced to be at hand. The man left the room, and returned almost immediately,
accompanied by three others. The four men, four porters with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves
without doing anything to attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was
leaning with his elbows. They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him.
Then Enjolras approached the man and demanded of him:
"Who are you?"
At this abrupt query, the man started. He plunged his gaze deep into Enjolras' clear eyes and appeared to
grasp the latter's meaning. He smiled with a smile than which nothing more disdainful, more energetic, and
more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty gravity:
"I see what it is. Well, yes!"
"You are a police spy?"
"I am an agent of the authorities."
"And your name?"
"Javert."
Enjolras made a sign to the four men. In the twinkling of an eye, before Javert had time to turn round, he was
collared, thrown down, pinioned and searched.
They found on him a little round card pasted between two pieces of glass, and bearing on one side the arms of
France, engraved, and with this motto: Supervision and vigilance, and on the other this note: "JAVERT,
inspector of police, aged fiftytwo," and the signature of the Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet.
Besides this, he had his watch and his purse, which contained several gold pieces. They left him his purse and
his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which
Enjolras unfolded, and on which he read these five lines, written in the very hand of the Prefect of Police:
"As soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Javert will make sure, by special supervision,
whether it is true that the malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Seine, near the Jena
bridge."
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Page No 773
The search ended, they lifted Javert to his feet, bound his arms behind his back, and fastened him to that
celebrated post in the middle of the room which had formerly given the wineshop its name.
Gavroche, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had approved of everything with a silent toss of
his head, stepped up to Javert and said to him:
"It's the mouse who has caught the cat."
All this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those about the wineshop noticed it.
Javert had not uttered a single cry.
At the sight of Javert bound to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scattered over
the two barricades came running up.
Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could not make a movement, raised his
head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.
"He is a police spy," said Enjolras.
And turning to Javert: "You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken."
Javert replied in his most imperious tone:
"Why not at once?"
"We are saving our powder."
"Then finish the business with a blow from a knife."
"Spy," said the handsome Enjolras, "we are judges and not assassins."
Then he called Gavroche:
"Here you! go about your business! Do what I told you!"
"I'm going!" cried Gavroche.
And halting as he was on the point of setting out:
"By the way, you will give me his gun!" and he added: "I leave you the musician, but I want the clarionet."
The gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through the opening in the large barricade.
CHAPTER VIII. MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A
CERTAIN LE CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC
The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete, the reader would not see those grand
moments of social birthpangs in a revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort, in
their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage
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Page No 774
horror which occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.
Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men.
These men do not ask each other whence they come. Among the passersby who had joined the rabble led by
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing the jacket of a street porter, which
was very threadbare on the shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken
savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was, moreover, an utter stranger to those
who pretended to know him, was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated himself
with several others at a table which they had dragged outside of the wineshop. This Cabuc, while making
those who vied with him drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at the extremity
of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole street and faced the Rue SaintDenis. All at once
he exclaimed:
"Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire. When we are at the windows, the
deuce is in it if any one can advance into the street!"
"Yes, but the house is closed," said one of the drinkers.
"Let us knock!"
"They will not open."
"Let us break in the door!"
Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and knocks. The door opens not. He strikes a
second blow. No one answers. A third stroke. The same silence.
"Is there any one here?" shouts Cabuc.
Nothing stirs.
Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.
It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of
iron and iron stays, a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble,
but did not shake the door.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed, for a tiny, square window was finally seen to
open on the third story, and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a grayhaired old man,
who was the porter, and who held a candle.
The man who was knocking paused.
"Gentlemen," said the porter, "what do you want?"
"Open!" said Cabuc.
"That cannot be, gentlemen."
"Open, nevertheless."
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Page No 775
"Impossible, gentlemen."
Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below, and as it was very dark, the porter did
not see him.
"Will you open, yes or no?"
"No, gentlemen."
"Do you say no?"
"I say no, my goo"
The porter did not finish. The shot was fired; the ball entered under his chin and came out at the nape of his
neck, after traversing the jugular vein.
The old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell and was extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen
except a motionless head lying on the sill of the small window, and a little whitish smoke which floated off
towards the roof.
"There!" said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon,
and he heard a voice saying to him:
"On your knees."
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras' cold, white face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his left hand.
"On your knees!" he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a
reed, and brought him to his knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman's face, had about him at that moment
something of the antique Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek
profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which, as the ancient world viewed the
matter, befit Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was
impossible to utter a word in the presence of the thing which they were about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled in every limb.
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Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.
"Collect yourself," said he. "Think or pray. You have one minute."
"Mercy!" murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head and stammered a few inarticulate oaths.
Enjolras never took his eyes off of him: he allowed a minute to pass, then he replaced his watch in his fob.
That done, he grasped Le Cabuc by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and shrieked,
and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered
upon the most terrible of adventures, turned aside their heads.
An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face downwards.
Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe glance around him. Then he spurned the
corpse with his foot and said:
"Throw that outside."
Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still agitated by the last mechanical convulsions
of the life that had fled, and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondetour.
Enjolras was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows slowly spread over his redoubtable
serenity. All at once he raised his voice.
A silence fell upon them.
"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is frightful, what I have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I
killed him. I had to do it, because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime
here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the
victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man, and
condemned him to death. As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I
have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself."
Those who listened to him shuddered.
"We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre.
"So be it," replied Enjolras. "One word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is
a monster of the old world, necessity's name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall
disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce
the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of
thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious
ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future
no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come,
citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may
come that we are about to die."
Enjolras ceased. His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time standing on the spot where he had
shed blood, in marble immobility. His staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.
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Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other's hands silently, and, leaning against each other in an
angle of the barricade, they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion, that grave
young man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also of rock.
Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies were taken to the morgue and searched, a
police agent's card was found on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the special
report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.
We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police, which is strange but probably well founded, Le
Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no longer any question
of Claquesous. Claquesous had nowhere left any trace of his disappearance; he would seem to have
amalgamated himself with the invisible. His life had been all shadows, his end was night.
The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the emotion of that tragic case which had been so
quickly tried and so quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small young man
who had inquired of him that morning for Marius.
This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join the insurgents.
BOOK THIRTEENTH.MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
CHAPTER I. FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINTDENIS
The voice which had summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had
produced on him the effect of the voice of destiny. He wished to die; the opportunity presented itself; he
knocked at the door of the tomb, a hand in the darkness offered him the key. These melancholy openings
which take place in the gloom before despair, are tempting. Marius thrust aside the bar which had so often
allowed him to pass, emerged from the garden, and said: "I will go."
Mad with grief, no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid in his brain, incapable of accepting anything
thenceforth of fate after those two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love, overwhelmed at once
by all the reveries of despair, he had but one desire remaining, to make a speedy end of all.
He set out at rapid pace. He found himself most opportunely armed, as he had Javert's pistols with him.
The young man of whom he thought that he had caught a glimpse, had vanished from his sight in the street.
Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, traversed the Esplanade and the bridge of
the Invalides, the Champs Elysees, the Place Louis XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open
there, the gas was burning under the arcades, women were making their purchases in the stalls, people were
eating ices in the Cafe Laiter, and nibbling small cakes at the English pastrycook's shop. Only a few
postingchaises were setting out at a gallop from the Hotel des Princes and the Hotel Meurice.
Marius entered the Rue SaintHonore through the Passage Delorme. There the shops were closed, the
merchants were chatting in front of their halfopen doors, people were walking about, the street lanterns were
lighted, beginning with the first floor, all the windows were lighted as usual. There was cavalry on the Place
du PalaisRoyal.
Marius followed the Rue SaintHonore. In proportion as he left the PalaisRoyal behind him, there were
fewer lighted windows, the shops were fast shut, no one was chatting on the thresholds, the street grew
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sombre, and, at the same time, the crowd increased in density. For the passersby now amounted to a crowd.
No one could be seen to speak in this throng, and yet there arose from it a dull, deep murmur.
Near the fountain of the ArbreSec, there were "assemblages", motionless and gloomy groups which were to
those who went and came as stones in the midst of running water.
At the entrance to the Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer walked. It formed a resisting, massive, solid,
compact, almost impenetrable block of people who were huddled together, and conversing in low tones.
There were hardly any black coats or round hats now, but smock frocks, blouses, caps, and bristling and
cadaverous heads. This multitude undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom. Its whisperings had the
hoarse accent of a vibration. Although not one of them was walking, a dull trampling was audible in the mire.
Beyond this dense portion of the throng, in the Rue du Roule, in the Rue des Prouvaires, and in the extension
of the Rue SaintHonore, there was no longer a single window in which a candle was burning. Only the
solitary and diminishing rows of lanterns could be seen vanishing into the street in the distance. The lanterns
of that date resembled large red stars, hanging to ropes, and shed upon the pavement a shadow which had the
form of a huge spider. These streets were not deserted. There could be descried piles of guns, moving
bayonets, and troops bivouacking. No curious observer passed that limit. There circulation ceased. There the
rabble ended and the army began.
Marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more. He had been summoned, he must go. He found a
means to traverse the throng and to pass the bivouac of the troops, he shunned the patrols, he avoided the
sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the Rue de Bethisy, and directed his course towards the Halles. At the
corner of the Rue des Bourdonnais, there were no longer any lanterns.
After having passed the zone of the crowd, he had passed the limits of the troops; he found himself in
something startling. There was no longer a passerby, no longer a soldier, no longer a light, there was no one;
solitude, silence, night, I know not what chill which seized hold upon one. Entering a street was like entering
a cellar.
He continued to advance.
He took a few steps. Some one passed close to him at a run. Was it a man? Or a woman? Were there many of
them? he could not have told. It had passed and vanished.
Proceeding from circuit to circuit, he reached a lane which he judged to be the Rue de la Poterie; near the
middle of this street, he came in contact with an obstacle. He extended his hands. It was an overturned
wagon; his foot recognized pools of water, gullies, and pavingstones scattered and piled up. A barricade had
been begun there and abandoned. He climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the
barrier. He walked very near the streetposts, and guided himself along the walls of the houses. A little
beyond the barricade, it seemed to him that he could make out something white in front of him. He
approached, it took on a form. It was two white horses; the horses of the omnibus harnessed by Bossuet in the
morning, who had been straying at random all day from street to street, and had finally halted there, with the
weary patience of brutes who no more understand the actions of men, than man understands the actions of
Providence.
Marius left the horses behind him. As he was approaching a street which seemed to him to be the Rue du
ContratSocial, a shot coming no one knows whence, and traversing the darkness at random, whistled close
by him, and the bullet pierced a brass shavingdish suspended above his head over a hairdresser's shop. This
pierced shavingdish was still to be seen in 1848, in the Rue du ContratSocial, at the corner of the pillars of
the market.
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This shot still betokened life. From that instant forth he encountered nothing more.
The whole of this itinerary resembled a descent of black steps.
Nevertheless, Marius pressed forward.
CHAPTER II. AN OWL'S VIEW OF PARIS
A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had
beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle.
All that old quarter of the Halles, which is like a city within a city, through which run the Rues SaintDenis
and SaintMartin, where a thousand lanes cross, and of which the insurgents had made their redoubt and their
stronghold, would have appeared to him like a dark and enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of Paris.
There the glance fell into an abyss. Thanks to the broken lanterns, thanks to the closed windows, there all
radiance, all life, all sound, all movement ceased. The invisible police of the insurrection were on the watch
everywhere, and maintained order, that is to say, night. The necessary tactics of insurrection are to drown
small numbers in a vast obscurity, to multiply every combatant by the possibilities which that obscurity
contains. At dusk, every window where a candle was burning received a shot. The light was extinguished,
sometimes the inhabitant was killed. Hence nothing was stirring. There was nothing but fright, mourning,
stupor in the houses; and in the streets, a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and stores,
the indentations of the chimneys, and the roofs, and the vague reflections which are cast back by the wet and
muddy pavements, were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might, perhaps, have caught a
glimpse here and there, at intervals, of indistinct gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines, and
profiles of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and come in ruins; it was at such points that
the barricades were situated. The rest was a lake of obscurity, foggy, heavy, and funereal, above which, in
motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower of SaintJacques, the church of SaintMerry, and two or
three more of those grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night makes phantoms.
All around this deserted and disquieting labyrinth, in the quarters where the Parisian circulation had not been
annihilated, and where a few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer might have distinguished the
metallic gleam of swords and bayonets, the dull rumble of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions
whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute; a formidable girdle which was slowly drawing in and
around the insurrection.
The invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous cavern; everything there appeared to be
asleep or motionless, and, as we have just seen, any street which one might come to offered nothing but
darkness.
A wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks, into which it was alarming to penetrate,
and in which it was terrible to remain, where those who entered shivered before those whom they awaited,
where those who waited shuddered before those who were coming. Invisible combatants were entrenched at
every corner of the street; snares of the sepulchre concealed in the density of night. All was over. No more
light was to be hoped for, henceforth, except the lightning of guns, no further encounter except the abrupt and
rapid apparition of death. Where? How? When? No one knew, but it was certain and inevitable. In this place
which had been marked out for the struggle, the Government and the insurrection, the National Guard, and
popular societies, the bourgeois and the uprising, groping their way, were about to come into contact. The
necessity was the same for both. The only possible issue thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or
conquerors. A situation so extreme, an obscurity so powerful, that the most timid felt themselves seized with
resolution, and the most daring with terror.
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Moreover, on both sides, the fury, the rage, and the determination were equal. For the one party, to advance
meant death, and no one dreamed of retreating; for the other, to remain meant death, and no one dreamed of
flight.
It was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day, that triumph should rest either here or
there, that the insurrection should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish. The Government understood this as
well as the parties; the most insignificant bourgeois felt it. Hence a thought of anguish which mingled with
the impenetrable gloom of this quarter where all was at the point of being decided; hence a redoubled anxiety
around that silence whence a catastrophe was on the point of emerging. Here only one sound was audible, a
sound as heartrending as the death rattle, as menacing as a malediction, the tocsin of SaintMerry. Nothing
could be more bloodcurdling than the clamor of that wild and desperate bell, wailing amid the shadows.
As it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what men were about to do. Nothing
disturbed the harmony of the whole effect. The stars had disappeared, heavy clouds filled the horizon with
their melancholy folds. A black sky rested on these dead streets, as though an immense windingsheet were
being outspread over this immense tomb.
While a battle that was still wholly political was in preparation in the same locality which had already
witnessed so many revolutionary events, while youth, the secret associations, the schools, in the name of
principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing
themselves together, clasping and throwing each other, while each one hastened and invited the last and
decisive hour of the crisis, far away and quite outside of this fatal quarter, in the most profound depths of the
unfathomable cavities of that wretched old Paris which disappears under the splendor of happy and opulent
Paris, the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar.
A fearful and sacred voice which is composed of the roar of the brute and of the word of God, which terrifies
the weak and which warns the wise, which comes both from below like the voice of the lion, and from on
high like the voice of the thunder.
CHAPTER III. THE EXTREME EDGE
Marius had reached the Halles.
There everything was still calmer, more obscure and more motionless than in the neighboring streets. One
would have said that the glacial peace of the sepulchre had sprung forth from the earth and had spread over
the heavens.
Nevertheless, a red glow brought out against this black background the lofty roofs of the houses which barred
the Rue de la Chanvrerie on the SaintEustache side. It was the reflection of the torch which was burning in
the Corinthe barricade. Marius directed his steps towards that red light. It had drawn him to the
MarcheauxPoirees, and he caught a glimpse of the dark mouth of the Rue des Precheurs. He entered it.
The insurgents' sentinel, who was guarding the other end, did not see him. He felt that he was very close to
that which he had come in search of, and he walked on tiptoe. In this manner he reached the elbow of that
short section of the Rue Mondetour which was, as the reader will remember, the only communication which
Enjolras had preserved with the outside world. At the corner of the last house, on his left, he thrust his head
forward, and looked into the fragment of the Rue Mondetour.
A little beyond the angle of the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie which cast a broad curtain of shadow, in
which he was himself engulfed, he perceived some light on the pavement, a bit of the wineshop, and
beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall, and men crouching down with guns on their knees.
All this was ten fathoms distant from him. It was the interior of the barricade.
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The houses which bordered the lane on the right concealed the rest of the wineshop, the large barricade, and
the flag from him.
Marius had but a step more to take.
Then the unhappy young man seated himself on a post, folded his arms, and fell to thinking about his father.
He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been so proud a soldier, who had guarded the frontier
of France under the Republic, and had touched the frontier of Asia under Napoleon, who had beheld Genoa,
Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Moscow, who had left on all the victorious
battlefields of Europe drops of that same blood, which he, Marius, had in his veins, who had grown gray
before his time in discipline and command, who had lived with his swordbelt buckled, his epaulets falling
on his breast, his cockade blackened with powder, his brow furrowed with his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in
the bivouac, in ambulances, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returned from the great wars with
a scarred cheek, a smiling countenance, tranquil, admirable, pure as a child, having done everything for
France and nothing against her.
He said to himself that his day had also come now, that his hour had struck, that following his father, he too
was about to show himself brave, intrepid, bold, to run to meet the bullets, to offer his breast to bayonets, to
shed his blood, to seek the enemy, to seek death, that he was about to wage war in his turn and descend to the
field of battle, and that the field of battle upon which he was to descend was the street, and that the war in
which he was about to engage was civil war!
He beheld civil war laid open like a gulf before him, and into this he was about to fall. Then he shuddered.
He thought of his father's sword, which his grandfather had sold to a secondhand dealer, and which he had
so mournfully regretted. He said to himself that that chaste and valiant sword had done well to escape from
him, and to depart in wrath into the gloom; that if it had thus fled, it was because it was intelligent and
because it had foreseen the future; that it had had a presentiment of this rebellion, the war of the gutters, the
war of the pavements, fusillades through cellarwindows, blows given and received in the rear; it was
because, coming from Marengo and Friedland, it did not wish to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie; it was
because, after what it had done with the father, it did not wish to do this for the son! He told himself that if
that sword were there, if after taking possession of it at his father's pillow, he had dared to take it and carry it
off for this combat of darkness between Frenchmen in the streets, it would assuredly have scorched his hands
and burst out aflame before his eyes, like the sword of the angel! He told himself that it was fortunate that it
was not there and that it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just, that his grandfather had been
the true guardian of his father's glory, and that it was far better that the colonel's sword should be sold at
auction, sold to the oldclothes man, thrown among the old junk, than that it should, today, wound the side
of his country.
And then he fell to weeping bitterly.
This was horrible. But what was he to do? Live without Cosette he could not. Since she was gone, he must
needs die. Had he not given her his word of honor that he would die? She had gone knowing that; this meant
that it pleased her that Marius should die. And then, it was clear that she no longer loved him, since she had
departed thus without warning, without a word, without a letter, although she knew his address! What was the
good of living, and why should he live now? And then, what! should he retreat after going so far? should he
flee from danger after having approached it? should he slip away after having come and peeped into the
barricade? slip away, all in a tremble, saying: "After all, I have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it, that
suffices, this is civil war, and I shall take my leave!" Should he abandon his friends who were expecting him?
Who were in need of him possibly! who were a mere handful against an army! Should he be untrue at once to
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his love, to country, to his word? Should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism? But this was
impossible, and if the phantom of his father was there in the gloom, and beheld him retreating, he would beat
him on the loins with the flat of his sword, and shout to him: "March on, you poltroon!"
Thus a prey to the conflicting movements of his thoughts, he dropped his head.
All at once he raised it. A sort of splendid rectification had just been effected in his mind. There is a widening
of the sphere of thought which is peculiar to the vicinity of the grave; it makes one see clearly to be near
death. The vision of the action into which he felt that he was, perhaps, on the point of entering, appeared to
him no more as lamentable, but as superb. The war of the street was suddenly transfigured by some
unfathomable inward working of his soul, before the eye of his thought. All the tumultuous interrogation
points of revery recurred to him in throngs, but without troubling him. He left none of them unanswered.
Let us see, why should his father be indignant? Are there not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of
duty? What was there that was degrading for the son of Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to
begin? It is no longer Montmirail nor Champaubert; it is something quite different. The question is no longer
one of sacred territory,but of a holy idea. The country wails, that may be, but humanity applauds. But is it
true that the country does wail? France bleeds, but liberty smiles; and in the presence of liberty's smile,
France forgets her wound. And then if we look at things from a still more lofty point of view, why do we
speak of civil war?
Civil warwhat does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men war between brothers?
War is qualified only by its object. There is no such thing as foreign or civil war; there is only just and unjust
war. Until that day when the grand human agreement is concluded, war, that at least which is the effort of the
future, which is hastening on against the past, which is lagging in the rear, may be necessary. What have we
to reproach that war with? War does not become a disgrace, the sword does not become a disgrace, except
when it is used for assassinating the right, progress, reason, civilization, truth. Then war, whether foreign or
civil, is iniquitous; it is called crime. Outside the pale of that holy thing, justice, by what right does one form
of man despise another? By what right should the sword of Washington disown the pike of Camille
Desmoulins? Leonidas against the stranger, Timoleon against the tyrant, which is the greater? the one is the
defender, the other the liberator. Shall we brand every appeal to arms within a city's limits without taking the
object into a consideration? Then note the infamy of Brutus, Marcel, Arnould von Blankenheim, Coligny,
Hedgerow war? War of the streets? Why not? That was the war of Ambiorix, of Artevelde, of Marnix, of
Pelagius. But Ambiorix fought against Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, Pelagius
against the Moors; all against the foreigner. Well, the monarchy is a foreigner; oppression is a stranger; the
right divine is a stranger. Despotism violates the moral frontier, an invasion violates the geographical frontier.
Driving out the tyrant or driving out the English, in both cases, regaining possession of one's own territory.
There comes an hour when protestation no longer suffices; after philosophy, action is required; live force
finishes what the idea has sketched out; Prometheus chained begins, Arostogeiton ends; the encyclopedia
enlightens souls, the 10th of August electrifies them. After AEschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton.
Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master. Their mass bears witness to apathy. A crowd is easily led as
a whole to obedience. Men must be stirred up, pushed on, treated roughly by the very benefit of their
deliverance, their eyes must be wounded by the true, light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They
must be a little thunderstruck themselves at their own wellbeing; this dazzling awakens them. Hence the
necessity of tocsins and wars. Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations with audacity, and shake up
that sad humanity which is covered with gloom by the right divine, Caesarian glory, force, fanaticism,
irresponsible power, and absolute majesty; a rabble stupidly occupied in the contemplation, in their twilight
splendor, of these sombre triumphs of the night. Down with the tyrant! Of whom are you speaking? Do you
call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more than Louis XVI. Both of them are what history is in the habit of
calling good kings; but principles are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true is rectilinear, the peculiarity
of truth is that it lacks complaisance; no concessions, then; all encroachments on man should be repressed.
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Page No 783
There is a divine right in Louis XVI., there is because a Bourbon in Louis Philippe; both represent in a certain
measure the confiscation of right, and, in order to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated;
it must be done, France being always the one to begin. When the master falls in France, he falls everywhere.
In short, what cause is more just, and consequently, what war is greater, than that which reestablishes social
truth, restores her throne to liberty, restores the people to the people, restores sovereignty to man, replaces the
purple on the head of France, restores equity and reason in their plenitude, suppresses every germ of
antagonism by restoring each one to himself, annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents to the whole
immense universal concord, and places the human race once more on a level with the right? These wars build
up peace. An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences,
iniquities, and darkness still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred. It must be cast down. This
monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.
There is no one who has not noticed it in his own casethe soul, and therein lies the marvel of its unity
complicated with ubiquity, has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities,
and it often happens that heartbroken passion and profound despair in the very agony of their blackest
monologues, treat subjects and discuss theses. Logic is mingled with convulsion, and the thread of the
syllogism floats, without breaking, in the mournful storm of thought. This was the situation of Marius' mind.
As he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in every direction, and, in short, shuddering at what he
was about to do, his glance strayed to the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were here conversing in a
low voice, without moving, and there was perceptible that quasisilence which marks the last stage of
expectation. Overhead, at the small window in the third story Marius descried a sort of spectator who
appeared to him to be singularly attentive. This was the porter who had been killed by Le Cabuc. Below, by
the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the pavingstones, this head could be vaguely distinguished.
Nothing could be stranger, in that sombre and uncertain gleam, than that livid, motionless, astonished face,
with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of
curiosity. One would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die. A
long trail of blood which had flowed from that head, descended in reddish threads from the window to the
height of the first floor, where it stopped.
BOOK FOURTEENTH.THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER I. THE FLAG: ACT FIRST
As yet, nothing had come. Ten o'clock had sounded from SaintMerry. Enjolras and Combeferre had gone
and seated themselves, carbines in hand, near the outlet of the grand barricade. They no longer addressed
each other, they listened, seeking to catch even the faintest and most distant sound of marching.
Suddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice, which seemed to come from the Rue
SaintDenis, rose and began to sing distinctly, to the old popular air of "By the Light of the Moon," this bit of
poetry, terminated by a cry like the crow of a cock:
Mon nez est en larmes,
Mon ami Bugeaud,
Prete moi tes gendarmes
Pour leur dire un mot.
En capote bleue,
La poule au shako,
Voici la banlieue!
Cococorico![54]
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Page No 784
[54] My nose is in tears, my friend Bugeaud, lend me thy gendarmes that I may say a word to them. With a
blue capote and a chicken in his shako, here's the banlieue, cococorico.
They pressed each other's hands.
"That is Gavroche," said Enjolras.
"He is warning us," said Combeferre.
A hasty rush troubled the deserted street; they beheld a being more agile than a clown climb over the
omnibus, and Gavroche bounded into the barricade, all breathless, saying:
"My gun! Here they are!"
An electric quiver shot through the whole barricade, and the sound of hands seeking their guns became
audible.
"Would you like my carbine?" said Enjolras to the lad.
"I want a big gun," replied Gavroche.
And he seized Javert's gun.
Two sentinels had fallen back, and had come in almost at the same moment as Gavroche. They were the
sentinels from the end of the street, and the vidette of the Rue de la PetiteTruanderie. The vidette of the
Lane des Precheurs had remained at his post, which indicated that nothing was approaching from the
direction of the bridges and Halles.
The Rue de la Chanvrerie, of which a few pavingstones alone were dimly visible in the reflection of the
light projected on the flag, offered to the insurgents the aspect of a vast black door vaguely opened into a
smoke.
Each man had taken up his position for the conflict.
Fortythree insurgents, among whom were Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and
Gavroche, were kneeling inside the large barricade, with their heads on a level with the crest of the barrier,
the barrels of their guns and carbines aimed on the stones as though at loopholes, attentive, mute, ready to
fire. Six, commanded by Feuilly, had installed themselves, with their guns levelled at their shoulders, at the
windows of the two stories of Corinthe.
Several minutes passed thus, then a sound of footsteps, measured, heavy, and numerous, became distinctly
audible in the direction of SaintLeu. This sound, faint at first, then precise, then heavy and sonorous,
approached slowly, without halt, without intermission, with a tranquil and terrible continuity. Nothing was to
be heard but this. It was that combined silence and sound, of the statue of the commander, but this stony step
had something indescribably enormous and multiple about it which awakened the idea of a throng, and, at the
same time, the idea of a spectre. One thought one heard the terrible statue Legion marching onward. This
tread drew near; it drew still nearer, and stopped. It seemed as though the breathing of many men could be
heard at the end of the street. Nothing was to be seen, however, but at the bottom of that dense obscurity there
could be distinguished a multitude of metallic threads, as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which
moved about like those indescribable phosphoric networks which one sees beneath one's closed eyelids, in
the first mists of slumber at the moment when one is dropping off to sleep. These were bayonets and
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Page No 785
gunbarrels confusedly illuminated by the distant reflection of the torch.
A pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting. All at once, from the depths of this darkness, a voice,
which was all the more sinister, since no one was visible, and which appeared to be the gloom itself speaking,
shouted:
"Who goes there?"
At the same time, the click of guns, as they were lowered into position, was heard.
Enjolras replied in a haughty and vibrating tone:
"The French Revolution!"
"Fire!" shouted the voice.
A flash empurpled all the facades in the street as though the door of a furnace had been flung open, and
hastily closed again.
A fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade. The red flag fell. The discharge had been so violent and so
dense that it had cut the staff, that is to say, the very tip of the omnibus pole.
Bullets which had rebounded from the cornices of the houses penetrated the barricade and wounded several
men.
The impression produced by this first discharge was freezing. The attack had been rough, and of a nature to
inspire reflection in the boldest. It was evident that they had to deal with an entire regiment at the very least.
"Comrades!" shouted Courfeyrac, "let us not waste our powder. Let us wait until they are in the street before
replying."
"And, above all," said Enjolras, "let us raise the flag again."
He picked up the flag, which had fallen precisely at his feet.
Outside, the clatter of the ramrods in the guns could be heard; the troops were reloading their arms.
Enjolras went on:
"Who is there here with a bold heart? Who will plant the flag on the barricade again?"
Not a man responded. To mount on the barricade at the very moment when, without any doubt, it was again
the object of their aim, was simply death. The bravest hesitated to pronounce his own condemnation. Enjolras
himself felt a thrill. He repeated:
"Does no one volunteer?"
CHAPTER II. THE FLAG: ACT SECOND
Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction of the barricade, no attention had been
paid to Father Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered the groundfloor of the
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Page No 786
wineshop and had seated himself behind the counter. There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself. He
no longer seemed to look or to think. Courfeyrac and others had accosted him two or three times, warning
him of his peril, beseeching him to withdraw, but he did not hear them. When they were not speaking to him,
his mouth moved as though he were replying to some one, and as soon as he was addressed, his lips became
motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive.
Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an attitude which he did not afterwards
abandon, with both fists planted on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over a
precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude; it did not seem as though his mind were in
the barricade. When each had gone to take up his position for the combat, there remained in the taproom
where Javert was bound to the post, only a single insurgent with a naked sword, watching over Javert, and
himself, Mabeuf. At the moment of the attack, at the detonation, the physical shock had reached him and had,
as it were, awakened him; he started up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when Enjolras repeated
his appeal: "Does no one volunteer?" the old man was seen to make his appearance on the threshold of the
wineshop. His presence produced a sort of commotion in the different groups. A shout went up:
"It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the representative of the people!"
It is probable that he did not hear them.
He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag
from Enjolras, who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to assist him, this old man
of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot, began slowly to ascend the staircase of pavingstones arranged in
the barricade. This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried: "Off with your hats!" At every
step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and
wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom
and were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld the spectre of
'93 emerging from the earth, with the flag of terror in his hand.
When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in
the presence of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death and as though he were
more powerful than it, the whole barricade assumed amid the darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.
There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence of prodigies. In the midst of this silence,
the old man waved the red flag and shouted:
"Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity! Equality! and Death!"
Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the murmur of a priest who is despatching a prayer
in haste. It was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end of the
street.
Then the same piercing voice which had shouted: "Who goes there?" shouted:
"Retire!"
M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful flame of aberration, raised the flag above his
head and repeated:
"Long live the Republic!"
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"Fire!" said the voice.
A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the barricade.
The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag and fell backwards on the pavement, like a
log, at full length, with outstretched arms.
Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him. His aged head, pale and sad, seemed to be gazing at the sky.
One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make him forget even to defend himself, seized
upon the insurgents, and they approached the body with respectful awe.
"What men these regicides were!" said Enjolras.
Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:
"This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm. But this man was anything rather than a
regicide. I knew him. His name was Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter with him today. But
he was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head."
"The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus," replied Enjolras.
Then he raised his voice:
"Citizens! This is the example which the old give to the young. We hesitated, he came! We were drawing
back, he advanced! This is what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble with fear! This
aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has had a long life and a magnificent death! Now, let us
place the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man dead as he would his father living,
and may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable!"
A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.
Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce as he was, he kissed him on the brow, then,
throwing wide his arms, and handling this dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it, he
removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all, and said:
"This is our flag now."
CHAPTER III. GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT
ENJOLRAS' CARBINE
They threw a long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup's over Father Mabeuf. Six men made a litter of their
guns; on this they laid the body, and bore it, with bared heads, with solemn slowness, to the large table in the
taproom.
These men, wholly absorbed in the grave and sacred task in which they were engaged, thought no more of the
perilous situation in which they stood.
When the corpse passed near Javert, who was still impassive, Enjolras said to the spy:
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Page No 788
"It will be your turn presently!"
During all this time, Little Gavroche, who alone had not quitted his post, but had remained on guard, thought
he espied some men stealthily approaching the barricade. All at once he shouted:
"Look out!"
Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, Bossuet, and all the rest ran tumultuously
from the wineshop. It was almost too late. They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating above the
barricade. Municipal guards of lofty stature were making their way in, some striding over the omnibus, others
through the cut, thrusting before them the urchin, who retreated, but did not flee.
The moment was critical. It was that first, redoubtable moment of inundation, when the stream rises to the
level of the levee and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more and the
barricade would have been taken.
Bahorel dashed upon the first municipal guard who was entering, and killed him on the spot with a blow from
his gun; the second killed Bahorel with a blow from his bayonet. Another had already overthrown
Courfeyrac, who was shouting: "Follow me!" The largest of all, a sort of colossus, marched on Gavroche
with his bayonet fixed. The urchin took in his arms Javert's immense gun, levelled it resolutely at the giant,
and fired. No discharge followed. Javert's gun was not loaded. The municipal guard burst into a laugh and
raised his bayonet at the child.
Before the bayonet had touched Gavroche, the gun slipped from the soldier's grasp, a bullet had struck the
municipal guardsman in the centre of the forehead, and he fell over on his back. A second bullet struck the
other guard, who had assaulted Courfeyrac in the breast, and laid him low on the pavement.
This was the work of Marius, who had just entered the barricade.
CHAPTER IV. THE BARREL OF POWDER
Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondetour, had witnessed, shuddering and irresolute, the first
phase of the combat. But he had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign vertigo which may
be designated as the call of the abyss. In the presence of the imminence of the peril, in the presence of the
death of M. Mabeuf, that melancholy enigma, in the presence of Bahorel killed, and Courfeyrac shouting:
"Follow me!" of that child threatened, of his friends to succor or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished, and
he had flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his first shot he had saved Gavroche, and
with the second delivered Courfeyrac.
Amid the sound of the shots, amid the cries of the assaulted guards, the assailants had climbed the
entrenchment, on whose summit Municipal Guards, soldiers of the line and National Guards from the suburbs
could now be seen, gun in hand, rearing themselves to more than half the height of their bodies.
They already covered more than twothirds of the barrier, but they did not leap into the enclosure, as though
wavering in the fear of some trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion's den. The
light of the torch illuminated only their bayonets, their bearskin caps, and the upper part of their uneasy and
angry faces.
Marius had no longer any weapons; he had flung away his discharged pistols after firing them; but he had
caught sight of the barrel of powder in the taproom, near the door.
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As he turned half round, gazing in that direction, a soldier took aim at him. At the moment when the soldier
was sighting Marius, a hand was laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it. This was done by some one
who had darted forward,the young workman in velvet trousers. The shot sped, traversed the hand and
possibly, also, the workman, since he fell, but the ball did not strike Marius. All this, which was rather to be
apprehended than seen through the smoke, Marius, who was entering the taproom, hardly noticed. Still, he
had, in a confused way, perceived that gunbarrel aimed at him, and the hand which had blocked it, and he
had heard the discharge. But in moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate and are precipitated,
and one pauses for nothing. One feels obscurely impelled towards more darkness still, and all is cloud.
The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied. Enjolras had shouted: "Wait! Don't fire at random!" In
the first confusion, they might, in fact, wound each other. The majority of them had ascended to the window
on the first story and to the attic windows, whence they commanded the assailants.
The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, had proudly placed
themselves with their backs against the houses at the rear, unsheltered and facing the ranks of soldiers and
guards who crowned the barricade.
All this was accomplished without haste, with that strange and threatening gravity which precedes
engagements. They took aim, point blank, on both sides: they were so close that they could talk together
without raising their voices.
When they had reached this point where the spark is on the brink of darting forth, an officer in a gorget
extended his sword and said:
"Lay down your arms!"
"Fire!" replied Enjolras.
The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in smoke.
An acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak, dull groans. When the smoke
cleared away, the combatants on both sides could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions,
reloading in silence. All at once, a thundering voice was heard, shouting:
"Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!"
All turned in the direction whence the voice proceeded.
Marius had entered the taproom, and had seized the barrel of powder, then he had taken advantage of the
smoke, and the sort of obscure mist which filled the entrenched enclosure, to glide along the barricade as far
as that cage of pavingstones where the torch was fixed. To tear it from the torch, to replace it by the barrel
of powder, to thrust the pile of stones under the barrel, which was instantly staved in, with a sort of horrible
obedience,all this had cost Marius but the time necessary to stoop and rise again; and now all, National
Guards, Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, huddled at the other extremity of the barricade, gazed stupidly
at him, as he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal
resolution, drooping the flame of the torch towards that redoubtable pile where they could make out the
broken barrel of powder, and giving vent to that startling cry:
"Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!"
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Page No 790
Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the young revolution after the apparition of
the old.
"Blow up the barricade!" said a sergeant, "and yourself with it!"
Marius retorted: "And myself also."
And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.
But there was no longer any one on the barrier. The assailants, abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed
back pellmell and in disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again lost in the night. It
was a headlong flight.
The barricade was free.
CHAPTER V. END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE
All flocked around Marius. Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.
"Here you are!"
"What luck!" said Combeferre.
"You came in opportunely!" ejaculated Bossuet.
"If it had not been for you, I should have been dead!" began Courfeyrac again.
"If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!" added Gavroche.
Marius asked:
"Where is the chief?"
"You are he!" said Enjolras.
Marius had had a furnace in his brain all day long; now it was a whirlwind. This whirlwind which was within
him, produced on him the effect of being outside of him and of bearing him away. It seemed to him that he
was already at an immense distance from life. His two luminous months of joy and love, ending abruptly at
that frightful precipice, Cosette lost to him, that barricade, M. Mabeuf getting himself killed for the Republic,
himself the leader of the insurgents, all these things appeared to him like a tremendous nightmare. He was
obliged to make a mental effort to recall the fact that all that surrounded him was real. Marius had already
seen too much of life not to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible, and that what it is
always necessary to foresee is the unforeseen. He had looked on at his own drama as a piece which one does
not understand.
In the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize Javert, who, bound to his post, had not so
much as moved his head during the whole of the attack on the barricade, and who had gazed on the revolt
seething around him with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius had not even seen
him.
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Page No 791
In the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir, they could be heard marching and swarming through at the end
of the street but they did not venture into it, either because they were awaiting orders or because they were
awaiting reinforcements before hurling themselves afresh on this impregnable redoubt. The insurgents had
posted sentinels, and some of them, who were medical students, set about caring for the wounded.
They had thrown the tables out of the wineshop, with the exception of the two tables reserved for lint and
cartridges, and of the one on which lay Father Mabeuf; they had added them to the barricade, and had
replaced them in the taproom with mattresses from the bed of the widow Hucheloup and her servants. On
these mattresses they had laid the wounded. As for the three poor creatures who inhabited Corinthe, no one
knew what had become of them. They were finally found, however, hidden in the cellar.
A poignant emotion clouded the joy of the disencumbered barricade.
The roll was called. One of the insurgents was missing. And who was it? One of the dearest. One of the most
valiant. Jean Prouvaire. He was sought among the wounded, he was not there. He was sought among the
dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to Enjolras:
"They have our friend; we have their agent. Are you set on the death of that spy?"
"Yes," replied Enjolras; "but less so than on the life of Jean Prouvaire."
This took place in the taproom near Javert's post.
"Well," resumed Combeferre, "I am going to fasten my handkerchief to my cane, and go as a flag of truce, to
offer to exchange our man for theirs."
"Listen," said Enjolras, laying his hand on Combeferre's arm.
At the end of the street there was a significant clash of arms.
They heard a manly voice shout:
"Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the future!"
They recognized the voice of Prouvaire.
A flash passed, a report rang out.
Silence fell again.
"They have killed him," exclaimed Combeferre.
Enjolras glanced at Javert, and said to him:
"Your friends have just shot you."
CHAPTER VI. THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE
A peculiarity of this species of war is, that the attack of the barricades is almost always made from the front,
and that the assailants generally abstain from turning the position, either because they fear ambushes, or
because they are afraid of getting entangled in the tortuous streets. The insurgents' whole attention had been
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directed, therefore, to the grand barricade, which was, evidently, the spot always menaced, and there the
struggle would infallibly recommence. But Marius thought of the little barricade, and went thither. It was
deserted and guarded only by the firepot which trembled between the pavingstones. Moreover, the
Mondetour alley, and the branches of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne were profoundly
calm.
As Marius was withdrawing, after concluding his inspection, he heard his name pronounced feebly in the
darkness.
"Monsieur Marius!"
He started, for he recognized the voice which had called to him two hours before through the gate in the Rue
Plumet.
Only, the voice now seemed to be nothing more than a breath.
He looked about him, but saw no one.
Marius thought he had been mistaken, that it was an illusion added by his mind to the extraordinary realities
which were clashing around him. He advanced a step, in order to quit the distant recess where the barricade
lay.
"Monsieur Marius!" repeated the voice.
This time he could not doubt that he had heard it distinctly; he looked and saw nothing.
"At your feet," said the voice.
He bent down, and saw in the darkness a form which was dragging itself towards him.
It was crawling along the pavement. It was this that had spoken to him.
The firepot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something
which resembled a pool of blood. Marius indistinctly made out a pale head which was lifted towards him and
which was saying to him:
"You do not recognize me?"
"No."
"Eponine."
Marius bent hastily down. It was, in fact, that unhappy child. She was dressed in men's clothes.
"How come you here? What are you doing here?"
"I am dying," said she.
There are words and incidents which arouse dejected beings. Marius cried out with a start:
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Page No 793
"You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will attend to you there. Is it serious? How
must I take hold of you in order not to hurt you? Where do you suffer? Help! My God! But why did you
come hither?"
And he tried to pass his arm under her, in order to raise her.
She uttered a feeble cry.
"Have I hurt you?" asked Marius.
"A little."
"But I only touched your hand."
She raised her hand to Marius, and in the middle of that hand Marius saw a black hole.
"What is the matter with your hand?" said he.
"It is pierced."
"Pierced?"
"Yes."
"What with?"
"A bullet."
"How?"
"Did you see a gun aimed at you?"
"Yes, and a hand stopping it."
"It was mine."
Marius was seized with a shudder.
"What madness! Poor child! But so much the better, if that is all, it is nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They
will dress your wound; one does not die of a pierced hand."
She murmured:
"The bullet traversed my hand, but it came out through my back. It is useless to remove me from this spot. I
will tell you how you can care for me better than any surgeon. Sit down near me on this stone."
He obeyed; she laid her head on Marius' knees, and, without looking at him, she said:
"Oh! How good this is! How comfortable this is! There; I no longer suffer."
She remained silent for a moment, then she turned her face with an effort, and looked at Marius.
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Page No 794
"Do you know what, Monsieur Marius? It puzzled me because you entered that garden; it was stupid, because
it was I who showed you that house; and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you"
She paused, and overstepping the sombre transitions that undoubtedly existed in her mind, she resumed with
a heartrending smile:
"You thought me ugly, didn't you?"
She continued:
"You see, you are lost! Now, no one can get out of the barricade. It was I who led you here, by the way! You
are going to die, I count upon that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle
of the gun. How queer it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I received that bullet, I
dragged myself here, no one saw me, no one picked me up, I was waiting for you, I said: `So he is not
coming!' Oh, if you only knew. I bit my blouse, I suffered so! Now I am well. Do you remember the day I
entered your chamber and when I looked at myself in your mirror, and the day when I came to you on the
boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! That was a long time ago. You gave me a hundred
sous, and I said to you: `I don't want your money.' I hope you picked up your coin? You are not rich. I did not
think to tell you to pick it up. The sun was shining bright, and it was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur
Marius? Oh! How happy I am! Every one is going to die."
She had a mad, grave, and heartbreaking air. Her torn blouse disclosed her bare throat.
As she talked, she pressed her pierced hand to her breast, where there was another hole, and whence there
spurted from moment to moment a stream of blood, like a jet of wine from an open bunghole.
Marius gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.
"Oh!" she resumed, "it is coming again, I am stifling!"
She caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the pavement.
At that moment the young cock's crow executed by little Gavroche resounded through the barricade.
The child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing gayly the song then so popular:
"En voyant Lafayette, "On beholding Lafayette,
Le gendarme repete: The gendarme repeats:
Sauvons nous! sauvons nous! Let us flee! let us flee!
sauvons nous!" let us flee!
Eponine raised herself and listened; then she murmured:
"It is he."
And turning to Marius:
"My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me."
"Your brother?" inquired Marius, who was meditating in the most bitter and sorrowful depths of his heart on
the duties to the Thenardiers which his father had bequeathed to him; "who is your brother?"
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Page No 795
"That little fellow."
"The one who is singing?"
"Yes."
Marius made a movement.
"Oh! don't go away," said she, "it will not be long now."
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs.
At intervals, the death rattle interrupted her. She put her face as near that of Marius as possible. She added
with a strange expression:
"Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I
kept it. I did not want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry with me for it when we meet again
presently? Take your letter."
She grasped Marius' hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no longer seemed to feel her
sufferings. She put Marius' hand in the pocket of her blouse. There, in fact, Marius felt a paper.
"Take it," said she.
Marius took the letter.
She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.
"Now, for my trouble, promise me"
And she stopped.
"What?" asked Marius.
"Promise me!"
"I promise."
"Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.I shall feel it."
She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed.
Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she
slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose
sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:
"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you."
She tried to smile once more and expired.
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CHAPTER VII. GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF
DISTANCES
Marius kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads.
This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul.
It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Eponine had given him. He had immediately
felt that it was an event of weight. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that the
unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper.
He laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in
the presence of that body.
He drew near to a candle in the taproom. It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman's elegant care.
The address was in a woman's hand and ran:
"To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac's, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16."
He broke the seal and read:
"My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de
l'Homme Arme, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th."
Such was the innocence of their love that Marius was not even acquainted with Cosette's handwriting.
What had taken place may be related in a few words. Eponine had been the cause of everything. After the
evening of the 3d of June she had cherished a double idea, to defeat the projects of her father and the ruffians
on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged rags with the first
young scamp she came across who had thought it amusing to dress like a woman, while Eponine disguised
herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to Jean Valjean in the Champ de Mars the expressive
warning: "Leave your house." Jean Valjean had, in fact, returned home, and had said to Cosette: "We set out
this evening and we go to the Rue de l'Homme Arme with Toussaint. Next week, we shall be in London."
Cosette, utterly overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of lines to Marius. But
how was she to get the letter to the post? She never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such a
commission, would certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this dilemma, Cosette had caught sight
through the fence of Eponine in man's clothes, who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Cosette had
called to "this young workman" and had handed him five francs and the letter, saying: "Carry this letter
immediately to its address." Eponine had put the letter in her pocket. The next day, on the 5th of June, she
went to Courfeyrac's quarters to inquire for Marius, not for the purpose of delivering the letter, but,a thing
which every jealous and loving soul will comprehend,"to see." There she had waited for Marius, or at least
for Courfeyrac, still for the purpose of seeing. When Courfeyrac had told her: "We are going to the
barricades," an idea flashed through her mind, to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into
any other, and to thrust Marius into it also. She had followed Courfeyrac, had made sure of the locality where
the barricade was in process of construction; and, quite certain, since Marius had received no warning, and
since she had intercepted the letter, that he would go at dusk to his trysting place for every evening, she had
betaken herself to the Rue Plumet, had there awaited Marius, and had sent him, in the name of his friends, the
appeal which would, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She reckoned on Marius' despair when he should
fail to find Cosette; she was not mistaken. She had returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie herself. What she did
there the reader has just seen. She died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being into
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Page No 797
their own death, and who say: "No one shall have him!"
Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses. So she loved him! For one moment the idea occurred to him that
he ought not to die now. Then he said to himself: "She is going away. Her father is taking her to England, and
my grandfather refuses his consent to the marriage. Nothing is changed in our fates." Dreamers like Marius
are subject to supreme attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result. The fatigue of living is
insupportable; death is sooner over with. Then he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfil: to inform
Cosette of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from the impending catastrophe which was in
preparation, that poor child, Eponine's brother and Thenardier's son.
He had a pocketbook about him; the same one which had contained the notebook in which he had
inscribed so many thoughts of love for Cosette. He tore out a leaf and wrote on it a few lines in pencil:
"Our marriage was impossible. I asked my grandfather, he refused; I have no fortune, neither hast thou. I
hastened to thee, thou wert no longer there. Thou knowest the promise that I gave thee, I shall keep it. I die. I
love thee. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee, and thou wilt smile."
Having nothing wherewith to seal this letter, he contented himself with folding the paper in four, and added
the address:
"To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, at M. Fauchelevent's, Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."
Having folded the letter, he stood in thought for a moment, drew out his pocketbook again, opened it, and
wrote, with the same pencil, these four lines on the first page:
"My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, Rue des
FillesduCalvaire, No. 6, in the Marais."
He put his pocketbook back in his pocket, then he called Gavroche.
The gamin, at the sound of Marius' voice, ran up to him with his merry and devoted air.
"Will you do something for me?"
"Anything," said Gavroche. "Good God! if it had not been for you, I should have been done for."
"Do you see this letter?"
"Yes."
"Take it. Leave the barricade instantly" (Gavroche began to scratch his ear uneasily) "and tomorrow
morning, you will deliver it at its address to Mademoiselle Cosette, at M. Fauchelevent's, Rue de l'Homme
Arme, No. 7."
The heroic child replied
"Well, but! in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I shall not be there."
"The barricade will not be attacked until daybreak, according to all appearances, and will not be taken before
tomorrow noon."
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The fresh respite which the assailants were granting to the barricade had, in fact, been prolonged. It was one
of those intermissions which frequently occur in nocturnal combats, which are always followed by an
increase of rage.
"Well," said Gavroche, "what if I were to go and carry your letter tomorrow?"
"It will be too late. The barricade will probably be blockaded, all the streets will be guarded, and you will not
be able to get out. Go at once."
Gavroche could think of no reply to this, and stood there in indecision, scratching his ear sadly.
All at once, he took the letter with one of those birdlike movements which were common with him.
"All right," said he.
And he started off at a run through Mondetour lane.
An idea had occurred to Gavroche which had brought him to a decision, but he had not mentioned it for fear
that Marius might offer some objection to it.
This was the idea:
"It is barely midnight, the Rue de l'Homme Arme is not far off; I will go and deliver the letter at once, and I
shall get back in time."
BOOK FIFTEENTH.THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME
CHAPTER I. A DRINKER IS A BABBLER
What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Man is a depth still
greater than the people. Jean Valjean at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of
gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and
formidable revolution. A few hours had sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had
suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it might have been said: "Two principles
are face to face. The white angel and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the abyss.
Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the day?"
On the evening preceding this same 5th of June, Jean Valjean, accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint had
installed himself in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. A change awaited him there.
Cosette had not quitted the Rue Plumet without making an effort at resistance. For the first time since they
had lived side by side, Cosette's will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct, and had been in
opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the
other. The abrupt advice: "Leave your house," hurled at Jean Valjean by a stranger, had alarmed him to the
extent of rendering him peremptory. He thought that he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been
obliged to give way.
Both had arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme without opening their lips, and without uttering a word, each
being absorbed in his own personal preoccupation; Jean Valjean so uneasy that he did not notice Cosette's
sadness, Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean's uneasiness.
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Jean Valjean had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which he had never done in his previous absences. He
perceived the possibility of not returning to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind nor
confide his secret to her. Besides, he felt that she was devoted and trustworthy. Treachery between master
and servant begins in curiosity. Now Toussaint, as though she had been destined to be Jean Valjean's servant,
was not curious. She stammered in her peasant dialect of Barneville: "I am made so; I do my work; the rest is
no affair of mine."
In this departure from the Rue Plumet, which had been almost a flight, Jean Valjean had carried away nothing
but the little embalmed valise, baptized by Cosette "the inseparable." Full trunks would have required porters,
and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the door on the Rue de Babylone, and they had
taken their departure.
It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to pack up a little linen and clothes and a few
toilet articles. Cosette had taken only her portfolio and her blottingbook.
Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of this departure, had arranged to quit
the pavilion of the Rue Plumet only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to Marius.
They had arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme after night had fully fallen.
They had gone to bed in silence.
The lodgings in the Rue de l'Homme Arme were situated on a back court, on the second floor, and were
composed of two sleepingrooms, a diningroom and a kitchen adjoining the diningroom, with a garret
where there was a foldingbed, and which fell to Toussaint's share. The diningroom was an antechamber as
well, and separated the two bedrooms. The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.
People reacquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature is so constituted. Hardly had Jean
Valjean reached the Rue de l'Homme Arme when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated. There
are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An obscure street, peaceable inhabitants.
Jean Valjean experienced an indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley of ancient Paris, which is so
narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in
the midst of the clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday, and is, so to speak, incapable of emotions between
two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold their peace like ancients as they are. There was a touch of
stagnant oblivion in that street. Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there. How could he be found there?
His first care was to place the inseparable beside him.
He slept well. Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes. On the following morning he awoke in a
mood that was almost gay. He thought the diningroom charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an
old round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a dilapidated armchair, and several plain
chairs which were encumbered with Toussaint's packages. In one of these packages Jean Valjean's uniform of
a National Guard was visible through a rent.
As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and did not make her appearance until
evening.
About five o'clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying herself with the tiny establishment,
set on the table a cold chicken, which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.
That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache, had bade Jean Valjean good night and
had shut herself up in her chamber. Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good appetite, and
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with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of
security.
While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice, noticed in a confused way, Toussaint's
stammering words as she said to him: "Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in Paris." But
absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no heed to it. To tell the truth, he had not heard her.
He rose and began to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door, growing ever more
serene.
With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts. Not that he was troubled by this headache,
a little nervous crisis, a young girl's fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be nothing left of it in a
day or two; but he meditated on the future, and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure. After all, he
saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course. At certain hours, everything seems impossible, at
others everything appears easy; Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours. They generally
succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of contrast which lies at
the very foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street where he had
taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that
he had seen many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have quitted the Rue Plumet
without complications or incidents was one good step already accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go
abroad, if only for a few months, and to set out for London. Well, they would go. What difference did it make
to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he had Cosette beside him? Cosette was his nation.
Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, that idea
which had formerly been the cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind. He
was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he was fully entered on optimism. Cosette was by
his side, she seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced. He arranged in his own
mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity
reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his revery.
As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly encountered something strange.
In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he saw the four lines which follow:
"My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de
l'Homme Arme, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th."
Jean Valjean halted, perfectly haggard.
Cosette on her arrival had placed her blottingbook on the sideboard in front of the mirror, and, utterly
absorbed in her agony of grief, had forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she had left it
wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she had laid to dry the four lines which she had penned,
and which she had given in charge of the young workman in the Rue Plumet. The writing had been printed
off on the blotter.
The mirror reflected the writing.
The result was, what is called in geometry, the symmetrical image; so that the writing, reversed on the blotter,
was righted in the mirror and presented its natural appearance; and Jean Valjean had beneath his eyes the
letter written by Cosette to Marius on the preceding evening.
It was simple and withering.
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Page No 801
Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again, but he did not believe them. They
produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination, it was impossible. It
was not so.
Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at Cosette's blottingbook, and the
consciousness of the reality returned to him. He caught up the blotter and said: "It comes from there." He
feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters converted into an odd
scrawl, and he saw no sense in it. Then he said to himself: "But this signifies nothing; there is nothing written
here." And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in
horrible instants? The soul does not surrender to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
He held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in stupid delight, almost ready to laugh at the
hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again, and again he
beheld the vision. There were the four lines outlined with inexorable clearness. This time it was no mirage.
The recurrence of a vision is a reality; it was palpable, it was the writing restored in the mirror. He
understood.
Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old armchair beside the buffet, with drooping
head, and glassy eyes, in utter bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain, that the light of the world had
been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette had written that to some one. Then he heard his soul, which had
become terrible once more, give vent to a dull roar in the gloom. Try then the effect of taking from the lion
the dog which he has in his cage!
Strange and sad to say, at that very moment, Marius had not yet received Cosette's letter; chance had
treacherously carried it to Jean Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Up to that day, Jean Valjean had not
been vanquished by trial. He had been subjected to fearful proofs; no violence of bad fortune had been spared
him; the ferocity of fate, armed with all vindictiveness and all social scorn, had taken him for her prey and
had raged against him. He had accepted every extremity when it had been necessary; he had sacrificed his
inviolability as a reformed man, had yielded up his liberty, risked his head, lost everything, suffered
everything, and he had remained disinterested and stoical to such a point that he might have been thought to
be absent from himself like a martyr. His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have appeared
to be forever impregnable. Well, any one who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to
concede that it weakened at that moment. It was because, of all the tortures which he had undergone in the
course of this long inquisition to which destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible. Never had such
pincers seized him hitherto. He felt the mysterious stirring of all his latent sensibilities. He felt the plucking at
the strange chord. Alas! the supreme trial, let us say rather, the only trial, is the loss of the beloved being.
Poor old Jean Valjean certainly did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father; but we have already
remarked, above, that into this paternity the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love; he
loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had
never had either a woman to love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest, that sentiment also,
the most impossible to lose, was mingled with the rest, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness,
unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine; less like a sentiment than like an instinct, less like an instinct than like
an imperceptible and invisible but real attraction; and love, properly speaking, was, in his immense
tenderness for Cosette, like the thread of gold in the mountain, concealed and virgin.
Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible
between them; not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the
exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of
his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which succeed each other
had not produced in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in
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foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we have insisted on it more
than once, all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering
Jean Valjean a father to Cosette. A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother, and the
husband, that existed in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a father who loved
Cosette and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.
Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping from him, that she was slipping
from his hands, that she was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes this
crushing proof: "another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no
longer anything but her father, I no longer exist"; when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself:
"She is going away from me!" the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all
that he had done for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being nothing! Then, as we have
just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him from head to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the
immense reawakening of egotism, and the _I_ in this man's abyss howled.
There is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A despairing certainty does not make its
way into a man without thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements which, in some cases, are the
very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience.
These are fatal crises. Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty. When the limit
of endurance is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted. Jean Valjean took the blotter
again, and convinced himself afresh; he remained bowed and as though petrified and with staring eyes, over
those four unobjectionable lines; and there arose within him such a cloud that one might have thought that
everything in this soul was crumbling away.
He examined this revelation, athwart the exaggerations of revery, with an apparent and terrifying calmness,
for it is a fearful thing when a man's calmness reaches the coldness of the statue.
He measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without his having a suspicion of the fact; he
recalled his fears of the preceding summer, so foolishly dissipated; he recognized the precipice, it was still the
same; only, Jean Valjean was no longer on the brink, he was at the bottom of it.
The unprecedented and heartrending thing about it was that he had fallen without perceiving it. All the light
of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.
His instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances, certain dates, certain blushes and certain
pallors on Cosette's part, and he said to himself: "It is he."
The divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow which never misses its aim. He struck Marius with his
first conjecture. He did not know the name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived, in the
background of the implacable conjuration of his memories, the unknown prowler of the Luxembourg, that
wretched seeker of love adventures, that idler of romance, that idiot, that coward, for it is cowardly to come
and make eyes at young girls who have beside them a father who loves them.
After he had thoroughly verified the fact that this young man was at the bottom of this situation, and that
everything proceeded from that quarter, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had so labored
over his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all unhappiness into
love, looked into his own breast and there beheld a spectre, Hate.
Great griefs contain something of dejection. They discourage one with existence. The man into whom they
enter feels something within him withdraw from him. In his youth, their visits are lugubrious; later on they
are sinister. Alas, if despair is a fearful thing when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is
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erect on the body like the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still retains its full thickness, when the
heart, full of desirable love, still possesses beats which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress,
when all women and all smiles and all the future and all the horizon are before one, when the force of life is
complete, what is it in old age, when the years hasten on, growing ever paler, to that twilight hour when one
begins to behold the stars of the tomb?
While he was meditating, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean rose and asked her:
"In what quarter is it? Do you know?"
Toussaint was struck dumb, and could only answer him:
"What is it, sir?"
Jean Valjean began again: "Did you not tell me that just now that there is fighting going on?"
"Ah! yes, sir," replied Toussaint. "It is in the direction of SaintMerry."
There is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously, from the most profound depths of our
thought. It was, no doubt, under the impulse of a movement of this sort, and of which he was hardly
conscious, that Jean Valjean, five minutes later, found himself in the street.
Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He seemed to be listening.
Night had come.
CHAPTER II. THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT
How long did he remain thus? What was the ebb and flow of this tragic meditation? Did he straighten up?
Did he remain bowed? Had he been bent to breaking? Could he still rise and regain his footing in his
conscience upon something solid? He probably would not have been able to tell himself.
The street was deserted. A few uneasy bourgeois, who were rapidly returning home, hardly saw him. Each
one for himself in times of peril. The lamplighter came as usual to light the lantern which was situated
precisely opposite the door of No. 7, and then went away. Jean Valjean would not have appeared like a living
man to any one who had examined him in that shadow. He sat there on the post of his door, motionless as a
form of ice. There is congealment in despair. The alarm bells and a vague and stormy uproar were audible. In
the midst of all these convulsions of the bell mingled with the revolt, the clock of SaintPaul struck eleven,
gravely and without haste; for the tocsin is man; the hour is God. The passage of the hour produced no effect
on Jean Valjean; Jean Valjean did not stir. Still, at about that moment, a brusque report burst forth in the
direction of the Halles, a second yet more violent followed; it was probably that attack on the barricade in the
Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just seen repulsed by Marius. At this double discharge, whose fury
seemed augmented by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean started; he rose, turning towards the quarter
whence the noise proceeded; then he fell back upon the post again, folded his arms, and his head slowly sank
on his bosom again.
He resumed his gloomy dialogue with himself.
All at once, he raised his eyes; some one was walking in the street, he heard steps near him. He looked, and
by the light of the lanterns, in the direction of the street which ran into the RueauxArchives, he perceived a
young, livid, and beaming face.
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Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue l'Homme Arme.
Gavroche was staring into the air, apparently in search of something. He saw Jean Valjean perfectly well but
he took no notice of him.
Gavroche after staring into the air, stared below; he raised himself on tiptoe, and felt of the doors and
windows of the ground floor; they were all shut, bolted, and padlocked. After having authenticated the fronts
of five or six barricaded houses in this manner, the urchin shrugged his shoulders, and took himself to task in
these terms:
"Pardi!"
Then he began to stare into the air again.
Jean Valjean, who, an instant previously, in his then state of mind, would not have spoken to or even
answered any one, felt irresistibly impelled to accost that child.
"What is the matter with you, my little fellow?" he said.
"The matter with me is that I am hungry," replied Gavroche frankly. And he added: "Little fellow yourself."
Jean Valjean fumbled in his fob and pulled out a fivefranc piece.
But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who skipped vivaciously from one gesture to another, had
just picked up a stone. He had caught sight of the lantern.
"See here," said he, "you still have your lanterns here. You are disobeying the regulations, my friend. This is
disorderly. Smash that for me."
And he flung the stone at the lantern, whose broken glass fell with such a clatter that the bourgeois in hiding
behind their curtains in the opposite house cried: "There is `Ninetythree' come again."
The lantern oscillated violently, and went out. The street had suddenly become black.
"That's right, old street," ejaculated Gavroche, "put on your nightcap."
And turning to Jean Valjean:
"What do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the end of the street? It's the Archives, isn't
it? I must crumble up those big stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them."
Jean Valjean stepped up to Gavroche.
"Poor creature," he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, "he is hungry."
And he laid the hundredsou piece in his hand.
Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou; he stared at it in the darkness, and the whiteness
of the big sou dazzled him. He knew fivefranc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to him; he
was delighted to see one close to. He said:
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"Let us contemplate the tiger."
He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and
said majestically to him:
"Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast. You can't bribe me. That has got five
claws; but it doesn't scratch me."
"Have you a mother?" asked Jean Valjean.
Gavroche replied:
"More than you have, perhaps."
"Well," returned Jean Valjean, "keep the money for your mother!"
Gavroche was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat, and
this inspired him with confidence.
"Truly," said he, "so it wasn't to keep me from breaking the lanterns?"
"Break whatever you please."
"You're a fine man," said Gavroche.
And he put the fivefranc piece into one of his pockets.
His confidence having increased, he added:
"Do you belong in this street?"
"Yes, why?"
"Can you tell me where No. 7 is?"
"What do you want with No. 7?"
Here the child paused, he feared that he had said too much; he thrust his nails energetically into his hair and
contented himself with replying:
"Ah! Here it is."
An idea flashed through Jean Valjean's mind. Anguish does have these gleams. He said to the lad:
"Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?"
"You?" said Gavroche. "You are not a woman."
"The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?"
"Cosette," muttered Gavroche. "Yes, I believe that is the queer name."
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"Well," resumed Jean Valjean, "I am the person to whom you are to deliver the letter. Give it here."
"In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade."
"Of course," said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew out a paper folded in four.
Then he made the military salute.
"Respect for despatches," said he. "It comes from the Provisional Government."
"Give it to me," said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.
"Don't go and fancy it's a love letter. It is for a woman, but it's for the people. We men fight and we respect
the fair sex. We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens[55] to camels."
[55] Love letters.
"Give it to me."
"After all," continued Gavroche, "you have the air of an honest man."
"Give it to me quick."
"Catch hold of it."
And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.
"And make haste, Monsieur What'syourname, for Mamselle Cosette is waiting."
Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.
Jean Valjean began again:
"Is it to SaintMerry that the answer is to be sent?"
"There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called brioches [blunders]. This letter comes
from the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I'm going back there. Good evening, citizen."
That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly, fluttered away in the direction whence
he had come with a flight like that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he made a
hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley of l'Homme Arme became silent and solitary once
more; in a twinkling, that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of the dream, had
buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one
might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few minutes after his
disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the
pavement once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche upon his way through the
Rue du Chaume.
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CHAPTER III. WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP
Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius' letter.
He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut
his door softly, listened to see whether he could hear any noise,made sure that, to all appearances, Cosette
and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he
could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft. At last the
candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.
In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds, one
clutches it like a victim, one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one's wrath, or of one's joy; one hastens to
the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential
points; it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius' note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these
words:
"I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee."
In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by
the change of emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius' note with a sort of intoxicated
amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor, the death of a hated individual.
He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had
dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off of his
own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the
matter, and it was through no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever entered into
calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had evidently been intended for Cosette to read on the
following morning; after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o'clock and midnight, nothing
more has taken place; the barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no
difference, from the moment when "that man" is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is caught in the gearing.
Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was about to find himself alone with Cosette once more. The
rivalry would cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in his pocket. Cosette would
never know what had become of that man. All that there requires to be done is to let things take their own
course. This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die. What good
fortune!
Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.
Then he went down stairs and woke up the porter.
About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a National Guard, and with his arms.
The porter had easily found in the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded
gun and a cartridgebox filled with cartridges.
He strode off in the direction of the markets.
CHAPTER IV. GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL
In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure.
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Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du Chaume, entered the Rue des
ViellesHaudriettes, and not seeing "even a cat" there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all
the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by his singing, was accelerated by it.
He began to sow along the sleeping or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:
"L'oiseau medit dans les charmilles,
Et pretend qu'hier Atala
Avec un Russe s'en alla.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles,
Parce que l'autre jour Mila
Cogna sa vitre et m'appela,
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Les drolesses sont fort gentilles,
Leur poison qui m'ensorcela
Griserait Monsieur Orfila.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"J'aime l'amour et les bisbilles,
J'aime Agnes, j'aime Pamela,
Lisa en m'allumant se brula.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles
De Suzette et de Zeila,
Mon ame aleurs plis se mela,
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Amour, quand dans l'ombre ou tu brilles,
Tu coiffes de roses Lola,
Je me damnerais pour cela.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Jeanne a ton miroir tu t'habilles!
Mon coeur un beau jour s'envola.
Je crois que c'est Jeanne qui l'a.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,
Je montre aux etoiles Stella,
Et je leur dis: 'Regardezla.'
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la."[56]
[56]"The bird slanders in the elms,
And pretends that yesterday, Atala
Went off with a Russian,
Where fair maids go.
Lon la.
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My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her pane the other day and called me. The jades are
very charming, their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila. I'm fond of love and its
bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela, Lise burned herself in setting me aflame. In former days when I saw
the mantillas of Suzette and of Zeila, my soul mingled with their folds. Love, when thou gleamest in the dark
thou crownest Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that. Jeanne, at thy mirror thou deckest thyself! One
fine day, my heart flew forth. I think that it is Jeanne who has it. At night, when I come from the quadrilles, I
show Stella to the stars, and I say to them: "Behold her." Where fair maids go, lon la.
Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong point of the refrain. His face, an
inexhaustible repertory of masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents of a
cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even
visible. Such wastes of riches do occur.
All at once, he stopped short.
"Let us interrupt the romance," said he.
His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door, what is called in painting, an ensemble, that
is to say, a person and a thing; the thing was a handcart, the person was a man from Auvergene who was
sleeping therein.
The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat's head was supported against the front of the
cart. His body was coiled up on this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.
Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized a drunken man. He was some corner
errandman who had drunk too much and was sleeping too much.
"There now," thought Gavroche, "that's what the summer nights are good for. We'll take the cart for the
Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the Monarchy."
His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:
"How bully that cart would look on our barricade!"
The Auvergnat was snoring.
Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat from the front, that is to say, by the
feet, and at the expiration of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the pavement.
The cart was free.
Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had everything about him. He fumbled in one
of his pockets, and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter.
He wrote:
"French Republic."
"Received thy cart."
And he signed it:
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Page No 810
"GAVROCHE."
That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring Auvergnat's velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in
both hands, and set off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a hard gallop with a
glorious and triumphant uproar.
This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Gavroche did not think of this. This
post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised
from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs. This was a
great deal for those cowardly streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the extinguisher on
their candles at such an early hour. For the last hour, that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable
arrondissement, the uproar of a fly in a bottle. The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear. He waited. He was a
prudent man.
The mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible measure of waiting, and decided the sergeant to
make a reconnaisance.
"There's a whole band of them there!" said he, "let us proceed gently."
It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and that it was stalking abroad through the
quarter.
And the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.
All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the very moment when he was about to turn
into the Rue des ViellesHaudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun.
For the second time, he stopped short.
"Hullo," said he, "it's him. Good day, public order."
Gavroche's amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.
"Where are you going, you rascal?" shouted the sergeant.
"Citizen," retorted Gavroche, "I haven't called you `bourgeois' yet. Why do you insult me?"
"Where are you going, you rogue?"
"Monsieur," retorted Gavroche, "perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this
morning."
"I ask you where are you going, you villain?"
Gavroche replied:
"You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. You ought to sell all your hair at a
hundred francs apiece. That would yield you five hundred francs."
"Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going, bandit?"
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Page No 811
Gavroche retorted again:
"What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck."
The sergeant lowered his bayonet.
"Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?"
"General," said Gavroche "I'm on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor."
"To arms!" shouted the sergeant.
The masterstroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them;
Gavroche took in the whole situation at a glance. It was the cart which had told against him, it was the cart's
place to protect him.
At the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent on Gavroche, the cart, converted
into a projectile and launched with all the latter's might, rolled down upon him furiously, and the sergeant,
struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards into the gutter while his gun went off in the air.
The men of the post had rushed out pellmell at the sergeant's shout; the shot brought on a general random
discharge, after which they reloaded their weapons and began again.
This blindman'sbuff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass.
In the meanwhile, Gavroche, who had retraced his steps at full speed, halted five or six streets distant and
seated himself, panting, on the stone post which forms the corner of the EnfantsRouges.
He listened.
After panting for a few minutes, he turned in the direction where the fusillade was raging, lifted his left hand
to a level with his nose and thrust it forward three times, as he slapped the back of his head with his right
hand; an imperious gesture in which Parisian streeturchindom has condensed French irony, and which is
evidently efficacious, since it has already lasted half a century.
This gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection.
"Yes," said he, "I'm splitting with laughter, I'm twisting with delight, I abound in joy, but I'm losing my way,
I shall have to take a roundabout way. If I only reach the barricade in season!"
Thereupon he set out again on a run.
And as he ran:
"Ah, by the way, where was I?" said he.
And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets, and this is what died away in the
gloom:
"Mais il reste encore des bastilles,
Et je vais mettre le hola
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Page No 812
Dans l'orde public que voila.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Quelqu'un veutil jouer aux quilles?
Tout l'ancien monde s'ecroula
Quand la grosse boule roula.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Vieux bon peuple, a coups de bequilles,
Cassons ce Louvre ou s'etala
La monarchie en falbala.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
"Nous en avons force les grilles,
Le roi CharlesDix ce jour la,
Tenait mal et se decolla.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la."[57]
[57] But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop to this sort of public order. Does any one
wish to play at skittles? The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled. Good old folks, let us
smash with our crutches that Louvre where the monarchy displayed itself in furbelows. We have forced its
gates. On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.
The post's recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was conquered, the drunken man was taken
prisoner. The first was put in the pound, the second was later on somewhat harassed before the councils of
war as an accomplice. The public ministry of the day proved its indefatigable zeal in the defence of society,
in this instance.
Gavroche's adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the Temple, is one of the most
terrible souvenirs of the elderly bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memories: "The nocturnal
attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment."
[The end of Volume IV. "Saint Denis"]
VOLUME V. JEAN VALJEAN
BOOK FIRST.THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
CHAPTER I. THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE
AND THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE
The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the
period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols, under two
different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June,
1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.
It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even
contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish,
of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of
its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle
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Page No 813
against, the people.
Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos.
These are melancholy days; for there is always a certain amount of night even in this madness, there is
suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults beggars, canaille, ochlocracy,
populaceexhibit, alas! rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault
of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited.
For our own part, we never pronounce those words without pain and without respect, for when philosophy
fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was
an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the
rabble followed Jesus Christ.
There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes.
It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of all these poor people and all these
vagabonds and all these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs, when he uttered this
mysterious saying: "Fex urbis, lex orbis," the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.
The exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds, its violences contrary to all sense, directed against
the principles which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right, are its popular coups d'etat and should
be repressed. The man of probity sacrifices himself, and out of his very love for this crowd, he combats it.
But how excusable he feels it even while holding out against it! How he venerates it even while resisting it!
This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one's duty to do, one feels something
which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary,
but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the
heart.
June, 1848, let us hasten to say, was an exceptional fact, and almost impossible of classification, in the
philosophy of history. All the words which we have just uttered, must be discarded, when it becomes a
question of this extraordinary revolt, in which one feels the holy anxiety of toil claiming its rights. It was
necessary to combat it, and this was a duty, for it attacked the republic. But what was June, 1848, at bottom?
A revolt of the people against itself.
Where the subject is not lost sight of, there is no digression; may we, then, be permitted to arrest the reader's
attention for a moment on the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken and which
characterized this insurrection.
One blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint Antoine; the other defended the approach to the Faubourg du
Temple; those before whom these two fearful masterpieces of civil war reared themselves beneath the
brilliant blue sky of June, will never forget them.
The SaintAntoine barricade was tremendous; it was three stories high, and seven hundred feet wide. It
barred the vast opening of the faubourg, that is to say, three streets, from angle to angle; ravined, jagged, cut
up, divided, crenelated, with an immense rent, buttressed with piles that were bastions in themselves
throwing out capes here and there, powerfully backed up by two great promontories of houses of the
faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike at the end of the formidable place which had seen the 14th of
July. Nineteen barricades were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths of the streets behind this principal
barricade. At the very sight of it, one felt the agonizing suffering in the immense faubourg, which had
reached that point of extremity when a distress may become a catastrophe. Of what was that barricade made?
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Page No 814
Of the ruins of three sixstory houses demolished expressly, said some. Of the prodigy of all wraths, said
others. It wore the lamentable aspect of all constructions of hatred, ruin. It might be asked: Who built this? It
might also be said: Who destroyed this? It was the improvisation of the ebullition. Hold! take this door! this
grating! this penthouse! this chimneypiece! this broken brazier! this cracked pot! Give all! cast away all!
Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything! It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of
stone, the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane, the unseated chair, the cabbagestalk, the
tatter, the rag, and the malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on the public
place by hubbub. The mass beside the atom; the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,threatening
fraternization of every sort of rubbish. Sisyphus had thrown his rock there and Job his potsherd. Terrible, in
short. It was the acropolis of the barefooted. Overturned carts broke the uniformity of the slope; an immense
dray was spread out there crossways, its axle pointing heavenward, and seemed a scar on that tumultuous
facade; an omnibus hoisted gayly, by main force, to the very summit of the heap, as though the architects of
this bit of savagery had wished to add a touch of the street urchin humor to their terror, presented its
horseless, unharnessed pole to no one knows what horses of the air. This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the
revolt, figured to the mind an Ossa on Pelion of all revolutions; '93 on '89, the 9th of Thermidor on the 10th
of August, the 18th of Brumaire on the 11th of January, Vendemiaire on Prairial, 1848 on 1830. The situation
deserved the trouble and this barricade was worthy to figure on the very spot whence the Bastille had
disappeared. If the ocean made dikes, it is thus that it would build. The fury of the flood was stamped upon
this shapeless mass. What flood? The crowd. One thought one beheld hubbub petrified. One thought one
heard humming above this barricade as though there had been over their hive, enormous, dark bees of violent
progress. Was it a thicket? Was it a bacchanalia? Was it a fortress? Vertigo seemed to have constructed it
with blows of its wings. There was something of the cesspool in that redoubt and something Olympian in
that confusion. One there beheld in a pellmell full of despair, the rafters of roofs, bits of garret windows
with their figured paper, window sashes with their glass planted there in the ruins awaiting the cannon,
wrecks of chimneys, cupboards, tables, benches, howling topsyturveydom, and those thousand
povertystricken things, the very refuse of the mendicant, which contain at the same time fury and
nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of
stone, and that the Faubourg Saint Antoine had thrust it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the broom
making of its misery its barricade. Blocks resembling headsman's blocks, dislocated chains, pieces of
woodwork with brackets having the form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish,
amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy the sombre figure of the old tortures endured by the people. The
barricade Saint Antoine converted everything into a weapon; everything that civil war could throw at the
head of society proceeded thence; it was not combat, it was a paroxysm; the carbines which defended this
redoubt, among which there were some blunderbusses, sent bits of earthenware bones, coatbuttons, even the
casters from nightstands, dangerous projectiles on account of the brass. This barricade was furious; it hurled
to the clouds an inexpressible clamor; at certain moments, when provoking the army, it was covered with
throngs and tempest; a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it; a swarm filled it; it had a thorny crest
of guns, of sabres, of cudgels, of axes, of pikes and of bayonets; a vast red flag flapped in the wind; shouts of
command, songs of attack, the roll of drums, the sobs of women and bursts of gloomy laughter from the
starving were to be heard there. It was huge and living, and, like the back of an electric beast, there proceeded
from it little flashes of lightning. The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where rumbled
that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God; a strange majesty was emitted by this titanic
basket of rubbish. It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai.
As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolutionwhat? The revolution. Itthat
barricade, chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown had facing it the Constituent
Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic; and it was the
Carmagnole bidding defiance to the Marseillaise.
Immense but heroic defiance, for the old faubourg is a hero.
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The faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The faubourg shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt
took its stand under cover of the faubourg. The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against which the
strategy of the African generals dashed itself. Its caverns, its excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced,
so to speak, and grinned beneath the smoke. The mitraille vanished in shapelessness; the bombs plunged into
it; bullets only succeeded in making holes in it; what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments,
accustomed to the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of redoubt, a wild beast in
its boarlike bristling and a mountain by its enormous size.
A quarter of a league away, from the corner of the Rue du Temple which debouches on the boulevard near
the Chateaud'Eau, if one thrust one's head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the Dallemagne
shop, one perceived in the distance, beyond the canal, in the street which mounts the slopes of Belleville at
the culminating point of the rise, a strange wall reaching to the second story of the house fronts, a sort of
hyphen between the houses on the right and the houses on the left, as though the street had folded back on
itself its loftiest wall in order to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of pavingstones. It was straight,
correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid out by rule and line. Cement was lacking, of
course, but, as in the case of certain Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture. The
entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. From distance to distance, one could distinguish on the
gray surface, almost invisible loopholes which resembled black threads. These loopholes were separated from
each other by equal spaces. The street was deserted as far as the eye could reach. All windows and doors
were closed. In the background rose this barrier, which made a blind thoroughfare of the street, a motionless
and tranquil wall; no one was visible, nothing was audible; not a cry, not a sound, not a breath. A sepulchre.
The dazzling sun of June inundated this terrible thing with light.
It was the barricade of the Faubourg of the Temple.
As soon as one arrived on the spot, and caught sight of it, it was impossible, even for the boldest, not to
become thoughtful before this mysterious apparition. It was adjusted, jointed, imbricated, rectilinear,
symmetrical and funereal. Science and gloom met there. One felt that the chief of this barricade was a
geometrician or a spectre. One looked at it and spoke low.
From time to time, if some soldier, an officer or representative of the people, chanced to traverse the deserted
highway, a faint, sharp whistle was heard, and the passerby fell dead or wounded, or, if he escaped the
bullet, sometimes a biscaien was seen to ensconce itself in some closed shutter, in the interstice between two
blocks of stone, or in the plaster of a wall. For the men in the barricade had made themselves two small
cannons out of two castiron lengths of gaspipe, plugged up at one end with tow and fireclay. There was
no waste of useless powder. Nearly every shot told. There were corpses here and there, and pools of blood on
the pavement. I remember a white butterfly which went and came in the street. Summer does not abdicate.
In the neighborhood, the spaces beneath the portes cocheres were encumbered with wounded.
One felt oneself aimed at by some person whom one did not see, and one understood that guns were levelled
at the whole length of the street.
Massed behind the sort of sloping ridge which the vaulted canal forms at the entrance to the Faubourg du
Temple, the soldiers of the attacking column, gravely and thoughtfully, watched this dismal redoubt, this
immobility, this passivity, whence sprang death. Some crawled flat on their faces as far as the crest of the
curve of the bridge, taking care that their shakos did not project beyond it.
The valiant Colonel Monteynard admired this barricade with a shudder."How that is built!" he said to a
Representative. "Not one pavingstone projects beyond its neighbor. It is made of porcelain."At that
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Page No 816
moment, a bullet broke the cross on his breast, and he fell.
"The cowards!" people said. "Let them show themselves. Let us see them! They dare not! They are hiding!"
The barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty men, attacked by ten thousand, held out for
three days. On the fourth, they did as at Zaatcha, as at Constantine, they pierced the houses, they came over
the roofs, the barricade was taken. Not one of the eighty cowards thought of flight, all were killed there with
the exception of the leader, Barthelemy, of whom we shall speak presently.
The SaintAntoine barricade was the tumult of thunders; the barricade of the Temple was silence. The
difference between these two redoubts was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. One
seemed a maw; the other a mask.
Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one
divined in the first barricade the dragon, and behind the second the sphinx.
These two fortresses had been erected by two men named, the one, Cournet, the other, Barthelemy. Cournet
made the SaintAntoine barricade; Barthelemy the barricade of the Temple. Each was the image of the man
who had built it.
Cournet was a man of lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal
soul, a sincere and terrible eye. Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most
formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict, were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor.
He had been an officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined that he sprang from the
ocean, and that he came from the tempest; he carried the hurricane on into battle. With the exception of the
genius, there was in Cournet something of Danton, as, with the exception of the divinity, there was in Danton
something of Hercules.
Barthelemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic street urchin, who, having had his ears boxed by a
policeman, lay in wait for him, and killed him, and at seventeen was sent to the galleys. He came out and
made this barricade.
Later on, fatal circumstance, in London, proscribed by all, Barthelemy slew Cournet. It was a funereal duel.
Some time afterwards, caught in the gearing of one of those mysterious adventures in which passion plays a
part, a catastrophe in which French justice sees extenuating circumstances, and in which English justice sees
only death, Barthelemy was hanged. The sombre social construction is so made that, thanks to material
destitution, thanks to moral obscurity, that unhappy being who possessed an intelligence, certainly firm,
possibly great, began in France with the galleys, and ended in England with the gallows. Barthelemy, on
occasion, flew but one flag, the black flag.
CHAPTER II. WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT
CONVERSE
Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection, and June, 1848, knew a great deal more
about it than June, 1832. So the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only an outline, and an embryo
compared to the two colossal barricades which we have just sketched; but it was formidable for that epoch.
The insurgents under the eye of Enjolras, for Marius no longer looked after anything, had made good use of
the night. The barricade had been not only repaired, but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of iron
planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions
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complicated the external confusion. The redoubt had been cleverly made over, into a wall on the inside and a
thicket on the outside.
The staircase of pavingstones which permitted one to mount it like the wall of a citadel had been
reconstructed.
The barricade had been put in order, the taproom disencumbered, the kitchen appropriated for the
ambulance, the dressing of the wounded completed, the powder scattered on the ground and on the tables had
been gathered up, bullets run, cartridges manufactured, lint scraped, the fallen weapons redistributed, the
interior of the redoubt cleaned, the rubbish swept up, corpses removed.
They laid the dead in a heap in the Mondetour lane, of which they were still the masters. The pavement was
red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. Enjolras
had their uniforms laid aside.
Enjolras had advised two hours of sleep. Advice from Enjolras was a command. Still, only three or four took
advantage of it.
Feuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern:
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES!
These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be still read on the wall in 1848.
The three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish definitely; which allowed the insurgents to
breathe more freely.
They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house.
The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. On a litter of mattresses and trusses of
straw in the kitchen, which had been converted into an ambulance, there were five men gravely wounded,
two of whom were municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were attended to first.
In the taproom there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and Javert bound to his post.
"This is the hall of the dead," said Enjolras.
In the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end, the mortuary table being behind the post like
a horizontal bar, a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf lying prone.
The pole of the omnibus, although snapped off by the fusillade, was still sufficiently upright to admit of their
fastening the flag to it.
Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a leader, of always doing what he said, attached to this staff the
bulletridden and bloody coat of the old man's.
No repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men in the barricade had speedily
exhausted the scanty provisions of the wineshop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there. At a
given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of la Meduse. They were obliged to resign
themselves to hunger. They had then reached the first hours of that Spartan day of the 6th of June when, in
the barricade SaintMerry, Jeanne, surrounded by the insurgents who demanded bread, replied to all
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combatants crying: "Something to eat!" with: "Why? It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead."
As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine, and portioned out the
brandy.
They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. Enjolras and Combeferre examined them.
Combeferre when he came up again said:"It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a
grocer.""It must be real wine," observed Bossuet. "It's lucky that Grantaire is asleep. If he were on foot,
there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving those bottles."Enjolras, in spite of all murmurs, placed
his veto on the fifteen bottles, and, in order that no one might touch them, he had them placed under the table
on which Father Mabeuf was lying.
About two o'clock in the morning, they reckoned up their strength. There were still thirtyseven of them.
The day began to dawn. The torch, which had been replaced in its cavity in the pavement, had just been
extinguished. The interior of the barricade, that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street, was
bathed in shadows, and resembled, athwart the vague, twilight horror, the deck of a disabled ship. The
combatants, as they went and came, moved about there like black forms. Above that terrible nestingplace of
gloom the stories of the mute houses were lividly outlined; at the very top, the chimneys stood palely out.
The sky was of that charming, undecided hue, which may be white and may be blue. Birds flew about in it
with cries of joy. The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade, being turned to the East, had upon
its roof a rosy reflection. The morning breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the dead man at the
thirdstory window.
"I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished," said Courfeyrac to Feuilly. "That torch flickering in the
wind annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of
cowards; it gives a bad light because it trembles."
Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to talk.
Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy from it.
"What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: `Hullo! I
have committed a blunder.' And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the
cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected."
Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of
Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and of Enjolras' sad severity. He said:
"Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had
their moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, even
in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having
struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race."
And, such are the windings of the exchange of speech, that, a moment later, by a transition brought about
through Jean Prouvaire's verses, Combeferre was comparing the translators of the Georgics, Raux with
Cournand, Cournand with Delille, pointing out the passages translated by Malfilatre, particularly the
prodigies of Caesar's death; and at that word, Caesar, the conversation reverted to Brutus.
"Caesar," said Combeferre, "fell justly. Cicero was severe towards Caesar, and he was right. That severity is
not diatribe. When Zoilus insults Homer, when Maevius insults Virgil, when Vise insults Moliere, when Pope
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insults Shakspeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried
out; genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. But Zoilus and Cicero are two
different persons. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my own part, I
blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. Caesar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as
though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the
senate, committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. He was a great man; so
much the worse, or so much the better; the lesson is but the more exalted. His twentythree wounds touch me
less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. Caesar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys.
One feels the God through the greater outrage."
Bossuet, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit of a heap of pavingstones, exclaimed, rifle
in hand:
"Oh Cydathenaeum, Oh Myrrhinus, Oh Probalinthus, Oh graces of the AEantides! Oh! Who will grant me to
pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of Laurium or of Edapteon?"
CHAPTER III. LIGHT AND SHADOW
Enjolras had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mondetour lane, gliding along
close to the houses.
The insurgents, we will remark, were full of hope. The manner in which they had repulsed the attack of the
preceding night had caused them to almost disdain in advance the attack at dawn. They waited for it with a
smile. They had no more doubt as to their success than as to their cause. Moreover, succor was, evidently, on
the way to them. They reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphant prophecy which is one of the sources
of strength in the French combatant, they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases. At six
o'clock in the morning a regiment "which had been labored with," would turn; at noon, the insurrection of all
Paris; at sunset, revolution.
They heard the alarm bell of SaintMerry, which had not been silent for an instant since the night before; a
proof that the other barricade, the great one, Jeanne's, still held out.
All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of gay and formidable whisper which
resembled the warlike hum of a hive of bees.
Enjolras reappeared. He returned from his sombre eagle flight into outer darkness. He listened for a moment
to all this joy with folded arms, and one hand on his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of
the dawn, he said:
"The whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you
now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the
standardbearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething
yesterday, today it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg
nor from a regiment. You are abandoned."
These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees
by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have been
heard flitting by.
This moment was brief.
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A voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Enjolras:
"So be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer
the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not
abandon the people."
These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an
enthusiastic acclamation.
No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus; he was some unknown blousewearer, a
stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous, always mingled in human crises and in social
geneses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word, and who vanishes into the
shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God.
This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very
same hour, on the barricade SaintMerry, the insurgents were raising that clamor which has become a matter
of history and which has been consigned to the documents in the case:"What matters it whether they come
to our assistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man."
As the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially isolated, were in communication with each other.
CHAPTER IV. MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE
After the man who decreed the "protest of corpses" had spoken, and had given this formula of their common
soul, there issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in sense and triumphant in
tone:
"Long live death! Let us all remain here!"
"Why all?" said Enjolras.
"All! All!"
Enjolras resumed:
"The position is good; the barricade is fine. Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty?"
They replied:
"Because not one will go away."
"Citizens," cried Enjolras, and there was an almost irritated vibration in his voice, "this republic is not rich
enough in men to indulge in useless expenditure of them. Vainglory is waste. If the duty of some is to
depart, that duty should be fulfilled like any other."
Enjolras, the manprinciple, had over his coreligionists that sort of omnipotent power which emanates from
the absolute. Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose. A leader to the very fingertips, Enjolras,
seeing that they murmured, insisted. He resumed haughtily:
"Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so."
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The murmurs redoubled.
"Besides," observed a voice in one group, "it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed
in."
"Not on the side of the Halles," said Enjolras. "The Rue Mondetour is free, and through the Rue des
Precheurs one can reach the Marche des Innocents."
"And there," went on another voice, "you would be captured. You would fall in with some grand guard of the
line or the suburbs; they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap. `Whence come you?' `Don't you belong to
the barricade?' And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. Shot."
Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre's shoulder, and the two entered the taproom.
They emerged thence a moment later. Enjolras held in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had
laid aside. Combeferre followed, carrying the shoulderbelts and the shakos.
"With this uniform," said Enjolras, "you can mingle with the ranks and escape; here is enough for four." And
he flung on the ground, deprived of its pavement, the four uniforms.
No wavering took place in his stoical audience. Combeferre took the word.
"Come, said he, "you must have a little pity. Do you know what the question is here? It is a question of
women. See here. Are there women or are there not? Are there children or are there not? Are there mothers,
yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot and who have a lot of little ones around them? Let that man of you
who has never beheld a nurse's breast raise his hand. Ah! you want to get yourselves killed, so do II, who
am speaking to you; but I do not want to feel the phantoms of women wreathing their arms around me. Die, if
you will, but don't make others die. Suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here are
sublime; but suicide is narrow, and does not admit of extension; and as soon as it touches your neighbors,
suicide is murder. Think of the little blond heads; think of the white locks. Listen, Enjolras has just told me
that he saw at the corner of the Rue du Cygne a lighted casement, a candle in a poor window, on the fifth
floor, and on the pane the quivering shadow of the head of an old woman, who had the air of having spent the
night in watching. Perhaps she is the mother of some one of you. Well, let that man go, and make haste, to
say to his mother: `Here I am, mother!' Let him feel at ease, the task here will be performed all the same.
When one supports one's relatives by one's toil, one has not the right to sacrifice one's self. That is deserting
one's family. And those who have daughters! what are you thinking of? You get yourselves killed, you are
dead, that is well. And tomorrow? Young girls without breadthat is a terrible thing. Man begs, woman
sells. Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so sweet, who have bonnets of flowers, who
fill the house with purity, who sing and prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence of
angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth, that Jeanne, that Lise, that Mimi, those adorable and honest
creatures who are your blessings and your pride, ah! good God, they will suffer hunger! What do you want
me to say to you? There is a market for human flesh; and it is not with your shadowy hands, shuddering
around them, that you will prevent them from entering it! Think of the street, think of the pavement covered
with passersby, think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the
mire. These women, too, were pure once. Think of your sisters, those of you who have them. Misery,
prostitution, the police, SaintLazare that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of
modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to. Ah! you have got
yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is well; you have wished to release the people from
Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the police. Friends, have a care, have mercy. Women,
unhappy women, we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them. We trust to the women not
having received a man's education, we prevent their reading, we prevent their thinking, we prevent their
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occupying themselves with politics; will you prevent them from going to the deadhouse this evening, and
recognizing your bodies? Let us see, those who have families must be tractable, and shake hands with us and
take themselves off, and leave us here alone to attend to this affair. I know well that courage is required to
leave, that it is hard; but the harder it is, the more meritorious. You say: `I have a gun, I am at the barricade;
so much the worse, I shall remain there.' So much the worse is easily said. My friends, there is a morrow; you
will not be here tomorrow, but your families will; and what sufferings! See, here is a pretty, healthy child,
with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chatters, who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your
kiss,and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned? I have seen one, a very small creature,
no taller than that. His father was dead. Poor people had taken him in out of charity, but they had bread only
for themselves. The child was always hungry. It was winter. He did not cry. You could see him approach the
stove, in which there was never any fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow clay. His
breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flaccid, his belly prominent. He said nothing. If you spoke to
him, he did not answer. He is dead. He was taken to the Necker Hospital, where I saw him. I was
housesurgeon in that hospital. Now, if there are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to
stroll on Sundays holding their child's tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of those fathers imagine
that this child is his own. That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay nude on the
dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery. A sort of
mud was found in his stomach. There were ashes in his teeth. Come, let us examine ourselves conscientiously
and take counsel with our heart. Statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fiftyfive per
cent. I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns young girls, it concerns little
children. Who is talking to you of yourselves? We know well what you are; we know well that you are all
brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the
great cause; we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully and magnificently, and that each
one of you clings to his share in the triumph. Very well. But you are not alone in this world. There are other
beings of whom you must think. You must not be egoists."
All dropped their heads with a gloomy air.
Strange contradictions of the human heart at its most sublime moments. Combeferre, who spoke thus, was
not an orphan. He recalled the mothers of other men, and forgot his own. He was about to get himself killed.
He was "an egoist."
Marius, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession from all hope, and having been stranded in grief, the
most sombre of shipwrecks, and saturated with violent emotions and conscious that the end was near, had
plunged deeper and deeper into that visionary stupor which always precedes the fatal hour voluntarily
accepted.
A physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms of that febrile absorption known to, and
classified by, science, and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure. Despair, also, has its
ecstasy. Marius had reached this point. He looked on at everything as from without; as we have said, things
which passed before him seemed far away; he made out the whole, but did not perceive the details. He beheld
men going and coming as through a flame. He heard voices speaking as at the bottom of an abyss.
But this moved him. There was in this scene a point which pierced and roused even him. He had but one idea
now, to die; and he did not wish to be turned aside from it, but he reflected, in his gloomy somnambulism,
that while destroying himself, he was not prohibited from saving some one else.
He raised his voice.
"Enjolras and Combeferre are right," said he; "no unnecessary sacrifice. I join them, and you must make
haste. Combeferre has said convincing things to you. There are some among you who have families, mothers,
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sisters, wives, children. Let such leave the ranks."
No one stirred.
"Married men and the supporters of families, step out of the ranks!" repeated Marius.
His authority was great. Enjolras was certainly the head of the barricade, but Marius was its savior.
"I order it," cried Enjolras.
"I entreat you," said Marius.
Then, touched by Combeferre's words, shaken by Enjolras' order, touched by Marius' entreaty, these heroic
men began to denounce each other."It is true," said one young man to a full grown man, "you are the father
of a family. Go.""It is your duty rather," retorted the man, "you have two sisters whom you maintain."
And an unprecedented controversy broke forth. Each struggled to determine which should not allow himself
to be placed at the door of the tomb.
"Make haste," said Courfeyrac, "in another quarter of an hour it will be too late."
"Citizens," pursued Enjolras, "this is the Republic, and universal suffrage reigns. Do you yourselves
designate those who are to go."
They obeyed. After the expiration of a few minutes, five were unanimously selected and stepped out of the
ranks.
"There are five of them!" exclaimed Marius.
There were only four uniforms.
"Well," began the five, "one must stay behind."
And then a struggle arose as to who should remain, and who should find reasons for the others not remaining.
The generous quarrel began afresh.
"You have a wife who loves you.""You have your aged mother."" You have neither father nor mother,
and what is to become of your three little brothers?""You are the father of five children.""You have a
right to live, you are only seventeen, it is too early for you to die."
These great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. The improbable was simple there.
These men did not astonish each other.
"Be quick," repeated Courfeyrac.
Men shouted to Marius from the groups:
"Do you designate who is to remain."
"Yes," said the five, "choose. We will obey you."
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Marius did not believe that he was capable of another emotion. Still, at this idea, that of choosing a man for
death, his blood rushed back to his heart. He would have turned pale, had it been possible for him to become
any paler.
He advanced towards the five, who smiled upon him, and each, with his eyes full of that grand flame which
one beholds in the depths of history hovering over Thermopylae, cried to him:
"Me! me! me!"
And Marius stupidly counted them; there were still five of them! Then his glance dropped to the four
uniforms.
At that moment, a fifth uniform fell, as if from heaven, upon the other four.
The fifth man was saved.
Marius raised his eyes and recognized M. Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade.
He had arrived by way of Mondetour lane, whither by dint of inquiries made, or by instinct, or chance.
Thanks to his dress of a National Guardsman, he had made his way without difficulty.
The sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the Rue Mondetour had no occasion to give the alarm for a single
National Guardsman, and he had allowed the latter to entangle himself in the street, saying to himself:
"Probably it is a reinforcement, in any case it is a prisoner." The moment was too grave to admit of the
sentinel abandoning his duty and his post of observation.
At the moment when Jean Valjean entered the redoubt, no one had noticed him, all eyes being fixed on the
five chosen men and the four uniforms. Jean Valjean also had seen and heard, and he had silently removed
his coat and flung it on the pile with the rest.
The emotion aroused was indescribable.
"Who is this man?" demanded Bossuet.
"He is a man who saves others," replied Combeferre.
Marius added in a grave voice:
"I know him."
This guarantee satisfied every one.
Enjolras turned to Jean Valjean.
"Welcome, citizen."
And he added:
"You know that we are about to die."
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Jean Valjean, without replying, helped the insurgent whom he was saving to don his uniform.
CHAPTER V. THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT
OF A BARRICADE
The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place, had as result and culminating point Enjolras'
supreme melancholy.
Enjolras bore within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was incomplete, however, so far as the absolute
can be so; he had too much of SaintJust about him, and not enough of Anacharsis Cloots; still, his mind, in
the society of the Friends of the A B C, had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from Combeferre's
ideas; for some time past, he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma, and had allowed
himself to incline to the broadening influence of progress, and he had come to accept, as a definitive and
magnificent evolution, the transformation of the great French Republic, into the immense human republic. As
far as the immediate means were concerned, a violent situation being given, he wished to be violent; on that
point, he never varied; and he remained of that epic and redoubtable school which is summed up in the
words: "Eightythree." Enjolras was standing erect on the staircase of pavingstones, one elbow resting on
the stock of his gun. He was engaged in thought; he quivered, as at the passage of prophetic breaths; places
where death is have these effects of tripods. A sort of stifled fire darted from his eyes, which were filled with
an inward look. All at once he threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the
sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo, and
Enjolras cried:
"Citizens, do you picture the future to yourselves? The streets of cities inundated with light, green branches
on the thresholds, nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children, the past loving the present, thinkers
entirely at liberty, believers on terms of full equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest, human
conscience become an altar, no more hatreds, the fraternity of the workshop and the school, for sole penalty
and recompense fame, work for all, right for all, peace over all, no more bloodshed, no more wars, happy
mothers! To conquer matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has
already accomplished. Formerly, the first human races beheld with terror the hydra pass before their eyes,
breathing on the waters, the dragon which vomited flame, the griffin who was the monster of the air, and who
flew with the wings of an eagle and the talons of a tiger; fearful beasts which were above man. Man,
nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated by intelligence, and finally conquered these monsters. We have
vanquished the hydra, and it is called the locomotive; we are on the point of vanquishing the griffin, we
already grasp it, and it is called the balloon. On the day when this Promethean task shall be accomplished,
and when man shall have definitely harnessed to his will the triple Chimaera of antiquity, the hydra, the
dragon and the griffin, he will be the master of water, fire, and of air, and he will be for the rest of animated
creation that which the ancient gods formerly were to him. Courage, and onward! Citizens, whither are we
going? To science made government, to the force of things become the sole public force, to the natural law,
having in itself its sanction and its penalty and promulgating itself by evidence, to a dawn of truth
corresponding to a dawn of day. We are advancing to the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of
man. No more fictions; no more parasites. The real governed by the true, that is the goal. Civilization will
hold its assizes at the summit of Europe, and, later on, at the centre of continents, in a grand parliament of the
intelligence. Something similar has already been seen. The amphictyons had two sittings a year, one at
Delphos the seat of the gods, the other at Thermopylae, the place of heroes. Europe will have her
amphictyons; the globe will have its amphictyons. France bears this sublime future in her breast. This is the
gestation of the nineteenth century. That which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France.
Listen to me, you, Feuilly, valiant artisan, man of the people. I revere you. Yes, you clearly behold the future,
yes, you are right. You had neither father nor mother, Feuilly; you adopted humanity for your mother and
right for your father. You are about to die, that is to say to triumph, here. Citizens, whatever happens today,
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through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As
conflagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. And what is the
revolution that we shall cause? I have just told you, the Revolution of the True. From a political point of
view, there is but a single principle; the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over
myself is called Liberty. Where two or three of these sovereignties are combined, the state begins. But in that
association there is no abdication. Each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself, for the purpose of
forming the common right. This quantity is the same for all of us. This identity of concession which each
makes to all, is called Equality. Common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right
of each. This protection of all over each is called Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these assembled
sovereignties is called society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence what is called the
social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the word contract being etymologically
formed with the idea of a bond. Let us come to an understanding about equality; for, if liberty is the summit,
equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a surface vegetation, a society of great blades of grass
and tiny oaks; a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void; legally speaking, it is all
aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; politically, it is all votes possessed of the same weight;
religiously, it is all consciences possessed of the same right. Equality has an organ: gratuitous and obligatory
instruction. The right to the alphabet, that is where the beginning must be made. The primary school imposed
on all, the secondary school offered to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical society will
spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. Citizens, the
nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the
history of old, we shall no longer, as today, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of
nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in
hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a
dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the
infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from
the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of
events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will
accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be reestablished between the
soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present
hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A
revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier.
Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point
of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of pavingstones, nor of
joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the
ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: `I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.'
From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their
immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies
here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn."
Enjolras paused rather than became silent; his lips continued to move silently, as though he were talking to
himself, which caused them all to gaze attentively at him, in the endeavor to hear more. There was no
applause; but they whispered together for a long time. Speech being a breath, the rustling of intelligences
resembles the rustling of leaves.
CHAPTER VI. MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC
Let us narrate what was passing in Marius' thoughts.
Let the reader recall the state of his soul. We have just recalled it, everything was a vision to him now. His
judgment was disturbed. Marius, let us insist on this point, was under the shadow of the great, dark wings
which are spread over those in the death agony. He felt that he had entered the tomb, it seemed to him that he
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was already on the other side of the wall, and he no longer beheld the faces of the living except with the eyes
of one dead.
How did M. Fauchelevent come there? Why was he there? What had he come there to do? Marius did not
address all these questions to himself. Besides, since our despair has this peculiarity, that it envelops others as
well as ourselves, it seemed logical to him that all the world should come thither to die.
Only, he thought of Cosette with a pang at his heart.
However, M. Fauchelevent did not speak to him, did not look at him, and had not even the air of hearing him,
when Marius raised his voice to say: "I know him."
As far as Marius was concerned, this attitude of M. Fauchelevent was comforting, and, if such a word can be
used for such impressions, we should say that it pleased him. He had always felt the absolute impossibility of
addressing that enigmatical man, who was, in his eyes, both equivocal and imposing. Moreover, it had been a
long time since he had seen him; and this still further augmented the impossibility for Marius' timid and
reserved nature.
The five chosen men left the barricade by way of Mondetour lane; they bore a perfect resemblance to
members of the National Guard. One of them wept as he took his leave. Before setting out, they embraced
those who remained.
When the five men sent back to life had taken their departure, Enjolras thought of the man who had been
condemned to death.
He entered the taproom. Javert, still bound to the post, was engaged in meditation.
"Do you want anything?" Enjolras asked him.
"Javert replied: "When are you going to kill me?"
"Wait. We need all our cartridges just at present."
"Then give me a drink," said Javert.
Enjolras himself offered him a glass of water, and, as Javert was pinioned, he helped him to drink.
"Is that all?" inquired Enjolras.
"I am uncomfortable against this post," replied Javert. "You are not tender to have left me to pass the night
here. Bind me as you please, but you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man."
And with a motion of the head, he indicated the body of M. Mabeuf.
There was, as the reader will remember, a long, broad table at the end of the room, on which they had been
running bullets and making cartridges. All the cartridges having been made, and all the powder used, this
table was free.
At Enjolras' command, four insurgents unbound Javert from the post. While they were loosing him, a fifth
held a bayonet against his breast.
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Leaving his arms tied behind his back, they placed about his feet a slender but stout whipcord, as is done to
men on the point of mounting the scaffold, which allowed him to take steps about fifteen inches in length,
and made him walk to the table at the end of the room, where they laid him down, closely bound about the
middle of the body.
By way of further security, and by means of a rope fastened to his neck, they added to the system of ligatures
which rendered every attempt at escape impossible, that sort of bond which is called in prisons a martingale,
which, starting at the neck, forks on the stomach, and meets the hands, after passing between the legs.
While they were binding Javert, a man standing on the threshold was surveying him with singular attention.
The shadow cast by this man made Javert turn his head. He raised his eyes, and recognized Jean Valjean. He
did not even start, but dropped his lids proudly and confined himself to the remark: "It is perfectly simple."
CHAPTER VII. THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED
The daylight was increasing rapidly. Not a window was opened, not a door stood ajar; it was the dawn but not
the awaking. The end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade, had been evacuated by the troops,
as we have stated it seemed to be free, and presented itself to passersby with a sinister tranquillity. The Rue
SaintDenis was as dumb as the avenue of Sphinxes at Thebes. Not a living being in the crossroads, which
gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so mournful as this light in deserted streets. Nothing was to
be seen, but there was something to be heard. A mysterious movement was going on at a certain distance. It
was evident that the critical moment was approaching. As on the previous evening, the sentinels had come in;
but this time all had come.
The barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack. Since the departure of the five, they had
increased its height still further.
On the advice of the sentinel who had examined the region of the Halles, Enjolras, for fear of a surprise in the
rear, came to a serious decision. He had the small gut of the Mondetour lane, which had been left open up to
that time, barricaded. For this purpose, they tore up the pavement for the length of several houses more. In
this manner, the barricade, walled on three streets, in front on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, to the left on the
Rues du Cygne and de la Petite Truanderie, to the right on the Rue Mondetour, was really almost
impregnable; it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there. It had three fronts, but no exit."A fortress
but a rat hole too," said Courfeyrac with a laugh.
Enjolras had about thirty pavingstones "torn up in excess," said Bossuet, piled up near the door of the
wineshop.
The silence was now so profound in the quarter whence the attack must needs come, that Enjolras had each
man resume his post of battle.
An allowance of brandy was doled out to each.
Nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault. Each man selects his place as though at the
theatre. They jostle, and elbow and crowd each other. There are some who make stalls of pavingstones.
Here is a corner of the wall which is in the way, it is removed; here is a redan which may afford protection,
they take shelter behind it. Lefthanded men are precious; they take the places that are inconvenient to the
rest. Many arrange to fight in a sitting posture. They wish to be at ease to kill, and to die comfortably. In the
sad war of June, 1848, an insurgent who was a formidable marksman, and who was firing from the top of a
terrace upon a roof, had a recliningchair brought there for his use; a charge of grapeshot found him out
there.
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As soon as the leader has given the order to clear the decks for action, all disorderly movements cease; there
is no more pulling from one another; there are no more coteries; no more asides, there is no more holding
aloof; everything in their spirits converges in, and changes into, a waiting for the assailants. A barricade
before the arrival of danger is chaos; in danger, it is discipline itself. Peril produces order.
As soon as Enjolras had seized his doublebarrelled rifle, and had placed himself in a sort of embrasure
which he had reserved for himself, all the rest held their peace. A series of faint, sharp noises resounded
confusedly along the wall of pavingstones. It was the men cocking their guns.
Moreover, their attitudes were prouder, more confident than ever; the excess of sacrifice strengthens; they no
longer cherished any hope, but they had despair, despair,the last weapon, which sometimes gives victory;
Virgil has said so. Supreme resources spring from extreme resolutions. To embark in death is sometimes the
means of escaping a shipwreck; and the lid of the coffin becomes a plank of safety.
As on the preceding evening, the attention of all was directed, we might almost say leaned upon, the end of
the street, now lighted up and visible.
They had not long to wait. A stir began distinctly in the SaintLeu quarter, but it did not resemble the
movement of the first attack. A clashing of chains, the uneasy jolting of a mass, the click of brass skipping
along the pavement, a sort of solemn uproar, announced that some sinister construction of iron was
approaching. There arose a tremor in the bosoms of these peaceful old streets, pierced and built for the fertile
circulation of interests and ideas, and which are not made for the horrible rumble of the wheels of war.
The fixity of eye in all the combatants upon the extremity of the street became ferocious.
A cannon made its appearance.
Artillerymen were pushing the piece; it was in firing trim; the forecarriage had been detached; two upheld
the guncarriage, four were at the wheels; others followed with the caisson. They could see the smoke of the
burning lintstock.
"Fire!" shouted Enjolras.
The whole barricade fired, the report was terrible; an avalanche of smoke covered and effaced both cannon
and men; after a few seconds, the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men reappeared; the guncrew had
just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into position facing the barricade. Not one of them had
been struck. Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, began
to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer levelling a telescope.
"Bravo for the cannoneers!" cried Bossuet.
And the whole barricade clapped their hands.
A moment later, squarely planted in the very middle of the street, astride of the gutter, the piece was ready for
action. A formidable pair of jaws yawned on the barricade.
"Come, merrily now!" ejaculated Courfeyrac. "That's the brutal part of it. After the fillip on the nose, the
blow from the fist. The army is reaching out its big paw to us. The barricade is going to be severely shaken
up. The fusillade tries, the cannon takes."
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"It is a piece of eight, new model, brass," added Combeferre. "Those pieces are liable to burst as soon as the
proportion of ten parts of tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded. The excess of tin renders them too tender.
Then it comes to pass that they have caves and chambers when looked at from the vent hole. In order to
obviate this danger, and to render it possible to force the charge, it may become necessary to return to the
process of the fourteenth century, hooping, and to encircle the piece on the outside with a series of unwelded
steel bands, from the breech to the trunnions. In the meantime, they remedy this defect as best they may; they
manage to discover where the holes are located in the vent of a cannon, by means of a searcher. But there is a
better method, with Gribeauval's movable star."
"In the sixteenth century," remarked Bossuet, "they used to rifle cannon."
"Yes," replied Combeferre, "that augments the projectile force, but diminishes the accuracy of the firing. In
firing at short range, the trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired, the parabola is exaggerated, the line of
the projectile is no longer sufficiently rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is,
nevertheless, a necessity of battle, the importance of which increases with the proximity of the enemy and the
precipitation of the discharge. This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled cannon of
the sixteenth century arose from the smallness of the charge; small charges for that sort of engine are imposed
by the ballistic necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation of the guncarriage. In short, that despot,
the cannon, cannot do all that it desires; force is a great weakness. A cannonball only travels six hundred
leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand leagues a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over
Napoleon."
"Reload your guns," said Enjolras.
How was the casing of the barricade going to behave under the cannonballs? Would they effect a breach?
That was the question. While the insurgents were reloading their guns, the artillerymen were loading the
cannon.
The anxiety in the redoubt was profound.
The shot sped the report burst forth.
"Present!" shouted a joyous voice.
And Gavroche flung himself into the barricade just as the ball dashed against it.
He came from the direction of the Rue du Cygne, and he had nimbly climbed over the auxiliary barricade
which fronted on the labyrinth of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.
Gavroche produced a greater sensation in the barricade than the cannonball.
The ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish. At the most there was an omnibus wheel broken, and the old
Anceau cart was demolished. On seeing this, the barricade burst into a laugh.
"Go on!" shouted Bossuet to the artillerists.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ARTILLERYMEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE
THEM SERIOUSLY
Thet flocked round Gavroche. But he had no time to tell anything. Marius drew him aside with a shudder.
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"What are you doing here?"
"Hullo!" said the child, "what are you doing here yourself?"
And he stared at Marius intently with his epic effrontery. His eyes grew larger with the proud light within
them.
It was with an accent of severity that Marius continued:
"Who told you to come back? Did you deliver my letter at the address?"
Gavroche was not without some compunctions in the matter of that letter. In his haste to return to the
barricade, he had got rid of it rather than delivered it. He was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had
confided it rather lightly to that stranger whose face he had not been able to make out. It is true that the man
was bareheaded, but that was not sufficient. In short, he had been administering to himself little inward
remonstrances and he feared Marius' reproaches. In order to extricate himself from the predicament, he took
the simplest course; he lied abominably.
"Citizen, I delivered the letter to the porter. The lady was asleep. She will have the letter when she wakes up.
Marius had had two objects in sending that letter: to bid farewell to Cosette and to save Gavroche. He was
obliged to content himself with the half of his desire.
The despatch of his letter and the presence of M. Fauchelevent in the barricade, was a coincidence which
occurred to him. He pointed out M. Fauchelevent to Gavroche.
"Do you know that man?"
"No," said Gavroche.
Gavroche had, in fact, as we have just mentioned, seen Jean Valjean only at night.
The troubled and unhealthy conjectures which had outlined themselves in Marius' mind were dissipated. Did
he know M. Fauchelevent's opinions? Perhaps M. Fauchelevent was a republican. Hence his very natural
presence in this combat.
In the meanwhile, Gavroche was shouting, at the other end of the barricade: "My gun!"
Courfeyrac had it returned to him.
Gavroche warned "his comrades" as he called them, that the barricade was blocked. He had had great
difficulty in reaching it. A battalion of the line whose arms were piled in the Rue de la Petite Truanderie was
on the watch on the side of the Rue du Cygne; on the opposite side, the municipal guard occupied the Rue des
Precheurs. The bulk of the army was facing them in front.
This information given, Gavroche added:
"I authorize you to hit 'em a tremendous whack."
Meanwhile, Enjolras was straining his ears and watching at his embrasure.
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Page No 832
The assailants, dissatisfied, no doubt, with their shot, had not repeated it.
A company of infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end of the street behind the piece of
ordnance. The soldiers were tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a
sort of sidework not more than eighteen inches high, and facing the barricade. In the angle at the left of this
epaulement, there was visible the head of the column of a battalion from the suburbs massed in the Rue
SaintDenis.
Enjolras, on the watch, thought he distinguished the peculiar sound which is produced when the shells of
grapeshot are drawn from the caissons, and he saw the commander of the piece change the elevation and
incline the mouth of the cannon slightly to the left. Then the cannoneers began to load the piece. The chief
seized the lintstock himself and lowered it to the vent.
"Down with your heads, hug the wall!" shouted Enjolras, "and all on your knees along the barricade!"
The insurgents who were straggling in front of the wineshop, and who had quitted their posts of combat on
Gavroche's arrival, rushed pellmell towards the barricade; but before Enjolras' order could be executed, the
discharge took place with the terrifying rattle of a round of grapeshot. This is what it was, in fact.
The charge had been aimed at the cut in the redoubt, and had there rebounded from the wall; and this terrible
rebound had produced two dead and three wounded.
If this were continued, the barricade was no longer tenable. The grapeshot made its way in.
A murmur of consternation arose.
"Let us prevent the second discharge," said Enjolras.
And, lowering his rifle, he took aim at the captain of the gun, who, at that moment, was bearing down on the
breach of his gun and rectifying and definitely fixing its pointing.
The captain of the piece was a handsome sergeant of artillery, very young, blond, with a very gentle face, and
the intelligent air peculiar to that predestined and redoubtable weapon which, by dint of perfecting itself in
horror, must end in killing war.
Combeferre, who was standing beside Enjolras, scrutinized this young man.
"What a pity!" said Combeferre. "What hideous things these butcheries are! Come, when there are no more
kings, there will be no more war. Enjolras, you are taking aim at that sergeant, you are not looking at him.
Fancy, he is a charming young man; he is intrepid; it is evident that he is thoughtful; those young
artillerymen are very well educated; he has a father, a mother, a family; he is probably in love; he is not
more than five and twenty at the most; he might be your brother."
"He is," said Enjolras.
"Yes," replied Combeferre, "he is mine too. Well, let us not kill him."
"Let me alone. It must be done."
And a tear trickled slowly down Enjolras' marble cheek.
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At the same moment, he pressed the trigger of his rifle. The flame leaped forth. The artilleryman turned
round twice, his arms extended in front of him, his head uplifted, as though for breath, then he fell with his
side on the gun, and lay there motionless. They could see his back, from the centre of which there flowed
directly a stream of blood. The ball had traversed his breast from side to side. He was dead.
He had to be carried away and replaced by another. Several minutes were thus gained, in fact.
CHAPTER IX. EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER
AND THAT INFALLIBLE MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE
CONDEMNATION OF 1796
Opinions were exchanged in the barricade. The firing from the gun was about to begin again. Against that
grapeshot, they could not hold out a quarter of an hour longer. It was absolutely necessary to deaden the
blows.
Enjolras issued this command:
"We must place a mattress there."
"We have none," said Combeferre, "the wounded are lying on them."
Jean Valjean, who was seated apart on a stone post, at the corner of the tavern, with his gun between his
knees, had, up to that moment, taken no part in anything that was going on. He did not appear to hear the
combatants saying around him: "Here is a gun that is doing nothing."
At the order issued by Enjolras, he rose.
It will be remembered that, on the arrival of the rabble in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, an old woman, foreseeing
the bullets, had placed her mattress in front of her window. This window, an attic window, was on the roof of
a sixstory house situated a little beyond the barricade. The mattress, placed crosswise, supported at the
bottom on two poles for drying linen, was upheld at the top by two ropes, which, at that distance, looked like
two threads, and which were attached to two nails planted in the window frames. These ropes were distinctly
visible, like hairs, against the sky.
"Can some one lend me a doublebarrelled rifle?" said Jean Valjean.
Enjolras, who had just reloaded his, handed it to him.
Jean Valjean took aim at the attic window and fired.
One of the mattress ropes was cut.
The mattress now hung by one thread only.
Jean Valjean fired the second charge. The second rope lashed the panes of the attic window. The mattress
slipped between the two poles and fell into the street.
The barricade applauded.
All voices cried:
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"Here is a mattress!"
"Yes," said Combeferre, "but who will go and fetch it?"
The mattress had, in fact, fallen outside the barricade, between besiegers and besieged. Now, the death of the
sergeant of artillery having exasperated the troop, the soldiers had, for several minutes, been lying flat on
their stomachs behind the line of pavingstones which they had erected, and, in order to supply the forced
silence of the piece, which was quiet while its service was in course of reorganization, they had opened fire
on the barricade. The insurgents did not reply to this musketry, in order to spare their ammunition The
fusillade broke against the barricade; but the street, which it filled, was terrible.
Jean Valjean stepped out of the cut, entered the street, traversed the storm of bullets, walked up to the
mattress, hoisted it upon his back, and returned to the barricade.
He placed the mattress in the cut with his own hands. He fixed it there against the wall in such a manner that
the artillerymen should not see it.
That done, they awaited the next discharge of grapeshot.
It was not long in coming.
The cannon vomited forth its package of buckshot with a roar. But there was no rebound. The effect which
they had foreseen had been attained. The barricade was saved.
"Citizen," said Enjolras to Jean Valjean, "the Republic thanks you."
Bossuet admired and laughed. He exclaimed:
"It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which
strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!"
CHAPTER X. DAWN
At that moment, Cosette awoke.
Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sashwindow, facing the East on the back
courtyard of the house.
Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She had not been there on the preceding evening, and
she had already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said:
"It appears that there is a row."
Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly. She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the
fact that her little bed was very white. Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her in the light. She
awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first, produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her
dream. Her first thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one. Cosette felt herself thoroughly
reassured. Like Jean Valjean, she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction of the soul which
absolutely will not hear of unhappiness. She began to cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why.
Then she felt a pang at her heart. It was three days since she had seen Marius. But she said to herself that he
must have received her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever that he would find
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means of reaching her.And that certainly today, and perhaps that very morning.It was broad daylight,
but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it was very early, but that she must rise,
nevertheless, in order to receive Marius.
She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that, consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius
would come. No objection was valid. All this was certain. It was monstrous enough already to have suffered
for three days. Marius absent three days, this was horrible on the part of the good God. Now, this cruel
teasing from on high had been gone through with. Marius was about to arrive, and he would bring good news.
Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it. Youth is the smile
of the future in the presence of an unknown quantity, which is itself. It is natural to it to be happy. It seems as
though its respiration were made of hope.
Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her on the subject of this absence which was
to last only one day, and what explanation of it he had given her. Every one has noticed with what nimbleness
a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with what art it renders itself
undiscoverable. There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of our brain;
that is the end of them; they are lost; it is impossible to lay the memory on them. Cosette was somewhat
vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory. She told herself, that it was very naughty and very
wicked of her, to have forgotten the words uttered by Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber.
Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed
lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is
sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that adorable halfnudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot
which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye,
that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing
vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and
modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause
for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn, it is not fitting that all this
should be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the
rising of a star. The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect. The down on the peach,
the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are
coarse compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste. The young girl is only the flash
of a dream, and is not yet a statue. Her bedchamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal. The indiscreet
touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra. Here, contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of Cosette's rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God, but that Adam looked upon her when she was
unfolding, and she was ashamed and turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the
presence of young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair, which was a very simple matter in those
days, when women did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did not put crinoline
in their locks. Then she opened the window and cast her eyes around her in every direction, hoping to descry
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some bit of the street, an angle of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to watch for
Marius there. But no view of the outside was to be had. The back court was surrounded by tolerably high
walls, and the outlook was only on several gardens. Cosette pronounced these gardens hideous: for the first
time in her life, she found flowers ugly. The smallest scrap of the gutter of the street would have met her
wishes better. She decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might come from that
quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears. Not that this was fickleness of soul; but hopes cut in twain by
dejectionthat was her case. She had a confused consciousness of something horrible. Thoughts were rife in
the air, in fact. She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that to withdraw herself from sight was to
be lost; and the idea that Marius could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but
mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her, and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which
yet indicated trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep. A countrylike silence reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. The
porter's lodge was closed. Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her father was asleep.
She must have suffered much, and she must have still been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her
father had been unkind; but she counted on Marius. The eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible.
Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and she said: "It is odd that people should be opening
and shutting their carriage gates so early." They were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette's window, in the ancient and perfectly black cornice of the wall, there was a
martin's nest; the curve of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it was
possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there, spreading her wings like a fan over her brood;
the father fluttered about, flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and kisses. The dawning day
gilded this happy thing, the great law, "Multiply," lay there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery
unfolded in the glory of the morning. Cosette, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul absorbed in chimeras,
illuminated by love within and by the dawn without, bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to
avow to herself that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze at these birds, at this family,
at that male and female, that mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a
virgin.
CHAPTER XI. THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE
The assailants' fire continued. Musketry and grapeshot alternated, but without committing great ravages, to
tell the truth. The top alone of the Corinthe facade suffered; the window on the first floor, and the attic
window in the roof, riddled with buckshot and biscaiens, were slowly losing their shape. The combatants
who had been posted there had been obliged to withdraw. However, this is according to the tactics of
barricades; to fire for a long while, in order to exhaust the insurgents' ammunition, if they commit the mistake
of replying. When it is perceived, from the slackening of their fire, that they have no more powder and ball,
the assault is made. Enjolras had not fallen into this trap; the barricade did not reply.
At every discharge by platoons, Gavroche puffed out his cheek with his tongue, a sign of supreme disdain.
"Good for you," said he, "rip up the cloth. We want some lint."
Courfeyrac called the grapeshot to order for the little effect which it produced, and said to the cannon:
"You are growing diffuse, my good fellow."
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One gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball. It is probable that this silence on the part of the redoubt began to
render the besiegers uneasy, and to make them fear some unexpected incident, and that they felt the necessity
of getting a clear view behind that heap of pavingstones, and of knowing what was going on behind that
impassable wall which received blows without retorting. The insurgents suddenly perceived a helmet
glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof. A fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney, and seemed
to be acting as sentinel. His glance fell directly down into the barricade.
"There's an embarrassing watcher," said Enjolras.
Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras' rifle, but he had his own gun.
Without saying a word, he took aim at the fireman, and, a second later, the helmet, smashed by a bullet,
rattled noisily into the street. The terrified soldier made haste to disappear. A second observer took his place.
This one was an officer. Jean Valjean, who had reloaded his gun, took aim at the newcomer and sent the
officer's casque to join the soldier's. The officer did not persist, and retired speedily. This time the warning
was understood. No one made his appearance thereafter on that roof; and the idea of spying on the barricade
was abandoned.
"Why did you not kill the man?" Bossuet asked Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean made no reply.
CHAPTER XII. DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER
Bossuet muttered in Combeferre's ear:
"He did not answer my question."
"He is a man who does good by gunshots," said Combeferre.
Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know that the National Guard from the
suburbs was valiant against insurrections. It was particularly zealous and intrepid in the days of June, 1832. A
certain good dramshop keeper of Pantin des Vertus or la Cunette, whose "establishment" had been closed by
the riots, became leonine at the sight of his deserted dancehall, and got himself killed to preserve the order
represented by a teagarden. In that bourgeois and heroic time, in the presence of ideas which had their
knights, interests had their paladins. The prosiness of the originators detracted nothing from the bravery of
the movement. The diminution of a pile of crowns made bankers sing the Marseillaise. They shed their blood
lyrically for the countinghouse; and they defended the shop, that immense diminutive of the fatherland, with
Lacedaemonian enthusiasm.
At bottom, we will observe, there was nothing in all this that was not extremely serious. It was social
elements entering into strife, while awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium.
Another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism [the barbarous name of the correct
party]. People were for order in combination with lack of discipline.
The drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such a Colonel of the National Guard;
such and such a captain went into action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought, "for
an idea," and on their own account. At critical moments, on "days" they took counsel less of their leaders than
of their instincts. There existed in the army of order, veritable guerilleros, some of the sword, like Fannicot,
others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrede.
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Civilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an aggregation of interests than by a group of
principles, was or thought itself, in peril; it set up the cry of alarm; each, constituting himself a centre,
defended it, succored it, and protected it with his own head; and the first comer took it upon himself to save
society.
Zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination. A platoon of the National Guard would constitute itself on its
own authority a private council of war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was an
improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvaire. Fierce Lynch law, with which no one party had any
right to reproach the rest, for it has been applied by the Republic in America, as well as by the monarchy in
Europe. This Lynch law was complicated with mistakes. On one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul
Aime Garnier, was pursued in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at his loins, and only escaped by taking
refuge under the portecochere of No. 6. They shouted:"There's another of those SaintSimonians!" and
they wanted to kill him. Now, he had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de SaintSimon. A
National Guard had read the words SaintSimon on the book, and had shouted: "Death!"
On the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the suburbs, commanded by the Captain
Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice and its own good
pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the judicial investigation opened in
consequence of the insurrection of 1832. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort of
condottiere of the order of those whom we have just characterized, a fanatical and intractable
governmentalist, could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the
barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company. Exasperated by the successive apparition of the
red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the
corps, who were holding council and did not think that the moment for the decisive assault had arrived, and
who were allowing "the insurrection to fry in its own fat," to use the celebrated expression of one of them.
For his part, he thought the barricade ripe, and as that which is ripe ought to fall, he made the attempt.
He commanded men as resolute as himself, "raging fellows," as a witness said. His company, the same which
had shot Jean Prouvaire the poet, was the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street. At the moment
when they were least expecting it, the captain launched his men against the barricade. This movement,
executed with more good will than strategy, cost the Fannicot company dear. Before it had traversed two
thirds of the street it was received by a general discharge from the barricade. Four, the most audacious, who
were running on in front, were mown down pointblank at the very foot of the redoubt, and this courageous
throng of National Guards, very brave men but lacking in military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after
some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time
to reload their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could
regain the corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught between two fires, and it
received the volley from the battery piece which, not having received the order, had not discontinued its
firing.
The intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one of the dead from this grapeshot. He was killed by the cannon,
that is to say, by order.
This attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated Enjolras."The fools!" said he. "They are getting
their own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for nothing."
Enjolras spoke like the real general of insurrection which he was. Insurrection and repression do not fight
with equal weapons. Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number of shots to fire and
a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty cartridgebox, a man killed, cannot be replaced. As
repression has the army, it does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes, it does not count its shots.
Repression has as many regiments as the barricade has men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has
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cartridgeboxes. Thus they are struggles of one against a hundred, which always end in crushing the
barricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly, flings into the balance its flaming archangel's sword. This
does happen sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to seethe, popular redoubts abound.
Paris quivers supremely, the quid divinum is given forth, a 10th of August is in the air, a 29th of July is in the
air, a wonderful light appears, the yawning maw of force draws back, and the army, that lion, sees before it,
erect and tranquil, that prophet, France.
CHAPTER XIII. PASSING GLEAMS
In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is a little of everything; there is
bravery, there is youth, honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above all,
intermittences of hope.
One of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope suddenly traversed the barricade of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie at the moment when it was least expected.
"Listen," suddenly cried Enjolras, who was still on the watch, "it seems to me that Paris is waking up."
It is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a
certain extent. The obstinacy of the alarm peal of SaintMerry reanimated some fancies. Barricades were
begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front of the Porte SaintMartin, a young man,
armed with a rifle, attacked alone a squadron of cavalry. In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he placed one
knee on the ground, shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the commander of the squadron, and turned away,
saying: "There's another who will do us no more harm."
He was put to the sword. In the Rue SaintDenis, a woman fired on the National Guard from behind a
lowered blind. The slats of the blind could be seen to tremble at every shot. A child fourteen years of age was
arrested in the Rue de la Cossonerie, with his pockets full of cartridges. Many posts were attacked. At the
entrance to the Rue BertinPoiree, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed a regiment of
cuirrassiers, at whose head marched Marshal General Cavaignac de Barague. In the Rue PlancheMibray,
they threw old pieces of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a bad sign; and
when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon's old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled
Suchet's saying at Saragossa: "We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre on our heads."
These general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment when it was thought that the uprising
had been rendered local, this fever of wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep
masses of combustibles which are called the faubourgs of Paris,all this, taken together, disturbed the
military chiefs. They made haste to stamp out these beginnings of conflagration.
They delayed the attack on the barricades Maubuee, de la Chanvrerie and SaintMerry until these sparks had
been extinguished, in order that they might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish them at
one blow. Columns were thrown into the streets where there was fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding
the small, right and left, now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in the doors of
houses whence shots had been fired; at the same time, manoeuvres by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the
boulevards. This repression was not effected without some commotion, and without that tumultuous uproar
peculiar to collisions between the army and the people. This was what Enjolras had caught in the intervals of
the cannonade and the musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing the end of the street in litters,
and he said to Courfeyrac:"Those wounded do not come from us."
Their hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less than half an hour, what was in the air
vanished, it was a flash of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents felt that sort of leaden
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cope, which the indifference of the people casts over obstinate and deserted men, fall over them once more.
The general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline, had miscarried; and the attention of
the minister of war and the strategy of the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four barricades
which still remained standing.
The sun was mounting above the horizon.
An insurgent hailed Enjolras.
"We are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this, without anything to eat?"
Enjolras, who was still leaning on his elbows at his embrasure, made an affirmative sign with his head, but
without taking his eyes from the end of the street.
CHAPTER XIV. WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS'
MISTRESS
Courfeyrac, seated on a pavingstone beside Enjolras, continued to insult the cannon, and each time that that
gloomy cloud of projectiles which is called grapeshot passed overhead with its terrible sound he assailed it
with a burst of irony.
"You are wearing out your lungs, poor, brutal, old fellow, you pain me, you are wasting your row. That's not
thunder, it's a cough."
And the bystanders laughed.
Courfeyrac and Bossuet, whose brave good humor increased with the peril, like Madame Scarron, replaced
nourishment with pleasantry, and, as wine was lacking, they poured out gayety to all.
"I admire Enjolras," said Bossuet. "His impassive temerity astounds me. He lives alone, which renders him a
little sad, perhaps; Enjolras complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us have
mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy, that is to say, brave. When a man is as much in love as a tiger,
the least that he can do is to fight like a lion. That is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that
mesdames our grisettes play on us. Roland gets himself killed for Angelique; all our heroism comes from our
women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off. Well,
Enjolras has no woman. He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a
man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire."
Enjolras did not appear to be listening, but had any one been near him, that person would have heard him
mutter in a low voice: "Patria."
Bossuet was still laughing when Courfeyrac exclaimed:
"News!"
And assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement, he added:
"My name is EightPounder."
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In fact, a new personage had entered on the scene. This was a second piece of ordnance.
The artillerymen rapidly performed their manoeuvres in force and placed this second piece in line with the
first.
This outlined the catastrophe.
A few minutes later, the two pieces, rapidly served, were firing pointblank at the redoubt; the platoon firing
of the line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery.
Another cannonade was audible at some distance. At the same time that the two guns were furiously
attacking the redoubt from the Rue de la Chanvrerie, two other cannons, trained one from the Rue
SaintDenis, the other from the Rue AubryleBoucher, were riddling the SaintMerry barricade. The four
cannons echoed each other mournfully.
The barking of these sombre dogs of war replied to each other.
One of the two pieces which was now battering the barricade on the Rue de la Chanvrerie was firing
grapeshot, the other balls.
The piece which was firing balls was pointed a little high, and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck
the extreme edge of the upper crest of the barricade, and crumbled the stone down upon the insurgents,
mingled with bursts of grapeshot.
The object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents from the summit of the redoubt, and to compel
them to gather close in the interior, that is to say, this announced the assault.
The combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade by balls, and from the windows of the cabaret by
grapeshot, the attacking columns could venture into the street without being picked off, perhaps, even,
without being seen, could briskly and suddenly scale the redoubt, as on the preceding evening, and, who
knows? take it by surprise.
"It is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of those guns should be diminished," said Enjolras, and he
shouted: "Fire on the artillerymen!"
All were ready. The barricade, which had long been silent, poured forth a desperate fire; seven or eight
discharges followed, with a sort of rage and joy; the street was filled with blinding smoke, and, at the end of a
few minutes, athwart this mist all streaked with flame, two thirds of the gunners could be distinguished lying
beneath the wheels of the cannons. Those who were left standing continued to serve the pieces with severe
tranquillity, but the fire had slackened.
"Things are going well now," said Bossuet to Enjolras. "Success."
Enjolras shook his head and replied:
"Another quarter of an hour of this success, and there will not be any cartridges left in the barricade."
It appears that Gavroche overheard this remark.
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Page No 842
CHAPTER XV. GAVROCHE OUTSIDE
Courfeyrac suddenly caught sight of some one at the base of the barricade, outside in the street, amid the
bullets.
Gavroche had taken a bottle basket from the wineshop, had made his way out through the cut, and was
quietly engaged in emptying the full cartridgeboxes of the National Guardsmen who had been killed on the
slope of the redoubt, into his basket.
"What are you doing there?" asked Courfeyrac.
Gavroche raised his face:
"I'm filling my basket, citizen."
"Don't you see the grapeshot?"
Gavroche replied:
"Well, it is raining. What then?"
Courfeyrac shouted:"Come in!"
"Instanter," said Gavroche.
And with a single bound he plunged into the street.
It will be remembered that Fannicot's company had left behind it a trail of bodies. Twenty corpses lay
scattered here and there on the pavement, through the whole length of the street. Twenty cartouches for
Gavroche meant a provision of cartridges for the barricade.
The smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has beheld a cloud which has fallen into a mountain gorge
between two peaked escarpments can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of
lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed; hence a twilight which made even the broad
daylight turn pale. The combatants could hardly see each other from one end of the street to the other, short
as it was.
This obscurity, which had probably been desired and calculated on by the commanders who were to direct the
assault on the barricade, was useful to Gavroche.
Beneath the folds of this veil of smoke, and thanks to his small size, he could advance tolerably far into the
street without being seen. He rifled the first seven or eight cartridgeboxes without much danger.
He crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket in his teeth, twisted, glided, undulated,
wound from one dead body to another, and emptied the cartridgebox or cartouche as a monkey opens a nut.
They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade, which was quite near, for fear of attracting
attention to him.
On one body, that of a corporal, he found a powderflask.
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Page No 843
"For thirst," said he, putting it in his pocket.
By dint of advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the fusillade became transparent. So that the
sharpshooters of the line ranged on the outlook behind their pavingstone dike and the sharpshooters of the
banlieue massed at the corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each other something moving through the
smoke.
At the moment when Gavroche was relieving a sergeant, who was lying near a stone doorpost, of his
cartridges, a bullet struck the body.
"Fichtre!" ejaculated Gavroche. "They are killing my dead men for me."
A second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him. A third overturned his basket.
Gavroche looked and saw that this came from the men of the banlieue.
He sprang to his feet, stood erect, with his hair flying in the wind, his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the
National Guardsmen who were firing, and sang:
"On est laid a Nanterre, "Men are ugly at Nanterre,
C'est la faute a Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Et bete a Palaiseau, And dull at Palaiseau,
C'est la faute a Rousseau." 'Tis the fault of Rousseau."
Then he picked up his basket, replaced the cartridges which had fallen from it, without missing a single one,
and, advancing towards the fusillade, set about plundering another cartridgebox. There a fourth bullet
missed him, again. Gavroche sang:
"Je ne suis pas notaire, "I am not a notary,
C'est la faute a Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Je suis un petit oiseau, I'm a little bird,
C'est la faute a Rousseau." 'Tis the fault of Rousseau."
A fifth bullet only succeeded in drawing from him a third couplet.
"Joie est mon caractere, "Joy is my character,
C'est la faute a Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Misere est mon trousseau, Misery is my trousseau,
C'est la faute a Rousseau." 'Tis the fault of Rousseau."
Thus it went on for some time.
It was a charming and terrible sight. Gavroche, though shot at, was teasing the fusillade. He had the air of
being greatly diverted. It was the sparrow pecking at the sportsmen. To each discharge he retorted with a
couplet. They aimed at him constantly, and always missed him. The National Guardsmen and the soldiers
laughed as they took aim at him. He lay down, sprang to his feet, hid in the corner of a doorway, then made a
bound, disappeared, reappeared, scampered away, returned, replied to the grapeshot with his thumb at his
nose, and, all the while, went on pillaging the cartouches, emptying the cartridgeboxes, and filling his
basket. The insurgents, panting with anxiety, followed him with their eyes. The barricade trembled; he sang.
He was not a child, he was not a man; he was a strange gaminfairy. He might have been called the
invulnerable dwarf of the fray. The bullets flew after him, he was more nimble than they. He played a fearful
game of hide and seek with death; every time that the flatnosed face of the spectre approached, the urchin
administered to it a fillip.
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Page No 844
One bullet, however, better aimed or more treacherous than the rest, finally struck the willo'thewisp of a
child. Gavroche was seen to stagger, then he sank to the earth. The whole barricade gave vent to a cry; but
there was something of Antaeus in that pygmy; for the gamin to touch the pavement is the same as for the
giant to touch the earth; Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he remained in a sitting posture, a long thread
of blood streaked his face, he raised both arms in the air, glanced in the direction whence the shot had come,
and began to sing:
"Je suis tombe par terre, "I have fallen to the earth,
C'est la faute a Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Le nez dans le ruisseau, With my nose in the gutter,
C'est la faute a . . . " 'Tis the fault of . . . "
He did not finish. A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face
downward on the pavement, and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken its flight.
CHAPTER XVI. HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER
At that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg,for the gaze of the drama must be everywhere
present,two children were holding each other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other
five. The rain having soaked them, they were walking along the paths on the sunny side; the elder was
leading the younger; they were pale and ragged; they had the air of wild birds. The smaller of them said: "I
am very hungry."
The elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was leading his brother with his left hand and in his
right he carried a small stick.
They were alone in the garden. The garden was deserted, the gates had been closed by order of the police, on
account of the insurrection. The troops who had been bivouacking there had departed for the exigencies of
combat.
How did those children come there? Perhaps they had escaped from some guardhouse which stood ajar;
perhaps there was in the vicinity, at the Barriere d'Enfer; or on the Esplanade de l'Observatoire, or in the
neighboring carrefour, dominated by the pediment on which could be read: Invenerunt parvulum pannis
involutum, some mountebank's booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had, on the preceding evening,
escaped the eye of the inspectors of the garden at the hour of closing, and had passed the night in some one of
those sentryboxes where people read the papers? The fact is, they were stray lambs and they seemed free.
To be astray and to seem free is to be lost. These poor little creatures were, in fact, lost.
These two children were the same over whom Gavroche had been put to some trouble, as the reader will
recollect. Children of the Thenardiers, leased out to Magnon, attributed to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves
fallen from all these rootless branches, and swept over the ground by the wind. Their clothing, which had
been clean in Magnon's day, and which had served her as a prospectus with M. Gillenormand, had been
converted into rags.
Henceforth these beings belonged to the statistics as "Abandoned children," whom the police take note of,
collect, mislay and find again on the pavements of Paris.
It required the disturbance of a day like that to account for these miserable little creatures being in that
garden. If the superintendents had caught sight of them, they would have driven such rags forth. Poor little
things do not enter public gardens; still, people should reflect that, as children, they have a right to flowers.
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These children were there, thanks to the locked gates. They were there contrary to the regulations. They had
slipped into the garden and there they remained. Closed gates do not dismiss the inspectors, oversight is
supposed to continue, but it grows slack and reposes; and the inspectors, moved by the public anxiety and
more occupied with the outside than the inside, no longer glanced into the garden, and had not seen the two
delinquents.
It had rained the night before, and even a little in the morning. But in June, showers do not count for much.
An hour after a storm, it can hardly be seen that the beautiful blonde day has wept. The earth, in summer, is
as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice, the light of full noonday is, so to speak,
poignant. It takes everything. It applies itself to the earth, and superposes itself with a sort of suction. One
would say that the sun was thirsty. A shower is but a glass of water; a rainstorm is instantly drunk up. In the
morning everything was dripping, in the afternoon everything is powdered over.
Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is
warm freshness. The gardens and meadows, having water at their roots, and sun in their flowers, become
perfumingpans of incense, and smoke with all their odors at once. Everything smiles, sings and offers itself.
One feels gently intoxicated. The springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man to have patience.
There are beings who demand nothing further; mortals, who, having the azure of heaven, say: "It is enough!"
dreamers absorbed in the wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of nature, indifferent to good and evil,
contemplators of cosmos and radiantly forgetful of man, who do not understand how people can occupy
themselves with the hunger of these, and the thirst of those, with the nudity of the poor in winter, with the
lymphatic curvature of the little spinal column, with the pallet, the attic, the dungeon, and the rags of
shivering young girls, when they can dream beneath the trees; peaceful and terrible spirits they, and pitilessly
satisfied. Strange to say, the infinite suffices them. That great need of man, the finite, which admits of
embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. The
indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them.
Provided that they are face to face with immensity, they smile. Joy never, ecstasy forever. Their life lies in
surrendering their personality in contemplation. The history of humanity is for them only a detailed plan. All
is not there; the true All remains without; what is the use of busying oneself over that detail, man? Man
suffers, that is quite possible; but look at Aldebaran rising! The mother has no more milk, the newborn babe
is dying. I know nothing about that, but just look at this wonderful rosette which a slice of woodcells of the
pine presents under the microscope! Compare the most beautiful Mechlin lace to that if you can! These
thinkers forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such a point that it prevents their seeing the weeping
child. God eclipses their souls. This is a family of minds which are, at once, great and petty. Horace was one
of them; so was Goethe. La Fontaine perhaps; magnificent egoists of the infinite, tranquil spectators of
sorrow, who do not behold Nero if the weather be fair, for whom the sun conceals the funeral pile, who
would look on at an execution by the guillotine in the search for an effect of light, who hear neither the cry
nor the sob, nor the death rattle, nor the alarm peal, for whom everything is well, since there is a month of
May, who, so long as there are clouds of purple and gold above their heads, declare themselves content, and
who are determined to be happy until the radiance of the stars and the songs of the birds are exhausted.
These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who
does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at
once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.
The indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some, a superior philosophy. That may be; but in this
superiority there is some infirmity. One may be immortal and yet limp: witness Vulcan. One may be more
than man and less than man. There is incomplete immensity in nature. Who knows whether the sun is not a
blind man?
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But then, what? In whom can we trust? Solem quis dicere falsum audeat? Who shall dare to say that the sun
is false? Thus certain geniuses, themselves, certain VeryLofty mortals, manstars, may be mistaken? That
which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith, that which sends down so much light on the earth,
sees but little, sees badly, sees not at all? Is not this a desperate state of things? No. But what is there, then,
above the sun? The god.
On the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o'clock in the morning, the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated,
was charming. The quincunxes and flowerbeds shed forth balm and dazzling beauty into the sunlight. The
branches, wild with the brilliant glow of midday, seemed endeavoring to embrace. In the sycamores there was
an uproar of linnets, sparrows triumphed, woodpeckers climbed along the chestnut trees, administering little
pecks on the bark. The flowerbeds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies; the most august of perfumes
is that which emanates from whiteness. The peppery odor of the carnations was perceptible. The old crows of
Marie de Medici were amorous in the tall trees. The sun gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the
tulips, which are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers. All around the banks of tulips the
bees, the sparks of these flameflowers, hummed. All was grace and gayety, even the impending rain; this
relapse, by which the lilies of the valley and the honeysuckles were destined to profit, had nothing disturbing
about it; the swallows indulged in the charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness;
life smelled good; all nature exhaled candor, help, assistance, paternity, caress, dawn. The thoughts which fell
from heaven were as sweet as the tiny hand of a baby when one kisses it.
The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow pierced with light; these goddesses were all
tattered with sunlight; rays hung from them on all sides. Around the great fountain, the earth was already
dried up to the point of being burnt. There was sufficient breeze to raise little insurrections of dust here and
there. A few yellow leaves, left over from the autumn, chased each other merrily, and seemed to be playing
tricks on each other.
This abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring about it. Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed;
one was conscious, beneath creation, of the enormous size of the source; in all these breaths permeated with
love, in this interchange of reverberations and reflections, in this marvellous expenditure of rays, in this
infinite outpouring of liquid gold, one felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and, behind this splendor as
behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that millionaire of stars.
Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks to the rain, there was not a grain of ashes. The
clumps of blossoms had just been bathed; every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish, which springs from the
earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. This magnificence was cleanly. The grand silence of happy
nature filled the garden. A celestial silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of music, the cooing of
nests, the buzzing of swarms, the flutterings of the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in one
gracious whole; the entrances and exits of spring took place in proper order; the lilacs ended; the jasmines
began; some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time; the vanguard of the red June
butterflies fraternized with the rearguard of the white butterflies of May. The plantain trees were getting
their new skins. The breeze hollowed out undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chestnuttrees. It
was splendid. A veteran from the neighboring barracks, who was gazing through the fence, said: "Here is the
Spring presenting arms and in full uniform."
All nature was breakfasting; creation was at table; this was its hour; the great blue cloth was spread in the
sky, and the great green cloth on earth; the sun lighted it all up brilliantly. God was serving the universal
repast. Each creature had his pasture or his mess. The ringdove found his hempseed, the chaffinch found
his millet, the goldfinch found chickweed, the redbreast found worms, the green finch found flies, the fly
found infusoriae, the bee found flowers. They ate each other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil
mixed with good; but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach.
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The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity of the grand fountain, and, rather bewildered by
all this light, they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor and the weak in the presence of even
impersonal magnificence; and they kept behind the swans' hutch.
Here and there, at intervals, when the wind blew, shouts, clamor, a sort of tumultuous death rattle, which was
the firing, and dull blows, which were discharges of cannon, struck the ear confusedly. Smoke hung over the
roofs in the direction of the Halles. A bell, which had the air of an appeal, was ringing in the distance.
These children did not appear to notice these noises. The little one repeated from time to time: "I am hungry."
Almost at the same instant with the children, another couple approached the great basin. They consisted of a
goodman, about fifty years of age, who was leading by the hand a little fellow of six. No doubt, a father and
his son. The little man of six had a big brioche.
At that epoch, certain houses abutting on the river, in the Rues Madame and d'Enfer, had keys to the
Luxembourg garden, of which the lodgers enjoyed the use when the gates were shut, a privilege which was
suppressed later on. This father and son came from one of these houses, no doubt.
The two poor little creatures watched "that gentleman" approaching, and hid themselves a little more
thoroughly.
He was a bourgeois. The same person, perhaps, whom Marius had one day heard, through his love fever, near
the same grand basin, counselling his son "to avoid excesses." He had an affable and haughty air, and a
mouth which was always smiling, since it did not shut. This mechanical smile, produced by too much jaw
and too little skin, shows the teeth rather than the soul. The child, with his brioche, which he had bitten into
but had not finished eating, seemed satiated. The child was dressed as a National Guardsman, owing to the
insurrection, and the father had remained clad as a bourgeois out of prudence.
Father and son halted near the fountain where two swans were sporting. This bourgeois appeared to cherish a
special admiration for the swans. He resembled them in this sense, that he walked like them.
For the moment, the swans were swimming, which is their principal talent, and they were superb.
If the two poor little beings had listened and if they had been of an age to understand, they might have
gathered the words of this grave man. The father was saying to his son:
"The sage lives content with little. Look at me, my son. I do not love pomp. I am never seen in clothes decked
with gold lace and stones; I leave that false splendor to badly organized souls."
Here the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction of the Halles burst out with fresh force of bell and
uproar.
"What is that?" inquired the child.
The father replied:
"It is the Saturnalia."
All at once, he caught sight of the two little ragged boys behind the green swanhutch.
"There is the beginning," said he.
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And, after a pause, he added:
"Anarchy is entering this garden."
In the meanwhile, his son took a bite of his brioche, spit it out, and, suddenly burst out crying.
"What are you crying about?" demanded his father.
"I am not hungry any more," said the child.
The father's smile became more accentuated.
"One does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake."
"My cake tires me. It is stale."
"Don't you want any more of it?"
"No."
The father pointed to the swans.
"Throw it to those palmipeds."
The child hesitated. A person may not want any more of his cake; but that is no reason for giving it away.
The father went on:
"Be humane. You must have compassion on animals."
And, taking the cake from his son, he flung it into the basin.
The cake fell very near the edge.
The swans were far away, in the centre of the basin, and busy with some prey. They had seen neither the
bourgeois nor the brioche.
The bourgeois, feeling that the cake was in danger of being wasted, and moved by this useless shipwreck,
entered upon a telegraphic agitation, which finally attracted the attention of the swans.
They perceived something floating, steered for the edge like ships, as they are, and slowly directed their
course toward the brioche, with the stupid majesty which befits white creatures.
"The swans [cygnes] understand signs [signes]," said the bourgeois, delighted to make a jest.
At that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent another sudden increase. This time it was sinister.
There are some gusts of wind which speak more distinctly than others. The one which was blowing at that
moment brought clearly defined drumbeats, clamors, platoon firing, and the dismal replies of the tocsin and
the cannon. This coincided with a black cloud which suddenly veiled the sun.
The swans had not yet reached the brioche.
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"Let us return home," said the father, "they are attacking the Tuileries."
He grasped his son's hand again. Then he continued:
"From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the distance which separates Royalty from the peerage;
that is not far. Shots will soon rain down."
He glanced at the cloud.
"Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky is joining in; the younger branch is condemned.
Let us return home quickly."
"I should like to see the swans eat the brioche," said the child.
The father replied:
"That would be imprudent."
And he led his little bourgeois away.
The son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward the basin until a corner of the quincunxes
concealed it from him.
In the meanwhile, the two little waifs had approached the brioche at the same time as the swans. It was
floating on the water. The smaller of them stared at the cake, the elder gazed after the retreating bourgeois.
Father and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand flight of steps near the clump of trees
on the side of the Rue Madame.
As soon as they had disappeared from view, the elder child hastily flung himself flat on his stomach on the
rounding curb of the basin, and clinging to it with his left hand, and leaning over the water, on the verge of
falling in, he stretched out his right hand with his stick towards the cake. The swans, perceiving the enemy,
made haste, and in so doing, they produced an effect of their breasts which was of service to the little fisher;
the water flowed back before the swans, and one of these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the
brioche towards the child's wand. Just as the swans came up, the stick touched the cake. The child gave it a
brisk rap, drew in the brioche, frightened away the swans, seized the cake, and sprang to his feet. The cake
was wet; but they were hungry and thirsty. The elder broke the cake into two portions, a large one and a small
one, took the small one for himself, gave the large one to his brother, and said to him:
"Ram that into your muzzle."
CHAPTER XVII. MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT
Marius dashed out of the barricade, Combeferre followed him. But he was too late. Gavroche was dead.
Combeferre brought back the basket of cartridges; Marius bore the child.
"Alas!" he thought, "that which the father had done for his father, he was requiting to the son; only,
Thenardier had brought back his father alive; he was bringing back the child dead."
When Marius reentered the redoubt with Gavroche in his arms, his face, like the child, was inundated with
blood.
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At the moment when he had stooped to lift Gavroche, a bullet had grazed his head; he had not noticed it.
Courfeyrac untied his cravat and with it bandaged Marius' brow.
They laid Gavroche on the same table with Mabeuf, and spread over the two corpses the black shawl. There
was enough of it for both the old man and the child.
Combeferre distributed the cartridges from the basket which he had brought in.
This gave each man fifteen rounds to fire.
Jean Valjean was still in the same place, motionless on his stone post. When Combeferre offered him his
fifteen cartridges, he shook his head.
"Here's a rare eccentric," said Combeferre in a low voice to Enjolras. "He finds a way of not fighting in this
barricade."
"Which does not prevent him from defending it," responded Enjolras.
"Heroism has its originals," resumed Combeferre.
And Courfeyrac, who had overheard, added:
"He is another sort from Father Mabeuf."
One thing which must be noted is, that the fire which was battering the barricade hardly disturbed the interior.
Those who have never traversed the whirlwind of this sort of war can form no idea of the singular moments
of tranquillity mingled with these convulsions. Men go and come, they talk, they jest, they lounge. Some one
whom we know heard a combatant say to him in the midst of the grapeshot: "We are here as at a bachelor
breakfast." The redoubt of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, we repeat, seemed very calm within. All mutations and
all phases had been, or were about to be, exhausted. The position, from critical, had become menacing, and,
from menacing, was probably about to become desperate. In proportion as the situation grew gloomy, the
glow of heroism empurpled the barricade more and more. Enjolras, who was grave, dominated it, in the
attitude of a young Spartan sacrificing his naked sword to the sombre genius, Epidotas.
Combeferre, wearing an apron, was dressing the wounds: Bossuet and Feuilly were making cartridges with
the powderflask picked up by Gavroche on the dead corporal, and Bossuet said to Feuilly: "We are soon to
take the diligence for another planet"; Courfeyrac was disposing and arranging on some pavingstones which
he had reserved for himself near Enjolras, a complete arsenal, his swordcane, his gun, two holster pistols,
and a cudgel, with the care of a young girl setting a small dunkerque in order. Jean Valjean stared silently at
the wall opposite him. An artisan was fastening Mother Hucheloup's big straw hat on his head with a string,
"for fear of sunstroke," as he said. The young men from the Cougourde d'Aix were chatting merrily among
themselves, as though eager to speak patois for the last time. Joly, who had taken Widow Hucheloup's mirror
from the wall, was examining his tongue in it. Some combatants, having discovered a few crusts of rather
mouldy bread, in a drawer, were eagerly devouring them. Marius was disturbed with regard to what his father
was about to say to him.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE VULTURE BECOME PREY
We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. Nothing which is characteristic of that
surprising war of the streets should be omitted.
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Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we have just mentioned, the barricade, for
those who are inside it, remains, none the less, a vision.
There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of the unknown are commingled with fierce
flashes, revolutions are sphinxes, and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed a
dream.
The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed out in the case of Marius, and we shall
see the consequences; they are both more and less than life. On emerging from a barricade, one no longer
knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one knows it not. One has been surrounded with
conflicting ideas which had human faces; one's head has been in the light of the future. There were corpses
lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One
has lived in death. Shadows have passed by. What were they?
One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a deafening horror; there was also a frightful
silence; there were open mouths which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace; one was in
the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched the sinister ooze of unknown depths;
one stares at something red on one's finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.
Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock striking the hour became audible.
"It is midday," said Combeferre.
The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras sprang to his feet, and from the summit of the
barricade hurled this thundering shout:
"Carry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the roofs with them. Half the men to their guns, the
other half to the pavingstones. There is not a minute to be lost."
A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made their appearance in battle array at the end of
the street.
This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The attacking column, evidently; the sappers
charged with the demolition of the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.
They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which M. ClermontTonnerre, in 1822, called "the tug of
war."
Enjolras' order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar to ships and barricades, the only two
scenes of combat where escape is impossible. In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones which Enjolras
had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been carried up to the first floor and the attic, and before a
second minute had elapsed, these stones, artistically set one upon the other, walled up the sashwindow on
the first floor and the windows in the roof to half their height. A few loopholes carefully planned by Feuilly,
the principal architect, allowed of the passage of the gunbarrels. This armament of the windows could be
effected all the more easily since the firing of grapeshot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging
ball against the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if possible, a breach for the assault.
When the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Enjolras had the bottles which he had set under
the table where Mabeuf lay, carried to the first floor.
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"Who is to drink that?" Bossuet asked him.
"They," replied Enjolras.
Then they barricaded the window below, and held in readiness the iron crossbars which served to secure the
door of the wineshop at night.
The fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart, the wineshop was the dungeon. With the stones
which remained they stopped up the outlet.
As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing of their ammunition, and as the assailants
know this, the assailants combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure, expose themselves to fire
prematurely, though in appearance more than in reality, and take their ease. The preparations for attack are
always made with a certain methodical deliberation; after which, the lightning strikes.
This deliberation permitted Enjolras to take a review of everything and to perfect everything. He felt that,
since such men were to die, their death ought to be a masterpiece.
He said to Marius: "We are the two leaders. I will give the last orders inside. Do you remain outside and
observe."
Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade.
Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance, as the reader will remember, nailed up.
"No splashing of the wounded," he said.
He issued his final orders in the taproom in a curt, but profoundly tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied
in the name of all.
"On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase. Have you them?"
"Yes," said Feuilly.
"How many?"
"Two axes and a poleaxe."
"That is good. There are now twentysix combatants of us on foot. How many guns are there?"
"Thirtyfour."
"Eight too many. Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at hand. Swords and pistols in your belts.
Twenty men to the barricade. Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first floor to fire
on the assailants through the loopholes in the stones. Let not a single worker remain inactive here. Presently,
when the drum beats the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. The first to arrive will have
the best places."
These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:
"I am not forgetting you."
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And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:
"The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy."
"Here?" inquired a voice.
"No, let us not mix their corpses with our own. The little barricade of the Mondetour lane can be scaled. It is
only four feet high. The man is well pinioned. He shall be taken thither and put to death."
There was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Enjolras, it was Javert. Here Jean Valjean
made his appearance.
He had been lost among the group of insurgents. He stepped forth and said to Enjolras:
"You are the commander?"
"Yes."
"You thanked me a while ago."
"In the name of the Republic. The barricade has two saviors, Marius Pontmercy and yourself."
"Do you think that I deserve a recompense?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I request one."
"What is it?"
"That I may blow that man's brains out."
Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible movement, and said:
"That is just."
As for Enjolras, he had begun to reload his rifle; he cut his eyes about him:
"No objections."
And he turned to Jean Valjean:
"Take the spy."
Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by seating himself on the end of the table. He seized the
pistol, and a faint click announced that he had cocked it.
Almost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became audible.
"Take care!" shouted Marius from the top of the barricade.
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Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to him, and gazing intently at the
insurgents, he said to them:
"You are in no better case than I am."
"All out!" shouted Enjolras.
The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went, received in the back,may we be permitted the
expression, this sally of Javert's:
"We shall meet again shortly!"
CHAPTER XIX. JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE
When Jean Valjean was left alone with Javert, he untied the rope which fastened the prisoner across the
middle of the body, and the knot of which was under the table. After this he made him a sign to rise.
Javert obeyed with that indefinable smile in which the supremacy of enchained authority is condensed.
Jean Valjean took Javert by the martingale, as one would take a beast of burden by the breastband, and,
dragging the latter after him, emerged from the wineshop slowly, because Javert, with his impeded limbs,
could take only very short steps.
Jean Valjean had the pistol in his hand.
In this manner they crossed the inner trapezium of the barricade. The insurgents, all intent on the attack,
which was imminent, had their backs turned to these two.
Marius alone, stationed on one side, at the extreme left of the barricade, saw them pass. This group of victim
and executioner was illuminated by the sepulchral light which he bore in his own soul.
Jean Valjean with some difficulty, but without relaxing his hold for a single instant, made Javert, pinioned as
he was, scale the little entrenchment in the Mondetour lane.
When they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the lane. No one saw them. Among the
heap they could distinguish a livid face, streaming hair, a pierced hand and the half nude breast of a woman.
It was Eponine. The corner of the houses hid them from the insurgents. The corpses carried away from the
barricade formed a terrible pile a few paces distant.
Javert gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone:
"It strikes me that I know that girl."
Then he turned to Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean thrust the pistol under his arm and fixed on Javert a look which it required no words to interpret:
"Javert, it is I."
Javert replied:
"Take your revenge."
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Jean Valjean drew from his pocket a knife, and opened it.
"A claspknife!" exclaimed Javert, "you are right. That suits you better."
Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck, then he cut the cords on his wrists, then,
stooping down, he cut the cord on his feet; and, straightening himself up, he said to him:
"You are free."
Javert was not easily astonished. Still, master of himself though he was, he could not repress a start. He
remained openmouthed and motionless.
Jean Valjean continued:
"I do not think that I shall escape from this place. But if, by chance, I do, I live, under the name of
Fauchelevent, in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."
Javert snarled like a tiger, which made him half open one corner of his mouth, and he muttered between his
teeth:
"Have a care."
"Go," said Jean Valjean.
Javert began again:
"Thou saidst Fauchelevent, Rue de l'Homme Arme?"
"Number 7."
Javert repeated in a low voice:"Number 7."
He buttoned up his coat once more, resumed the military stiffness between his shoulders, made a half turn,
folded his arms and, supporting his chin on one of his hands, he set out in the direction of the Halles. Jean
Valjean followed him with his eyes:
A few minutes later, Javert turned round and shouted to Jean Valjean:
"You annoy me. Kill me, rather."
Javert himself did not notice that he no longer addressed Jean Valjean as "thou."
"Be off with you," said Jean Valjean.
Javert retreated slowly. A moment later he turned the corner of the Rue des Precheurs.
When Javert had disappeared, Jean Valjean fired his pistol in the air.
Then he returned to the barricade and said:
"It is done."
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In the meanwhile, this is what had taken place.
Marius, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not, up to that time, taken a good look at the
pinioned spy in the dark background of the taproom.
When he beheld him in broad daylight, striding over the barricade in order to proceed to his death, he
recognized him. Something suddenly recurred to his mind. He recalled the inspector of the Rue de Pontoise,
and the two pistols which the latter had handed to him and which he, Marius, had used in this very barricade,
and not only did he recall his face, but his name as well.
This recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas.
It was not an affirmation that he made, but a question which he put to himself:
"Is not that the inspector of police who told me that his name was Javert?"
Perhaps there was still time to intervene in behalf of that man. But, in the first place, he must know whether
this was Javert.
Marius called to Enjolras, who had just stationed himself at the other extremity of the barricade:
"Enjolras!"
"What?"
"What is the name of yonder man?"
"What man?"
"The police agent. Do you know his name?"
"Of course. He told us."
"What is it?"
"Javert."
Marius sprang to his feet.
At that moment, they heard the report of the pistol.
Jean Valjean reappeared and cried: "It is done."
A gloomy chill traversed Marius' heart.
CHAPTER XX. THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE
NOT IN THE WRONG
The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.
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Everything contributed to its tragic majesty at that supreme moment; a thousand mysterious crashes in the air,
the breath of armed masses set in movement in the streets which were not visible, the intermittent gallop of
cavalry, the heavy shock of artillery on the march, the firing by squads, and the cannonades crossing each
other in the labyrinth of Paris, the smokes of battle mounting all gilded above the roofs, indescribable and
vaguely terrible cries, lightnings of menace everywhere, the tocsin of SaintMerry, which now had the
accents of a sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of the sky filled with sun and clouds, the beauty of
the day, and the alarming silence of the houses.
For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls;
ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed.
In those days, so different from those in which we live, when the hour was come, when the people wished to
put an end to a situation, which had lasted too long, with a charter granted or with a legal country, when
universal wrath was diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented to the tearing up of the pavements,
when insurrection made the bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then the inhabitant,
thoroughly penetrated with the revolt, so to speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant, and the house
fraternized with the improvised fortress which rested on it. When the situation was not ripe, when the
insurrection was not decidedly admitted, when the masses disowned the movement, all was over with the
combatants, the city was changed into a desert around the revolt, souls grew chilled, refuges were nailed up,
and the street turned into a defile to help the army to take the barricade.
A people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk more quickly than it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries
to force its hand! A people does not let itself go at random. Then it abandons the insurrection to itself. The
insurgents become noxious, infected with the plague. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade
is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at
you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses. They seem dead, they are living. Life which
is, as it were, suspended there, persists there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty hours, but no
one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock, people go and come, go to bed and rise again; they are a
family party there; there they eat and drink; they are afraid, a terrible thing! Fear excuses this fearful lack of
hospitality; terror is mixed with it, an extenuating circumstance. Sometimes, even, and this has been actually
seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence does into rage; hence this wise saying:
"The enraged moderates." There are outbursts of supreme terror, whence springs wrath like a mournful
smoke."What do these people want? What have they come there to do? Let them get out of the scrape. So
much the worse for them. It is their fault. They are only getting what they deserve. It does not concern us.
Here is our poor street all riddled with balls. They are a pack of rascals. Above all things, don't open the
door."And the house assumes the air of a tomb. The insurgent is in the deaththroes in front of that house;
he sees the grapeshot and naked swords drawing near; if he cries, he knows that they are listening to him,
and that no one will come; there stand walls which might protect him, there are men who might save him;
and these walls have ears of flesh, and these men have bowels of stone.
Whom shall he reproach?
No one and every one.
The incomplete times in which we live.
It is always at its own risk and peril that Utopia is converted into revolution, and from philosophical protest
becomes an armed protest, and from Minerva turns to Pallas.
The Utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt knows what awaits it; it almost always comes too
soon. Then it becomes resigned, and stoically accepts catastrophe in lieu of triumph. It serves those who deny
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it without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates them, and its magnanimity consists in
consenting to abandonment. It is indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards ingratitude.
Is this ingratitude, however?
Yes, from the point of view of the human race.
No, from the point of view of the individual.
Progress is man's mode of existence. The general life of the human race is called Progress, the collective
stride of the human race is called Progress. Progress advances; it makes the great human and terrestrial
journey towards the celestial and the divine; it has its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop, it has
its stations where it meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its horizon, it
has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow
resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering
Progress.
"God is dead, perhaps," said Gerard de Nerval one day to the writer of these lines, confounding progress with
God, and taking the interruption of movement for the death of Being.
He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly awakes, and, in short, we may say that it marches on,
even when it is asleep, for it has increased in size. When we behold it erect once more, we find it taller. To be
always peaceful does not depend on progress any more than it does on the stream; erect no barriers, cast in no
boulders; obstacles make water froth and humanity boil. Hence arise troubles; but after these troubles, we
recognize the fact that ground has been gained. Until order, which is nothing else than universal peace, has
been established, until harmony and unity reign, progress will have revolutions as its haltingplaces.
What, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it; the permanent life of the peoples.
Now, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the
human race.
Let us admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture,
stipulate for his interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism; momentary life has its
rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn
over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have
their turn later on."I exist," murmurs that some one whose name is All. "I am young and in love, I am old
and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to
lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire
to live, leave me in peace."Hence, at certain hours, a profound cold broods over the magnanimous
vanguard of the human race.
Utopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere when it makes war. It, the truth of tomorrow,
borrows its mode of procedure, battle, from the lie of yesterday. It, the future, behaves like the past. It, pure
idea, becomes a deed of violence. It complicates its heroism with a violence for which it is just that it should
be held to answer; a violence of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for which it is fatally
punished. The Utopia, insurrection, fights with the old military code in its fist; it shoots spies, it executes
traitors; it suppresses living beings and flings them into unknown darkness. It makes use of death, a serious
matter. It seems as though Utopia had no longer any faith in radiance, its irresistible and incorruptible force.
It strikes with the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with the one
is wounded with the other.
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Having made this reservation, and made it with all severity, it is impossible for us not to admire, whether they
succeed or not, those the glorious combatants of the future, the confessors of Utopia. Even when they
miscarry, they are worthy of veneration; and it is, perhaps, in failure, that they possess the most majesty.
Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people; but a heroic defeat merits their
tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom to
success. John Brown is greater than Washington, and Pisacane is greater than Garibaldi.
It certainly is necessary that some one should take the part of the vanquished.
We are unjust towards these great men who attempt the future, when they fail.
Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are
incriminated, their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are
reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of
griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order
therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them: "You are tearing up the pavements of
hell!" They might reply: "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions."
The best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution. In short, let us agree that when we behold the pavement, we
think of the bear, and it is a good will which renders society uneasy. But it depends on society to save itself, it
is to its own good will that we make our appeal. No violent remedy is necessary. To study evil amiably, to
prove its existence, then to cure it. It is to this that we invite it.
However that may be, even when fallen, above all when fallen, these men, who at every point of the universe,
with their eyes fixed on France, are striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are
august; they give their life a free offering to progress; they accomplish the will of providence; they perform a
religious act. At the appointed hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor who answers to his cue, in
obedience to the divine stagemanager, they enter the tomb. And this hopeless combat, this stoical
disappearance they accept in order to bring about the supreme and universal consequences, the magnificent
and irresistibly human movement begun on the 14th of July, 1789; these soldiers are priests. The French
revolution is an act of God.
Moreover, there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to the distinctions already pointed out in another
chapter,there are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused
revolutions, which are called riots.
An insurrection which breaks out, is an idea which is passing its examination before the people. If the people
lets fall a black ball, the idea is dried fruit; the insurrection is a mere skirmish.
Waging war at every summons and every time that Utopia desires it, is not the thing for the peoples. Nations
have not always and at every hour the temperament of heroes and martyrs.
They are positive. A priori, insurrection is repugnant to them, in the first place, because it often results in a
catastrophe, in the second place, because it always has an abstraction as its point of departure.
Because, and this is a noble thing, it is always for the ideal, and for the ideal alone, that those who sacrifice
themselves do thus sacrifice themselves. An insurrection is an enthusiasm. Enthusiasm may wax wroth;
hence the appeal to arms. But every insurrection, which aims at a government or a regime, aims higher. Thus,
for instance, and we insist upon it, what the chiefs of the insurrection of 1832, and, in particular, the young
enthusiasts of the Rue de la Chanvrerie were combating, was not precisely Louis Philippe. The majority of
them, when talking freely, did justice to this king who stood midway between monarchy and revolution; no
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one hated him. But they attacked the younger branch of the divine right in Louis Philippe as they had
attacked its elder branch in Charles X.; and that which they wished to overturn in overturning royalty in
France, was, as we have explained, the usurpation of man over man, and of privilege over right in the entire
universe. Paris without a king has as result the world without despots. This is the manner in which they
reasoned. Their aim was distant no doubt, vague perhaps, and it retreated in the face of their efforts; but it
was great.
Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed,
but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw ourselves into these
tragic affairs and become intoxicated with that which we are about to do. Who knows? We may succeed. We
are few in number, we have a whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right, the natural law, the
sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth, and in case of
need, we die like the three hundred Spartans. We do not think of Don Quixote but of Leonidas. And we
march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw back, and we rush onwards with head held low,
cherishing as our hope an unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again, the
aggrandizement of the human race, universal deliverance; and in the event of the worst, Thermopylae.
These passages of arms for the sake of progress often suffer shipwreck, and we have just explained why. The
crowd is restive in the presence of the impulses of paladins. Heavy masses, the multitudes which are fragile
because of their very weight, fear adventures; and there is a touch of adventure in the ideal.
Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental
are in the way. Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.
The grandeur and beauty of France lies in this, that she takes less from the stomach than other nations: she
more easily knots the rope about her loins. She is the first awake, the last asleep. She marches forwards. She
is a seeker.
This arises from the fact that she is an artist.
The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of
the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch
of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on
to France. Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! Vitaelampada tradunt.
It is an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is the element of its progress. The amount of civilization is
measured by the quantity of imagination. Only, a civilizing people should remain a manly people. Corinth,
yes; Sybaris, no. Whoever becomes effeminate makes himself a bastard. He must be neither a dilettante nor a
virtuoso: but he must be artistic. In the matter of civilization, he must not refine, but he must sublime. On this
condition, one gives to the human race the pattern of the ideal.
The modern ideal has its type in art, and its means is science. It is through science that it will realize that
august vision of the poets, the socially beautiful. Eden will be reconstructed by A+B. At the point which
civilization has now reached, the exact is a necessary element of the splendid, and the artistic sentiment is not
only served, but completed by the scientific organ; dreams must be calculated. Art, which is the conqueror,
should have for support science, which is the walker; the solidity of the creature which is ridden is of
importance. The modern spirit is the genius of Greece with the genius of India as its vehicle; Alexander on
the elephant.
Races which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucre are unfit to guide civilization. Genuflection
before the idol or before money wastes away the muscles which walk and the will which advances. Hieratic
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or mercantile absorption lessens a people's power of radiance, lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and
deprives it of that intelligence, at once both human and divine of the universal goal, which makes
missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal; Carthage has no ideal. Athens and Rome have and keep,
throughout all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of civilization.
France is in the same quality of race as Greece and Italy. She is Athenian in the matter of beauty, and Roman
in her greatness. Moreover, she is good. She gives herself. Oftener than is the case with other races, is she in
the humor for selfdevotion and sacrifice. Only, this humor seizes upon her, and again abandons her. And
therein lies the great peril for those who run when she desires only to walk, or who walk on when she desires
to halt. France has her relapses into materialism, and, at certain instants, the ideas which obstruct that sublime
brain have no longer anything which recalls French greatness and are of the dimensions of a Missouri or a
South Carolina. What is to be done in such a case? The giantess plays at being a dwarf; immense France has
her freaks of pettiness. That is all.
To this there is nothing to say. Peoples, like planets, possess the right to an eclipse. And all is well, provided
that the light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. Dawn and resurrection are
synonymous. The reappearance of the light is identical with the persistence of the _I_.
Let us state these facts calmly. Death on the barricade or the tomb in exile, is an acceptable occasion for
devotion. The real name of devotion is disinterestedness. Let the abandoned allow themselves to be
abandoned, let the exiled allow themselves to be exiled, and let us confine ourselves to entreating great
nations not to retreat too far, when they do retreat. One must not push too far in descent under pretext of a
return to reason.
Matter exists, the minute exists, interest exists, the stomach exists; but the stomach must not be the sole
wisdom. The life of the moment has its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. Alas! the fact
that one is mounted does not preclude a fall. This can be seen in history more frequently than is desirable: A
nation is great, it tastes the ideal, then it bites the mire, and finds it good; and if it be asked how it happens
that it has abandoned Socrates for Falstaff, it replies: "Because I love statesmen."
One word more before returning to our subject, the conflict.
A battle like the one which we are engaged in describing is nothing else than a convulsion towards the ideal.
Progress trammelled is sickly, and is subject to these tragic epilepsies. With that malady of progress, civil
war, we have been obliged to come in contact in our passage. This is one of the fatal phases, at once act and
entr'acte of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is Progress.
Progress!
The cry to which we frequently give utterance is our whole thought; and, at the point of this drama which we
have now reached, the idea which it contains having still more than one trial to undergo, it is, perhaps,
permitted to us, if not to lift the veil from it, to at least allow its light to shine through.
The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in
detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust
to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from
nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the
angel at the end.
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CHAPTER XXI. THE HEROES
All at once, the drum beat the charge.
The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been approached
silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad daylight, in that widening street, surprise was decidedly impossible, rude
force had, moreover, been unmasked, the cannon had begun the roar, the army hurled itself on the barricade.
Fury now became skill. A powerful detachment of infantry of the line, broken at regular intervals, by the
National Guard and the Municipal Guard on foot, and supported by serried masses which could be heard
though not seen, debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating, trumpets braying, bayonets levelled,
the sappers at their head, and, imperturbable under the projectiles, charged straight for the barricade with the
weight of a brazen beam against a wall.
The wall held firm.
The insurgents fired impetuously. The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was
so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion
shakes off the dogs, and it was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam, to reappear, a
moment later, beetling, black and formidable.
The column, forced to retreat, remained massed in the street, unprotected but terrible, and replied to the
redoubt with a terrible discharge of musketry. Any one who has seen fireworks will recall the sheaf formed of
interlacing lightnings which is called a bouquet. Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer
vertical but horizontal, bearing a bullet, buckshot or a biscaien at the tip of each one of its jets of flame, and
picking off dead men one after another from its clusters of lightning. The barricade was underneath it.
On both sides, the resolution was equal. The bravery exhibited there was almost barbarous and was
complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity which began by the sacrifice of self.
This was the epoch when a National Guardsman fought like a Zouave. The troop wished to make an end of it,
insurrection was desirous of fighting. The acceptance of the death agony in the flower of youth and in the
flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. In this fray, each one underwent the broadening growth of the
death hour. The street was strewn with corpses.
The barricade had Enjolras at one of its extremities and Marius at the other. Enjolras, who carried the whole
barricade in his head, reserved and sheltered himself; three soldiers fell, one after the other, under his
embrasure, without having even seen him; Marius fought unprotected. He made himself a target. He stood
with more than half his body above the breastworks. There is no more violent prodigal than the avaricious
man who takes the bit in his teeth; there is no man more terrible in action than a dreamer. Marius was
formidable and pensive. In battle he was as in a dream. One would have pronounced him a phantom engaged
in firing a gun.
The insurgents' cartridges were giving out; but not their sarcasms. In this whirlwind of the sepulchre in which
they stood, they laughed.
Courfeyrac was bareheaded.
"What have you done with your hat?" Bossuet asked him.
Courfeyrac replied:
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"They have finally taken it away from me with cannonballs."
Or they uttered haughty comments.
"Can any one understand," exclaimed Feuilly bitterly, "those men,[and he cited names, wellknown
names, even celebrated names, some belonging to the old army]who had promised to join us, and taken an
oath to aid us, and who had pledged their honor to it, and who are our generals, and who abandon us!"
And Combeferre restricted himself to replying with a grave smile.
"There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance."
The interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said that there had been a
snowstorm.
The assailants had numbers in their favor; the insurgents had position. They were at the top of a wall, and
they thundered pointblank upon the soldiers tripping over the dead and wounded and entangled in the
escarpment. This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations
where a handful of men hold a legion in check. Nevertheless, the attacking column, constantly recruited and
enlarged under the shower of bullets, drew inexorably nearer, and now, little by little, step by step, but surely,
the army closed in around the barricade as the vice grasps the winepress.
One assault followed another. The horror of the situation kept increasing.
Then there burst forth on that heap of pavingstones, in that Rue de la Chanvrerie, a battle worthy of a wall
of Troy. These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours, who
had not slept, who had but a few more rounds to fire, who were fumbling in their pockets which had been
emptied of cartridges, nearly all of whom were wounded, with head or arm bandaged with black and
bloodstained linen, with holes in their clothes from which the blood trickled, and who were hardly armed
with poor guns and notched swords, became Titans. The barricade was ten times attacked, approached,
assailed, scaled, and never captured.
In order to form an idea of this struggle, it is necessary to imagine fire set to a throng of terrible courages, and
then to gaze at the conflagration. It was not a combat, it was the interior of a furnace; there mouths breathed
the flame; there countenances were extraordinary. The human form seemed impossible there, the combatants
flamed forth there, and it was formidable to behold the going and coming in that red glow of those
salamanders of the fray.
The successive and simultaneous scenes of this grand slaughter we renounce all attempts at depicting. The
epic alone has the right to fill twelve thousand verses with a battle.
One would have pronounced this that hell of Brahmanism, the most redoubtable of the seventeen abysses,
which the Veda calls the Forest of Swords.
They fought hand to hand, foot to foot, with pistol shots, with blows of the sword, with their fists, at a
distance, close at hand, from above, from below, from everywhere, from the roofs of the houses, from the
windows of the wineshop, from the cellar windows, whither some had crawled. They were one against
sixty.
The facade of Corinthe, half demolished, was hideous. The window, tattooed with grapeshot, had lost glass
and frame and was nothing now but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with pavingstones.
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Bossuet was killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed; Combeferre, transfixed by three blows from a
bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance
to heaven when he expired.
Marius, still fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in the head, that his countenance disappeared
beneath the blood, and one would have said that his face was covered with a red kerchief.
Enjolras alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he reached out his hands to right and left
and an insurgent thrust some arm or other into his fist. All he had left was the stumps of four swords; one
more than Francois I. at Marignan. Homer says: "Diomedes cuts the throat of Axylus, son of Teuthranis, who
dwelt in happy Arisba; Euryalus, son of Mecistaeus, exterminates Dresos and Opheltios, Esepius, and that
Pedasus whom the naiad Abarbarea bore to the blameless Bucolion; Ulysses overthrows Pidytes of Percosius;
Antilochus, Ablerus; Polypaetes, Astyalus; Polydamas, Otos, of Cyllene; and Teucer, Aretaon. Meganthios
dies under the blows of Euripylus' pike. Agamemnon, king of the heroes, flings to earth Elatos, born in the
rocky city which is laved by the sounding river Satnois." In our old poems of exploits, Esplandian attacks the
giant marquis Swantibore with a cobbler's shoulderstick of fire, and the latter defends himself by stoning the
hero with towers which he plucks up by the roots. Our ancient mural frescoes show us the two Dukes of
Bretagne and Bourbon, armed, emblazoned and crested in warlike guise, on horseback and approaching
each other, their battleaxes in hand, masked with iron, gloved with iron, booted with iron, the one
caparisoned in ermine, the other draped in azure: Bretagne with his lion between the two horns of his crown,
Bourbon helmeted with a monster fleur de lys on his visor. But, in order to be superb, it is not necessary to
wear, like Yvon, the ducal morion, to have in the fist, like Esplandian, a living flame, or, like Phyles, father
of Polydamas, to have brought back from Ephyra a good suit of mail, a present from the king of men,
Euphetes; it suffices to give one's life for a conviction or a loyalty. This ingenuous little soldier, yesterday a
peasant of Bauce or Limousin, who prowls with his claspknife by his side, around the children's nurses in
the Luxembourg garden, this pale young student bent over a piece of anatomy or a book, a blond youth who
shaves his beard with scissors,take both of them, breathe upon them with a breath of duty, place them face
to face in the Carrefour Boucherat or in the blind alley PlancheMibray, and let the one fight for his flag, and
the other for his ideal, and let both of them imagine that they are fighting for their country; the struggle will
be colossal; and the shadow which this raw recruit and this sawbones in conflict will produce in that grand
epic field where humanity is striving, will equal the shadow cast by Megaryon, King of Lycia, tigerfilled,
crushing in his embrace the immense body of Ajax, equal to the gods.
CHAPTER XXII. FOOT TO FOOT
When there were no longer any of the leaders left alive, except Enjolras and Marius at the two extremities of
the barricade, the centre, which had so long sustained Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly and Combeferre,
gave way. The cannon, though it had not effected a practicable breach, had made a rather large hollow in the
middle of the redoubt; there, the summit of the wall had disappeared before the balls, and had crumbled
away; and the rubbish which had fallen, now inside, now outside, had, as it accumulated, formed two piles in
the nature of slopes on the two sides of the barrier, one on the inside, the other on the outside. The exterior
slope presented an inclined plane to the attack.
A final assault was there attempted, and this assault succeeded. The mass bristling with bayonets and hurled
forward at a run, came up with irresistible force, and the serried front of battle of the attacking column made
its appearance through the smoke on the crest of the battlements. This time, it was decisive. The group of
insurgents who were defending the centre retreated in confusion.
Then the gloomy love of life awoke once more in some of them. Many, finding themselves under the muzzles
of this forest of guns, did not wish to die. This is a moment when the instinct of selfpreservation emits
howls, when the beast reappears in men. They were hemmed in by the lofty, sixstory house which formed
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the background of their redoubt. This house might prove their salvation. The building was barricaded, and
walled, as it were, from top to bottom. Before the troops of the line had reached the interior of the redoubt,
there was time for a door to open and shut, the space of a flash of lightning was sufficient for that, and the
door of that house, suddenly opened a crack and closed again instantly, was life for these despairing men.
Behind this house, there were streets, possible flight, space. They set to knocking at that door with the butts
of their guns, and with kicks, shouting, calling, entreating, wringing their hands. No one opened. From the
little window on the third floor, the head of the dead man gazed down upon them.
But Enjolras and Marius, and the seven or eight rallied about them, sprang forward and protected them.
Enjolras had shouted to the soldiers: "Don't advance!" and as an officer had not obeyed, Enjolras had killed
the officer. He was now in the little inner court of the redoubt, with his back planted against the Corinthe
building, a sword in one hand, a rifle in the other, holding open the door of the wineshop which he barred
against assailants. He shouted to the desperate men:"There is but one door open; this one." And
shielding them with his body, and facing an entire battalion alone, he made them pass in behind him. All
precipitated themselves thither. Enjolras, executing with his rifle, which he now used like a cane, what
singlestick players call a "covered rose" round his head, levelled the bayonets around and in front of him,
and was the last to enter; and then ensued a horrible moment, when the soldiers tried to make their way in,
and the insurgents strove to bar them out. The door was slammed with such violence, that, as it fell back into
its frame, it showed the five fingers of a soldier who had been clinging to it, cut off and glued to the post.
Marius remained outside. A shot had just broken his collar bone, he felt that he was fainting and falling. At
that moment, with eyes already shut, he felt the shock of a vigorous hand seizing him, and the swoon in
which his senses vanished, hardly allowed him time for the thought, mingled with a last memory of
Cosette:"I am taken prisoner. I shall be shot."
Enjolras, not seeing Marius among those who had taken refuge in the wineshop, had the same idea. But they
had reached a moment when each man has not the time to meditate on his own death. Enjolras fixed the bar
across the door, and bolted it, and doublelocked it with key and chain, while those outside were battering
furiously at it, the soldiers with the butts of their muskets, the sappers with their axes. The assailants were
grouped about that door. The siege of the wineshop was now beginning.
The soldiers, we will observe, were full of wrath.
The death of the artillerysergeant had enraged them, and then, a still more melancholy circumstance. during
the few hours which had preceded the attack, it had been reported among them that the insurgents were
mutilating their prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a soldier in the wineshop. This sort of
fatal rumor is the usual accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind which, later on,
produced the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain.
When the door was barricaded, Enjolras said to the others:
"Let us sell our lives dearly."
Then he approached the table on which lay Mabeuf and Gavroche. Beneath the black cloth two straight and
rigid forms were visible, one large, the other small, and the two faces were vaguely outlined beneath the cold
folds of the shroud. A hand projected from beneath the winding sheet and hung near the floor. It was that of
the old man.
Enjolras bent down and kissed that venerable hand, just as he had kissed his brow on the preceding evening.
These were the only two kisses which he had bestowed in the course of his life.
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Let us abridge the tale. The barricade had fought like a gate of Thebes; the wineshop fought like a house of
Saragossa. These resistances are dogged. No quarter. No flag of truce possible. Men are willing to die,
provided their opponent will kill them.
When Suchet says:"Capitulate,"Palafox replies: "After the war with cannon, the war with knives."
Nothing was lacking in the capture by assault of the Hucheloup wineshop; neither pavingstones raining
from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating the soldiers by crushing them horribly, nor
shots fired from the atticwindows and the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally, when the door yielded,
the frenzied madness of extermination. The assailants, rushing into the wineshop, their feet entangled in the
panels of the door which had been beaten in and flung on the ground, found not a single combatant there. The
spiral staircase, hewn asunder with the axe, lay in the middle of the taproom, a few wounded men were just
breathing their last, every one who was not killed was on the first floor, and from there, through the hole in
the ceiling, which had formed the entrance of the stairs, a terrific fire burst forth. It was the last of their
cartridges. When they were exhausted, when these formidable men on the point of death had no longer either
powder or ball, each grasped in his hands two of the bottles which Enjolras had reserved, and of which we
have spoken, and held the scaling party in check with these frightfully fragile clubs. They were bottles of
aquafortis.
We relate these gloomy incidents of carnage as they occurred. The besieged man, alas! converts everything
into a weapon. Greek fire did not disgrace Archimedes, boiling pitch did not disgrace Bayard. All war is a
thing of terror, and there is no choice in it. The musketry of the besiegers, though confined and embarrassed
by being directed from below upwards, was deadly. The rim of the hole in the ceiling was speedily
surrounded by heads of the slain, whence dripped long, red and smoking streams, the uproar was
indescribable; a close and burning smoke almost produced night over this combat. Words are lacking to
express horror when it has reached this pitch. There were no longer men in this conflict, which was now
infernal. They were no longer giants matched with colossi. It resembled Milton and Dante rather than Homer.
Demons attacked, spectres resisted.
It was heroism become monstrous.
CHAPTER XXIII. ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK
At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase,
climbing up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink of the trapdoor, the last one
who offered resistance, a score of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter
confusion, the majority disfigured by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent, blinded by blood,
furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment on the first floor. There they found only one
man still on his feet, Enjolras. Without cartridges, without sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the
barrel of his gun whose stock he had broken over the head of those who were entering. He had placed the
billiard table between his assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room, and there, with
haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to
speedily create an empty space around him. A cry arose:
"He is the leader! It was he who slew the artilleryman. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him
remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot."
"Shoot me," said Enjolras.
And flinging away his bit of gunbarrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast.
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The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end,
the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The
menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man,
haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being,
seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His
beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful
four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was
of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I
heard called Apollo." A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: "It
seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower."
Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns.
Then a sergeant shouted:
"Take aim!"
An officer intervened.
"Wait."
And addressing Enjolras:
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.
Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the
wineshop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.
He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of "dead drunk." The hideous potion of absintheporter and
alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been
left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat
on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beerjugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid
bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannonballs,
nor the grapeshot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the
tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He seemed
to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. Many corpses were strewn
around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of
death.
Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only
augmented Grantaire's prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The sort of halt which the
tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage
going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire
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rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.
A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance
and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who
has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twentyfour hours, has no sooner opened his
eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a
sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined
importunity of realities.
Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiardtable, the soldiers whose eyes were
fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take
aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:
"Long live the Republic! I'm one of them."
Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had
no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.
He repeated: "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the
guns beside Enjolras.
"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.
This smile was not ended when the report resounded.
Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there.
Only, his head was bowed.
Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.
A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last remaining insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of
the house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice. They fought under the very roof. They flung
bodies, some of them still alive, out through the windows. Two lightinfantrymen, who tried to lift the
shattered omnibus, were slain by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was flung down from it,
with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insurgent slipped
together on the sloping slates of the roof, and, as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a
ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar. Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence.
The barricade was captured.
The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue the fugitives.
CHAPTER XXIV. PRISONER
Marius was, in fact, a prisoner.
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The hand which had seized him from behind and whose grasp he had felt at the moment of his fall and his
loss of consciousness was that of Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had taken no other part in the combat than to expose himself in it. Had it not been for him, no
one, in that supreme phase of agony, would have thought of the wounded. Thanks to him, everywhere present
in the carnage, like a providence, those who fell were picked up, transported to the taproom, and cared for.
In the intervals, he reappeared on the barricade. But nothing which could resemble a blow, an attack or even
personal defence proceeded from his hands. He held his peace and lent succor. Moreover he had received
only a few scratches. The bullets would have none of him. If suicide formed part of what he had meditated on
coming to this sepulchre, to that spot, he had not succeeded. But we doubt whether he had thought of suicide,
an irreligious act.
Jean Valjean, in the thick cloud of the combat, did not appear to see Marius; the truth is, that he never took
his eyes from the latter. When a shot laid Marius low, Jean Valjean leaped forward with the agility of a tiger,
fell upon him as on his prey, and bore him off.
The whirlwind of the attack was, at that moment, so violently concentrated upon Enjolras and upon the door
of the wineshop, that no one saw Jean Valjean sustaining the fainting Marius in his arms, traverse the
unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind the angle of the Corinthe building.
The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the street; it afforded shelter from the bullets,
the grapeshot, and all eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber which does not
burn in the midst of a conflagration, and in the midst of raging seas, beyond a promontory or at the extremity
of a blind alley of shoals, a tranquil nook. It was in this sort of fold in the interior trapezium of the barricade,
that Eponine had breathed her last.
There Jean Valjean halted, let Marius slide to the ground, placed his back against the wall, and cast his eyes
about him.
The situation was alarming.
For an instant, for two or three perhaps, this bit of wall was a shelter, but how was he to escape from this
massacre? He recalled the anguish which he had suffered in the Rue Polonceau eight years before, and in
what manner he had contrived to make his escape; it was difficult then, today it was impossible. He had
before him that deaf and implacable house, six stories in height, which appeared to be inhabited only by a
dead man leaning out of his window; he had on his right the rather low barricade, which shut off the Rue de
la Petite Truanderie; to pass this obstacle seemed easy, but beyond the crest of the barrier a line of bayonets
was visible. The troops of the line were posted on the watch behind that barricade. It was evident, that to pass
the barricade was to go in quest of the fire of the platoon, and that any head which should run the risk of
lifting itself above the top of that wall of stones would serve as a target for sixty shots. On his left he had the
field of battle. Death lurked round the corner of that wall.
What was to be done?
Only a bird could have extricated itself from this predicament.
And it was necessary to decide on the instant, to devise some expedient, to come to some decision. Fighting
was going on a few paces away; fortunately, all were raging around a single point, the door of the wineshop;
but if it should occur to one soldier, to one single soldier, to turn the corner of the house, or to attack him on
the flank, all was over.
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Jean Valjean gazed at the house facing him, he gazed at the barricade at one side of him, then he looked at the
ground, with the violence of the last extremity, bewildered, and as though he would have liked to pierce a
hole there with his eyes.
By dint of staring, something vaguely striking in such an agony began to assume form and outline at his feet,
as though it had been a power of glance which made the thing desired unfold. A few paces distant he
perceived, at the base of the small barrier so pitilessly guarded and watched on the exterior, beneath a
disordered mass of pavingstones which partly concealed it, an iron grating, placed flat and on a level with
the soil. This grating, made of stout, transverse bars, was about two feet square. The frame of pavingstones
which supported it had been torn up, and it was, as it were, unfastened.
Through the bars a view could be had of a dark aperture, something like the flue of a chimney, or the pipe of
a cistern. Jean Valjean darted forward. His old art of escape rose to his brain like an illumination. To thrust
aside the stones, to raise the grating, to lift Marius, who was as inert as a dead body, upon his shoulders, to
descend, with this burden on his loins, and with the aid of his elbows and knees into that sort of well,
fortunately not very deep, to let the heavy trap, upon which the loosened stones rolled down afresh, fall into
its place behind him, to gain his footing on a flagged surface three metres below the surface,all this was
executed like that which one does in dreams, with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of an eagle; this
took only a few minutes.
Jean Valjean found himself with Marius, who was still unconscious, in a sort of long, subterranean corridor.
There reigned profound peace, absolute silence, night.
The impression which he had formerly experienced when falling from the wall into the convent recurred to
him. Only, what he was carrying today was not Cosette; it was Marius. He could barely hear the formidable
tumult in the wineshop, taken by assault, like a vague murmur overhead.
BOOK SECOND.THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN
CHAPTER I. THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA
Paris casts twentyfive millions yearly into the water. And this without metaphor. How, and in what manner?
Day and night. With what object? With no object. With what intention? With no intention. Why? For no
reason. By means of what organ? By means of its intestine. What is its intestine? The sewer.
Twentyfive millions is the most moderate approximative figure which the valuations of special science have
set upon it.
Science, after having long groped about, now knows that the most fecundating and the most efficacious of
fertilizers is human manure. The Chinese, let us confess it to our shame, knew it before us. Not a Chinese
peasantit is Eckberg who says this,goes to town without bringing back with him, at the two extremities
of his bamboo pole, two full buckets of what we designate as filth. Thanks to human dung, the earth in China
is still as young as in the days of Abraham. Chinese wheat yields a hundred fold of the seed. There is no
guano comparable in fertility with the detritus of a capital. A great city is the most mighty of dungmakers.
Certain success would attend the experiment of employing the city to manure the plain. If our gold is manure,
our manure, on the other hand, is gold.
What is done with this golden manure? It is swept into the abyss.
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Fleets of vessels are despatched, at great expense, to collect the dung of petrels and penguins at the South
Pole, and the incalculable element of opulence which we have on hand, we send to the sea. All the human and
animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of being cast into the water, would suffice
to nourish the world.
Those heaps of filth at the gateposts, those tumbrils of mud which jolt through the street by night, those
terrible casks of the street department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire, which the pavements hide
from you,do you know what they are? They are the meadow in flower, the green grass, wild thyme, thyme
and sage, they are game, they are cattle, they are the satisfied bellows of great oxen in the evening, they are
perfumed hay, they are golden wheat, they are the bread on your table, they are the warm blood in your veins,
they are health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation
on earth and transfiguration in heaven.
Restore this to the great crucible; your abundance will flow forth from it. The nutrition of the plains furnishes
the nourishment of men.
You have it in your power to lose this wealth, and to consider me ridiculous to boot. This will form the
masterpiece of your ignorance.
Statisticians have calculated that France alone makes a deposit of half a milliard every year, in the Atlantic,
through the mouths of her rivers. Note this: with five hundred millions we could pay one quarter of the
expenses of our budget. The cleverness of man is such that he prefers to get rid of these five hundred millions
in the gutter. It is the very substance of the people that is carried off, here drop by drop, there wave after
wave, the wretched outpour of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic collection of our rivers into the
ocean. Every hiccough of our sewers costs us a thousand francs. From this spring two results, the land
impoverished, and the water tainted. Hunger arising from the furrow, and disease from the stream.
It is notorious, for example, that at the present hour, the Thames is poisoning London.
So far as Paris is concerned, it has become indispensable of late, to transport the mouths of the sewers down
stream, below the last bridge.
A double tubular apparatus, provided with valves and sluices, sucking up and driving back, a system of
elementary drainage, simple as the lungs of a man, and which is already in full working order in many
communities in England, would suffice to conduct the pure water of the fields into our cities, and to send
back to the fields the rich water of the cities, and this easy exchange, the simplest in the world, would retain
among us the five hundred millions now thrown away. People are thinking of other things.
The process actually in use does evil, with the intention of doing good. The intention is good, the result is
melancholy. Thinking to purge the city, the population is blanched like plants raised in cellars. A sewer is a
mistake. When drainage, everywhere, with its double function, restoring what it takes, shall have replaced the
sewer, which is a simple impoverishing washing, then, this being combined with the data of a now social
economy, the product of the earth will be increased tenfold, and the problem of misery will be singularly
lightened. Add the suppression of parasitism, and it will be solved.
In the meanwhile, the public wealth flows away to the river, and leakage takes place. Leakage is the word.
Europe is being ruined in this manner by exhaustion.
As for France, we have just cited its figures. Now, Paris contains one twentyfifth of the total population of
France, and Parisian guano being the richest of all, we understate the truth when we value the loss on the part
of Paris at twentyfive millions in the half milliard which France annually rejects. These twentyfive
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Page No 872
millions, employed in assistance and enjoyment, would double the splendor of Paris. The city spends them in
sewers. So that we may say that Paris's great prodigality, its wonderful festival, its Beaujon folly, its orgy, its
stream of gold from full hands, its pomp, its luxury, its magnificence, is its sewer system.
It is in this manner that, in the blindness of a poor political economy, we drown and allow to float down
stream and to be lost in the gulfs the wellbeing of all. There should be nets at SaintCloud for the public
fortune.
Economically considered, the matter can be summed up thus: Paris is a spendthrift. Paris, that model city,
that patron of wellarranged capitals, of which every nation strives to possess a copy, that metropolis of the
ideal, that august country of the initiative, of impulse and of effort, that centre and that dwelling of minds,
that nationcity, that hive of the future, that marvellous combination of Babylon and Corinth, would make a
peasant of the FoKian shrug his shoulders, from the point of view which we have just indicated.
Imitate Paris and you will ruin yourselves.
Moreover, and particularly in this immemorial and senseless waste, Paris is itself an imitator.
These surprising exhibitions of stupidity are not novel; this is no young folly. The ancients did like the
moderns. "The sewers of Rome," says Liebig, "have absorbed all the wellbeing of the Roman peasant."
When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted Italy, and when she had put
Italy in her sewer, she poured in Sicily, then Sardinia, then Africa. The sewer of Rome has engulfed the
world. This cesspool offered its engulfment to the city and the universe. Urbi et orbi. Eternal city,
unfathomable sewer.
Rome sets the example for these things as well as for others.
Paris follows this example with all the stupidity peculiar to intelligent towns.
For the requirements of the operation upon the subject of which we have just explained our views, Paris has
beneath it another Paris; a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its crossroads, its squares, its blindalleys,
its arteries, and its circulation, which is of mire and minus the human form.
For nothing must be flattered, not even a great people; where there is everything there is also ignominy by the
side of sublimity; and, if Paris contains Athens, the city of light, Tyre, the city of might, Sparta, the city of
virtue, Nineveh, the city of marvels, it also contains Lutetia, the city of mud.
However, the stamp of its power is there also, and the Titanic sink of Paris realizes, among monuments, that
strange ideal realized in humanity by some men like Macchiavelli, Bacon and Mirabeau, grandiose vileness.
The subsoil of Paris, if the eye could penetrate its surface, would present the aspect of a colossal madrepore.
A sponge has no more partitions and ducts than the mound of earth for a circuit of six leagues round about,
on which rests the great and ancient city. Not to mention its catacombs, which are a separate cellar, not to
mention the inextricable trelliswork of gas pipes, without reckoning the vast tubular system for the
distribution of fresh water which ends in the pillar fountains, the sewers alone form a tremendous, shadowy
network under the two banks; a labyrinth which has its slope for its guiding thread.
There appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product to which Paris has given birth.
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CHAPTER II. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER
Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean network of sewers, from a bird's eye
view, will outline on the banks a species of large branch grafted on the river. On the right bank, the belt sewer
will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will form the branches, and those without exit the
twigs.
This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle, which is the customary angle of this species
of subterranean ramifications, being very rare in vegetation.
A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed by supposing that one is viewing some
eccentric oriental alphabet, as intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows, and the misshapen
letters should be welded one to another in apparent confusion, and as at haphazard, now by their angles, again
by their extremities.
Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages, in the Lower Empire and in the Orient of old. The
masses regarded these beds of decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death, with a fear that was almost
religious. The vermin ditch of Benares is no less conducive to giddiness than the lions' ditch of Babylon.
TeglathPhalasar, according to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink of Nineveh. It was from the sewer of
Munster that John of Leyden produced his false moon, and it was from the cesspool of Kekscheb that
oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Khorassan, caused his false sun to emerge.
The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The Germoniae[58] narrated Rome. The sewer of
Paris has been an ancient and formidable thing. It has been a sepulchre, it has served as an asylum. Crime,
intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws persecute or have
persecuted, is hidden in that hole; the maillotins in the fourteenth century, the tirelaine of the fifteenth, the
Huguenots in the sixteenth, Morin's illuminated in the seventeenth, the chauffeurs [brigands] in the
eighteenth. A hundred years ago, the nocturnal blow of the dagger emerged thence, the pickpocket in danger
slipped thither; the forest had its cave, Paris had its sewer. Vagrancy, that Gallic picareria, accepted the sewer
as the adjunct of the Cour des Miracles, and at evening, it returned thither, fierce and sly, through the
Maubuee outlet, as into a bedchamber.
[58] Steps on the Aventine Hill, leading to the Tiber, to which the bodies of executed criminals were dragged
by hooks to be thrown into the Tiber.
It was quite natural, that those who had the blindalley VideGousset, [EmptyPocket] or the Rue
CoupeGorge [CutThroat], for the scene of their daily labor, should have for their domicile by night the
culvert of the CheminVert, or the catch basin of Hurepoix. Hence a throng of souvenirs. All sorts of
phantoms haunt these long, solitary corridors; everywhere is putrescence and miasma; here and there are
breathingholes, where Villon within converses with Rabelais without.
The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and of all attempts. Political economy therein
spies a detritus, social philosophy there beholds a residuum.
The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else. In that
livid spot there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets. Each thing bears its true form, or at least, its
definitive form. The mass of filth has this in its favor, that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge
there. The mask of Basil is to be found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its strings and the inside as
well as the outside, and it is accentuated by honest mud. Scapin's false nose is its nextdoor neighbor. All the
uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth, where the immense social
sliding ends. They are there engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a confession. There,
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no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to
the rout all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really exists, presenting the sinister form
of that which is coming to an end. There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a baskethandle tells a
tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has entertained literary opinions becomes an applecore
once more; the effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris, Caiphas' spittle meets Falstaff's
puking, the louisd'or which comes from the gaminghouse jostles the nail whence hangs the rope's end of
the suicide. a livid foetus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which danced at the Opera last
ShroveTuesday, a cap which has pronounced judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which
was formerly Margoton's petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent to addressing each other as
thou. All which was formerly rouged, is washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells
everything.
The sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has passed one's time in enduring upon
earth the spectacle of the great airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human justice,
professional probity, the austerities of situation, incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer
and to behold the mire which befits it.
This is instructive at the same time. We have just said that history passes through the sewer. The
SaintBarthelemys filter through there, drop by drop, between the pavingstones. Great public
assassinations, political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground passage of civilization, and thrust
their corpses there. For the eye of the thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous
penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their windingsheet for an apron, dismally sponging out their work.
Louis XI. is there with Tristan, Francois I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother, Richelieu is
there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is there, Hebert and Maillard are there, scratching the
stones, and trying to make the traces of their actions disappear. Beneath these vaults one hears the brooms of
spectres. One there breathes the enormous fetidness of social catastrophes. One beholds reddish reflections in
the corners. There flows a terrible stream, in which bloody hands have been washed.
The social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his laboratory. Philosophy is the
microscope of the thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is useless.
What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the shameful side. Philosophy pursues with its glance,
probes the evil, and does not permit it to escape into nothingness. In the obliteration of things which
disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it recognizes all. It reconstructs the purple from the rag,
and the woman from the scrap of her dress. From the cesspool, it reconstitutes the city; from mud, it
reconstructs manners; from the potsherd it infers the amphora or the jug. By the imprint of a fingernail on a
piece of parchment, it recognizes the difference which separates the Jewry of the Judengasse from the Jewry
of the Ghetto. It rediscovers in what remains that which has been, good, evil, the true, the bloodstain of the
palace, the inkblot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the brothel, trials undergone, temptations
welcomed, orgies cast forth, the turn which characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of
prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered them capable, and on the vesture of the porters of
Rome the mark of Messalina's elbowing.
CHAPTER III. BRUNESEAU
The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth century, Henri II. attempted a bore,
which failed. Not a hundred years ago, the cesspool, Mercier attests the fact, was abandoned to itself, and
fared as best it might.
Such was this ancient Paris, delivered over to quarrels, to indecision, and to gropings. It was tolerably stupid
for a long time. Later on, '89 showed how understanding comes to cities. But in the good, old times, the
capital had not much head. It did not know how to manage its own affairs either morally or materially, and
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could not sweep out filth any better than it could abuses. Everything presented an obstacle, everything raised
a question. The sewer, for example, was refractory to every itinerary. One could no more find one's bearings
in the sewer than one could understand one's position in the city; above the unintelligible, below the
inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues there reigned the confusion of caverns; Daedalus backed up
Babel.
Sometimes the Paris sewer took a notion to overflow, as though this misunderstood Nile were suddenly
seized with a fit of rage. There occurred, infamous to relate, inundations of the sewer. At times, that stomach
of civilization digested badly, the cesspool flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an
aftertaste of her own filth. These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had their good points; they were
warnings; very badly accepted, however; the city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not
admit that the filth should return. Drive it out better.
The inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of Parisians of the age of eighty. The mud spread in
crossform over the Place des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV.; it entered the Rue
SaintHonore by the two mouths to the sewer in the ChampsElysees, the Rue SaintFlorentin through the
SaintFlorentin sewer, the Rue PierreaPoisson through the sewer de la Sonnerie, the Rue Popincourt,
through the sewer of the CheminVert, the Rue de la Roquette, through the sewer of the Rue de Lappe; it
covered the drain of the Rue des ChampsElysees to the height of thirtyfive centimetres; and, to the South,
through the vent of the Seine, performing its functions in inverse sense, it penetrated the Rue Mazarine, the
Rue de l'Echaude, and the Rue des Marais, where it stopped at a distance of one hundred and nine metres, a
few paces distant from the house in which Racine had lived, respecting, in the seventeenth century, the poet
more than the King. It attained its maximum depth in the Rue SaintPierre, where it rose to the height of
three feet above the flagstones of the waterspout, and its maximum length in the Rue SaintSabin, where it
spread out over a stretch two hundred and thirtyeight metres in length.
At the beginning of this century, the sewer of Paris was still a mysterious place. Mud can never enjoy a good
fame; but in this case its evil renown reached the verge of the terrible. Paris knew, in a confused way, that she
had under her a terrible cavern. People talked of it as of that monstrous bed of Thebes in which swarmed
centipedes fifteen long feet in length, and which might have served Behemoth for a bathtub. The great boots
of the sewermen never ventured further than certain wellknown points. We were then very near the epoch
when the scavenger's carts, from the summit of which SainteFoix fraternized with the Marquis de Crequi,
discharged their loads directly into the sewer. As for cleaning out, that function was entrusted to the
pouring rains which encumbered rather than swept away. Rome left some poetry to her sewer, and called it
the Gemoniae; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the PolypusHole. Science and superstition were in accord,
in horror. The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to legend. The goblin was developed under
the fetid covering of the Mouffetard sewer; the corpses of the Marmousets had been cast into the sewer de la
Barillerie; Fagon attributed the redoubtable malignant fever of 1685 to the great hiatus of the sewer of the
Marais, which remained yawning until 1833 in the Rue SaintLouis, almost opposite the sign of the Gallant
Messenger. The mouth of the sewer of the Rue de la Mortellerie was celebrated for the pestilences which had
their source there; with its grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth, it was like a dragon's maw in
that fatal street, breathing forth hell upon men. The popular imagination seasoned the sombre Parisian sink
with some indescribably hideous intermixture of the infinite. The sewer had no bottom. The sewer was the
lower world. The idea of exploring these leprous regions did not even occur to the police. To try that
unknown thing, to cast the plummet into that shadow, to set out on a voyage of discovery in that abysswho
would have dared? It was alarming. Nevertheless, some one did present himself. The cesspool had its
Christopher Columbus.
One day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor made in Paris, the Minister of the
Interior, some Decres or Cretet or other, came to the master's intimate levee. In the Carrousel there was
audible the clanking of swords of all those extraordinary soldiers of the great Republic, and of the great
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Empire; then Napoleon's door was blocked with heroes; men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the
Adige, and from the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, of Hoche, of Kleber; the aerostiers
of Fleurus, the grenadiers of Mayence, the pontoonbuilders of Genoa, hussars whom the Pyramids had
looked down upon, artillerists whom Junot's cannonball had spattered with mud, cuirassiers who had taken
by assault the fleet lying at anchor in the Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge of Lodi,
others had accompanied Murat in the trenches of Mantua, others had preceded Lannes in the hollow road of
Montebello. The whole army of that day was present there, in the courtyard of the Tuileries, represented by
a squadron or a platoon, and guarding Napoleon in repose; and that was the splendid epoch when the grand
army had Marengo behind it and Austerlitz before it."Sire," said the Minister of the Interior to Napoleon,
"yesterday I saw the most intrepid man in your Empire.""What man is that?" said the Emperor brusquely,
"and what has he done?""He wants to do something, Sire.""What is it?""To visit the sewers of Paris."
This man existed and his name was Bruneseau.
CHAPTER IV
The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. It
was, at the same time, a voyage of discovery. One of the survivors of this expedition, an intelligent
workingman, who was very young at the time, related curious details with regard to it, several years ago,
which Bruneseau thought himself obliged to omit in his report to the prefect of police, as unworthy of official
style. The processes of disinfection were, at that epoch, extremely rudimentary. Hardly had Bruneseau
crossed the first articulations of that subterranean network, when eight laborers out of the twenty refused to
go any further. The operation was complicated; the visit entailed the necessity of cleaning; hence it was
necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed; to note the entrances of water, to count the gratings and
the vents, to lay out in detail the branches, to indicate the currents at the point where they parted, to define the
respective bounds of the divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal sewer, to measure
the height under the keystone of each drain, and the width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the
bottom, in order to determine the arrangements with regard to the level of each waterentrance, either of the
bottom of the arch, or on the soil of the street. They advanced with toil. The lanterns pined away in the foul
atmosphere. From time to time, a fainting sewerman was carried out. At certain points, there were precipices.
The soil had given away, the pavement had crumbled, the sewer had changed into a bottomless well; they
found nothing solid; a man disappeared suddenly; they had great difficulty in getting him out again. On the
advice of Fourcroy, they lighted large cages filled with tow steeped in resin, from time to time, in spots which
had been sufficiently disinfected. In some places, the wall was covered with misshapen fungi,one would
have said tumors; the very stone seemed diseased within this unbreathable atmosphere.
Bruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down hill. At the point of separation of the two waterconduits of
the GrandHurleur, he deciphered upon a projecting stone the date of 1550; this stone indicated the limits
where Philibert Delorme, charged by Henri II. with visiting the subterranean drains of Paris, had halted. This
stone was the mark of the sixteenth century on the sewer; Bruneseau found the handiwork of the seventeenth
century once more in the Ponceau drain of the old Rue VielleduTemple, vaulted between 1600 and 1650;
and the handiwork of the eighteenth in the western section of the collecting canal, walled and vaulted in
1740. These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that of 1740, were more cracked and decrepit than the
masonry of the belt sewer, which dated from 1412, an epoch when the brook of fresh water of Menilmontant
was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Sewer of Paris, an advancement analogous to that of a peasant who
should become first valet de chambre to the King; something like GrosJean transformed into Lebel.
Here and there, particularly beneath the CourtHouse, they thought they recognized the hollows of ancient
dungeons, excavated in the very sewer itself. Hideous inpace. An iron neckcollar was hanging in one of
these cells. They walled them all up. Some of their finds were singular; among others, the skeleton of an
ourangoutan, who had disappeared from the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a disappearance probably connected
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with the famous and indisputable apparition of the devil in the Rue des Bernardins, in the last year of the
eighteenth century. The poor devil had ended by drowning himself in the sewer.
Beneath this long, arched drain which terminated at the ArcheMarion, a perfectly preserved ragpicker's
basket excited the admiration of all connoisseurs. Everywhere, the mire, which the sewermen came to handle
with intrepidity, abounded in precious objects, jewels of gold and silver, precious stones, coins. If a giant had
filtered this cesspool, he would have had the riches of centuries in his lair. At the point where the two
branches of the Rue du Temple and of the Rue SainteAvoye separate, they picked up a singular Huguenot
medal in copper, bearing on one side the pig hooded with a cardinal's hat, and on the other, a wolf with a tiara
on his head.
The most surprising rencounter was at the entrance to the Grand Sewer. This entrance had formerly been
closed by a grating of which nothing but the hinges remained. From one of these hinges hung a dirty and
shapeless rag which, arrested there in its passage, no doubt, had floated there in the darkness and finished its
process of being torn apart. Bruneseau held his lantern close to this rag and examined it. It was of very fine
batiste, and in one of the corners, less frayed than the rest, they made out a heraldic coronet and embroidered
above these seven letters: LAVBESP. The crown was the coronet of a Marquis, and the seven letters signified
Laubespine. They recognized the fact, that what they had before their eyes was a morsel of the shroud of
Marat. Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of
the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved,
with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen
of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the
tomb in that swaddlingband in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. Bruneseau
passed on. They left that rag where it hung; they did not put the finishing touch to it. Did this arise from scorn
or from respect? Marat deserved both. And then, destiny was there sufficiently stamped to make them
hesitate to touch it. Besides, the things of the sepulchre must be left in the spot which they select. In short, the
relic was a strange one. A Marquise had slept in it; Marat had rotted in it; it had traversed the Pantheon to end
with the rats of the sewer. This chamber rag, of which Watteau would formerly have joyfully sketched every
fold, had ended in becoming worthy of the fixed gaze of Dante.
The whole visit to the subterranean stream of filth of Paris lasted seven years, from 1805 to 1812. As he
proceeded, Bruneseau drew, directed, and completed considerable works; in 1808 he lowered the arch of the
Ponceau, and, everywhere creating new lines, he pushed the sewer, in 1809, under the Rue SaintDenis as far
as the fountain of the Innocents; in 1810, under the Rue Froidmanteau and under the Salpetriere; in 1811
under the Rue NeuvedesPetitsPeres, under the Rue du Mail, under the Rue de l'Echarpe, under the Place
Royale; in 1812, under the Rue de la Paix, and under the Chaussee d'Antin. At the same time, he had the
whole network disinfected and rendered healthful. In the second year of his work, Bruneseau engaged the
assistance of his soninlaw Nargaud.
It was thus that, at the beginning of the century, ancient society cleansed its double bottom, and performed
the toilet of its sewer. There was that much clean, at all events.
Tortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies, jolted by eccentric elbows, mounting and
descending illogically, fetid, wild, fierce, submerged in obscurity, with cicatrices on its pavements and scars
on its walls, terrible,such was, retrospectively viewed, the antique sewer of Paris. Ramifications in every
direction, crossings, of trenches, branches, goosefeet, stars, as in military mines, coecum, blind alleys,
vaults lined with saltpetre, pestiferous pools, scabby sweats, on the walls, drops dripping from the ceilings,
darkness; nothing could equal the horror of this old, waste crypt, the digestive apparatus of Babylon, a
cavern, ditch, gulf pierced with streets, a titanic moleburrow, where the mind seems to behold that
enormous blind mole, the past, prowling through the shadows, in the filth which has been splendor.
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This, we repeat, was the sewer of the past.
CHAPTER V. PRESENT PROGRESS
Today the sewer is clean, cold, straight, correct. It almost realizes the ideal of what is understood in England
by the word "respectable." It is proper and grayish; laid out by rule and line; one might almost say as though
it came out of a bandbox. It resembles a tradesman who has become a councillor of state. One can almost see
distinctly there. The mire there comports itself with decency. At first, one might readily mistake it for one of
those subterranean corridors, which were so common in former days, and so useful in flights of monarchs and
princes, in those good old times, "when the people loved their kings." The present sewer is a beautiful sewer;
the pure style reigns there; the classical rectilinear alexandrine which, driven out of poetry, appears to have
taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled with all the stones of that long, dark and whitish vault; each
outlet is an arcade; the Rue de Rivoli serves as pattern even in the sewer. However, if the geometrical line is
in place anywhere, it is certainly in the drainage trench of a great city. There, everything should be
subordinated to the shortest road. The sewer has, nowadays, assumed a certain official aspect. The very
police reports, of which it sometimes forms the subject, no longer are wanting in respect towards it. The
words which characterize it in administrative language are sonorous and dignified. What used to be called a
gut is now called a gallery; what used to be called a hole is now called a surveying orifice. Villon would no
longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging. This network of cellars has its immemorial
population of prowlers, rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time, an aged and
veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow
tame, so satisfied are they with their subterranean palace. The cesspool no longer retains anything of its
primitive ferocity. The rain, which in former days soiled the sewer, now washes it. Nevertheless, do not trust
yourself too much to it. Miasmas still inhabit it. It is more hypocritical than irreproachable. The prefecture of
police and the commission of health have done their best. But, in spite of all the processes of disinfection, it
exhales, a vague, suspicious odor like Tartuffe after confession.
Let us confess, that, taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as,
from this point of view, Tartuffe's conscience is a progress over the Augean stables, it is certain that the
sewers of Paris have been improved.
It is more than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and the present sewer there is a revolution.
What has effected this revolution?
The man whom all the world forgets, and whom we have mentioned, Bruneseau.
CHAPTER VI. FUTURE PROGRESS
The excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight task. The last ten centuries have toiled at it without
being able to bring it to a termination, any more than they have been able to finish Paris. The sewer, in fact,
receives all the countershocks of the growth of Paris. Within the bosom of the earth, it is a sort of
mysterious polyp with a thousand antennae, which expands below as the city expands above. Every time that
the city cuts a street, the sewer stretches out an arm. The old monarchy had constructed only twentythree
thousand three hundred metres of sewers; that was where Paris stood in this respect on the first of January,
1806. Beginning with this epoch, of which we shall shortly speak, the work was usefully and energetically
resumed and prosecuted; Napoleon builtthe figures are curiousfour thousand eight hundred and four
metres; Louis XVIII., five thousand seven hundred and nine; Charles X., ten thousand eight hundred and
thirtysix; LouisPhilippe, eightynine thousand and twenty; the Republic of 1848, twentythree thousand
three hundred and eightyone; the present government, seventy thousand five hundred; in all, at the present
time, two hundred and twentysix thousand six hundred and ten metres; sixty leagues of sewers; the
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enormous entrails of Paris. An obscure ramification ever at work; a construction which is immense and
ignored.
As the reader sees, the subterranean labyrinth of Paris is today more than ten times what it was at the
beginning of the century. It is difficult to form any idea of all the perseverance and the efforts which have
been required to bring this cesspool to the point of relative perfection in which it now is. It was with great
difficulty that the ancient monarchical provostship and, during the last ten years of the eighteenth century, the
revolutionary mayoralty, had succeeded in perforating the five leagues of sewer which existed previous to
1806. All sorts of obstacles hindered this operation, some peculiar to the soil, others inherent in the very
prejudices of the laborious population of Paris. Paris is built upon a soil which is singularly rebellious to the
pick, the hoe, the bore, and to human manipulation. There is nothing more difficult to pierce and to penetrate
than the geological formation upon which is superposed the marvellous historical formation called Paris; as
soon as work in any form whatsoever is begun and adventures upon this stretch of alluvium, subterranean
resistances abound. There are liquid clays, springs, hard rocks, and those soft and deep quagmires which
special science calls moutardes.[59] The pick advances laboriously through the calcareous layers alternating
with very slender threads of clay, and schistose beds in plates incrusted with oystershells, the
contemporaries of the preAdamite oceans. Sometimes a rivulet suddenly bursts through a vault that has been
begun, and inundates the laborers; or a layer of marl is laid bare, and rolls down with the fury of a cataract,
breaking the stoutest supporting beams like glass. Quite recently, at Villette, when it became necessary to
pass the collecting sewer under the SaintMartin canal without interrupting navigation or emptying the canal,
a fissure appeared in the basin of the canal, water suddenly became abundant in the subterranean tunnel,
which was beyond the power of the pumping engines; it was necessary to send a diver to explore the fissure
which had been made in the narrow entrance of the grand basin, and it was not without great difficulty that it
was stopped up. Elsewhere near the Seine, and even at a considerable distance from the river, as for instance,
at Belleville, GrandRue and Lumiere Passage, quicksands are encountered in which one sticks fast, and in
which a man sinks visibly. Add suffocation by miasmas, burial by slides, and sudden crumbling of the earth.
Add the typhus, with which the workmen become slowly impregnated. In our own day, after having
excavated the gallery of Clichy, with a banquette to receive the principal waterconduit of Ourcq, a piece of
work which was executed in a trench ten metres deep; after having, in the midst of landslides, and with the
aid of excavations often putrid, and of shoring up, vaulted the Bievre from the Boulevard de l'Hopital, as far
as the Seine; after having, in order to deliver Paris from the floods of Montmartre and in order to provide an
outlet for that riverlike pool nine hectares in extent, which crouched near the Barriere des Martyrs, after
having, let us state, constructed the line of sewers from the Barriere Blanche to the road of Aubervilliers, in
four months, working day and night, at a depth of eleven metres; after havinga thing heretofore unseen
made a subterranean sewer in the Rue BarreduBec, without a trench, six metres below the surface, the
superintendent, Monnot, died. After having vaulted three thousand metres of sewer in all quarters of the city,
from the Rue TraversiereSaintAntoine to the Rue de l'Ourcine, after having freed the Carrefour
CensierMouffetard from inundations of rain by means of the branch of the Arbalete, after having built the
SaintGeorges sewer, on rock and concrete in the fluid sands, after having directed the formidable lowering
of the flooring of the vault timber in the NotreDamedeNazareth branch, Duleau the engineer died. There
are no bulletins for such acts of bravery as these, which are more useful, nevertheless, than the brutal
slaughter of the field of battle.
[59] Mustards.
The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are today. Bruneseau had given the impulse, but
the cholera was required to bring about the vast reconstruction which took place later on. It is surprising to
say, for example, that in 1821, a part of the belt sewer, called the Grand Canal, as in Venice, still stood
stagnating uncovered to the sky, in the Rue des Gourdes. It was only in 1821 that the city of Paris found in its
pocket the two hundred and sixtythousand eighty francs and six centimes required for covering this mass of
filth. The three absorbing wells, of the Combat, the Cunette, and SaintMande, with their discharging
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mouths, their apparatus, their cesspools, and their depuratory branches, only date from 1836. The intestinal
sewer of Paris has been made over anew, and, as we have said, it has been extended more than tenfold within
the last quarter of a century.
Thirty years ago, at the epoch of the insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, it was still, in many localities,
nearly the same ancient sewer. A very great number of streets which are now convex were then sunken
causeways. At the end of a slope, where the tributaries of a street or crossroads ended, there were often to be
seen large, square gratings with heavy bars, whose iron, polished by the footsteps of the throng, gleamed
dangerous and slippery for vehicles, and caused horses to fall. The official language of the Roads and Bridges
gave to these gratings the expressive name of Cassis.[60]
[60] From casser, to break: breaknecks.
In 1832, in a number of streets, in the Rue de l'Etoile, the Rue SaintLouis, the Rue du Temple, the Rue
VielleduTemple, the Rue NotreDame de Nazareth, the Rue FolieMericourt, the Quai aux Fleurs, the Rue
du PetitMuse, the Rue du Normandie, the Rue PontAuxBiches, the Rue des Marais, the Faubourg
SaintMartin, the Rue Notre Dame desVictoires, the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue GrangeBateliere, in
the ChampsElysees, the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, the ancient gothic sewer still cynically displayed
its maw. It consisted of enormous voids of stone catchbasins sometimes surrounded by stone posts, with
monumental effrontery.
Paris in 1806 still had nearly the same sewers numerically as stated in 1663; five thousand three hundred
fathoms. After Bruneseau, on the 1st of January, 1832, it had forty thousand three hundred metres. Between
1806 and 1831, there had been built, on an average, seven hundred and fifty metres annually, afterwards eight
and even ten thousand metres of galleries were constructed every year, in masonry, of small stones, with
hydraulic mortar which hardens under water, on a cement foundation. At two hundred francs the metre, the
sixty leagues of Paris' sewers of the present day represent fortyeight millions.
In addition to the economic progress which we have indicated at the beginning, grave problems of public
hygiene are connected with that immense question: the sewers of Paris.
Paris is the centre of two sheets, a sheet of water and a sheet of air. The sheet of water, lying at a tolerably
great depth underground, but already sounded by two bores, is furnished by the layer of green clay situated
between the chalk and the Jurassic limestone; this layer may be represented by a disk five and twenty
leagues in circumference; a multitude of rivers and brooks ooze there; one drinks the Seine, the Marne, the
Yonne, the Oise, the Aisne, the Cher, the Vienne and the Loire in a glass of water from the well of Grenelle.
The sheet of water is healthy, it comes from heaven in the first place and next from the earth; the sheet of air
is unhealthy, it comes from the sewer. All the miasms of the cesspool are mingled with the breath of the
city; hence this bad breath. The air taken from above a dungheap, as has been scientifically proved, is purer
than the air taken from above Paris. In a given time, with the aid of progress, mechanisms become perfected,
and as light increases, the sheet of water will be employed to purify the sheet of air; that is to say, to wash the
sewer. The reader knows, that by "washing the sewer" we mean: the restitution of the filth to the earth; the
return to the soil of dung and of manure to the fields. Through this simple act, the entire social community
will experience a diminution of misery and an augmentation of health. At the present hour, the radiation of
diseases from Paris extends to fifty leagues around the Louvre, taken as the hub of this pestilential wheel.
We might say that, for ten centuries, the cesspool has been the disease of Paris. The sewer is the blemish
which Paris has in her blood. The popular instinct has never been deceived in it. The occupation of sewermen
was formerly almost as perilous, and almost as repugnant to the people, as the occupation of knacker, which
was so long held in horror and handed over to the executioner. High wages were necessary to induce a mason
to disappear in that fetid mine; the ladder of the cesspool cleaner hesitated to plunge into it; it was said, in
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proverbial form: "to descend into the sewer is to enter the grave;" and all sorts of hideous legends, as we have
said, covered this colossal sink with terror; a dread sinkhole which bears the traces of the revolutions of the
globe as of the revolutions of man, and where are to be found vestiges of all cataclysms from the shells of the
Deluge to the rag of Marat.
BOOK THIRD.MUD BUT THE SOUL
CHAPTER I. THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES
It was in the sewers of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself.
Still another resemblance between Paris and the sea. As in the ocean, the diver may disappear there.
The transition was an unheardof one. In the very heart of the city, Jean Valjean had escaped from the city,
and, in the twinkling of an eye, in the time required to lift the cover and to replace it, he had passed from
broad daylight to complete obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind
of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more tremendous even than that of the Rue
Polonceau, from the most extreme peril to the most absolute obscurity.
An abrupt fall into a cavern; a disappearance into the secret trapdoor of Paris; to quit that street where death
was on every side, for that sort of sepulchre where there was life, was a strange instant. He remained for
several seconds as though bewildered; listening, stupefied. The wastetrap of safety had suddenly yawned
beneath him. Celestial goodness had, in a manner, captured him by treachery. Adorable ambuscades of
providence!
Only, the wounded man did not stir, and Jean Valjean did not know whether that which he was carrying in
that grave was a living being or a dead corpse.
His first sensation was one of blindness. All of a sudden, he could see nothing. It seemed to him too, that, in
one instant, he had become deaf. He no longer heard anything. The frantic storm of murder which had been
let loose a few feet above his head did not reach him, thanks to the thickness of the earth which separated him
from it, as we have said, otherwise than faintly and indistinctly, and like a rumbling, in the depths. He felt
that the ground was solid under his feet; that was all; but that was enough. He extended one arm and then the
other, touched the walls on both sides, and perceived that the passage was narrow; he slipped, and thus
perceived that the pavement was wet. He cautiously put forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf;
he discovered that the paving continued. A gust of fetidness informed him of the place in which he stood.
After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind. A little light fell through the manhole through
which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something.
The passage in which he had burrowedno other word can better express the situationwas walled in
behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches. In front of him there
was another wall, a wall like night. The light of the airhole died out ten or twelve paces from the point
where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres of the damp walls of the sewer.
Beyond, the opaqueness was massive; to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into it appeared like
an engulfment. A man could, however, plunge into that wall of fog and it was necessary so to do. Haste was
even requisite. It occurred to Jean Valjean that the grating which he had caught sight of under the flagstones
might also catch the eye of the soldiery, and that everything hung upon this chance. They also might descend
into that well and search it. There was not a minute to be lost. He had deposited Marius on the ground, he
picked him up again, that is the real word for it,placed him on his shoulders once more, and set out. He
plunged resolutely into the gloom.
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The truth is, that they were less safe than Jean Valjean fancied. Perils of another sort and no less serious were
awaiting them, perchance. After the lightningcharged whirlwind of the combat, the cavern of miasmas and
traps; after chaos, the sewer. Jean Valjean had fallen from one circle of hell into another.
When he had advanced fifty paces, he was obliged to halt. A problem presented itself. The passage
terminated in another gut which he encountered across his path. There two ways presented themselves.
Which should he take? Ought he to turn to the left or to the right? How was he to find his bearings in that
black labyrinth? This labyrinth, to which we have already called the reader's attention, has a clue, which is its
slope. To follow to the slope is to arrive at the river.
This Jean Valjean instantly comprehended.
He said to himself that he was probably in the sewer des Halles; that if he were to choose the path to the left
and follow the slope, he would arrive, in less than a quarter of an hour, at some mouth on the Seine between
the Pont au Change and the PontNeuf, that is to say, he would make his appearance in broad daylight on the
most densely peopled spot in Paris. Perhaps he would come out on some manhole at the intersection of
streets. Amazement of the passersby at beholding two bleeding men emerge from the earth at their feet.
Arrival of the police, a call to arms of the neighboring post of guards. Thus they would be seized before they
had even got out. It would be better to plunge into that labyrinth, to confide themselves to that black gloom,
and to trust to Providence for the outcome.
He ascended the incline, and turned to the right.
When he had turned the angle of the gallery, the distant glimmer of an airhole disappeared, the curtain of
obscurity fell upon him once more, and he became blind again. Nevertheless, he advanced as rapidly as
possible. Marius' two arms were passed round his neck, and the former's feet dragged behind him. He held
both these arms with one hand, and groped along the wall with the other. Marius' cheek touched his, and
clung there, bleeding. He felt a warm stream which came from Marius trickling down upon him and making
its way under his clothes. But a humid warmth near his ear, which the mouth of the wounded man touched,
indicated respiration, and consequently, life. The passage along which Jean Valjean was now proceeding was
not so narrow as the first. Jean Valjean walked through it with considerable difficulty. The rain of the
preceding day had not, as yet, entirely run off, and it created a little torrent in the centre of the bottom, and he
was forced to hug the wall in order not to have his feet in the water.
Thus he proceeded in the gloom. He resembled the beings of the night groping in the invisible and lost
beneath the earth in veins of shadow.
Still, little by little, whether it was that the distant airholes emitted a little wavering light in this opaque
gloom, or whether his eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity, some vague vision returned to him, and
he began once more to gain a confused idea, now of the wall which he touched, now of the vault beneath
which he was passing. The pupil dilates in the dark, and the soul dilates in misfortune and ends by finding
God there.
It was not easy to direct his course.
The line of the sewer reechoes, so to speak, the line of the streets which lie above it. There were then in
Paris two thousand two hundred streets. Let the reader imagine himself beneath that forest of gloomy
branches which is called the sewer. The system of sewers existing at that epoch, placed end to end, would
have given a length of eleven leagues. We have said above, that the actual network, thanks to the special
activity of the last thirty years, was no less than sixty leagues in extent.
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Jean Valjean began by committing a blunder. He thought that he was beneath the Rue SaintDenis, and it
was a pity that it was not so. Under the Rue SaintDenis there is an old stone sewer which dates from Louis
XIII. and which runs straight to the collecting sewer, called the Grand Sewer, with but a single elbow, on the
right, on the elevation of the ancient Cour des Miracles, and a single branch, the SaintMartin sewer, whose
four arms describe a cross. But the gut of the PetiteTruanderie the entrance to which was in the vicinity of
the Corinthe wineshop has never communicated with the sewer of the Rue SaintDenis; it ended at the
Montmartre sewer, and it was in this that Jean Valjean was entangled. There opportunities of losing oneself
abound. The Montmartre sewer is one of the most labyrinthine of the ancient network. Fortunately, Jean
Valjean had left behind him the sewer of the markets whose geometrical plan presents the appearance of a
multitude of parrots' roosts piled on top of each other; but he had before him more than one embarrassing
encounter and more than one street cornerfor they are streets presenting itself in the gloom like an
interrogation point; first, on his left, the vast sewer of the Platriere, a sort of Chinese puzzle, thrusting out and
entangling its chaos of Ts and Zs under the PostOffice and under the rotunda of the Wheat Market, as far as
the Seine, where it terminates in a Y; secondly, on his right, the curving corridor of the Rue du Cadran with
its three teeth, which are also blind courts; thirdly, on his left, the branch of the Mail, complicated, almost at
its inception, with a sort of fork, and proceeding from zigzag to zigzag until it ends in the grand crypt of
the outlet of the Louvre, truncated and ramified in every direction; and lastly, the blind alley of a passage of
the Rue des Jeuneurs, without counting little ducts here and there, before reaching the belt sewer, which alone
could conduct him to some issue sufficiently distant to be safe.
Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here pointed out, he would speedily have perceived,
merely by feeling the wall, that he was not in the subterranean gallery of the Rue SaintDenis. Instead of the
ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with pavement and
string courses of granite and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he would have felt under his
hand contemporary cheapness, economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a concrete
foundation, which costs two hundred francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry known as a petits
materiauxsmall stuff; but of all this he knew nothing.
He advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, buried in chance, that is to
say, engulfed in providence.
By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him. The gloom which enveloped him penetrated his
spirit. He walked in an enigma. This aqueduct of the sewer is formidable; it interlaces in a dizzy fashion. It is
a melancholy thing to be caught in this Paris of shadows. Jean Valjean was obliged to find and even to invent
his route without seeing it. In this unknown, every step that he risked might be his last. How was he to get
out? should he find an issue? should he find it in time? would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone
cavities, allow itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there encounter some unexpected knot in the
darkness? should he arrive at the inextricable and the impassable? would Marius die there of hemorrhage and
he of hunger? should they end by both getting lost, and by furnishing two skeletons in a nook of that night?
He did not know. He put all these questions to himself without replying to them. The intestines of Paris form
a precipice. Like the prophet, he was in the belly of the monster.
All at once, he had a surprise. At the most unforeseen moment, and without having ceased to walk in a
straight line, he perceived that he was no longer ascending; the water of the rivulet was beating against his
heels, instead of meeting him at his toes. The sewer was now descending. Why? Was he about to arrive
suddenly at the Seine? This danger was a great one, but the peril of retreating was still greater. He continued
to advance.
It was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding. The ridge which the soil of Paris forms on its right bank
empties one of its watersheds into the Seine and the other into the Grand Sewer. The crest of this ridge
which determines the division of the waters describes a very capricious line. The culminating point, which is
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the point of separation of the currents, is in the SainteAvoye sewer, beyond the Rue MichelleComte, in the
sewer of the Louvre, near the boulevards, and in the Montmartre sewer, near the Halles. It was this
culminating point that Jean Valjean had reached. He was directing his course towards the belt sewer; he was
on the right path. But he did not know it.
Every time that he encountered a branch, he felt of its angles, and if he found that the opening which
presented itself was smaller than the passage in which he was, he did not enter but continued his route, rightly
judging that every narrower way must needs terminate in a blind alley, and could only lead him further from
his goal, that is to say, the outlet. Thus he avoided the quadruple trap which was set for him in the darkness
by the four labyrinths which we have just enumerated.
At a certain moment, he perceived that he was emerging from beneath the Paris which was petrified by the
uprising, where the barricades had suppressed circulation, and that he was entering beneath the living and
normal Paris. Overhead he suddenly heard a noise as of thunder, distant but continuous. It was the rumbling
of vehicles.
He had been walking for about half an hour, at least according to the calculation which he made in his own
mind, and he had not yet thought of rest; he had merely changed the hand with which he was holding Marius.
The darkness was more profound than ever, but its very depth reassured him.
All at once, he saw his shadow in front of him. It was outlined on a faint, almost indistinct reddish glow,
which vaguely empurpled the flooring vault underfoot, and the vault overhead, and gilded to his right and to
his left the two viscous walls of the passage. Stupefied, he turned round.
Behind him, in the portion of the passage which he had just passed through, at a distance which appeared to
him immense, piercing the dense obscurity, flamed a sort of horrible star which had the air of surveying him.
It was the gloomy star of the police which was rising in the sewer.
In the rear of that star eight or ten forms were moving about in a confused way, black, upright, indistinct,
horrible.
CHAPTER II. EXPLANATION
On the day of the sixth of June, a battue of the sewers had been ordered. It was feared that the vanquished
might have taken to them for refuge, and Prefect Gisquet was to search occult Paris while General Bugeaud
swept public Paris; a double and connected operation which exacted a double strategy on the part of the
public force, represented above by the army and below by the police. Three squads of agents and sewermen
explored the subterranean drain of Paris, the first on the right bank, the second on the left bank, the third in
the city. The agents of police were armed with carabines, with bludgeons, swords and poignards.
That which was directed at Jean Valjean at that moment, was the lantern of the patrol of the right bank.
This patrol had just visited the curving gallery and the three blind alleys which lie beneath the Rue du
Cadran. While they were passing their lantern through the depths of these blind alleys, Jean Valjean had
encountered on his path the entrance to the gallery, had perceived that it was narrower than the principal
passage and had not penetrated thither. He had passed on. The police, on emerging from the gallery du
Cadran, had fancied that they heard the sound of footsteps in the direction of the belt sewer. They were, in
fact, the steps of Jean Valjean. The sergeant in command of the patrol had raised his lantern, and the squad
had begun to gaze into the mist in the direction whence the sound proceeded.
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This was an indescribable moment for Jean Valjean.
Happily, if he saw the lantern well, the lantern saw him but ill. It was light and he was shadow. He was very
far off, and mingled with the darkness of the place. He hugged the wall and halted. Moreover, he did not
understand what it was that was moving behind him. The lack of sleep and food, and his emotions had caused
him also to pass into the state of a visionary. He beheld a gleam, and around that gleam, forms. What was it?
He did not comprehend.
Jean Valjean having paused, the sound ceased.
The men of the patrol listened, and heard nothing, they looked and saw nothing. They held a consultation.
There existed at that epoch at this point of the Montmartre sewer a sort of crossroads called de service,
which was afterwards suppressed, on account of the little interior lake which formed there, swallowing up the
torrent of rain in heavy storms. The patrol could form a cluster in this open space. Jean Valjean saw these
spectres form a sort of circle. These bulldogs' heads approached each other closely and whispered together.
The result of this council held by the watch dogs was, that they had been mistaken, that there had been no
noise, that it was useless to get entangled in the belt sewer, that it would only be a waste of time, but that they
ought to hasten towards SaintMerry; that if there was anything to do, and any "bousingot" to track out, it
was in that quarter.
From time to time, parties resole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between
the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such
excellent service.
The sergeant gave orders to turn to the left, towards the watershed of the Seine.
If it had occurred to them to separate into two squads, and to go in both directions, Jean Valjean would have
been captured. All hung on that thread. It is probable that the instructions of the prefecture, foreseeing a
possibility of combat and insurgents in force, had forbidden the patrol to part company. The patrol resumed
its march, leaving Jean Valjean behind it. Of all this movement, Jean Valjean perceived nothing, except the
eclipse of the lantern which suddenly wheeled round.
Before taking his departure, the Sergeant, in order to acquit his policeman's conscience, discharged his gun in
the direction of Jean Valjean. The detonation rolled from echo to echo in the crypt, like the rumbling of that
titanic entrail. A bit of plaster which fell into the stream and splashed up the water a few paces away from
Jean Valjean, warned him that the ball had struck the arch over his head.
Slow and measured steps resounded for some time on the timber work, gradually dying away as they
retreated to a greater distance; the group of black forms vanished, a glimmer of light oscillated and floated,
communicating to the vault a reddish glow which grew fainter, then disappeared; the silence became
profound once more, the obscurity became complete, blindness and deafness resumed possession of the
shadows; and Jean Valjean, not daring to stir as yet, remained for a long time leaning with his back against
the wall, with straining ears, and dilated pupils, watching the disappearance of that phantom patrol.
CHAPTER III. THE "SPUN" MAN
This justice must be rendered to the police of that period, that even in the most serious public junctures, it
imperturbably fulfilled its duties connected with the sewers and surveillance. A revolt was, in its eyes, no
pretext for allowing malefactors to take the bit in their own mouths, and for neglecting society for the reason
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that the government was in peril. The ordinary service was performed correctly in company with the
extraordinary service, and was not troubled by the latter. In the midst of an incalculable political event
already begun, under the pressure of a possible revolution, a police agent, "spun" a thief without allowing
himself to be distracted by insurrection and barricades.
It was something precisely parallel which took place on the afternoon of the 6th of June on the banks of the
Seine, on the slope of the right shore, a little beyond the Pont des Invalides.
There is no longer any bank there now. The aspect of the locality has changed.
On that bank, two men, separated by a certain distance, seemed to be watching each other while mutually
avoiding each other. The one who was in advance was trying to get away, the one in the rear was trying to
overtake the other.
It was like a game of checkers played at a distance and in silence. Neither seemed to be in any hurry, and
both walked slowly, as though each of them feared by too much haste to make his partner redouble his pace.
One would have said that it was an appetite following its prey, and purposely without wearing the air of
doing so. The prey was crafty and on its guard.
The proper relations between the hunted polecat and the hunting dog were observed. The one who was
seeking to escape had an insignificant mien and not an impressive appearance; the one who was seeking to
seize him was rude of aspect, and must have been rude to encounter.
The first, conscious that he was the more feeble, avoided the second; but he avoided him in a manner which
was deeply furious; any one who could have observed him would have discerned in his eyes the sombre
hostility of flight, and all the menace that fear contains.
The shore was deserted; there were no passersby; not even a boatman nor a lighterman was in the skiffs
which were moored here and there.
It was not easy to see these two men, except from the quay opposite, and to any person who had scrutinized
them at that distance, the man who was in advance would have appeared like a bristling, tattered, and
equivocal being, who was uneasy and trembling beneath a ragged blouse, and the other like a classic and
official personage, wearing the frockcoat of authority buttoned to the chin.
Perchance the reader might recognize these two men, if he were to see them closer at hand.
What was the object of the second man?
Probably to succeed in clothing the first more warmly.
When a man clothed by the state pursues a man in rags, it is in order to make of him a man who is also
clothed by the state. Only, the whole question lies in the color. To be dressed in blue is glorious; to be dressed
in red is disagreeable.
There is a purple from below.
It is probably some unpleasantness and some purple of this sort which the first man is desirous of shirking.
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If the other allowed him to walk on, and had not seized him as yet, it was, judging from all appearances, in
the hope of seeing him lead up to some significant meetingplace and to some group worth catching. This
delicate operation is called "spinning."
What renders this conjecture entirely probable is that the buttonedup man, on catching sight from the shore
of a hackneycoach on the quay as it was passing along empty, made a sign to the driver; the driver
understood, evidently recognized the person with whom he had to deal, turned about and began to follow the
two men at the top of the quay, at a footpace. This was not observed by the slouching and tattered personage
who was in advance.
The hackneycoach rolled along the trees of the ChampsElysees. The bust of the driver, whip in hand, could
be seen moving along above the parapet.
One of the secret instructions of the police authorities to their agents contains this article: "Always have on
hand a hackneycoach, in case of emergency."
While these two men were manoeuvring, each on his own side, with irreproachable strategy, they approached
an inclined plane on the quay which descended to the shore, and which permitted cabdrivers arriving from
Passy to come to the river and water their horses. This inclined plane was suppressed later on, for the sake of
symmetry; horses may die of thirst, but the eye is gratified.
It is probable that the man in the blouse had intended to ascend this inclined plane, with a view to making his
escape into the ChampsElysees, a place ornamented with trees, but, in return, much infested with
policemen, and where the other could easily exercise violence.
This point on the quay is not very far distant from the house brought to Paris from Moret in 1824, by Colonel
Brack, and designated as "the house of Francois I." A guard house is situated close at hand.
To the great surprise of his watcher, the man who was being tracked did not mount by the inclined plane for
watering. He continued to advance along the quay on the shore.
His position was visibly becoming critical.
What was he intending to do, if not to throw himself into the Seine?
Henceforth, there existed no means of ascending to the quay; there was no other inclined plane, no staircase;
and they were near the spot, marked by the bend in the Seine towards the Pont de Jena, where the bank,
growing constantly narrower, ended in a slender tongue, and was lost in the water. There he would inevitably
find himself blocked between the perpendicular wall on his right, the river on his left and in front of him, and
the authorities on his heels.
It is true that this termination of the shore was hidden from sight by a heap of rubbish six or seven feet in
height, produced by some demolition or other. But did this man hope to conceal himself effectually behind
that heap of rubbish, which one need but skirt? The expedient would have been puerile. He certainly was not
dreaming of such a thing. The innocence of thieves does not extend to that point.
The pile of rubbish formed a sort of projection at the water's edge, which was prolonged in a promontory as
far as the wall of the quay.
The man who was being followed arrived at this little mound and went round it, so that he ceased to be seen
by the other.
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The latter, as he did not see, could not be seen; he took advantage of this fact to abandon all dissimulation and
to walk very rapidly. In a few moments, he had reached the rubbish heap and passed round it. There he halted
in sheer amazement. The man whom he had been pursuing was no longer there.
Total eclipse of the man in the blouse.
The shore, beginning with the rubbish heap, was only about thirty paces long, then it plunged into the water
which beat against the wall of the quay. The fugitive could not have thrown himself into the Seine without
being seen by the man who was following him. What had become of him?
The man in the buttonedup coat walked to the extremity of the shore, and remained there in thought for a
moment, his fists clenched, his eyes searching. All at once he smote his brow. He had just perceived, at the
point where the land came to an end and the water began, a large iron grating, low, arched, garnished with a
heavy lock and with three massive hinges. This grating, a sort of door pierced at the base of the quay, opened
on the river as well as on the shore. A blackish stream passed under it. This stream discharged into the Seine.
Beyond the heavy, rusty iron bars, a sort of dark and vaulted corridor could be descried. The man folded his
arms and stared at the grating with an air of reproach.
As this gaze did not suffice, he tried to thrust it aside; he shook it, it resisted solidly. It is probable that it had
just been opened, although no sound had been heard, a singular circumstance in so rusty a grating; but it is
certain that it had been closed again. This indicated that the man before whom that door had just opened had
not a hook but a key.
This evidence suddenly burst upon the mind of the man who was trying to move the grating, and evoked from
him this indignant ejaculation:
"That is too much! A government key!"
Then, immediately regaining his composure, he expressed a whole world of interior ideas by this outburst of
monosyllables accented almost ironically: "Come! Come! Come! Come!"
That said, and in the hope of something or other, either that he should see the man emerge or other men enter,
he posted himself on the watch behind a heap of rubbish, with the patient rage of a pointer.
The hackneycoach, which regulated all its movements on his, had, in its turn, halted on the quay above him,
close to the parapet. The coachman, foreseeing a prolonged wait, encased his horses' muzzles in the bag of
oats which is damp at the bottom, and which is so familiar to Parisians, to whom, be it said in parenthesis, the
Government sometimes applies it. The rare passersby on the Pont de Jena turned their heads, before they
pursued their way, to take a momentary glance at these two motionless items in the landscape, the man on the
shore, the carriage on the quay.
CHAPTER IV. HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS
Jean Valjean had resumed his march and had not again paused.
This march became more and more laborious. The level of these vaults varies; the average height is about
five feet, six inches, and has been calculated for the stature of a man; Jean Valjean was forced to bend over,
in order not to strike Marius against the vault; at every step he had to bend, then to rise, and to feel
incessantly of the wall. The moisture of the stones, and the viscous nature of the timber framework furnished
but poor supports to which to cling, either for hand or foot. He stumbled along in the hideous dungheap of
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the city. The intermittent gleams from the airholes only appeared at very long intervals, and were so wan
that the full sunlight seemed like the light of the moon; all the rest was mist, miasma, opaqueness, blackness.
Jean Valjean was both hungry and thirsty; especially thirsty; and this, like the sea, was a place full of water
where a man cannot drink. His strength, which was prodigious, as the reader knows, and which had been but
little decreased by age, thanks to his chaste and sober life, began to give way, nevertheless. Fatigue began to
gain on him; and as his strength decreased, it made the weight of his burden increase. Marius, who was,
perhaps, dead, weighed him down as inert bodies weigh. Jean Valjean held him in such a manner that his
chest was not oppressed, and so that respiration could proceed as well as possible. Between his legs he felt
the rapid gliding of the rats. One of them was frightened to such a degree that he bit him. From time to time, a
breath of fresh air reached him through the ventholes of the mouths of the sewer, and reanimated him.
It might have been three hours past midday when he reached the beltsewer.
He was, at first, astonished at this sudden widening. He found himself, all at once, in a gallery where his
outstretched hands could not reach the two walls, and beneath a vault which his head did not touch. The
Grand Sewer is, in fact, eight feet wide and seven feet high.
At the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the Grand Sewer, two other subterranean galleries, that of the
Rue de Provence, and that of the Abattoir, form a square. Between these four ways, a less sagacious man
would have remained undecided. Jean Valjean selected the broadest, that is to say, the beltsewer. But here
the question again came upshould he descend or ascend? He thought that the situation required haste, and
that he must now gain the Seine at any risk. In other terms, he must descend. He turned to the left.
It was well that he did so, for it is an error to suppose that the beltsewer has two outlets, the one in the
direction of Bercy, the other towards Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates, the subterranean girdle of the
Paris on the right bank. The Grand Sewer, which is, it must be remembered, nothing else than the old brook
of Menilmontant, terminates, if one ascends it, in a blind sack, that is to say, at its ancient point of departure
which was its source, at the foot of the knoll of Menilmontant. There is no direct communication with the
branch which collects the waters of Paris beginning with the Quartier Popincourt, and which falls into the
Seine through the Amelot sewer above the ancient Isle Louviers. This branch, which completes the collecting
sewer, is separated from it, under the Rue Menilmontant itself, by a pile which marks the dividing point of
the waters, between upstream and downstream. If Jean Valjean had ascended the gallery he would have
arrived, after a thousand efforts, and broken down with fatigue, and in an expiring condition, in the gloom, at
a wall. He would have been lost.
In case of necessity, by retracing his steps a little way, and entering the passage of the FillesduCalvaire, on
condition that he did not hesitate at the subterranean crossing of the Carrefour Boucherat, and by taking the
corridor SaintLouis, then the SaintGilles gut on the left, then turning to the right and avoiding the
SaintSebastian gallery, he might have reached the Amelot sewer, and thence, provided that he did not go
astray in the sort of F which lies under the Bastille, he might have attained the outlet on the Seine near the
Arsenal. But in order to do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar with the enormous madrepore of the
sewer in all its ramifications and in all its openings. Now, we must again insist that he knew nothing of that
frightful drain which he was traversing; and had any one asked him in what he was, he would have answered:
"In the night."
His instinct served him well. To descend was, in fact, possible safety.
He left on his right the two narrow passages which branch out in the form of a claw under the Rue Laffitte
and the Rue SaintGeorges and the long, bifurcated corridor of the Chaussee d'Antin.
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A little beyond an affluent, which was, probably, the Madeleine branch, he halted. He was extremely weary.
A passably large airhole, probably the manhole in the Rue d'Anjou, furnished a light that was almost vivid.
Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother would exercise towards his wounded brother,
deposited Marius on the banquette of the sewer. Marius' bloodstained face appeared under the wan light of
the airhole like the ashes at the bottom of a tomb. His eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his
temples like a painter's brushes dried in red wash; his hands hung limp and dead. A clot of blood had
collected in the knot of his cravat; his limbs were cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of his mouth; his
shirt had thrust itself into his wounds, the cloth of his coat was chafing the yawning gashes in the living flesh.
Jean Valjean, pushing aside the garments with the tips of his fingers, laid his hand upon Marius' breast; his
heart was still beating. Jean Valjean tore up his shirt, bandaged the young man's wounds as well as he was
able and stopped the flowing blood; then bending over Marius, who still lay unconscious and almost without
breathing, in that half light, he gazed at him with inexpressible hatred.
On disarranging Marius' garments, he had found two things in his pockets, the roll which had been forgotten
there on the preceding evening, and Marius' pocketbook. He ate the roll and opened the pocketbook. On the
first page he found the four lines written by Marius. The reader will recall them:
"My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, Rue des
FillesduCalvaire, No. 6, in the Marais."
Jean Valjean read these four lines by the light of the airhole, and remained for a moment as though absorbed
in thought, repeating in a low tone: "Rue des FillesduCalvaire, number 6, Monsieur Gillenormand." He
replaced the pocketbook in Marius' pocket. He had eaten, his strength had returned to him; he took Marius up
once more upon his back, placed the latter's head carefully on his right shoulder, and resumed his descent of
the sewer.
The Grand Sewer, directed according to the course of the valley of Menilmontant, is about two leagues long.
It is paved throughout a notable portion of its extent.
This torch of the names of the streets of Paris, with which we are illuminating for the reader Jean Valjean's
subterranean march, Jean Valjean himself did not possess. Nothing told him what zone of the city he was
traversing, nor what way he had made. Only the growing pallor of the pools of light which he encountered
from time to time indicated to him that the sun was withdrawing from the pavement, and that the day would
soon be over; and the rolling of vehicles overhead, having become intermittent instead of continuous, then
having almost ceased, he concluded that he was no longer under central Paris, and that he was approaching
some solitary region, in the vicinity of the outer boulevards, or the extreme outer quays. Where there are
fewer houses and streets, the sewer has fewer airholes. The gloom deepened around Jean Valjean.
Nevertheless, he continued to advance, groping his way in the dark.
Suddenly this darkness became terrible.
CHAPTER V. IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS
A FINENESS WHICH IS TREACHEROUS
He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer had a pavement under his feet, but only mud.
It sometimes happens, that on certain shores of Bretagne or Scotland a man, either a traveller or a fisherman,
while walking at low tide on the beach far from shore, suddenly notices that for several minutes past, he has
been walking with some difficulty. The beach under foot is like pitch; his soles stick fast to it; it is no longer
sand, it is birdlime. The strand is perfectly dry, but at every step that he takes, as soon as the foot is raised,
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the print is filled with water. The eye, however, has perceived no change; the immense beach is smooth and
tranquil, all the sand has the same aspect, nothing distinguishes the soil that is solid from that which is not
solid; the joyous little cloud of sandlice continues to leap tumultuously under the feet of the passerby.
The man pursues his way, he walks on, turns towards the land, endeavors to approach the shore. He is not
uneasy. Uneasy about what? Only he is conscious that the heaviness of his feet seems to be increasing at
every step that he takes. All at once he sinks in. He sinks in two or three inches. Decidedly, he is not on the
right road; he halts to get his bearings. Suddenly he glances at his feet; his feet have disappeared. The sand
has covered them. He draws his feet out of the sand, he tries to retrace his steps, he turns back, he sinks in
more deeply than before. The sand is up to his ankles, he tears himself free from it and flings himself to the
left, the sand reaches to midleg, he flings himself to the right, the sand comes up to his knees. Then, with
indescribable terror, he recognizes the fact that he is caught in a quicksand, and that he has beneath him that
frightful medium in which neither man can walk nor fish can swim. He flings away his burden, if he have
one, he lightens himself, like a ship in distress; it is too late, the sand is above his knees.
He shouts, he waves his hat, or his handkerchief, the sand continually gains on him; if the beach is deserted,
if the land is too far away, if the bank of sand is too illfamed, there is no hero in the neighborhood, all is
over, he is condemned to be engulfed. He is condemned to that terrible interment, long, infallible, implacable,
which it is impossible to either retard or hasten, which lasts for hours, which will not come to an end, which
seizes you erect, free, in the flush of health, which drags you down by the feet, which, at every effort that you
attempt, at every shout that you utter, draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you for your
resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man to return slowly to earth, while leaving him time to
survey the horizon, the trees, the verdant country, the smoke of the villages on the plain, the sails of the ships
on the sea, the birds which fly and sing, the sun and the sky. This engulfment is the sepulchre which assumes
a tide, and which mounts from the depths of the earth towards a living man. Each minute is an inexorable
layerout of the dead. The wretched man tries to sit down, to lie down, to climb; every movement that he
makes buries him deeper; he straightens himself up, he sinks; he feels that he is being swallowed up; he
shrieks, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands, grows desperate. Behold him in the sand up to his
belly, the sand reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now. He uplifts his hands, utters furious groans,
clenches his nails on the beach, tries to cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows in order to
raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically; the sand mounts higher. The sand has reached his
shoulders, the sand reaches to his throat; only his face is visible now. His mouth cries aloud, the sand fills it;
silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand closes them, night. Then his brow decreases, a little hair quivers
above the sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface of the beach, waves and disappears. Sinister obliteration
of a man.
Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes the carter is swallowed up with his cart; all founders
in that strand. It is shipwreck elsewhere than in the water. It is the earth drowning a man. The earth,
permeated with the ocean, becomes a pitfall. It presents itself in the guise of a plain, and it yawns like a wave.
The abyss is subject to these treacheries.
This melancholy fate, always possible on certain sea beaches, was also possible, thirty years ago, in the
sewers of Paris.
Before the important works, undertaken in 1833, the subterranean drain of Paris was subject to these sudden
slides.
The water filtered into certain subjacent strata, which were particularly friable; the footway, which was of
flagstones, as in the ancient sewers, or of cement on concrete, as in the new galleries, having no longer an
underpinning, gave way. A fold in a flooring of this sort means a crack, means crumbling. The framework
crumbled away for a certain length. This crevice, the hiatus of a gulf of mire, was called a fontis, in the
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special tongue. What is a fontis? It is the quicksands of the seashore suddenly encountered under the surface
of the earth; it is the beach of Mont SaintMichel in a sewer. The soaked soil is in a state of fusion, as it
were; all its molecules are in suspension in soft medium; it is not earth and it is not water. The depth is
sometimes very great. Nothing can be more formidable than such an encounter. If the water predominates,
death is prompt, the man is swallowed up; if earth predominates, death is slow.
Can any one picture to himself such a death? If being swallowed by the earth is terrible on the seashore, what
is it in a cesspool? Instead of the open air, the broad daylight, the clear horizon, those vast sounds, those free
clouds whence rains life, instead of those barks descried in the distance, of that hope under all sorts of forms,
of probable passersby, of succor possible up to the very last moment,instead of all this, deafness,
blindness, a black vault, the inside of a tomb already prepared, death in the mire beneath a cover! slow
suffocation by filth, a stone box where asphyxia opens its claw in the mire and clutches you by the throat;
fetidness mingled with the deathrattle; slime instead of the strand, sulfuretted hydrogen in place of the
hurricane, dung in place of the ocean! And to shout, to gnash one's teeth, and to writhe, and to struggle, and
to agonize, with that enormous city which knows nothing of it all, over one's head!
Inexpressible is the horror of dying thus! Death sometimes redeems his atrocity by a certain terrible dignity.
On the funeral pile, in shipwreck, one can be great; in the flames as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible;
one there becomes transfigured as one perishes. But not here. Death is filthy. It is humiliating to expire. The
supreme floating visions are abject. Mud is synonymous with shame. It is petty, ugly, infamous. To die in a
butt of Malvoisie, like Clarence, is permissible; in the ditch of a scavenger, like Escoubleau, is horrible. To
struggle therein is hideous; at the same time that one is going through the death agony, one is floundering
about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying
man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a spectre or a frog.
Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister; here it is deformed.
The depth of the fontis varied, as well as their length and their density, according to the more or less bad
quality of the subsoil. Sometimes a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten; sometimes the
bottom was unfathomable. Here the mire was almost solid, there almost liquid. In the Luniere fontis, it would
have taken a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five minutes by the Philippeaux
slough. The mire bears up more or less, according to its density. A child can escape where a man will perish.
The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load. Every sewerman who felt the ground giving way
beneath him began by flinging away his sack of tools, or his backbasket, or his hod.
The fontis were due to different causes: the friability of the soil; some landslip at a depth beyond the reach of
man; the violent summer rains; the incessant flooding of winter; long, drizzling showers. Sometimes the
weight of the surrounding houses on a marly or sandy soil forced out the vaults of the subterranean galleries
and caused them to bend aside, or it chanced that a flooring vault burst and split under this crushing thrust. In
this manner, the heaping up of the Parthenon, obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the vaults of
SaintGenevieve hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the mischief was
sometimes betrayed in the street above by a sort of space, like the teeth of a saw, between the pavingstones;
this crevice was developed in an undulating line throughout the entire length of the cracked vault, and then,
the evil being visible, the remedy could be promptly applied. It also frequently happened, that the interior
ravages were not revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the sewermen. When they entered
without precaution into the sewer, they were liable to be lost. Ancient registers make mention of several
scavengers who were buried in fontis in this manner. They give many names; among others, that of the
sewerman who was swallowed up in a quagmire under the manhole of the Rue CaremePrenant, a certain
Blaise Poutrain; this Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last gravedigger of
the cemetery called the Charnier des Innocents, in 1785, the epoch when that cemetery expired.
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There was also that young and charming Vicomte d'Escoubleau, of whom we have just spoken, one of the
heroes of the siege of Lerida, where they delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head.
D'Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin's, the Duchess de Sourdis', was drowned in a quagmire of the
Beautreillis sewer, in which he had taken refuge in order to escape from the Duke. Madame de Sourdis, when
informed of his death, demanded her smellingbottle, and forgot to weep, through sniffling at her salts. In
such cases, there is no love which holds fast; the sewer extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash the body of
Leander. Thisbe stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and says: "Phew!"
CHAPTER VI. THE FONTIS
Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontis.
This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of the ChampsElysees, difficult to handle in
the hydraulic works and a bad preservative of the subterranean constructions, on account of its excessive
fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier SaintGeorges, which could
only be conquered by a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, infected with gas,
of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that the only way in which a passage was effected under the
gallery des Martyrs was by means of a castiron pipe. When, in 1836, the old stone sewer beneath the
Faubourg SaintHonore, in which we now see Jean Valjean, was demolished for the purpose of
reconstructing it, the quicksand, which forms the subsoil of the ChampsElysees as far as the Seine,
presented such an obstacle, that the operation lasted nearly six months, to the great clamor of the dwellers on
the riverside, particularly those who had hotels and carriages. The work was more than unhealthy; it was
dangerous. It is true that they had four months and a half of rain, and three floods of the Seine.
The fontis which Jean Valjean had encountered was caused by the downpour of the preceding day. The
pavement, badly sustained by the subjacent sand, had given way and had produced a stoppage of the water.
Infiltration had taken place, a slip had followed. The dislocated bottom had sunk into the ooze. To what
extent? Impossible to say. The obscurity was more dense there than elsewhere. It was a pit of mire in a cavern
of night.
Jean Valjean felt the pavement vanishing beneath his feet. He entered this slime. There was water on the
surface, slime at the bottom. He must pass it. To retrace his steps was impossible. Marius was dying, and Jean
Valjean exhausted. Besides, where was he to go? Jean Valjean advanced. Moreover, the pit seemed, for the
first few steps, not to be very deep. But in proportion as he advanced, his feet plunged deeper. Soon he had
the slime up to his calves and water above his knees. He walked on, raising Marius in his arms, as far above
the water as he could. The mire now reached to his knees, and the water to his waist. He could no longer
retreat. This mud, dense enough for one man, could not, obviously, uphold two. Marius and Jean Valjean
would have stood a chance of extricating themselves singly. Jean Valjean continued to advance, supporting
the dying man, who was, perhaps, a corpse.
The water came up to his armpits; he felt that he was sinking; it was only with difficulty that he could move
in the depth of ooze which he had now reached. The density, which was his support, was also an obstacle. He
still held Marius on high, and with an unheardof expenditure of force, he advanced still; but he was sinking.
He had only his head above the water now and his two arms holding up Marius. In the old paintings of the
deluge there is a mother holding her child thus.
He sank still deeper, he turned his face to the rear, to escape the water, and in order that he might be able to
breathe; anyone who had seen him in that gloom would have thought that what he beheld was a mask floating
on the shadows; he caught a faint glimpse above him of the drooping head and livid face of Marius; he made
a desperate effort and launched his foot forward; his foot struck something solid; a point of support. It was
high time.
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He straightened himself up, and rooted himself upon that point of support with a sort of fury. This produced
upon him the effect of the first step in a staircase leading back to life.
The point of support, thus encountered in the mire at the supreme moment, was the beginning of the other
watershed of the pavement, which had bent but had not given way, and which had curved under the water
like a plank and in a single piece. Well built pavements form a vault and possess this sort of firmness. This
fragment of the vaulting, partly submerged, but solid, was a veritable inclined plane, and, once on this plane,
he was safe. Jean Valjean mounted this inclined plane and reached the other side of the quagmire.
As he emerged from the water, he came in contact with a stone and fell upon his knees. He reflected that this
was but just, and he remained there for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed to God.
He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foulsmelling, bowed beneath the dying man whom he was dragging
after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light.
CHAPTER VII. ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES
THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING
He set out on his way once more.
However, although he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed to have left his strength behind him there.
That supreme effort had exhausted him. His lassitude was now such that he was obliged to pause for breath
every three or four steps, and lean against the wall. Once he was forced to seat himself on the banquette in
order to alter Marius' position, and he thought that he should have to remain there. But if his vigor was dead,
his energy was not. He rose again.
He walked on desperately, almost fast, proceeded thus for a hundred paces, almost without drawing breath,
and suddenly came in contact with the wall. He had reached an elbow of the sewer, and, arriving at the turn
with head bent down, he had struck the wall. He raised his eyes, and at the extremity of the vault, far, very far
away in front of him, he perceived a light. This time it was not that terrible light; it was good, white light. It
was daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet.
A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would
experience what Jean Valjean felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that
radiant portal. Jean Valjean was no longer conscious of fatigue, he no longer felt Marius' weight, he found his
legs once more of steel, he ran rather than walked. As he approached, the outlet became more and more
distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which gradually narrowed, and narrower than
the gallery, which closed in as the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel; a faulty
construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which
has since been corrected.
Jean Valjean reached the outlet.
There he halted.
It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.
The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty
hinges, was clamped to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick.
The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in the iron staple. The door was plainly
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doublelocked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.
Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the shore, very narrow but sufficient for escape.
The distant quays, Paris, that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon, liberty. On the
right, down stream, the bridge of Jena was discernible, on the left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalides; the
place would have been a propitious one in which to await the night and to escape. It was one of the most
solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the GrandCaillou. Flies were entering and emerging through
the bars of the grating.
It might have been halfpast eight o'clock in the evening. The day was declining.
Jean Valjean laid Marius down along the wall, on the dry portion of the vaulting, then he went to the grating
and clenched both fists round the bars; the shock which he gave it was frenzied, but it did not move. The
grating did not stir. Jean Valjean seized the bars one after the other, in the hope that he might be able to tear
away the least solid, and to make of it a lever wherewith to raise the door or to break the lock. Not a bar
stirred. The teeth of a tiger are not more firmly fixed in their sockets. No lever; no prying possible. The
obstacle was invincible. There was no means of opening the gate.
Must he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him? He had not the strength to retrace
his steps, to recommence the journey which he had already taken. Besides, how was he to again traverse that
quagmire whence he had only extricated himself as by a miracle? And after the quagmire, was there not the
police patrol, which assuredly could not be twice avoided? And then, whither was he to go? What direction
should he pursue? To follow the incline would not conduct him to his goal. If he were to reach another outlet,
he would find it obstructed by a plug or a grating. Every outlet was, undoubtedly, closed in that manner.
Chance had unsealed the grating through which he had entered, but it was evident that all the other sewer
mouths were barred. He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.
All was over. Everything that Jean Valjean had done was useless. Exhaustion had ended in failure.
They were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Jean Valjean felt the terrible spider
running along those black strands and quivering in the shadows. He turned his back to the grating, and fell
upon the pavement, hurled to earth rather than seated, close to Marius, who still made no movement, and with
his head bent between his knees. This was the last drop of anguish.
Of what was he thinking during this profound depression? Neither of himself nor of Marius. He was thinking
of Cosette.
CHAPTER VIII. THE TORN COATTAIL
In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a low voice said to him:
"Half shares."
Some person in that gloom? Nothing so closely resembles a dream as despair. Jean Valjean thought that he
was dreaming. He had heard no footsteps. Was it possible? He raised his eyes.
A man stood before him.
This man was clad in a blouse; his feet were bare; he held his shoes in his left hand; he had evidently
removed them in order to reach Jean Valjean, without allowing his steps to be heard.
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Jean Valjean did not hesitate for an instant. Unexpected as was this encounter, this man was known to him.
The man was Thenardier.
Although awakened, so to speak, with a start, Jean Valjean, accustomed to alarms, and steeled to unforeseen
shocks that must be promptly parried, instantly regained possession of his presence of mind. Moreover, the
situation could not be made worse, a certain degree of distress is no longer capable of a crescendo, and
Thenardier himself could add nothing to this blackness of this night.
A momentary pause ensued.
Thenardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead, formed with it a shade, then he brought his
eyelashes together, by screwing up his eyes, a motion which, in connection with a slight contraction of the
mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is endeavoring to recognize another man. He did
not succeed. Jean Valjean, as we have just stated, had his back turned to the light, and he was, moreover, so
disfigured, so bemired, so bleeding that he would have been unrecognizable in full noonday. On the contrary,
illuminated by the light from the grating, a cellar light, it is true, livid, yet precise in its lividness, Thenardier,
as the energetic popular metaphor expresses it, immediately "leaped into" Jean Valjean's eyes. This inequality
of conditions sufficed to assure some advantage to Jean Valjean in that mysterious duel which was on the
point of beginning between the two situations and the two men. The encounter took place between Jean
Valjean veiled and Thenardier unmasked.
Jean Valjean immediately perceived that Thenardier did not recognize him.
They surveyed each other for a moment in that halfgloom, as though taking each other's measure.
Thenardier was the first to break the silence.
"How are you going to manage to get out?"
Jean Valjean made no reply. Thenardier continued:
"It's impossible to pick the lock of that gate. But still you must get out of this."
"That is true," said Jean Valjean.
"Well, half shares then."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You have killed that man; that's all right. I have the key."
Thenardier pointed to Marius. He went on:
"I don't know you, but I want to help you. You must be a friend."
Jean Valjean began to comprehend. Thenardier took him for an assassin.
Thenardier resumed:
"Listen, comrade. You didn't kill that man without looking to see what he had in his pockets. Give me my
half. I'll open the door for you."
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And half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse a huge key, he added:
"Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made? Look here."
Jean Valjean "remained stupid"the expression belongs to the elder Corneilleto such a degree that he
doubted whether what he beheld was real. It was providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angel
springing from the earth in the form of Thenardier.
Thenardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under his blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Jean
Valjean.
"Hold on," said he, "I'll give you the rope to boot."
"What is the rope for?"
"You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There's a heap of rubbish."
"What am I to do with a stone?"
"Idiot, you'll want to sling that stiff into the river, you'll need a stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on
the water."
Jean Valjean took the rope. There is no one who does not occasionally accept in this mechanical way.
Thenardier snapped his fingers as though an idea had suddenly occurred to him.
"Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slough yonder? I haven't dared to risk myself
in it. Phew! you don't smell good."
After a pause he added:
"I'm asking you questions, but you're perfectly right not to answer. It's an apprenticeship against that cursed
quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don't talk at all, you run no risk of
talking too loud. That's no matter, as I can't see your face and as I don't know your name, you are wrong in
supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want. I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a bit;
now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I'll get you
out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair."
While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean's silence, he endeavored to force him to talk. He jostled his
shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone:
"Apropos of that quagmire, you're a hearty animal. Why didn't you toss the man in there?"
Jean Valjean preserved silence.
Thenardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat to the level of his Adam's apple, a gesture
which completes the capable air of a serious man:
"After all, you acted wisely. The workmen, when they come tomorrow to stop up that hole, would certainly
have found the stiff abandoned there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw, to
pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through the sewer. Who? Where did he get out? Was
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he seen to come out? The police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you. Such a
find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river
belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at
SaintCloud. Well, what does one care for that? It's carrion! Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes
no inquiries. You have done well."
The more loquacious Thenardier became, the more mute was Jean Valjean.
Again Thenardier shook him by the shoulder.
"Now let's settle this business. Let's go shares. You have seen my key, show me your money."
Thenardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet amicable.
There was one singular circumstance; Thenardier's manners were not simple; he had not the air of being
wholly at his ease; while affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on his
mouth, and muttered, "hush!" It was difficult to divine why. There was no one there except themselves. Jean
Valjean thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed in some nook, not very far off, and that
Thenardier did not care to share with them.
Thenardier resumed:
"Let's settle up. How much did the stiff have in his bags?"
Jean Valjean searched his pockets.
It was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some money about him. The mournful life of
expedients to which he had been condemned imposed this as a law upon him. On this occasion, however, he
had been caught unprepared. When donning his uniform of a National Guardsman on the preceding evening,
he had forgotten, dolefully absorbed as he was, to take his pocketbook. He had only some small change in
his fob. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with ooze, and spread out on the banquette of the vault one louis
d'or, two fivefranc pieces, and five or six large sous.
Thenardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the neck.
"You knocked him over cheap," said he.
He set to feeling the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius, with the greatest familiarity. Jean Valjean, who was
chiefly concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way.
While handling Marius' coat, Thenardier, with the skill of a pickpocket, and without being noticed by Jean
Valjean, tore off a strip which he concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel of stuff
might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man and the assassin. However, he found no more than the
thirty francs.
"That's true," said he, "both of you together have no more than that."
And, forgetting his motto: "half shares," he took all.
He hesitated a little over the large sous. After due reflection, he took them also, muttering:
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"Never mind! You cut folks' throats too cheap altogether."
That done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse.
"Now, my friend, you must leave. It's like the fair here, you pay when you go out. You have paid, now clear
out."
And he began to laugh.
Had he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in making some other man than himself emerge
from that portal, the pure and disinterested intention of rescuing an assassin? We may be permitted to doubt
this.
Thenardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his shoulders, then he betook himself to the grating on
tiptoe, and barefooted, making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger on his mouth,
and remained for several seconds, as though in suspense; his inspection finished, he placed the key in the
lock. The bolt slipped back and the gate swung open. It neither grated nor squeaked. It moved very softly.
It was obvious that this gate and those hinges, carefully oiled, were in the habit of opening more frequently
than was supposed. This softness was suspicious; it hinted at furtive goings and comings, silent entrances and
exits of nocturnal men, and the wolflike tread of crime.
The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some mysterious band. This taciturn grating was a receiver of
stolen goods.
Thenardier opened the gate a little way, allowing just sufficient space for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the
grating again, gave the key a double turn in the lock and plunged back into the darkness, without making any
more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger.
A moment later, that hideous providence had retreated into the invisibility.
Jean Valjean found himself in the open air.
CHAPTER IX. MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF
THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD
He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.
They were in the open air!
The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe
inundated him. Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when the sun has set in an
unclouded azure sky. Twilight had descended; night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all
those who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself in all
directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of
the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the ChampsElysees was audible. A few stars, daintily
piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the
immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.
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It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no. Night was already sufficiently
advanced to render it possible to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient daylight to permit
of recognition at close quarters.
For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that august and caressing serenity; such
moments of oblivion do come to men; suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch; everything is
eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer like night; and, beneath the twilight which beams and
in imitation of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could not
refrain from contemplating that vast, clear shadow which rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea
of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then he bent down swiftly to Marius, as
though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the hollow of his hand, he gently
sprinkled a few drops on the latter's face. Marius' eyelids did not open; but his halfopen mouth still
breathed.
Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more, when, all at once, he experienced
an indescribable embarrassment, such as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does not
see.
We have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone is familiar.
He turned round.
Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short while before.
A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms, and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of
which the leaden head was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean Valjean was
crouching over Marius.
With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. An ordinary man would have been alarmed
because of the twilight, a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized Javert.
The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's pursuer was no other than Javert. Javert, after his
unlookedfor escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a
verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which
implied the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on his persona certain surveillance
of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the ChampsElysees, which had, for some time past, aroused
the attention of the police. There he had caught sight of Thenardier and had followed him. The reader knows
the rest.
Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of
cleverness on Thenardier's part. Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there; the man spied upon has
a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuthhound. An assassin, what a
godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip. Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in
his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger
adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs, and counted with
certainty, so far as he himself was concerned, on escaping with the aid of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.
These two encounters, this falling one after the other, from Thenardier upon Javert, was a rude shock.
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Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated, no longer looked like himself. He did not
unfold his arms, he made sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement, and said in a curt,
calm voice:
"Who are you?"
"I."
"Who is `I'?"
"Jean Valjean."
Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on
the shoulders of Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized him, and
recognized him. Their faces almost touched. Javert's look was terrible.
Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power. Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner
ever since this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me.
Only grant me one favor."
Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean Valjean. His chin being contracted, thrust
his lips upwards towards his nose, a sign of savage revery. At length he released Jean Valjean, straightened
himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and, as though in a dream, he
murmured rather than uttered this question:
"What are you doing here? And who is this man?"
He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as thou.
Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse Javert:
"It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry
him home. That is all that I ask of you."
Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed to think him capable of making a
concession. Nevertheless, he did not say "no."
Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water and with which he
then wiped Marius' bloodstained brow.
"This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice and as though speaking to himself. "He is the one they
called Marius."
A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, and taken in everything, even
when he thought that he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows
leaning on the first step of the sepulchre, had taken notes.
He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse.
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"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.
"He is a dead man," said Javert.
Jean Valjean replied:
"No. Not yet."
"So you have brought him thither from the barricade?" remarked Javert.
His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to insist on this alarming rescue through
the sewer, and for him not to even notice Jean Valjean's silence after his question.
Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. He resumed:
"He lives in the Marais, Rue des FillesduCalvaire, with his grandfather. I do not recollect his name."
Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius' coat, pulled out his pocketbook, opened it at the page which Marius had
pencilled, and held it out to Javert.
There was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this, Javert possessed in his eye the feline
phosphorescence of night birds. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered:
"Gillenormand, Rue des FillesduCalvaire, No. 6."
Then he exclaimed: "Coachman!"
The reader will remember that the hackneycoach was waiting in case of need.
Javert kept Marius' pocketbook.
A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined plane of the wateringplace, was on the
shore. Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert seated himself on the front seat beside Jean Valjean.
The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the quays in the direction of the Bastille.
They quitted the quays and entered the streets. The coachman, a black form on his box, whipped up his thin
horses. A glacial silence reigned in the carriage. Marius, motionless, with his body resting in the corner, and
his head drooping on his breast, his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin; Jean
Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose interior, every
time that it passed in front of a street lantern, appeared to be turned lividly wan, as by an intermittent flash of
lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the three forms of tragic immobility, the
corpse, the spectre, and the statue.
CHAPTER X. RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE
At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled from Marius' hair.
Night had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at No. 6, Rue des FillesduCalvaire.
Javert was the first to alight; he made sure with one glance of the number on the carriage gate, and, raising
the heavy knocker of beaten iron, embellished in the old style, with a male goat and a satyr confronting each
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other, he gave a violent peal. The gate opened a little way and Javert gave it a push. The porter half made his
appearance yawning, vaguely awake, and with a candle in his hand.
Everyone in the house was asleep. People go to bed betimes in the Marais, especially on days when there is a
revolt. This good, old quarter, terrified at the Revolution, takes refuge in slumber, as children, when they hear
the Bugaboo coming, hide their heads hastily under their coverlet.
In the meantime Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius out of the carriage, Jean Valjean
supporting him under the armpits, and the coachman under the knees.
As they thus bore Marius, Jean Valjean slipped his hand under the latter's clothes, which were broadly rent,
felt his breast, and assured himself that his heart was still beating. It was even beating a little less feebly, as
though the movement of the carriage had brought about a certain fresh access of life.
Javert addressed the porter in a tone befitting the government, and the presence of the porter of a factious
person.
"Some person whose name is Gillenormand?"
"Here. What do you want with him?"
"His son is brought back."
"His son?" said the porter stupidly.
"He is dead."
Jean Valjean, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert, and whom the porter was surveying with some
horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so.
The porter did not appear to understand either Javert's words or Jean Valjean's sign.
Javert continued:
"He went to the barricade, and here he is."
"To the barricade?" ejaculated the porter.
"He has got himself killed. Go waken his father."
The porter did not stir.
"Go along with you!" repeated Javert.
And he added:
"There will be a funeral here tomorrow."
For Javert, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically classed, which is the beginning of
foresight and surveillance, and each contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were arranged
in drawers, as it were, whence they emerged on occasion, in variable quantities; in the street, uproar, revolt,
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carnival, and funeral.
The porter contented himself with waking Basque. Basque woke Nicolette; Nicolette roused greataunt
Gillenormand.
As for the grandfather, they let him sleep on, thinking that he would hear about the matter early enough in
any case.
Marius was carried up to the first floor, without any one in the other parts of the house being aware of the
fact, and deposited on an old sofa in M. Gillenormand's antechamber; and while Basque went in search of a
physician, and while Nicolette opened the linenpresses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch him on the shoulder.
He understood and descended the stairs, having behind him the step of Javert who was following him.
The porter watched them take their departure as he had watched their arrival, in terrified somnolence.
They entered the carriage once more, and the coachman mounted his box.
"Inspector Javert," said Jean, "grant me yet another favor."
"What is it?" demanded Javert roughly.
"Let me go home for one instant. Then you shall do whatever you like with me."
Javert remained silent for a few moments, with his chin drawn back into the collar of his greatcoat, then he
lowered the glass and front:
"Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."
CHAPTER XI. CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE
They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride.
What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, to tell her where Marius was, to
give her, possibly, some other useful information, to take, if he could, certain final measures. As for himself,
so far as he was personally concerned, all was over; he had been seized by Javert and had not resisted; any
other man than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague thoughts connected with the
rope which Thenardier had given him, and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us impress
it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of
any violence, even when directed against himself.
Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain, in a measure, the death of
the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
At the entrance to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, the carriage halted, the way being too narrow to admit of the
entrance of vehicles. Javert and Jean Valjean alighted.
The coachman humbly represented to "monsieur l'Inspecteur," that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all
spotted with the blood of the assassinated man, and with mire from the assassin. That is the way he
understood it. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, drawing his certificate book from
his pocket, he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him "a bit of an attestation."
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Javert thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him, and said:
"How much do you want, including your time of waiting and the drive?"
"It comes to seven hours and a quarter," replied the man, "and my velvet was perfectly new. Eighty francs,
Mr. Inspector."
Javert drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage.
Jean Valjean fancied that it was Javert's intention to conduct him on foot to the post of the BlancsManteaux
or to the post of the Archives, both of which are close at hand.
They entered the street. It was deserted as usual. Javert followed Jean Valjean. They reached No. 7. Jean
Valjean knocked. The door opened.
"It is well," said Javert. "Go up stairs."
He added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner:
"I will wait for you here."
Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This mode of procedure was but little in accord with Javert's habits. However,
he could not be greatly surprised that Javert should now have a sort of haughty confidence in him, the
confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claws, seeing that Jean Valjean had
made up his mind to surrender himself and to make an end of it. He pushed open the door, entered the house,
called to the porter who was in bed and who had pulled the cord from his couch: "It is I!" and ascended the
stairs.
On arriving at the first floor, he paused. All sorrowful roads have their stations. The window on the
landingplace, which was a sashwindow, was open. As in many ancient houses, the staircase got its light
from without and had a view on the street. The streetlantern, situated directly opposite, cast some light on
the stairs, and thus effected some economy in illumination.
Jean Valjean, either for the sake of getting the air, or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window. He
leaned out over the street. It is short, and the lantern lighted it from end to end. Jean Valjean was
overwhelmed with amazement; there was no longer any one there.
Javert had taken his departure.
CHAPTER XII. THE GRANDFATHER
Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawingroom, as he still lay stretched out, motionless, on
the sofa upon which he had been placed on his arrival. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither.
Aunt Gillenormand had risen.
Aunt Gillenormand went and came, in affright, wringing her hands and incapable of doing anything but
saying: "Heavens! is it possible?" At times she added: "Everything will be covered with blood." When her
first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the situation penetrated her mind, and took form in the
exclamation: "It was bound to end in this way!" She did not go so far as: "I told you so!" which is customary
on this sort of occasion. At the physician's orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. The doctor
examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very
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deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils, he had
him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle
lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that
they were undressing Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber.
The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet, deadened by the pocketbook, had turned aside and
made the tour of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth, and consequently, not
dangerous. The long, underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collarbone, and the
disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. Not a single scar disfigured his face;
but his head was fairly covered with cuts; what would be the result of these wounds on the head? Would they
stop short at the hairy cuticle, or would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave
symptom was that they had caused a swoon, and that people do not always recover from such swoons.
Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted by hemorrhage. From the waist down, the barricade had
protected the lower part of the body from injury.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette sewed them, Basque rolled them. As lint
was lacking, the doctor, for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. Beside the bed,
three candles burned on a table where the case of surgical instruments lay spread out. The doctor bathed
Marius' face and hair with cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle in hand,
lighted them.
The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as
though replying to some question which he had inwardly addressed to himself.
A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself.
At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius' face, and lightly touching his still closed eyes with his
finger, a door opened at the end of the drawingroom, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance.
This was the grandfather.
The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and engrossed the mind of M. Gillenormand.
He had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. In the evening,
he had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything in the house should be well barred, and he had
fallen into a doze through sheer fatigue.
Old men sleep lightly; M. Gillenormand's chamber adjoined the drawingroom, and in spite of all the
precautions that had been taken, the noise had awakened him. Surprised at the rift of light which he saw
under his door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither.
He stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the halfopen door, with his head bent a
little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressinggown, which was straight and as destitute
of folds as a windingsheet; and he had the air of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb.
He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, with closed
eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds,
motionless and brilliantly lighted up.
The grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose
corneae were yellow on account of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter, his whole face
assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull, his arms fell pendent, as though a spring had broken, and
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his amazement was betrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his two aged hands, which quivered all
over, his knees formed an angle in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressinggown, a view of his
poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs, and he murmured:
"Marius!"
"Sir," said Basque, "Monsieur has just been brought back. He went to the barricade, and . . ."
"He is dead!" cried the old man in a terrible voice. "Ah! The rascal!"
Then a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man.
"Sir," said he, "you are the doctor. Begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?"
The doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent.
M. Gillenormand wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter.
"He is dead! He is dead! He is dead! He has got himself killed on the barricades! Out of hatred to me! He did
that to spite me! Ah! You blooddrinker! This is the way he returns to me! Misery of my life, he is dead!"
He went to the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling, and, erect before the darkness, he
began to talk into the street, to the night:
"Pierced, sabred, exterminated, slashed, hacked in pieces! Just look at that, the villain! He knew well that I
was waiting for him, and that I had had his room arranged, and that I had placed at the head of my bed his
portrait taken when he was a little child! He knew well that he had only to come back, and that I had been
recalling him for years, and that I remained by my fireside, with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to
do, and that I was mad over it! You knew well, that you had but to return and to say: `It is I,' and you would
have been the master of the house, and that I should have obeyed you, and that you could have done whatever
you pleased with your old numskull of a grandfather! you knew that well, and you said:
"No, he is a Royalist, I will not go! And you went to the barricades, and you got yourself killed out of malice!
To revenge yourself for what I said to you about Monsieur le Duc de Berry. It is infamous! Go to bed then
and sleep tranquilly! he is dead, and this is my awakening."
The doctor, who was beginning to be uneasy in both quarters, quitted Marius for a moment, went to M.
Gillenormand, and took his arm. The grandfather turned round, gazed at him with eyes which seemed
exaggerated in size and bloodshot, and said to him calmly:
"I thank you, sir. I am composed, I am a man, I witnessed the death of Louis XVI., I know how to bear
events. One thing is terrible and that is to think that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You will
have scribblers, chatterers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man,
the liberty of the press, and this is the way that your children will be brought home to you. Ah! Marius! It is
abominable! Killed! Dead before me! A barricade! Ah, the scamp! Doctor, you live in this quarter, I believe?
Oh! I know you well. I see your cabriolet pass my window. I am going to tell you. You are wrong to think
that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against a dead man. That would be stupid. This is a child whom I
have reared. I was already old while he was very young. He played in the Tuileries garden with his little
shovel and his little chair, and in order that the inspectors might not grumble, I stopped up the holes that he
made in the earth with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down with Louis XVIII.! and off he
went. It was no fault of mine. He was all rosy and blond. His mother is dead. Have you ever noticed that all
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little children are blond? Why is it so? He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are
innocent of their fathers' crimes. I remember when he was no higher than that. He could not manage to
pronounce his Ds. He had a way of talking that was so sweet and indistinct that you would have thought it
was a bird chirping. I remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a circle to admire
him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that child! He had a head such as you see in pictures. I
talked in a deep voice, and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it was only to make
him laugh. In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the
same. One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let
you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child. Now, what can you say for your
Lafayettes, your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him? This cannot be
allowed to pass in this fashion."
He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom the physician had returned, and
began once more to wring his hands. The old man's pallid lips moved as though mechanically, and permitted
the passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death agony:
"Ah! heartless lad! Ah! clubbist! Ah! wretch! Ah! Septembrist!"
Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.
Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of
words returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his voice was so
weak, and extinct, that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:
"It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am. And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who
would not have been delighted to make this wretch happy! A scamp who, instead of amusing himself and
enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself shot down like a brute! And for whom? Why? For the
Republic! Instead of going to dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young folks to do! What's the use of
being twenty years old? The Republic, a cursed pretty folly! Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do! Come, he is
dead. That will make two funerals under the same carriage gate. So you have got yourself arranged like this
for the sake of General Lamarque's handsome eyes! What had that General Lamarque done to you? A
slasher! A chatterbox! To get oneself killed for a dead man! If that isn't enough to drive any one mad! Just
think of it! At twenty! And without so much as turning his head to see whether he was not leaving something
behind him! That's the way poor, good old fellows are forced to die alone, nowadays. Perish in your corner,
owl! Well, after all, so much the better, that is what I was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot. I am too
old, I am a hundred years old, I am a hundred thousand years old, I ought, by rights, to have been dead long
ago. This blow puts an end to it. So all is over, what happiness! What is the good of making him inhale
ammonia and all that parcel of drugs? You are wasting your trouble, you fool of a doctor! Come, he's dead,
completely dead. I know all about it, I am dead myself too. He hasn't done things by half. Yes, this age is
infamous, infamous and that's what I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your
oracles, of your doctors, of your scapegraces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the
revolutions which, for the last sixty years, have been frightening the flocks of crows in the Tuileries! But you
were pitiless in getting yourself killed like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand,
you assassin?"
At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on
M. Gillenormand.
"Marius!" cried the old man. "Marius! My little Marius! my child! my wellbeloved son! You open your
eyes, you gaze upon me, you are alive, thanks!"
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And he fell fainting.
BOOK FOURTH.JAVERT DERAILED
CHAPTER I
Javert passed slowly down the Rue de l'Homme Arme.
He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and likewise, for the first time in his life, with his
hands behind his back.
Up to that day, Javert had borrowed from Napoleon's attitudes, only that which is expressive of resolution,
with arms folded across the chest; that which is expressive of uncertaintywith the hands behind the
backhad been unknown to him. Now, a change had taken place; his whole person, slow and sombre, was
stamped with anxiety.
He plunged into the silent streets.
Nevertheless, he followed one given direction.
He took the shortest cut to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, skirted the quay, passed the Greve, and
halted at some distance from the post of the Place du Chatelet, at the angle of the Pont NotreDame. There,
between the NotreDame and the Pont au Change on the one hand, and the Quai de la Megisserie and the
Quai aux Fleurs on the other, the Seine forms a sort of square lake, traversed by a rapid.
This point of the Seine is dreaded by mariners. Nothing is more dangerous than this rapid, hemmed in, at that
epoch, and irritated by the piles of the mill on the bridge, now demolished. The two bridges, situated thus
close together, augment the peril; the water hurries in formidable wise through the arches. It rolls in vast and
terrible waves; it accumulates and piles up there; the flood attacks the piles of the bridges as though in an
effort to pluck them up with great liquid ropes. Men who fall in there never reappear; the best of swimmers
are drowned there.
Javert leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin resting in both hands, and, while his nails were
mechanically twined in the abundance of his whiskers, he meditated.
A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place in the depths of his being; and he had something
upon which to examine himself.
Javert was undergoing horrible suffering.
For several hours, Javert had ceased to be simple. He was troubled; that brain, so limpid in its blindness, had
lost its transparency; that crystal was clouded. Javert felt duty divided within his conscience, and he could not
conceal the fact from himself. When he had so unexpectedly encountered Jean Valjean on the banks of the
Seine, there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey, and of the dog who
finds his master again.
He beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he beheld two; and that terrified him; him, who
had never in all his life known more than one straight line. And, the poignant anguish lay in this, that the two
paths were contrary to each other. One of these straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the
true one?
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His situation was indescribable.
To owe his life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to repay it; to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a
fugitive from justice, and to repay his service with another service; to allow it to be said to him, "Go," and to
say to the latter in his turn: "Be free"; to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to be
conscious, in those personal motives, of something that was also general, and, perchance, superior, to betray
society in order to remain true to his conscience; that all these absurdities should be realized and should
accumulate upon him,this was what overwhelmed him.
One thing had amazed him,this was that Jean Valjean should have done him a favor, and one thing
petrified him, that he, Javert, should have done Jean Valjean a favor.
Where did he stand? He sought to comprehend his position, and could no longer find his bearings.
What was he to do now? To deliver up Jean Valjean was bad; to leave Jean Valjean at liberty was bad. In the
first case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys, in the second, a convict rose above the
law, and set his foot upon it. In both cases, dishonor for him, Javert. There was disgrace in any resolution at
which he might arrive. Destiny has some extremities which rise perpendicularly from the impossible, and
beyond which life is no longer anything but a precipice. Javert had reached one of those extremities.
One of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. The very violence of all these conflicting
emotions forced him to it. Thought was something to which he was unused, and which was peculiarly
painful.
In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion; and it irritated him to have that within
him.
Thought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of his functions, would have been for him in
any case useless and a fatigue; thought on the day which had just passed was a torture. Nevertheless, it was
indispensable that he should take a look into his conscience, after such shocks, and render to himself an
account of himself.
What he had just done made him shudder. He, Javert, had seen fit to decide, contrary to all the regulations of
the police, contrary to the whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code, upon a release;
this had suited him; he had substituted his own affairs for the affairs of the public; was not this unjustifiable?
Every time that he brought himself face to face with this deed without a name which he had committed, he
trembled from head to foot. Upon what should he decide? One sole resource remained to him; to return in all
haste to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, and commit Jean Valjean to prison. It was clear that that was what he
ought to do. He could not.
Something barred his way in that direction.
Something? What? Is there in the world, anything outside of the tribunals, executory sentences, the police and
the authorities? Javert was overwhelmed.
A galleyslave sacred! A convict who could not be touched by the law! And that the deed of Javert!
Was it not a fearful thing that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made to proceed with vigor, the man made to
submit,that these two men who were both the things of the law, should have come to such a pass, that both
of them had set themselves above the law? What then! such enormities were to happen and no one was to be
punished! Jean Valjean, stronger than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty, and he, Javert, was to
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go on eating the government's bread!
His revery gradually became terrible.
He might, athwart this revery, have also reproached himself on the subject of that insurgent who had been
taken to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire; but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault was lost in the
greater. Besides, that insurgent was, obviously, a dead man, and, legally, death puts an end to pursuit.
Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit.
Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long,
had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Jean Valjean's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him.
Other facts which he now recalled, and which he had formerly treated as lies and folly, now recurred to him
as realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures were superposed in such
fashion that they now formed but one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something terrible was
penetrating his souladmiration for a convict. Respect for a galleyslaveis that a possible thing? He
shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle, he was reduced to confess, in his inmost
heart, the sublimity of that wretch. This was odious.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back
pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy,
saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a
man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.
Things could not go on in this manner.
Certainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded without resistance to that monster, to that
infamous angel, to that hideous hero, who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. Twenty times, as he sat
in that carriage face to face with Jean Valjean, the legal tiger had roared within him. A score of times he had
been tempted to fling himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him and devour him, that is to say, to arrest him.
What more simple, in fact? To cry out at the first post that they passed:"Here is a fugitive from justice,
who has broken his ban!" to summon the gendarmes and say to them: "This man is yours!" then to go off,
leaving that condemned man there, to ignore the rest and not to meddle further in the matter. This man is
forever a prisoner of the law; the law may do with him what it will. What could be more just? Javert had said
all this to himself; he had wished to pass beyond, to act, to apprehend the man, and then, as at present, he had
not been able to do it; and every time that his arm had been raised convulsively towards Jean Valjean's collar,
his hand had fallen back again, as beneath an enormous weight, and in the depths of his thought he had heard
a voice, a strange voice crying to him:"It is well. Deliver up your savior. Then have the basin of Pontius
Pilate brought and wash your claws."
Then his reflections reverted to himself and beside Jean Valjean glorified he beheld himself, Javert, degraded.
A convict was his benefactor!
But then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the right to be killed in that barricade.
He should have asserted that right. It would have been better to summon the other insurgents to his succor
against Jean Valjean, to get himself shot by force.
His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. He felt that he had been uprooted. The code was no longer
anything more than a stump in his hand. He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There had taken
place within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from legal affirmation, his only standard of
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measurement hitherto. To remain in his former uprightness did not suffice. A whole order of unexpected facts
had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning on his soul: kindness accepted and
repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violences committed by pity on austerity, respect for persons, no more
definitive condemnation, no more conviction, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, no one knows
what justice according to God, running in inverse sense to justice according to men. He perceived amid the
shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified and dazzled him. An owl forced to the gaze
of an eagle.
He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases, that authority might be put out of
countenance, that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be framed
within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a
snare for the virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected with
despair that he himself had not even been fortified against a surprise.
He was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist. This convict had been good. And he himself,
unprecedented circumstance, had just been good also. So he was becoming depraved.
He found that he was a coward. He conceived a horror of himself.
Javert's ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable.
Now, he had just failed in this.
How had he come to such a pass? How had all this happened? He could not have told himself. He clasped his
head in both hands, but in spite of all that he could do, he could not contrive to explain it to himself.
He had certainly always entertained the intention of restoring Jean Valjean to the law of which Jean Valjean
was the captive, and of which he, Javert, was the slave. Not for a single instant while he held him in his grasp
had he confessed to himself that he entertained the idea of releasing him. It was, in some sort, without his
consciousness, that his hand had relaxed and had let him go free.
All sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes. He put questions to himself, and made replies to
himself, and his replies frightened him. He asked himself: "What has that convict done, that desperate fellow,
whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged
himself, and who owed it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in showing mercy upon
me? His duty? No. Something more. And I in showing mercy upon him in my turnwhat have I done? My
duty? No. Something more. So there is something beyond duty?" Here he took fright; his balance became
disjointed; one of the scales fell into the abyss, the other rose heavenward, and Javert was no less terrified by
the one which was on high than by the one which was below. Without being in the least in the world what is
called Voltairian or a philosopher, or incredulous, being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct, towards the
established church, he knew it only as an august fragment of the social whole; order was his dogma, and
sufficed for him; ever since he had attained to man's estate and the rank of a functionary, he had centred
nearly all his religion in the police. Being,and here we employ words without the least irony and in their
most serious acceptation, being, as we have said, a spy as other men are priests. He had a superior, M.
Gisquet; up to that day he had never dreamed of that other superior, God.
This new chief, God, he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt embarrassed by him. This unforeseen
presence threw him off his bearings; he did not know what to do with this superior, he, who was not ignorant
of the fact that the subordinate is bound always to bow, that he must not disobey, nor find fault, nor discuss,
and that, in the presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior has no other resource than that
of handing in his resignation.
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But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God?
However things might stand,and it was to this point that he reverted constantly,one fact dominated
everything else for him, and that was, that he had just committed a terrible infraction of the law. He had just
shut his eyes on an escaped convict who had broken his ban. He had just set a galleyslave at large. He had
just robbed the laws of a man who belonged to them. That was what he had done. He no longer understood
himself. The very reasons for his action escaped him; only their vertigo was left with him. Up to that moment
he had lived with that blind faith which gloomy probity engenders. This faith had quitted him, this probity
had deserted him. All that he had believed in melted away. Truths which he did not wish to recognize were
besieging him, inexorably. Henceforth, he must be a different man. He was suffering from the strange pains
of a conscience abruptly operated on for the cataract. He saw that which it was repugnant to him to behold.
He felt himself emptied, useless, put out of joint with his past life, turned out, dissolved. Authority was dead
within him. He had no longer any reason for existing.
A terrible situation! to be touched.
To be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and
suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and
disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one
has said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! to be the watchdog, and to lick the intruder's hand! to
be ice and melt! to be the pincers and to turn into a hand! to suddenly feel one's fingers opening! to relax
one's grip,what a terrible thing!
The manprojectile no longer acquainted with his route and retreating!
To be obliged to confess this to oneself: infallibility is not infallible, there may exist error in the dogma, all
has not been said when a code speaks, society is not perfect, authority is complicated with vacillation, a crack
is possible in the immutable, judges are but men, the law may err, tribunals may make a mistake! to behold a
rift in the immense blue pane of the firmament!
That which was passing in Javert was the Fampoux of a rectilinear conscience, the derailment of a soul, the
crushing of a probity which had been irresistibly launched in a straight line and was breaking against God. It
certainly was singular that the stoker of order, that the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse
with its rigid road, could be unseated by a flash of light! that the immovable, the direct, the correct, the
geometrical, the passive, the perfect, could bend! that there should exist for the locomotive a road to
Damascus!
God, always within man, and refractory, He, the true conscience, to the false; a prohibition to the spark to die
out; an order to the ray to remember the sun; an injunction to the soul to recognize the veritable absolute
when confronted with the fictitious absolute, humanity which cannot be lost; the human heart indestructible;
that splendid phenomenon, the finest, perhaps, of all our interior marvels, did Javert understand this? Did
Javert penetrate it? Did Javert account for it to himself? Evidently he did not. But beneath the pressure of that
incontestable incomprehensibility he felt his brain bursting.
He was less the man transfigured than the victim of this prodigy. In all this he perceived only the tremendous
difficulty of existence. It seemed to him that, henceforth, his respiration was repressed forever. He was not
accustomed to having something unknown hanging over his head.
Up to this point, everything above him had been, to his gaze, merely a smooth, limpid and simple surface;
there was nothing incomprehensible, nothing obscure; nothing that was not defined, regularly disposed,
linked, precise, circumscribed, exact, limited, closed, fully provided for; authority was a plane surface; there
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was no fall in it, no dizziness in its presence. Javert had never beheld the unknown except from below. The
irregular, the unforeseen, the disordered opening of chaos, the possible slip over a precipice this was the
work of the lower regions, of rebels, of the wicked, of wretches. Now Javert threw himself back, and he was
suddenly terrified by this unprecedented apparition: a gulf on high.
What! one was dismantled from top to bottom! one was disconcerted, absolutely! In what could one trust!
That which had been agreed upon was giving way! What! the defect in society's armor could be discovered
by a magnanimous wretch! What! an honest servitor of the law could suddenly find himself caught between
two crimes the crime of allowing a man to escape and the crime of arresting him! everything was not
settled in the orders given by the State to the functionary! There might be blind alleys in duty! What, all
this was real! was it true that an exruffian, weighed down with convictions, could rise erect and end by
being in the right? Was this credible? were there cases in which the law should retire before transfigured
crime, and stammer its excuses?Yes, that was the state of the case! and Javert saw it! and Javert had
touched it! and not only could he not deny it, but he had taken part in it. These were realities. It was
abominable that actual facts could reach such deformity. If facts did their duty, they would confine
themselves to being proofs of the law; factsit is God who sends them. Was anarchy, then, on the point of
now descending from on high?
Thus,and in the exaggeration of anguish, and the optical illusion of consternation, all that might have
corrected and restrained this impression was effaced, and society, and the human race, and the universe were,
henceforth, summed up in his eyes, in one simple and terrible feature,thus the penal laws, the thing judged,
the force due to legislation, the decrees of the sovereign courts, the magistracy, the government, prevention,
repression, official cruelty, wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on which rest
political and civil security, sovereignty, justice, public truth, all this was rubbish, a shapeless mass, chaos; he
himself, Javert, the spy of order, incorruptibility in the service of the police, the bulldog providence of
society, vanquished and hurled to earth; and, erect, at the summit of all that ruin, a man with a green cap on
his head and a halo round his brow; this was the astounding confusion to which he had come; this was the
fearful vision which he bore within his soul.
Was this to be endured? No.
A violent state, if ever such existed. There were only two ways of escaping from it. One was to go resolutely
to Jean Valjean, and restore to his cell the convict from the galleys. The other . . .
Javert quitted the parapet, and, with head erect this time, betook himself, with a firm tread, towards the
stationhouse indicated by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du Chatelet.
On arriving there, he saw through the window a sergeant of police, and he entered. Policemen recognize each
other by the very way in which they open the door of a stationhouse. Javert mentioned his name, showed his
card to the sergeant, and seated himself at the table of the post on which a candle was burning. On a table lay
a pen, a leaden inkstand and paper, provided in the event of possible reports and the orders of the night
patrols. This table, still completed by its strawseated chair, is an institution; it exists in all police stations; it
is invariably ornamented with a boxwood saucer filled with sawdust and a wafer box of cardboard filled
with red wafers, and it forms the lowest stage of official style. It is there that the literature of the State has its
beginning.
Javert took a pen and a sheet of paper, and began to write. This is what he wrote:
A FEW OBSERVATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.
"In the first place: I beg Monsieur le Prefet to cast his eyes on this.
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"Secondly: prisoners, on arriving after examination, take off their shoes and stand barefoot on the flagstones
while they are being searched. Many of them cough on their return to prison. This entails hospital expenses.
"Thirdly: the mode of keeping track of a man with relays of police agents from distance to distance, is good,
but, on important occasions, it is requisite that at least two agents should never lose sight of each other, so
that, in case one agent should, for any cause, grow weak in his service, the other may supervise him and take
his place.
"Fourthly: it is inexplicable why the special regulation of the prison of the Madelonettes interdicts the
prisoner from having a chair, even by paying for it.
"Fifthly: in the Madelonettes there are only two bars to the canteen, so that the canteen woman can touch the
prisoners with her hand.
"Sixthly: the prisoners called barkers, who summon the other prisoners to the parlor, force the prisoner to pay
them two sous to call his name distinctly. This is a theft.
"Seventhly: for a broken thread ten sous are withheld in the weaving shop; this is an abuse of the contractor,
since the cloth is none the worse for it.
"Eighthly: it is annoying for visitors to La Force to be obliged to traverse the boys' court in order to reach the
parlor of SainteMariel'Egyptienne.
"Ninthly: it is a fact that any day gendarmes can be overheard relating in the courtyard of the prefecture the
interrogations put by the magistrates to prisoners. For a gendarme, who should be sworn to secrecy, to repeat
what he has heard in the examination room is a grave disorder.
"Tenthly: Mme. Henry is an honest woman; her canteen is very neat; but it is bad to have a woman keep the
wicket to the mousetrap of the secret cells. This is unworthy of the Conciergerie of a great civilization."
Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct chirography, not omitting a single comma, and
making the paper screech under his pen. Below the last line he signed:
"JAVERT,
"Inspector of the 1st class.
"The Post of the Place du Chatelet.
"June 7th, 1832, about one o'clock in the morning."
Javert dried the fresh ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on the back: Note for the
administration, left it on the table, and quitted the post. The glazed and grated door fell to behind him.
Again he traversed the Place du Chatelet diagonally, regained the quay, and returned with automatic precision
to the very point which he had abandoned a quarter of an hour previously, leaned on his elbows and found
himself again in the same attitude on the same pavingstone of the parapet. He did not appear to have stirred.
The darkness was complete. It was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight. A ceiling of clouds
concealed the stars. Not a single light burned in the houses of the city; no one was passing; all of the streets
and quays which could be seen were deserted; NotreDame and the towers of the CourtHouse seemed
features of the night. A street lantern reddened the margin of the quay. The outlines of the bridges lay
shapeless in the mist one behind the other. Recent rains had swollen the river.
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The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered, situated precisely over the rapids of the Seine,
perpendicularly above that formidable spiral of whirlpools which loose and knot themselves again like an
endless screw.
Javert bent his head and gazed. All was black. Nothing was to be distinguished. A sound of foam was
audible; but the river could not be seen. At moments, in that dizzy depth, a gleam of light appeared, and
undulated vaguely, water possessing the power of taking light, no one knows whence, and converting it into a
snake. The light vanished, and all became indistinct once more. Immensity seemed thrown open there. What
lay below was not water, it was a gulf. The wall of the quay, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapors,
instantly concealed from sight, produced the effect of an escarpment of the infinite. Nothing was to be seen,
but the hostile chill of the water and the stale odor of the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from
this abyss. The flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the
melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that
shadow was full of horror.
Javert remained motionless for several minutes, gazing at this opening of shadow; he considered the invisible
with a fixity that resembled attention. The water roared. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the
edge of the quay. A moment later, a tall black figure, which a belated passerby in the distance might have
taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet of the quay, bent over towards the Seine, then drew
itself up again, and fell straight down into the shadows; a dull splash followed; and the shadow alone was in
the secret of the convulsions of that obscure form which had disappeared beneath the water.
BOOK FIFTH.GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS
AGAIN
Some time after the events which we have just recorded, Sieur Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion.
Sieur Boulatruelle was that roadmender of Montfermeil whom the reader has already seen in the gloomy
parts of this book.
Boulatruelle, as the reader may, perchance, recall, was a man who was occupied with divers and troublesome
matters. He broke stones and damaged travellers on the highway.
Roadmender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream; he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of
Montfermeil. He hoped some day to find the money in the earth at the foot of a tree; in the meanwhile, he
lived to search the pockets of passersby.
Nevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent. He had just escaped neatly. He had been, as the reader is aware,
picked up in Jondrette's garret in company with the other ruffians. Utility of a vice: his drunkenness had been
his salvation. The authorities had never been able to make out whether he had been there in the quality of a
robber or a man who had been robbed. An order of nolle prosequi, founded on his well authenticated state of
intoxication on the evening of the ambush, had set him at liberty. He had taken to his heels. He had returned
to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to make, under administrative supervision, broken stone for the good of the
state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive mood, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted
none the less tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short time after his return to his roadmender's
turfthatched cot, here it is:
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One morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his wont, to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a
little before daybreak caught sight, through the branches of the trees, of a man, whose back alone he saw, but
the shape of whose shoulders, as it seemed to him at that distance and in the early dusk, was not entirely
unfamiliar to him. Boulatruelle, although intoxicated, had a correct and lucid memory, a defensive arm that is
indispensable to any one who is at all in conflict with legal order.
"Where the deuce have I seen something like that man yonder?" he said to himself. But he could make
himself no answer, except that the man resembled some one of whom his memory preserved a confused trace.
However, apart from the identity which he could not manage to catch, Boulatruelle put things together and
made calculations. This man did not belong in the countryside. He had just arrived there. On foot, evidently.
No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil at that hour. He had walked all night. Whence came he?
Not from a very great distance; for he had neither haversack, nor bundle. From Paris, no doubt. Why was he
in these woods? why was he there at such an hour? what had he come there for?
Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of ransacking his memory, he recalled in a vague way that he
had already, many years before, had a similar alarm in connection with a man who produced on him the
effect that he might well be this very individual.
"By the deuce," said Boulatruelle, "I'll find him again. I'll discover the parish of that parishioner. This prowler
of PatronMinette has a reason, and I'll know it. People can't have secrets in my forest if I don't have a finger
in the pie."
He took his pickaxe which was very sharply pointed.
"There now," he grumbled, "is something that will search the earth and a man."
And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of march at his best pace in the direction
which the man must follow, and set out across the thickets.
When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already beginning to break, came to his
assistance. Footprints stamped in the sand, weeds trodden down here and there, heather crushed, young
branches in the brushwood bent and in the act of straightening themselves up again with the graceful
deliberation of the arms of a pretty woman who stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him a sort of
track. He followed it, then lost it. Time was flying. He plunged deeper into the woods and came to a sort of
eminence. An early huntsman who was passing in the distance along a path, whistling the air of Guillery,
suggested to him the idea of climbing a tree. Old as he was, he was agile. There stood close at hand a
beechtree of great size, worthy of Tityrus and of Boulatruelle. Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as he
was able.
The idea was a good one. On scrutinizing the solitary waste on the side where the forest is thoroughly
entangled and wild, Boulatruelle suddenly caught sight of his man.
Hardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of him.
The man entered, or rather, glided into, an open glade, at a considerable distance, masked by large trees, but
with which Boulatruelle was perfectly familiar, on account of having noticed, near a large pile of porous
stones, an ailing chestnuttree bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark. This glade was the
one which was formerly called the Blarubottom. The heap of stones, destined for no one knows what
employment, which was visible there thirty years ago, is doubtless still there. Nothing equals a heap of stones
in longevity, unless it is a board fence. They are temporary expedients. What a reason for lasting!
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Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, dropped rather than descended from the tree. The lair was unearthed,
the question now was to seize the beast. That famous treasure of his dreams was probably there.
It was no small matter to reach that glade. By the beaten paths, which indulge in a thousand teasing zigzags, it
required a good quarter of an hour. In a beeline, through the underbrush, which is peculiarly dense, very
thorny, and very aggressive in that locality, a full half hour was necessary. Boulatruelle committed the error
of not comprehending this. He believed in the straight line; a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a
man. The thicket, bristling as it was, struck him as the best road.
"Let's take to the wolves' Rue de Rivoli," said he.
Boulatruelle, accustomed to taking crooked courses, was on this occasion guilty of the fault of going straight.
He flung himself resolutely into the tangle of undergrowth.
He had to deal with holly bushes, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles, and very irascible brambles. He was
much lacerated.
At the bottom of the ravine he found water which he was obliged to traverse.
At last he reached the Blarubottom, after the lapse of forty minutes, sweating, soaked, breathless, scratched,
and ferocious.
There was no one in the glade. Boulatruelle rushed to the heap of stones. It was in its place. It had not been
carried off.
As for the man, he had vanished in the forest. He had made his escape. Where? in what direction? into what
thicket? Impossible to guess.
And, heartrending to say, there, behind the pile of stones, in front of the tree with the sheet of zinc, was
freshly turned earth, a pickaxe, abandoned or forgotten, and a hole.
The hole was empty.
"Thief!" shrieked Boulatruelle, shaking his fist at the horizon.
CHAPTER II. MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY
FOR DOMESTIC WAR
For a long time, Marius was neither dead nor alive. For many weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by
delirium, and by tolerably grave cerebral symptoms, caused more by the shocks of the wounds on the head
than by the wounds themselves.
He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity of fever, and with the sombre
obstinacy of agony. The extent of some of the lesions presented a serious danger, the suppuration of large
wounds being always liable to become reabsorbed, and consequently, to kill the sick man, under certain
atmospheric conditions; at every change of weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.
"Above all things," he repeated, "let the wounded man be subjected to no emotion." The dressing of the
wounds was complicated and difficult, the fixation of apparatus and bandages by cerecloths not having been
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invented as yet, at that epoch. Nicolette used up a sheet "as big as the ceiling," as she put it, for lint. It was not
without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the gangrene. As long as
there was any danger, M. Gillenormand, seated in despair at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius, neither
alive nor dead.
Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed gentleman with white hair,such was the description
given by the porter, came to inquire about the wounded man, and left a large package of lint for the
dressings.
Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day, after the sorrowful night when he had been brought
back to his grandfather in a dying condition, the doctor declared that he would answer for Marius.
Convalescence began. But Marius was forced to remain for two months more stretched out on a long chair,
on account of the results called up by the fracture of his collarbone. There always is a last wound like that
which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick person.
However, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him from all pursuit. In France, there is no
wrath, not even of a public character, which six months will not extinguish. Revolts, in the present state of
society, are so much the fault of every one, that they are followed by a certain necessity of shutting the eyes.
Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined doctors to lodge information against the
wounded, having outraged public opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all, the wounded were
covered and protected by this indignation; and, with the exception of those who had been made prisoners in
the very act of combat, the councils of war did not dare to trouble any one. So Marius was left in peace.
M. Gillenormand first passed through all manner of anguish, and then through every form of ecstasy. It was
found difficult to prevent his passing every night beside the wounded man; he had his big armchair carried
to Marius' bedside; he required his daughter to take the finest linen in the house for compresses and bandages.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, like a sage and elderly person, contrived to spare the fine linen, while allowing
the grandfather to think that he was obeyed. M. Gillenormand would not permit any one to explain to him,
that for the preparation of lint batiste is not nearly so good as coarse linen, nor new linen as old linen. He was
present at all the dressings of the wounds from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself.
When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors, he said: "Aie! aie!" Nothing was more touching than to see
him with his gentle, senile palsy, offer the wounded man a cup of his coolingdraught. He overwhelmed the
doctor with questions. He did not observe that he asked the same ones over and over again.
On the day when the doctor announced to him that Marius was out of danger, the good man was in a
delirium. He made his porter a present of three louis. That evening, on his return to his own chamber, he
danced a gavotte, using his thumb and forefinger as castanets, and he sang the following song:
"Jeanne est nee a Fougere "Amour, tu vis en elle;
Vrai nid d'une bergere; Car c'est dans sa prunelle
J'adore son jupon, Que tu mets ton carquois.
Fripon. Narquois!
"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
Plus que Diane meme,
Jeanne et ses durs tetons
Bretons."[61]
[61] "Jeanne was born at Fougere, a true shepherd's nest; I adore her petticoat, the rogue.
"Love, thou dwellest in her; For 'tis in her eyes that thou placest thy quiver, sly scamp!
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"As for me, I sing her, and I love, more than Diana herself, Jeanne and her firm Breton breasts."
Then he knelt upon a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the halfopen door, made sure that
he was praying.
Up to that time, he had not believed in God.
At each succeeding phase of improvement, which became more and more pronounced, the grandfather raved.
He executed a multitude of mechanical actions full of joy; he ascended and descended the stairs, without
knowing why. A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at receiving a big bouquet; it was M.
Gillenormand who had sent it to her. The husband made a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw
Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius, "M. le Baron." He shouted: "Long live the Republic!"
Every moment, he kept asking the doctor: "Is he no longer in danger?" He gazed upon Marius with the eyes
of a grandmother. He brooded over him while he ate. He no longer knew himself, he no longer rendered
himself an account of himself. Marius was the master of the house, there was abdication in his joy, he was the
grandson of his grandson.
In the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most venerable of children. In his fear lest he might
fatigue or annoy the convalescent, he stepped behind him to smile. He was content, joyous, delighted,
charming, young. His white locks added a gentle majesty to the gay radiance of his visage. When grace is
mingled with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.
As for Marius, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and care for him, he had but one fixed idea: Cosette.
After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce her name, and it might have been
supposed that he no longer thought of her. He held his peace, precisely because his soul was there.
He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud
in his memory; shadows that were almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf,
the Thenardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of
M. Fauchelevent through that adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest; he understood
nothing connected with his own life, he did not know how nor by whom he had been saved, and no one of
those around him knew this; all that they had been able to tell him was, that he had been brought home at
night in a hackneycoach, to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire; past, present, future were nothing more to him
than the mist of a vague idea; but in that fog there was one immovable point, one clear and precise outline,
something made of granite, a resolution, a will; to find Cosette once more. For him, the idea of life was not
distinct from the idea of Cosette. He had decreed in his heart that he would not accept the one without the
other, and he was immovably resolved to exact of any person whatever, who should desire to force him to
live,from his grandfather, from fate, from hell,the restitution of his vanished Eden.
He did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles existed.
Let us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and was but little softened by all the solicitude and
tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place, he was not in the secret; then, in his reveries of an invalid,
which were still feverish, possibly, he distrusted this tenderness as a strange and novel thing, which had for
its object his conquest. He remained cold. The grandfather absolutely wasted his poor old smile. Marius said
to himself that it was all right so long as he, Marius, did not speak, and let things take their course; but that
when it became a question of Cosette, he would find another face, and that his grandfather's true attitude
would be unmasked. Then there would be an unpleasant scene; a recrudescence of family questions, a
confrontation of positions, every sort of sarcasm and all manner of objections at one and the same time,
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Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, a stone about his neck, the future. Violent resistance;
conclusion: a refusal. Marius stiffened himself in advance.
And then, in proportion as he regained life, the old ulcers of his memory opened once more, he reflected
again on the past, Colonel Pontmercy placed himself once more between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius,
he told himself that he had no true kindness to expect from a person who had been so unjust and so hard to
his father. And with health, there returned to him a sort of harshness towards his grandfather. The old man
was gently pained by this. M. Gillenormand, without however allowing it to appear, observed that Marius,
ever since the latter had been brought back to him and had regained consciousness, had not once called him
father. It is true that he did not say "monsieur" to him; but he contrived not to say either the one or the other,
by means of a certain way of turning his phrases. Obviously, a crisis was approaching.
As almost always happens in such cases, Marius skirmished before giving battle, by way of proving himself.
This is called "feeling the ground." One morning it came to pass that M. Gillenormand spoke slightingly of
the Convention, apropos of a newspaper which had fallen into his hands, and gave vent to a Royalist
harangue on Danton, SaintJuste and Robespierre."The men of '93 were giants," said Marius with severity.
The old man held his peace, and uttered not a sound during the remainder of that day.
Marius, who had always present to his mind the inflexible grandfather of his early years, interpreted this
silence as a profound concentration of wrath, augured from it a hot conflict, and augmented his preparations
for the fray in the inmost recesses of his mind.
He decided that, in case of a refusal, he would tear off his bandages, dislocate his collarbone, that he would
lay bare all the wounds which he had left, and would reject all food. His wounds were his munitions of war.
He would have Cosette or die.
He awaited the propitious moment with the crafty patience of the sick.
That moment arrived.
CHAPTER III. MARIUS ATTACKED
One day, M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting in order the phials and cups on the marble of the
commode, bent over Marius and said to him in his tenderest accents: "Look here, my little Marius, if I were
in your place, I would eat meat now in preference to fish. A fried sole is excellent to begin a convalescence
with, but a good cutlet is needed to put a sick man on his feet."
Marius, who had almost entirely recovered his strength, collected the whole of it, drew himself up into a
sitting posture, laid his two clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his grandfather in the face,
assumed a terrible air, and said:
"This leads me to say something to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Agreed," said his grandfather.And he burst out laughing.
"How agreed?"
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Page No 922
"Yes, agreed. You shall have your little girl."
Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock, trembled in every limb.
M. Gillenormand went on:
"Yes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of yours. She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman
to inquire after you. Ever since you were wounded, she has passed her time in weeping and making lint. I
have made inquiries. She lives in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7. Ah! There we have it! Ah! so you want
her! Well, you shall have her. You're caught. You had arranged your little plot, you had said to
yourself:`I'm going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to that mummy of the Regency and of the
Directory, to that ancient beau, to that Dorante turned Geronte; he has indulged in his frivolities also, that he
has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes and his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his
wings, he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.' Ah! you take the cockchafer by the
horns. That's good. I offer you a cutlet and you answer me: `By the way, I want to marry.' There's a transition
for you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I am an old coward. What do you say to
that? You are vexed? You did not expect to find your grandfather still more foolish than yourself, you are
wasting the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's vexatious. Well, so much
the worse, rage away. I'll do whatever you wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my
inquiries, I'm cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not true about the lancer, she has made heaps
of lint, she's a jewel, she adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her coffin would
have accompanied mine. I have had an idea, ever since you have been better, of simply planting her at your
bedside, but it is only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of handsome young wounded
men who interest them. It is not done. What would your aunt have said to it? You were nude three quarters of
the time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you for a moment, if there was any possibility of
having a woman here. And then, what would the doctor have said? A pretty girl does not cure a man of fever.
In short, it's all right, let us say no more about it, all's said, all's done, it's all settled, take her. Such is my
ferocity. You see, I perceived that you did not love me. I said to myself: `Here now, I have my little Cosette
right under my hand, I'm going to give her to him, he will be obliged to love me a little then, or he must tell
the reason why.' Ah! so you thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on a big voice, to shout no,
and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not a bit of it. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better. Pray
take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my wellbeloved child."
That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.
And he seized Marius' head, and pressed it with both arms against his breast, and both fell to weeping. This is
one of the forms of supreme happiness.
"Father!" cried Marius.
"Ah, so you love me!" said the old man.
An ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could not speak.
At length the old man stammered:
"Come! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said: `Father' to me."
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently:
"But, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me that I might see her."
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"Agreed again, you shall see her tomorrow."
"Father!"
"What?"
"Why not today?"
"Well, today then. Let it be today. You have called me `father' three times, and it is worth it. I will attend
to it. She shall be brought hither. Agreed, I tell you. It has already been put into verse. This is the ending of
the elegy of the `Jeune Malade' by Andre Chenier, by Andre Chenier whose throat was cut by the ras . . . by
the giants of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part of Marius, who, in truth, as we must
admit, was no longer listening to him, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793.
The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced Andre Chenier, resumed precipitately:
"Cut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that
is incontestable, who were heroes, pardi! found that Andre Chenier embarrassed them somewhat, and they
had him guillot . . . that is to say, those great men on the 7th of Thermidor, besought Andre Chenier, in the
interests of public safety, to be so good as to go . . ."
M. Gillenormand, clutched by the throat by his own phrase, could not proceed. Being able neither to finish it
nor to retract it, while his daughter arranged the pillow behind Marius, who was overwhelmed with so many
emotions, the old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as his age permitted, from the bedchamber,
shut the door behind him, and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth, his eyes starting from his head, he
found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque
by the collar, and shouted full in his face in fury:"By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those
ruffians did assassinate him!"
"Who, sir?"
"Andre Chenier!"
"Yes, sir," said Basque in alarm.
CHAPTER IV. MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND ENDS BY NO LONGER
THINKING IT A BAD THING THAT M. FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD HAVE
ENTERED WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM
Cosette and Marius beheld each other once more.
What that interview was like we decline to say. There are things which one must not attempt to depict; the
sun is one of them.
The entire family, including Basque and Nicolette, were assembled in Marius' chamber at the moment when
Cosette entered it.
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Precisely at that moment, the grandfather was on the point of blowing his nose; he stopped short, holding his
nose in his handkerchief, and gazing over it at Cosette.
She appeared on the threshold; it seemed to him that she was surrounded by a glory.
"Adorable!" he exclaimed.
Then he blew his nose noisily.
Cosette was intoxicated, delighted, frightened, in heaven. She was as thoroughly alarmed as any one can be
by happiness. She stammered all pale, yet flushed, she wanted to fling herself into Marius' arms, and dared
not. Ashamed of loving in the presence of all these people. People are pitiless towards happy lovers; they
remain when the latter most desire to be left alone. Lovers have no need of any people whatever.
With Cosette, and behind her, there had entered a man with white hair who was grave yet smiling, though
with a vague and heartrending smile. It was "Monsieur Fauchelevent"; it was Jean Valjean.
He was very well dressed, as the porter had said, entirely in black, in perfectly new garments, and with a
white cravat.
The porter was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this correct bourgeois, in this probable notary, the
fearinspiring bearer of the corpse, who had sprung up at his door on the night of the 7th of June, tattered,
muddy, hideous, haggard, his face masked in blood and mire, supporting in his arms the fainting Marius; still,
his porter's scent was aroused. When M. Fauchelevent arrived with Cosette, the porter had not been able to
refrain from communicating to his wife this aside: "I don't know why it is, but I can't help fancying that I've
seen that face before."
M. Fauchelevent in Marius' chamber, remained apart near the door. He had under his arm, a package which
bore considerable resemblance to an octavo volume enveloped in paper. The enveloping paper was of a
greenish hue, and appeared to be mouldy.
"Does the gentleman always have books like that under his arm?" Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who did not
like books, demanded in a low tone of Nicolette.
"Well," retorted M. Gillenormand, who had overheard her, in the same tone, "he's a learned man. What then?
Is that his fault? Monsieur Boulard, one of my acquaintances, never walked out without a book under his arm
either, and he always had some old volume hugged to his heart like that."
And, with a bow, he said aloud:
"Monsieur Tranchelevent . . ."
Father Gillenormand did not do it intentionally, but inattention to proper names was an aristocratic habit of
his.
"Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of asking you, on behalf of my grandson, Baron Marius
Pontmercy, for the hand of Mademoiselle."
Monsieur Tranchelevent bowed.
"That's settled," said the grandfather.
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Page No 925
And, turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended in blessing, he cried:
"Permission to adore each other!"
They did not require him to repeat it twice. So much the worse! the chirping began. They talked low. Marius,
resting on his elbow on his reclining chair, Cosette standing beside him. "Oh, heavens!" murmured Cosette,
"I see you once again! it is thou! it is you! The idea of going and fighting like that! But why? It is horrible. I
have been dead for four months. Oh! how wicked it was of you to go to that battle! What had I done to you? I
pardon you, but you will never do it again. A little while ago, when they came to tell us to come to you, I still
thought that I was about to die, but it was from joy. I was so sad! I have not taken the time to dress myself, I
must frighten people with my looks! What will your relatives say to see me in a crumpled collar? Do speak!
You let me do all the talking. We are still in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. It seems that your shoulder was
terrible. They told me that you could put your fist in it. And then, it seems that they cut your flesh with the
scissors. That is frightful. I have cried till I have no eyes left. It is queer that a person can suffer like that.
Your grandfather has a very kindly air. Don't disturb yourself, don't rise on your elbow, you will injure
yourself. Oh! how happy I am! So our unhappiness is over! I am quite foolish. I had things to say to you, and
I no longer know in the least what they were. Do you still love me? We live in the Rue de l'Homme Arme.
There is no garden. I made lint all the time; stay, sir, look, it is your fault, I have a callous on my fingers."
"Angel!" said Marius.
Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out. No other word could resist the merciless
use which lovers make of it.
Then as there were spectators, they paused and said not a word more, contenting themselves with softly
touching each other's hands.
M. Gillenormand turned towards those who were in the room and cried:
"Talk loud, the rest of you. Make a noise, you people behind the scenes. Come, a little uproar, the deuce! so
that the children can chatter at their ease."
And, approaching Marius and Cosette, he said to them in a very low voice:
"Call each other thou. Don't stand on ceremony."
Aunt Gillenormand looked on in amazement at this irruption of light in her elderly household. There was
nothing aggressive about this amazement; it was not the least in the world like the scandalized and envious
glance of an owl at two turtledoves, it was the stupid eye of a poor innocent seven and fifty years of age; it
was a life which had been a failure gazing at that triumph, love.
"Mademoiselle Gillenormand senior," said her father to her, "I told you that this is what would happen to
you."
He remained silent for a moment, and then added:
"Look at the happiness of others."
Then he turned to Cosette.
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Page No 926
"How pretty she is! how pretty she is! She's a Greuze. So you are going to have that all to yourself, you
scamp! Ah! my rogue, you are getting off nicely with me, you are happy; if I were not fifteen years too old,
we would fight with swords to see which of us should have her. Come now! I am in love with you,
mademoiselle. It's perfectly simple. It is your right. You are in the right. Ah! what a sweet, charming little
wedding this will make! Our parish is SaintDenis du Saint Sacrament, but I will get a dispensation so that
you can be married at SaintPaul. The church is better. It was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is
opposite the fountain of Cardinal de Birague. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at Namur. It is called
SaintLoup. You must go there after you are married. It is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am quite of
your mind, I think girls ought to marry; that is what they are made for. There is a certain SainteCatherine
whom I should always like to see uncoiffed.[62] It's a fine thing to remain a spinster, but it is chilly. The
Bible says: Multiply. In order to save the people, Jeanne d'Arc is needed; but in order to make people, what is
needed is Mother Goose. So, marry, my beauties. I really do not see the use in remaining a spinster! I know
that they have their chapel apart in the church, and that they fall back on the Society of the Virgin; but,
sapristi, a handsome husband, a fine fellow, and at the expiration of a year, a big, blond brat who nurses
lustily, and who has fine rolls of fat on his thighs, and who musses up your breast in handfuls with his little
rosy paws, laughing the while like the dawn,that's better than holding a candle at vespers, and chanting
Turris eburnea!"
[62] In allusion to the expression, coiffer SainteCatherine, "to remain unmarried."
The grandfather executed a pirouette on his eightyyearold heels, and began to talk again like a spring that
has broken loose once more:
"Ainsi, bornant les cours de tes revasseries,
Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries."[63]
[63] "Thus, hemming in the course of thy musings, Alcippus, it is true that thou wilt wed ere long."
"By the way!"
"What is it, father?"
"Have not you an intimate friend?"
"Yes, Courfeyrac."
"What has become of him?"
"He is dead."
"That is good."
He seated himself near them, made Cosette sit down, and took their four hands in his aged and wrinkled
hands:
"She is exquisite, this darling. She's a masterpiece, this Cosette! She is a very little girl and a very great lady.
She will only be a Baroness, which is a come down for her; she was born a Marquise. What eyelashes she
has! Get it well fixed in your noddles, my children, that you are in the true road. Love each other. Be foolish
about it. Love is the folly of men and the wit of God. Adore each other. Only," he added, suddenly becoming
gloomy, "what a misfortune! It has just occurred to me! More than half of what I possess is swallowed up in
an annuity; so long as I live, it will not matter, but after my death, a score of years hence, ah! my poor
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Page No 927
children, you will not have a sou! Your beautiful white hands, Madame la Baronne, will do the devil the
honor of pulling him by the tail."[64]
[64] Tirer le diable par la queue, "to live from hand to mouth."
At this point they heard a grave and tranquil voice say:
"Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent possesses six hundred thousand francs."
It was the voice of Jean Valjean.
So far he had not uttered a single word, no one seemed to be aware that he was there, and he had remained
standing erect and motionless, behind all these happy people.
"What has Mademoiselle Euphrasie to do with the question?" inquired the startled grandfather.
"I am she," replied Cosette.
"Six hundred thousand francs?" resumed M. Gillenormand.
"Minus fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, possibly," said Jean Valjean.
And he laid on the table the package which Mademoiselle Gillenormand had mistaken for a book.
Jean Valjean himself opened the package; it was a bundle of banknotes. They were turned over and counted.
There were five hundred notes for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixtyeight of five hundred.
In all, five hundred and eightyfour thousand francs.
"This is a fine book," said M. Gillenormand.
"Five hundred and eightyfour thousand francs!" murmured the aunt.
"This arranges things well, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand senior?" said the grandfather. "That devil
of a Marius has ferreted out the nest of a millionaire grisette in his tree of dreams! Just trust to the love affairs
of young folks now, will you! Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. Cherubino works
better than Rothschild."
"Five hundred and eightyfour thousand francs!" repeated Mademoiselle Gillenormand, in a low tone. "Five
hundred and eightyfour! one might as well say six hundred thousand!"
As for Marius and Cosette, they were gazing at each other while this was going on; they hardly heeded this
detail.
CHAPTER V. DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN
WITH A NOTARY
The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating a lengthy explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the
Champmathieu affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape of a few days' duration, to come to Paris and to
withdraw in season, from the hands of Laffitte, the sum earned by him, under the name of Monsieur
Madeleine, at MontreuilsurMer; and that fearing that he might be recaptured, which eventually
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Page No 928
happenedhe had buried and hidden that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the locality known as the
Blarubottom. The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bankbills, was not very bulky, and
was contained in a box; only, in order to preserve the box from dampness, he had placed it in a coffer filled
with chestnut shavings. In the same coffer he had placed his other treasures, the Bishop's candlesticks. It will
be remembered that he had carried off the candlesticks when he made his escape from MontreuilsurMer.
The man seen one evening for the first time by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean. Later on, every time that Jean
Valjean needed money, he went to get it in the Blarubottom. Hence the absences which we have mentioned.
He had a pickaxe somewhere in the heather, in a hidingplace known to himself alone. When he beheld
Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand, when that money might prove of service, he had gone
to get it; it was he again, whom Boulatruelle had seen in the woods, but on this occasion, in the morning
instead of in the evening. Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.
The actual sum was five hundred and eightyfour thousand, five hundred francs. Jean Valjean withdrew the
five hundred francs for himself."We shall see hereafter," he thought.
The difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte
represented his expenditure in ten years, from 1823 to 1833. The five years of his stay in the convent had cost
only five thousand francs.
Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimneypiece, where they glittered to the great admiration of
Toussaint.
Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. The story had been told in his presence, and
he had verified the fact in the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Javert had been found drowned under
a boat belonging to some laundresses, between the Pont au Change and the PontNeuf, and that a writing left
by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his superiors, pointed to a fit of mental
aberration and a suicide."In fact," thought Jean Valjean, "since he left me at liberty, once having got me in
his power, he must have been already mad."
CHAPTER VI. THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER
HIS OWN FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY
Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being consulted, declared that it might take place
in February. It was then December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.
The grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He remained for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at
Cosette.
"The wonderful, beautiful girl!" he exclaimed. "And she has so sweet and good an air! she is, without
exception, the most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life. Later on, she'll have virtues with an odor of
violets. How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a
Baron, you are rich, don't go to pettifogging, I beg of you."
Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise. The transition had not been softened,
and they would have been stunned, had they not been dazzled by it.
"Do you understand anything about it?" said Marius to Cosette.
"No," replied Cosette, "but it seems to me that the good God is caring for us."
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Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged everything, made everything easy. He
hastened towards Cosette's happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as Cosette
herself.
As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate problem, with the secret of which he alone
was acquainted, Cosette's civil status. If he were to announce her origin bluntly, it might prevent the
marriage, who knows? He extricated Cosette from all difficulties. He concocted for her a family of dead
people, a sure means of not encountering any objections. Cosette was the only scion of an extinct family;
Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter of the other Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent
had been gardeners to the convent of the PetitPicpus. Inquiry was made at that convent; the very best
information and the most respectable references abounded; the good nuns, not very apt and but little inclined
to fathom questions of paternity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never understood
exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted and they
said it with zeal. An acte de notoriete was drawn up. Cosette became in the eyes of the law, Mademoiselle
Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan, both father and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so
arranged it that he was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's guardian, with M.
Gillenormand as supervising guardian over him.
As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted a legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead
person, who desired to remain unknown. The original legacy had consisted of five hundred and ninetyfour
thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie,
five thousand francs of that amount having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a
third party, was to be turned over to Cosette at her majority, or at the date of her marriage. This, taken as a
whole, was very acceptable, as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum due was half a million.
There were some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but they were not noticed; one of the interested parties
had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was
merely a kinsman; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time this would have broken her
heart. But at the ineffable moment which she was then passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint
cloud, and she was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. She had Marius. The young man arrived, the
old man was effaced; such is life.
And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing enigmas around her; every being who has
had a mysterious childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations.
Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean: Father.
Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Gillenormand. It is true that he overwhelmed her
with gallant compliments and presents. While Jean Valjean was building up for Cosette a normal situation in
society and an unassailable status, M. Gillenormand was superintending the basket of wedding gifts. Nothing
so amused him as being magnificent. He had given to Cosette a robe of Binche guipure which had descended
to him from his own grandmother.
"These fashions come up again," said he, "ancient things are the rage, and the young women of my old age
dress like the old women of my childhood."
He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with swelling fronts, which had not been
opened for years."Let us hear the confession of these dowagers," he said, "let us see what they have in
their paunches." He noisily violated the potbellied drawers of all his wives, of all his mistresses and of all
his grandmothers. Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India kerchiefs
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embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and
Alencon point lace, parures in antique goldsmith's work, ivory bonbon boxes ornamented with microscopic
battles, gewgaws and ribbons he lavished everything on Cosette. Cosette, amazed, desperately in love with
Marius, and wild with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a happiness without limit clothed in
satin and velvet. Her wedding basket seemed to her to be upheld by seraphim. Her soul flew out into the
azure depths, with wings of Mechlin lace.
The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. A
sort of flourish of trumpets went on in the Rue des FillesduCalvaire.
Every morning, a fresh offering of bricabrac from the grandfather to Cosette. All possible knickknacks
glittered around her.
One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his bliss, said, apropos of I know not what
incident:
"The men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige of the ages, like Cato and like Phocion,
and each one of them seems to me an antique memory."
"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "Thanks, Marius. That is precisely the idea of which I was in
search."
And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tearose colored moire antique was added to Cosette's
wedding presents.
From these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of wisdom.
"Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it. The useless must be mingled with
happiness. Happiness is only the necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace
and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand waterworks of Versailles. Give me my
shepherdess and try to make her a duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with cornflowers, and add a hundred
thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a marble
colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness
resembles dry bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant,
excess, that which serves no purpose. I remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a clock, as tall
as a threestory house which marked the hours, which had the kindness to indicate the hour, but which had
not the air of being made for that; and which, after having struck midday, or midnight, midday, the hour of
the sun, or midnight, the hour of love, or any other hour that you like, gave you the moon and the stars, the
earth and the sea, birds and fishes, Phoebus and Phoebe, and a host of things which emerged from a niche,
and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Eponine, and Sabinus, and a throng of little
gilded goodmen, who played on the trumpet to boot. Without reckoning delicious chimes which it sprinkled
through the air, on every occasion, without any one's knowing why. Is a petty bald clockface which merely
tells the hour equal to that? For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg, and I prefer it to
the cuckoo clock from the Black Forest."
M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the wedding, and all the fripperies of the eighteenth
century passed pellmell through his dithyrambs.
"You are ignorant of the art of festivals. You do not know how to organize a day of enjoyment in this age,"
he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth century is weak. It lacks excess. It ignores the rich, it ignores the noble. In
everything it is cleanshaven. Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of
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your bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet, ebony and calico.
Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutchpenny. Sumptuousness and
splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a candle. There's the epoch for you. My demand is that I may flee
from it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de
Rohan, Prince de Leon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Sonbise, Vicomte de Thouars, peer
of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men attend to business,
they gamble on 'Change, they win money, they are stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish
them; every one is dressed as though just out of a bandbox, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed,
waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet,
neat, and at the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have dungheaps and
cesspools that are enough to make a cowherd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the
device: `Dirty Cleanliness.' Don't be vexed, Marius, give me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people
as you see, I am always harping on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit of a slap to the
bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes well. Thereupon, I say plainly, that nowadays people
marry, but that they no longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace of the ancient manners. I
regret everything about them, their elegance, their chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that joyous
luxury which every one possessed, music forming part of the wedding, a symphony above stairs, a beating of
drums below stairs, the dances, the joyous faces round the table, the finespun gallant compliments, the
songs, the fireworks, the frank laughter, the devil's own row, the huge knots of ribbon. I regret the bride's
garter. The bride's garter is cousin to the girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen's
garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break over the head of Meriones that great
brazen helmet of ten points? why did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances?
Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter, Homer would construct the Iliad. He
would put in his poem, a loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call him Nestor. My friends, in bygone
days, in those amiable days of yore, people married wisely; they had a good contract, and then they had a
good carouse. As soon as Cujas had taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth! the stomach is an
agreeable beast which demands its due, and which wants to have its wedding also. People supped well, and
had at table a beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only moderately concealed. Oh! the
large laughing mouths, and how gay we were in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man
terminated in a branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a warrior; and if, by chance,
one was a captain of dragoons, one found means to call oneself Florian. People thought much of looking well.
They embroidered and tinted themselves. A bourgeois had the air of a flower, a Marquis had the air of a
precious stone. People had no straps to their boots, they had no boots. They were spruce, shining, waved,
lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides. The
hummingbird has beak and claws. That was the day of the Galland Indies. One of the sides of that century
was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green cabbages! people amused themselves. Today,
people are serious. The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is unfortunate. People
would drive away the Graces as being too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were
ugliness. Since the revolution, everything, including the balletdancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank
dancer must be grave; your rigadoons are doctrinarian. It is necessary to be majestic. People would be greatly
annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal of an urchin of twenty when he marries, is
to resemble M. RoyerCollard. And do you know what one arrives at with that majesty? at being petty. Learn
this: joy is not only joyous; it is great. But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! marry, when you marry,
with fever and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good. But, as
soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be
royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of
Chanteloup. I have a horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at least. Be
one of the gods. Ah! people might be sylphs. Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids. My friends,
every recently made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique minute in life to soar
away to the empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the
bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don't economize on the nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don't scrimp
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on the day when you beam. The wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it
would be gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. Here is my programme: skyblue and silver. I
would mingle with the festival the rural divinities, I would convoke the Dryads and the Nereids. The nuptials
of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks and entirely naked, an Academician offering
quatrains to the goddess, a chariot drawn by marine monsters.
"Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque
Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!"[65]
there's a festive programme, there's a good one, or else I know nothing of such matters, deuce take it!"
[65] "Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conchshell sounds so ravishing that he delighted
everyone!"
While the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was listening to himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated
as they gazed freely at each other.
Aunt Gillenormand surveyed all this with her imperturbable placidity. Within the last five or six months she
had experienced a certain amount of emotions. Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius
brought back from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius reconciled, Marius betrothed, Marius
wedding a poor girl, Marius wedding a millionairess. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last
surprise. Then, her indifference of a girl taking her first communion returned to her. She went regularly to
service, told her beads, read her euchology, mumbled Aves in one corner of the house, while I love you was
being whispered in the other, and she beheld Marius and Cosette in a vague way, like two shadows. The
shadow was herself.
There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul, neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which
may be designated as the business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or pleasant or painful,
with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his
daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life. Neither any bad, nor any good odor.
Moreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly spinster's indecision. Her father had
acquired the habit of taking her so little into account, that he had not consulted her in the matter of consent to
Marius' marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, a despotturned slave, but a
single thought,to satisfy Marius. As for the aunt,it had not even occurred to him that the aunt existed,
and that she could have an opinion of her own, and, sheep as she was, this had vexed her. Somewhat resentful
in her inmost soul, but impassible externally, she had said to herself: "My father has settled the question of
the marriage without reference to me; I shall settle the question of the inheritance without consulting him."
She was rich, in fact, and her father was not. She had reserved her decision on this point. It is probable that,
had the match been a poor one, she would have left him poor. "So much the worse for my nephew! he is
wedding a beggar, let him be a beggar himself!" But Cosette's halfmillion pleased the aunt, and altered her
inward situation so far as this pair of lovers were concerned. One owes some consideration to six hundred
thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young
people, since they did not need it.
It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather M. Gillenormand insisted on resigning to
them his chamber, the finest in the house. "That will make me young again," he said. "It's an old plan of
mine. I have always entertained the idea of having a wedding in my chamber."
He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had the ceiling and walls hung with an
extraordinary stuff, which he had by him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht
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with a buttercupcolored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula blossoms."It was with that stuff," said
he, "that the bed of the Duchesse d'Anville at la RocheGuyon was draped." On the chimneypiece, he set
a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff against her nude stomach.
M. Gillenormand's library became the lawyer's study, which Marius needed; a study, it will be remembered,
being required by the council of the order.
CHAPTER VII. THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS
The lovers saw each other every day. Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent."This is reversing things," said
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, "to have the bride come to the house to do the courting like this." But Marius'
convalescence had caused the habit to become established, and the armchairs of the Rue des
FillesduCalvaire, better adapted to interviews than the straw chairs of the Rue de l'Homme Arme, had
rooted it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not address each other. It seemed as though
this had been agreed upon. Every girl needs a chaperon. Cosette could not have come without M.
Fauchelevent. In Marius' eyes, M. Fauchelevent was the condition attached to Cosette. He accepted it. By
dint of discussing political matters, vaguely and without precision, from the point of view of the general
amelioration of the fate of all men, they came to say a little more than "yes" and "no." Once, on the subject of
education, which Marius wished to have free and obligatory, multiplied under all forms lavished on every
one, like the air and the sun in a word, respirable for the entire population, they were in unison, and they
almost conversed. M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even with a certain loftiness of languagestill he lacked
something indescribable. M. Fauchelevent possessed something less and also something more, than a man of
the world.
Marius, inwardly, and in the depths of his thought, surrounded with all sorts of mute questions this M.
Fauchelevent, who was to him simply benevolent and cold. There were moments when doubts as to his own
recollections occurred to him. There was a void in his memory, a black spot, an abyss excavated by four
months of agony.Many things had been lost therein. He had come to the point of asking himself whether it
were really a fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, so serious and so calm a man, in the barricade.
This was not, however, the only stupor which the apparitions and the disappearances of the past had left in his
mind. It must not be supposed that he was delivered from all those obsessions of the memory which force us,
even when happy, even when satisfied, to glance sadly behind us. The head which does not turn backwards
towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love. At times, Marius clasped his face
between his hands, and the vague and tumultuous past traversed the twilight which reigned in his brain.
Again he beheld Mabeuf fall, he heard Gavroche singing amid the grapeshot, he felt beneath his lips the
cold brow of Eponine; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends
rose erect before him, then dispersed into thin air. Were all those dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragic
beings merely dreams? had they actually existed? The revolt had enveloped everything in its smoke. These
great fevers create great dreams. He questioned himself; he felt himself; all these vanished realities made him
dizzy. Where were they all then? was it really true that all were dead? A fall into the shadows had carried off
all except himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain of a theatre. There
are curtains like this which drop in life. God passes on to the following act.
And he himselfwas he actually the same man? He, the poor man, was rich; he, the abandoned, had a
family; he, the despairing, was to marry Cosette. It seemed to him that he had traversed a tomb, and that he
had entered into it black and had emerged from it white, and in that tomb the others had remained. At certain
moments, all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle around him, and overshadowed
him; then he thought of Cosette, and recovered his serenity; but nothing less than this felicity could have
sufficed to efface that catastrophe.
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M. Fauchelevent almost occupied a place among these vanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the
Fauchelevent of the barricade was the same as this Fauchelevent in flesh and blood, sitting so gravely beside
Cosette. The first was, probably, one of those nightmares occasioned and brought back by his hours of
delirium. However, the natures of both men were rigid, no question from Marius to M. Fauchelevent was
possible. Such an idea had not even occurred to him. We have already indicated this characteristic detail.
Two men who have a secret in common, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, exchange not a word on the
subject, are less rare than is commonly supposed.
Once only, did Marius make the attempt. He introduced into the conversation the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and,
turning to M. Fauchelevent, he said to him:
"Of course, you are acquainted with that street?"
"What street?"
"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."
"I have no idea of the name of that street," replied M. Fauchelevent, in the most natural manner in the world.
The response which bore upon the name of the street and not upon the street itself, appeared to Marius to be
more conclusive than it really was.
"Decidedly," thought he, "I have been dreaming. I have been subject to a hallucination. It was some one who
resembled him. M. Fauchelevent was not there."'
CHAPTER VIII. TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND
Marius' enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his mind other preoccupations.
While the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting the date fixed upon, he caused difficult and
scrupulous retrospective researches to be made.
He owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his father's account, he owed it on his own.
There was Thenardier; there was the unknown man who had brought him, Marius, back to M. Gillenormand.
Marius endeavored to find these two men, not intending to marry, to be happy, and to forget them, and
fearing that, were these debts of gratitude not discharged, they would leave a shadow on his life, which
promised so brightly for the future.
It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind him, and he wished, before entering
joyously into the future, to obtain a quittance from the past.
That Thenardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy.
Thenardier was a ruffian in the eyes of all the world except Marius.
And Marius, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field of Waterloo, was not aware of the peculiar detail,
that his father, so far as Thenardier was concerned was in the strange position of being indebted to the latter
for his life, without being indebted to him for any gratitude.
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Page No 935
None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded in discovering any trace of Thenardier.
Obliteration appeared to be complete in that quarter. Madame Thenardier had died in prison pending the trial.
Thenardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two remaining of that lamentable group, had plunged back into
the gloom. The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed above those beings. On the surface there was
not visible so much as that quiver, that trembling, those obscure concentric circles which announce that
something has fallen in, and that the plummet may be dropped.
Madame Thenardier being dead, Boulatruelle being eliminated from the case, Claquesous having
disappeared, the principal persons accused having escaped from prison, the trial connected with the ambush
in the Gorbeau house had come to nothing.
That affair had remained rather obscure. The bench of Assizes had been obliged to content themselves with
two subordinates. Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and DemiLiard, alias DeuxMilliards, who
had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides of the case, to ten years in the galleys. Hard
labor for life had been the sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious accomplices.
Thenardier, the head and leader, had been, through contumacy, likewise condemned to death.
This sentence was the only information remaining about Thenardier, casting upon that buried name its
sinister light like a candle beside a bier.
Moreover, by thrusting Thenardier back into the very remotest depths, through a fear of being recaptured,
this sentence added to the density of the shadows which enveloped this man.
As for the other person, as for the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches were at first to some
extent successful, then came to an abrupt conclusion. They succeeded in finding the carriage which had
brought Marius to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire on the evening of the 6th of June.
The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience to the commands of a policeagent, he had
stood from three o'clock in the afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des ChampsElysees, above the outlet of
the Grand Sewer; that, towards nine o'clock in the evening, the grating of the sewer, which abuts on the bank
of the river, had opened; that a man had emerged therefrom, bearing on his shoulders another man, who
seemed to be dead; that the agent, who was on the watch at that point, had arrested the living man and had
seized the dead man; that, at the order of the policeagent, he, the coachman, had taken "all those folks" into
his carriage; that they had first driven to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire; that they had there deposited the
dead man; that the dead man was Monsieur Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him perfectly,
although he was alive "this time"; that afterwards, they had entered the vehicle again, that he had whipped up
his horses; a few paces from the gate of the Archives, they had called to him to halt; that there, in the street,
they had paid him and left him, and that the policeagent had led the other man away; that he knew nothing
more; that the night had been very dark.
Marius, as we have said, recalled nothing. He only remembered that he had been seized from behind by an
energetic hand at the moment when he was falling backwards into the barricade; then, everything vanished so
far as he was concerned.
He had only regained consciousness at M. Gillenormand's.
He was lost in conjectures.
He could not doubt his own identity. Still, how had it come to pass that, having fallen in the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, he had been picked up by the policeagent on the banks of the Seine, near the Pont des
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Page No 936
Invalides?
Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the ChampsElysees. And how? Through the
sewer. Unheardof devotion!
Some one? Who?
This was the man for whom Marius was searching.
Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the faintest indication.
Marius, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that direction, pushed his inquiries as far as the
prefecture of police. There, no more than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment.
The prefecture knew less about the matter than did the hackneycoachman. They had no knowledge of any
arrest having been made on the 6th of June at the mouth of the Grand Sewer.
No report of any agent had been received there upon this matter, which was regarded at the prefecture as a
fable. The invention of this fable was attributed to the coachman.
A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even of imagination. The fact was assured,
nevertheless, and Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.
Everything about this singular enigma was inexplicable.
What had become of that man, that mysterious man, whom the coachman had seen emerge from the grating
of the Grand Sewer bearing upon his back the unconscious Marius, and whom the policeagent on the watch
had arrested in the very act of rescuing an insurgent? What had become of the agent himself?
Why had this agent preserved silence? Had the man succeeded in making his escape? Had he bribed the
agent? Why did this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? His disinterestedness
was no less tremendous than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared again? Perhaps he was above
compensation, but no one is above gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What sort of a face had he?
No one could tell him this.
The coachman answered: "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette, all in a flutter, had looked only at
their young master all covered with blood.
The porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of Marius, had been the only one to take note of the
man in question, and this is the description that he gave:
"That man was terrible."
Marius had the bloodstained clothing which he had worn when he had been brought back to his grandfather
preserved, in the hope that it would prove of service in his researches.
On examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had been torn in a singular way. A piece was missing.
One evening, Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean Valjean of the whole of that singular
adventure, of the innumerable inquiries which he had made, and of the fruitlessness of his efforts. The cold
countenance of "Monsieur Fauchelevent" angered him.
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Page No 937
He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it:
"Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. Do you know what he did, sir? He intervened like
an archangel. He must have flung himself into the midst of the battle, have stolen me away, have opened the
sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He must have traversed more than a league
and a half in those frightful subterranean galleries, bent over, weighed down, in the dark, in the
cesspool,more than a league and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his back! And with what object? With the
sole object of saving the corpse. And that corpse I was. He said to himself: `There may still be a glimpse of
life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that miserable spark!' And his existence he risked not
once but twenty times! And every step was a danger. The proof of it is, that on emerging from the sewer, he
was arrested. Do you know, sir, that that man did all this? And he had no recompense to expect. What was I?
An insurgent. What was I? One of the conquered. Oh! if Cosette's six hundred thousand francs were mine . .
."
"They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean.
"Well," resumed Marius, "I would give them all to find that man once more."
Jean Valjean remained silent.
BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT.
CHAPTER I. THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833
The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above its shadows heaven stood
open. It was the wedding night of Marius and Cosette.
The day had been adorable.
It had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy spectacle, with a confusion of cherubim
and Cupids over the heads of the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject of a painting to be placed
over a door; but it had been sweet and smiling.
The manner of marriage in 1833 was not the same as it is today. France had not yet borrowed from England
that supreme delicacy of carrying off one's wife, of fleeing, on coming out of church, of hiding oneself with
shame from one's happiness, and of combining the ways of a bankrupt with the delights of the Song of Songs.
People had not yet grasped to the full the chastity, exquisiteness, and decency of jolting their paradise in a
postingchaise, of breaking up their mystery with clicclacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and
of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber, at so much a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs of
life mingled pellmell with the teteatete of the conductor of the diligence and the maidservant of the inn.
In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living, the mayor and his scarf, the priest
and his chasuble, the law and God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de Lonjumeau; a
blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons, a plaque like a vantbrace, kneebreeches of green
leather, oaths to the Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons, varnished hat, long powdered
locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. France does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the
English nobility, and raining down on the postchaise of the bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down
at heel and of wornout shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was
assailed on his weddingday by the wrath of an aunt which brought him good luck. Old shoes and slippers do
not, as yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall
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Page No 938
come to that.
In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not conducted at a full trot.
Strange to say, at that epoch, people still imagined that a wedding was a private and social festival, that a
patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess, provided it be honest,
and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion of
these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring, should begin at home, and that the household
should thenceforth have its nuptial chamber as its witness.
And people were so immodest as to marry in their own homes.
The marriage took place, therefore, in accordance with this now superannuated fashion, at M. Gillenormand's
house.
Natural and commonplace as this matter of marrying is, the banns to publish, the papers to be drawn up, the
mayoralty, and the church produce some complication. They could not get ready before the 16th of February.
Now, we note this detail, for the pure satisfaction of being exact, it chanced that the 16th fell on Shrove
Tuesday. Hesitations, scruples, particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand.
"Shrove Tuesday!" exclaimed the grandfather, "so much the better. There is a proverb:
"`Mariage un Mardi gras
N'aura point enfants ingrats.'[66]
[66] "A ShroveTuesday marriage will have no ungrateful children."
Let us proceed. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to delay, Marius?"
"No, certainly not!" replied the lover.
"Let us marry, then," cried the grandfather.
Accordingly, the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the public merrymaking. It rained that day,
but there is always in the sky a tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even when the
rest of creation is under an umbrella.
On the preceding evening, Jean Valjean handed to Marius, in the presence of M. Gillenormand, the five
hundred and eightyfour thousand francs.
As the marriage was taking place under the regime of community of property, the papers had been simple.
Henceforth, Toussaint was of no use to Jean Valjean; Cosette inherited her and promoted her to the rank of
lady's maid.
As for Jean Valjean, a beautiful chamber in the Gillenormand house had been furnished expressly for him,
and Cosette had said to him in such an irresistible manner: "Father, I entreat you," that she had almost
persuaded him to promise that he would come and occupy it.
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Page No 939
A few days before that fixed on for the marriage, an accident happened to Jean Valjean; he crushed the thumb
of his right hand. This was not a serious matter; and he had not allowed any one to trouble himself about it,
nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Cosette. Nevertheless, this had forced him to swathe his hand
in a linen bandage, and to carry his arm in a sling, and had prevented his signing. M. Gillenormand, in his
capacity of Cosette's supervisingguardian, had supplied his place.
We will not conduct the reader either to the mayor's office or to the church. One does not follow a pair of
lovers to that extent, and one is accustomed to turn one's back on the drama as soon as it puts a wedding
nosegay in its buttonhole. We will confine ourselves to noting an incident which, though unnoticed by the
wedding party, marked the transit from the Rue des FillesduCalvaire to the church of SaintPaul.
At that epoch, the northern extremity of the Rue SaintLouis was in process of repaving. It was barred off,
beginning with the Rue du PareRoyal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly to
SaintPaul. They were obliged to alter their course, and the simplest way was to turn through the boulevard.
One of the invited guests observed that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be a jam of
vehicles."Why?" asked M. Gillenormand"Because of the maskers." "Capital," said the grandfather,
"let us go that way. These young folks are on the way to be married; they are about to enter the serious part of
life. This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the masquerade."
They went by way of the boulevard. The first wedding coach held Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M.
Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his betrothed according to usage, did not come
until the second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des FillesduCalvaire, became entangled in a
long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the
Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of the fact that it was raining at
intervals, MerryAndrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris
had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen nowadays. Everything
which exists being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer any Carnival.
The sidewalks were overflowing with pedestrians and the windows with curious spectators. The terraces
which crown the peristyles of the theatres were bordered with spectators. Besides the maskers, they stared at
that processionpeculiar to Shrove Tuesday as to Longchamps, of vehicles of every description,
citadines, tapissieres, carioles, cabriolets marching in order, rigorously riveted to each other by the police
regulations, and locked into rails, as it were. Any one in these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle.
Policesergeants maintained, on the sides of the boulevard, these two interminable parallel files, moving in
contrary directions, and saw to it that nothing interfered with that double current, those two brooks of
carriages, flowing, the one down stream, the other up stream, the one towards the Chaussee d'Antin, the other
towards the Faubourg SaintAntoine. The carriages of the peers of France and of the Ambassadors,
emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the way, going and coming freely. Certain joyous and
magnificent trains, notably that of the Boeuf Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of Paris, England
cracked her whip; Lord Seymour's postchaise, harassed by a nickname from the populace, passed with great
noise.
In the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like sheepdogs, honest family coaches, loaded
down with greataunts and grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in disguise,
Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six, ravishing little creatures, who felt that they formed an
official part of the public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade, and who possessed
the gravity of functionaries.
From time to time, a hitch arose somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the two lateral files
halted until the knot was disentangled; one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole line. Then they set
out again on the march.
Les Miserables
BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT. 928
Page No 940
The wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille, and skirting the right side of the
Boulevard. At the top of the PontauxChoux, there was a stoppage. Nearly at the same moment, the other
file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At that point of the file there was a
carriageload of maskers.
These carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagonloads of maskers are very familiar to Parisians. If
they were missing on a Shrove Tuesday, or at the MidLent, it would be taken in bad part, and people would
say: "There's something behind that. Probably the ministry is about to undergo a change." A pile of
Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along high above the passersby, all possible
grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting Marquises, fishwives who would have
made Rabelais stop up his ears just as the Maenads made Aristophanes drop his eyes, tow wigs, pink tights,
dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer, threecornered hats of Janot tormented with a butterfly, shouts
directed at pedestrians, fists on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders, immodesty unchained; a chaos of
shamelessness driven by a coachman crowned with flowers; this is what that institution was like.
Greece stood in need of the chariot of Thespis, France stands in need of the hackneycoach of Vade.
Everything can be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, ends, through
exaggeration after exaggeration, in Shrove Tuesday; and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with sprays of
vine leaves and grapes, inundated with sunshine, displaying her marble breast in a divine seminudity,
having at the present day lost her shape under the soaked rags of the North, has finally come to be called the
Jackpudding.
The tradition of carriageloads of maskers runs back to the most ancient days of the monarchy. The accounts
of Louis XI. allot to the bailiff of the palace "twenty sous, Tournois, for three coaches of mascarades in the
crossroads." In our day, these noisy heaps of creatures are accustomed to have themselves driven in some
ancient cuckoo carriage, whose imperial they load down, or they overwhelm a hired landau, with its top
thrown back, with their tumultuous groups. Twenty of them ride in a carriage intended for six. They cling to
the seats, to the rumble, on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts. They even bestride the carriage lamps. They
stand, sit, lie, with their knees drawn up in a knot, and their legs hanging. The women sit on the men's laps.
Far away, above the throng of heads, their wild pyramid is visible. These carriageloads form mountains of
mirth in the midst of the rout. Colle, Panard and Piron flow from it, enriched with slang. This carriage which
has become colossal through its freight, has an air of conquest. Uproar reigns in front, tumult behind. People
vociferate, shout, howl, there they break forth and writhe with enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames forth,
joviality is flaunted like a red flag; two jades there drag farce blossomed forth into an apotheosis; it is the
triumphal car of laughter.
A laughter that is too cynical to be frank. In truth, this laughter is suspicious. This laughter has a mission. It is
charged with proving the Carnival to the Parisians.
These fishwife vehicles, in which one feels one knows not what shadows, set the philosopher to thinking.
There is government therein. There one lays one's finger on a mysterious affinity between public men and
public women.
It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon
opprobrium the people should be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids to prostitution
should amuse the rabble when it confronts them, that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of
tinsel rags, half dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing, that they should clap their
hands at this glory composed of all shames, that there would be no festival for the populace, did not the
police promenade in their midst these sorts of twentyheaded hydras of joy. But what can be done about it?
These beribboned and beflowered tumbrils of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public.
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BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT. 929
Page No 941
The laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the
people and convert them into the populace. And populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has
Roquelaure, the populace has the MerryAndrew. Paris is a great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great
sublime city. There the Carnival forms part of politics. Paris,let us confess itwillingly allows infamy to
furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masterswhen she has mastersone thing: "Paint me the
mud." Rome was of the same mind. She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.
Chance ordained, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless clusters of masked men and women,
dragged about on a vast calash, should halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding train halted on the
right. The carriageload of masks caught sight of the wedding carriage containing the bridal party opposite
them on the other side of the boulevard.
"Hullo!" said a masker, "here's a wedding."
"A sham wedding," retorted another. "We are the genuine article."
And, being too far off to accost the wedding party, and fearing also, the rebuke of the police, the two maskers
turned their eyes elsewhere.
At the end of another minute, the carriageload of maskers had their hands full, the multitude set to yelling,
which is the crowd's caress to masquerades; and the two maskers who had just spoken had to face the throng
with their comrades, and did not find the entire repertory of projectiles of the fishmarkets too extensive to
retort to the enormous verbal attacks of the populace. A frightful exchange of metaphors took place between
the maskers and the crowd.
In the meanwhile, two other maskers in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an enormous nose, an elderly air,
and huge black moustache, and a gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked with a loup,[67] had
also noticed the wedding, and while their companions and the passersby were exchanging insults, they had
held a dialogue in a low voice.
[67] A short mask.
Their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. The gusts of rain had drenched the front of the
vehicle, which was wide open; the breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife, clad in a lownecked
gown, replied to the Spaniard, she shivered, laughed and coughed.
Here is their dialogue:
"Say, now."
"What, daddy?"
"Do you see that old cove?"
"What old cove?"
"Yonder, in the first weddingcart, on our side."
"The one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?"
"Yes."
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BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT. 930
Page No 942
"Well?"
"I'm sure that I know him."
"Ah!"
"I'm willing that they should cut my throat, and I'm ready to swear that I never said either you, thou, or I, in
my life, if I don't know that Parisian." [pantinois.]
"Paris in Pantin today."
"Can you see the bride if you stoop down?"
"No."
"And the bridegroom?"
"There's no bridegroom in that trap."
"Bah!"
"Unless it's the old fellow."
"Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low."
"I can't."
"Never mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his paw I know, and that I'm positive."
"And what good does it do to know him?"
"No one can tell. Sometimes it does!"
"I don't care a hang for old fellows, that I don't!"
"I know him."
"Know him, if you want to."
"How the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party?"
"We are in it, too."
"Where does that wedding come from?"
"How should I know?"
"Listen."
"Well, what?"
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BOOK SIXTH.THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT. 931
Page No 943
"There's one thing you ought to do."
"What's that?"
"Get off of our trap and spin that wedding."
"What for?"
"To find out where it goes, and what it is. Hurry up and jump down, trot, my girl, your legs are young."
"I can't quit the vehicle."
"Why not?"
"I'm hired."
"Ah, the devil!"
"I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture."
"That's true."
"If I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me. You know that well enough."
"Yes, I do."
"I'm bought by the government for today."
"All the same, that old fellow bothers me."
"Do the old fellows bother you? But you're not a young girl."
"He's in the first carriage."
"Well?"
"In the bride's trap."
"What then?"
"So he is the father."
"What concern is that of mine?"
"I tell you that he's the father."
"As if he were the only father."
"Listen."
"What?"
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Page No 944
"I can't go out otherwise than masked. Here I'm concealed, no one knows that I'm here. But tomorrow, there
will be no more maskers. It's Ash Wednesday. I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back into my hole.
But you are free."
"Not particularly."
"More than I am, at any rate."
"Well, what of that?"
"You must try to find out where that weddingparty went to."
"Where it went?"
"Yes."
"I know."
"Where is it going then?"
"To the CadranBleu."
"In the first place, it's not in that direction."
"Well! to la Rapee."
"Or elsewhere."
"It's free. Weddingparties are at liberty."
"That's not the point at all. I tell you that you must try to learn for me what that wedding is, who that old cove
belongs to, and where that wedding pair lives."
"I like that! that would be queer. It's so easy to find out a weddingparty that passed through the street on a
Shrove Tuesday, a week afterwards. A pin in a haymow! It ain't possible!"
"That don't matter. You must try. You understand me, Azelma."
The two files resumed their movement on both sides of the boulevard, in opposite directions, and the carriage
of the maskers lost sight of the "trap" of the bride.
CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING
To realize one's dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all
candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote. Cosette and Marius had been elected.
Cosette, both at the mayor's office and at church, was dazzling and touching. Toussaint, assisted by Nicolette,
had dressed her.
Cosette wore over a petticoat of white taffeta, her robe of Binche guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace
of fine pearls, a wreath of orange flowers; all this was white, and, from the midst of that whiteness she
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Page No 945
beamed forth. It was an exquisite candor expanding and becoming transfigured in the light. One would have
pronounced her a virgin on the point of turning into a goddess.
Marius' handsome hair was lustrous and perfumed; here and there, beneath the thick curls, pale linesthe
scars of the barricade were visible.
The grandfather, haughty, with head held high, amalgamating more than ever in his toilet and his manners all
the elegances of the epoch of Barras, escorted Cosette. He took the place of Jean Valjean, who, on account of
his arm being still in a sling, could not give his hand to the bride.
Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile.
"Monsieur Fauchelevent," said the grandfather to him, "this is a fine day. I vote for the end of afflictions and
sorrows. Henceforth, there must be no sadness anywhere. Pardieu, I decree joy! Evil has no right to exist.
That there should be any unhappy men is, in sooth, a disgrace to the azure of the sky. Evil does not come
from man, who is good at bottom. All human miseries have for their capital and central government hell,
otherwise, known as the Devil's Tuileries. Good, here I am uttering demagogical words! As far as I am
concerned, I have no longer any political opinions; let all me be rich, that is to say, mirthful, and I confine
myself to that."
When, at the conclusion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced before the mayor and before the
priest all possible "yesses," after having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy, after
having exchanged their rings, after having knelt side by side under the pall of white moire in the smoke of the
censer, they arrived, hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Marius in black, she in white, preceded by the
suisse, with the epaulets of a colonel, tapping the pavement with his halberd, between two rows of astonished
spectators, at the portals of the church, both leaves of which were thrown wide open, ready to enter their
carriage again, and all being finished, Cosette still could not believe that it was real. She looked at Marius,
she looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky: it seemed as though she feared that she should wake up from
her dream. Her amazed and uneasy air added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty. They entered
the same carriage to return home, Marius beside Cosette; M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat opposite
them; Aunt Gillenormand had withdrawn one degree, and was in the second vehicle.
"My children," said the grandfather, "here you are, Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne, with an
income of thirty thousand livres."
And Cosette, nestling close to Marius, caressed his ear with an angelic whisper: "So it is true. My name is
Marius. I am Madame Thou."
These two creatures were resplendent. They had reached that irrevocable and irrecoverable moment, at the
dazzling intersection of all youth and all joy. They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire; they were forty
years old taken together. It was marriage sublimated; these two children were two lilies. They did not see
each other, they did not contemplate each other. Cosette perceived Marius in the midst of a glory; Marius
perceived Cosette on an altar. And on that altar, and in that glory, the two apotheoses mingling, in the
background, one knows not how, behind a cloud for Cosette, in a flash for Marius, there was the ideal thing,
the real thing, the meeting of the kiss and the dream, the nuptial pillow. All the torments through which they
had passed came back to them in intoxication. It seemed to them that their sorrows, their sleepless nights,
their tears, their anguish, their terrors, their despair, converted into caresses and rays of light, rendered still
more charming the charming hour which was approaching; and that their griefs were but so many
handmaidens who were preparing the toilet of joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their unhappiness
formed a halo round their happiness. The long agony of their love was terminating in an ascension.
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Page No 946
It was the same enchantment in two souls, tinged with voluptuousness in Marius, and with modesty in
Cosette. They said to each other in low tones: "We will go back to take a look at our little garden in the Rue
Plumet." The folds of Cosette's gown lay across Marius.
Such a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of reality. One possesses and one supposes. One still has
time before one to divine. The emotion on that day, of being at midday and of dreaming of midnight is
indescribable. The delights of these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and inspired the passersby with
cheerfulness.
People halted in the Rue SaintAntoine, in front of SaintPaul, to gaze through the windows of the carriage
at the orangeflowers quivering on Cosette's head.
Then they returned home to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire. Marius, triumphant and radiant, mounted side
by side with Cosette the staircase up which he had been borne in a dying condition. The poor, who had
trooped to the door, and who shared their purses, blessed them. There were flowers everywhere. The house
was no less fragrant than the church; after the incense, roses. They thought they heard voices carolling in the
infinite; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; above their heads they
beheld the light of a rising sun. All at once, the clock struck. Marius glanced at Cosette's charming bare arm,
and at the rosy things which were vaguely visible through the lace of her bodice, and Cosette, intercepting
Marius' glance, blushed to her very hair.
Quite a number of old family friends of the Gillenormand family had been invited; they pressed about
Cosette. Each one vied with the rest in saluting her as Madame la Baronne.
The officer, Theodule Gillenormand, now a captain, had come from Chartres, where he was stationed in
garrison, to be present at the wedding of his cousin Pontmercy. Cosette did not recognize him.
He, on his side, habituated as he was to have women consider him handsome, retained no more recollection
of Cosette than of any other woman.
"How right I was not to believe in that story about the lancer!" said Father Gillenormand, to himself.
Cosette had never been more tender with Jean Valjean. She was in unison with Father Gillenormand; while
he erected joy into aphorisms and maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. Happiness desires that all
the world should be happy.
She regained, for the purpose of addressing Jean Valjean, inflections of voice belonging to the time when she
was a little girl. She caressed him with her smile.
A banquet had been spread in the diningroom.
Illumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning of a great joy. Mist and obscurity are not
accepted by the happy. They do not consent to be black. The night, yes; the shadows, no. If there is no sun,
one must be made.
The diningroom was full of gay things. In the centre, above the white and glittering table, was a Venetian
lustre with flat plates, with all sorts of colored birds, blue, violet, red, and green, perched amid the candles;
around the chandelier, girandoles, on the walls, sconces with triple and quintuple branches; mirrors,
silverware, glassware, plate, porcelain, faience, pottery, gold and silversmith's work, all was sparkling and
gay. The empty spaces between the candelabra were filled in with bouquets, so that where there was not a
light, there was a flower.
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Page No 947
In the antechamber, three violins and a flute softly played quartettes by Haydn.
Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawingroom, behind the door, the leaf of which folded
back upon him in such a manner as to nearly conceal him. A few moments before they sat down to table,
Cosette came, as though inspired by a sudden whim, and made him a deep courtesy, spreading out her bridal
toilet with both hands, and with a tenderly roguish glance, she asked him:
"Father, are you satisfied?"
"Yes," said Jean Valjean, "I am content!"
"Well, then, laugh."
Jean Valjean began to laugh.
A few moments later, Basque announced that dinner was served.
The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand with Cosette on his arm, entered the diningroom, and arranged
themselves in the proper order around the table.
Two large armchairs figured on the right and left of the bride, the first for M. Gillenormand, the other for
Jean Valjean. M. Gillenormand took his seat. The other armchair remained empty.
They looked about for M. Fauchelevent.
He was no longer there.
M. Gillenormand questioned Basque.
"Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?"
"Sir," replied Basque, "I do, precisely. M. Fauchelevent told me to say to you, sir, that he was suffering, his
injured hand was paining him somewhat, and that he could not dine with Monsieur le Baron and Madame la
Baronne. That he begged to be excused, that he would come tomorrow. He has just taken his departure."
That empty armchair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a moment. But, if M. Fauchelevent was
absent, M. Gillenormand was present, and the grandfather beamed for two. He affirmed that M. Fauchelevent
had done well to retire early, if he were suffering, but that it was only a slight ailment. This declaration
sufficed. Moreover, what is an obscure corner in such a submersion of joy? Cosette and Marius were passing
through one of those egotistical and blessed moments when no other faculty is left to a person than that of
receiving happiness. And then, an idea occurred to M. Gillenormand."Pardieu, this armchair is empty.
Come hither, Marius. Your aunt will permit it, although she has a right to you. This armchair is for you. That
is legal and delightful. Fortunatus beside Fortunata." Applause from the whole table. Marius took Jean
Valjean's place beside Cosette, and things fell out so that Cosette, who had, at first, been saddened by Jean
Valjean's absence, ended by being satisfied with it. From the moment when Marius took his place, and was
the substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God himself. She set her sweet little foot, shod in white satin,
on Marius' foot.
The armchair being occupied, M. Fauchelevent was obliterated; and nothing was lacking.
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Page No 948
And, five minutes afterward, the whole table from one end to the other, was laughing with all the animation
of forgetfulness.
At dessert, M. Gillenormand, rising to his feet, with a glass of champagne in his handonly half full so that
the palsy of his eighty years might not cause an overflow,proposed the health of the married pair.
"You shall not escape two sermons," he exclaimed. "This morning you had one from the cure, this evening
you shall have one from your grandfather. Listen to me; I will give you a bit of advice: Adore each other. I do
not make a pack of gyrations, I go straight to the mark, be happy. In all creation, only the turtledoves are
wise. Philosophers say: `Moderate your joys.' I say: `Give rein to your joys.' Be as much smitten with each
other as fiends. Be in a rage about it. The philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. I should like to stuff their
philosophy down their gullets again. Can there be too many perfumes, too many open rosebuds, too many
nightingales singing, too many green leaves, too much aurora in life? can people love each other too much?
can people please each other too much? Take care, Estelle, thou art too pretty! Have a care, Nemorin, thou art
too handsome! Fine stupidity, in sooth! Can people enchant each other too much, cajole each other too much,
charm each other too much? Can one be too much alive, too happy? Moderate your joys. Ah, indeed! Down
with the philosophers! Wisdom consists in jubilation. Make merry, let us make merry. Are we happy because
we are good, or are we good because we are happy? Is the Sancy diamond called the Sancy because it
belonged to Harley de Sancy, or because it weighs six hundred carats? I know nothing about it, life is full of
such problems; the important point is to possess the Sancy and happiness. Let us be happy without quibbling
and quirking. Let us obey the sun blindly. What is the sun? It is love. He who says love, says woman. Ah! ah!
behold omnipotencewomen. Ask that demagogue of a Marius if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a
Cosette. And of his own free will, too, the coward! Woman! There is no Robespierre who keeps his place but
woman reigns. I am no longer Royalist except towards that royalty. What is Adam? The kingdom of Eve. No
'89 for Eve. There has been the royal sceptre surmounted by a fleurdelys, there has been the imperial
sceptre surmounted by a globe, there has been the sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron, there has been
the sceptre of Louis the Great, which was of gold, the revolution twisted them between its thumb and
forefinger, ha'penny straws; it is done with, it is broken, it lies on the earth, there is no longer any sceptre, but
make me a revolution against that little embroidered handkerchief, which smells of patchouli! I should like to
see you do it. Try. Why is it so solid? Because it is a gewgaw. Ah! you are the nineteenth century? Well,
what then? And we have been as foolish as you. Do not imagine that you have effected much change in the
universe, because your tripgallant is called the choleramorbus, and because your pourree is called the
cachuca. In fact, the women must always be loved. I defy you to escape from that. These friends are our
angels. Yes, love, woman, the kiss forms a circle from which I defy you to escape; and, for my own part, I
should be only too happy to reenter it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss,
the Celimene of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming all here below? The ocean is a rough Alcestis. Well,
grumble as he will, when Venus appears he is forced to smile. That brute beast submits. We are all made so.
Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder, foam to the very ceiling. A woman enters on the scene, a planet rises; flat
on your face! Marius was fighting six months ago; today he is married. That is well. Yes, Marius, yes,
Cosette, you are in the right. Exist boldly for each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the same,
idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades of felicity that exist on earth, and arrange
yourselves a nest for life. Pardi, to love, to be loved, what a fine miracle when one is young! Don't imagine
that you have invented that. I, too, have had my dream, I, too, have meditated, I, too, have sighed; I, too, have
had a moonlight soul. Love is a child six thousand years old. Love has the right to a long white beard.
Methusalem is a street arab beside Cupid. For sixty centuries men and women have got out of their scrape by
loving. The devil, who is cunning, took to hating man; man, who is still more cunning, took to loving woman.
In this way he does more good than the devil does him harm. This craft was discovered in the days of the
terrestrial paradise. The invention is old, my friends, but it is perfectly new. Profit by it. Be Daphnis and
Chloe, while waiting to become Philemon and Baucis. Manage so that, when you are with each other, nothing
shall be lacking to you, and that Cosette may be the sun for Marius, and that Marius may be the universe to
Cosette. Cosette, let your fine weather be the smile of your husband; Marius, let your rain be your wife's
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Page No 949
tears. And let it never rain in your household. You have filched the winning number in the lottery; you have
gained the great prize, guard it well, keep it under lock and key, do not squander it, adore each other and snap
your fingers at all the rest. Believe what I say to you. It is good sense. And good sense cannot lie. Be a
religion to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God. Saperlotte! the best way to adore God
is to love one's wife. I love thee! that's my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri IV. places
sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness. Ventresaintgris! I don't belong to the religion of
that oath. Woman is forgotten in it. This astonishes me on the part of Henri IV. My friends, long live women!
I am old, they say; it's astonishing how much I feel in the mood to be young. I should like to go and listen to
the bagpipes in the woods. Children who contrive to be beautiful and contented,that intoxicates me. I
would like greatly to get married, if any one would have me. It is impossible to imagine that God could have
made us for anything but this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves, to be dovelike, to be dainty, to bill and
coo our loves from morn to night, to gaze at one's image in one's little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant, to
plume oneself; that is the aim of life. There, let not that displease you which we used to think in our day,
when we were young folks. Ah! vertubamboche! what charming women there were in those days, and what
pretty little faces and what lovely lasses! I committed my ravages among them. Then love each other. If
people did not love each other, I really do not see what use there would be in having any springtime; and for
my own part, I should pray the good God to shut up all the beautiful things that he shows us, and to take
away from us and put back in his box, the flowers, the birds, and the pretty maidens. My children, receive an
old man's blessing.
The evening was gay, lively and agreeable. The grandfather's sovereign good humor gave the keynote to the
whole feast, and each person regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. They danced a little,
they laughed a great deal; it was an amiable wedding. Goodman Days of Yore might have been invited to it.
However, he was present in the person of Father Gillenormand.
There was a tumult, then silence.
The married pair disappeared.
A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple.
Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips.
The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place.
There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which they contain ought to make its escape
through the stones of the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom. It is impossible that this
sacred and fatal festival should not give off a celestial radiance to the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible
wherein the fusion of the man and the woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the being final, the
human trinity proceeds from it. This birth of two souls into one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The
lover is the priest; the ravished virgin is terrified. Something of that joy ascends to God. Where true marriage
is, that is to say, where there is love, the ideal enters in. A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the
shadows. If it were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the formidable and charming visions of the upper life,
it is probable that we should behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue passers of the
invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around the luminous house, satisfied, showering
benedictions, pointing out to each other the virgin wife gently alarmed, sweetly terrified, and bearing the
reflection of human bliss upon their divine countenances. If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair, dazzled
with voluptuousness and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their chamber a
confused rustling of wings. Perfect happiness implies a mutual understanding with the angels. That dark little
chamber has all heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach to create, it is
impossible that there should not be, above that ineffable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of
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Page No 950
stars.
These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest
weeps.
To love, or to have loved,this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the
shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfilment.
CHAPTER III. THE INSEPARABLE
What had become of Jean Valjean?
Immediately after having laughed, at Cosette's graceful command, when no one was paying any heed to him,
Jean Valjean had risen and had gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight
months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder, bringing back the grandson to the
grandfather. The old wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the
sofa on which they had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat, kneebreeches, white stockings and white
gloves, was arranging roses round all of the dishes that were to be served. Jean Valjean pointed to his arm in
its sling, charged Basque to explain his absence, and went away.
The long windows of the diningroom opened on the street. Jean Valjean stood for several minutes, erect and
motionless in the darkness, beneath those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the banquet
reached his ear. He heard the loud, commanding tones of the grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates,
the bursts of laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he distinguished Cosette's sweet and joyous voice.
He quitted the Rue des FillesduCalvaire, and returned to the Rue de l'Homme Arme.
In order to return thither, he took the Rue SaintLouis, the Rue CultureSainteCatherine, and the
BlancsManteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months, he had
become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des
FillesduCalvaire, in order to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue VielleduTemple.
This road, through which Cosette had passed, excluded for him all possibility of any other itinerary.
Jean Valjean entered his lodgings. He lighted his candle and mounted the stairs. The apartment was empty.
Even Toussaint was no longer there. Jean Valjean's step made more noise than usual in the chambers. All the
cupboards stood open. He penetrated to Cosette's bedroom. There were no sheets on the bed. The pillow,
covered with ticking, and without a case or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot of the
mattress, whose covering was visible, and on which no one was ever to sleep again. All the little feminine
objects which Cosette was attached to had been carried away; nothing remained except the heavy furniture
and the four walls. Toussaint's bed was despoiled in like manner. One bed only was made up, and seemed to
be waiting some one, and this was Jean Valjean's bed.
Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors, and went and came from one room to
another.
Then he sought his own chamber once more, and set his candle on a table.
He had disengaged his arm from the sling, and he used his right hand as though it did not hurt him.
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He approached his bed, and his eyes rested, was it by chance? was it intentionally? on the inseparable of
which Cosette had been jealous, on the little portmanteau which never left him. On his arrival in the Rue de
l'Homme Arme, on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round table near the head of his bed. He went to
this table with a sort of vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise.
From it he slowly drew forth the garments in which, ten years before, Cosette had quitted Montfermeil; first
the little gown, then the black fichu, then the stout, coarse child's shoes which Cosette might almost have
worn still, so tiny were her feet, then the fustian bodice, which was very thick, then the knitted petticoat, next
the apron with pockets, then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still preserved the graceful form
of a tiny leg, were no longer than Jean Valjean's hand. All this was black of hue. It was he who had brought
those garments to Montfermeil for her. As he removed them from the valise, he laid them on the bed. He fell
to thinking. He called up memories. It was in winter, in a very cold month of December, she was shivering,
halfnaked, in rags, her poor little feet were all red in their wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, had made her
abandon those rags to clothe herself in these mourning habiliments. The mother must have felt pleased in her
grave, to see her daughter wearing mourning for her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and
that she was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed it together, Cosette and he;
he thought of what the weather had been, of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless
sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on the bed, the fichu next to the
petticoat, the stockings beside the shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. She was no taller than
that, she had her big doll in her arms, she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of that apron, she had laughed,
they walked hand in hand, she had no one in the world but him.
Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so
to speak, in Cosette's garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he would have heard
frightful sobs.
CHAPTER IV. THE IMMORTAL LIVER
[68]
[68] In allusion to the story of Prometheus.
The old and formidable struggle, of which we have already witnessed so many phases, began once more.
Jacob struggled with the angel but one night. Alas! how many times have we beheld Jean Valjean seized
bodily by his conscience, in the darkness, and struggling desperately against it!
Unheardof conflict! At certain moments the foot slips; at other moments the ground crumbles away
underfoot. How many times had that conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown him! How many
times had the truth set her knee inexorably upon his breast! How many times, hurled to earth by the light, had
he begged for mercy! How many times had that implacable spark, lighted within him, and upon him by the
Bishop, dazzled him by force when he had wished to be blind! How many times had he risen to his feet in the
combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his
conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times, after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous
reasoning of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: "A trip! you wretch!" How many
times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance to
God. Funereal sweats. What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed! What excoriations in his lamentable
existence! How many times he had risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in his heart, serenity
in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself the conqueror. And, after having dislocated, broken, and rent
his conscience with redhot pincers, it had said to him, as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and
tranquil: "Now, go in peace!"
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But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious peace, alas!
Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean felt that he was passing through his final combat.
A heartrending question presented itself.
Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a straight avenue before the predestined man; they
have blind courts, impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering the choice of many ways.
Jean Valjean had halted at that moment at the most perilous of these crossroads.
He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On
this occasion once more, as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads opened out
before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.
Which was he to take?
He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious index finger which we all perceive
whenever we fix our eyes on the darkness.
Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the terrible port and the smiling ambush.
Is it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate. Frightful thing! an incurable destiny!
This is the problem which presented itself to him:
In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who
had willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at
that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would
experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast.
Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even riches. And this was his doing.
But what was he, Jean Valjean, to do with this happiness, now that it existed, now that it was there? Should
he force himself on this happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? No doubt, Cosette did belong to
another; but should he, Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette all that he could retain? Should he remain the sort of
father, half seen but respected, which he had hitherto been? Should he, without saying a word, bring his past
to that future? Should he present himself there, as though he had a right, and should he seat himself, veiled, at
that luminous fireside? Should he take those innocent hands into his tragic hands, with a smile? Should he
place upon the peaceful fender of the Gillenormand drawingroom those feet of his, which dragged behind
them the disgraceful shadow of the law? Should he enter into participation in the fair fortunes of Cosette and
Marius? Should he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs still more dense? Should he
place his catastrophe as a third associate in their felicity? Should he continue to hold his peace? In a word,
should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these two happy beings?
We must have become habituated to fatality and to encounters with it, in order to have the daring to raise our
eyes when certain questions appear to us in all their horrible nakedness. Good or evil stands behind this
severe interrogation point. What are you going to do? demands the sphinx.
This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed. He gazed intently at the sphinx.
He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.
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Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What was he to do? To cling fast to it, or to
let go his hold?
If he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend again into the sunlight, he should let the
bitter water drip from his garments and his hair, he was saved, he should live.
And if he let go his hold?
Then the abyss.
Thus he took sad council with his thoughts. Or, to speak more correctly, he fought; he kicked furiously
internally, now against his will, now against his conviction.
Happily for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. That relieved him, possibly. But the beginning was
savage. A tempest, more furious than the one which had formerly driven him to Arras, broke loose within
him. The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them and sobbed. The silence of tears
once opened, the despairing man writhed.
He felt that he had been stopped short.
Alas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and our duty, when we thus retreat step by step before our
immutable ideal, bewildered, furious, exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground, hoping for a
possible flight, seeking an escape, what an abrupt and sinister resistance does the foot of the wall offer in our
rear!
To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!
The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!
Then, one is never done with conscience. Make your choice, Brutus; make your choice, Cato. It is fathomless,
since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life, one flings in one's fortune, one flings in
one's riches, one flings in one's success, one flings in one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's
wellbeing, one flings in one's repose, one flings in one's joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the
urn! One must finish by flinging in one's heart.
Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun like that.
Is not one pardonable, if one at last refuses! Can the inexhaustible have any right? Are not chains which are
endless above human strength? Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying: "It is enough!"
The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit to the obedience of the soul? If perpetual
motion is impossible, can perpetual selfsacrifice be exacted?
The first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. What was the Champmathieu affair in comparison
with Cosette's marriage and of that which it entailed? What is a reentrance into the galleys, compared to
entrance into the void?
Oh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art thou! Oh, second step, how black art thou!
How could he refrain from turning aside his head this time?
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Page No 954
Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which consecrates. One can consent to it for
the first hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one's head the crown of hot iron,
one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still
remains to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and when one
abdicates from suffering?
At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of exhaustion.
He weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives, the mysterious balance of light and darkness.
Should he impose his galleys on those two dazzling children, or should he consummate his irremediable
engulfment by himself? On one side lay the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other that of himself.
At what solution should he arrive? What decision did he come to?
What resolution did he take? What was his own inward definitive response to the unbribable interrogatory of
fatality? What door did he decide to open? Which side of his life did he resolve upon closing and
condemning? Among all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, which was his choice? What
extremity did he accept? To which of the gulfs did he nod his head?
His dizzy revery lasted all night long.
He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude, bent double over that bed, prostrate beneath the
enormity of fate, crushed, perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms outspread at right angles, like a man
crucified who has been unnailed, and flung face down on the earth. There he remained for twelve hours, the
twelve long hours of a long winter's night, icecold, without once raising his head, and without uttering a
word. He was as motionless as a corpse, while his thoughts wallowed on the earth and soared, now like the
hydra, now like the eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him dead; all at
once he shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Cosette's garments, kissed them; then it could be
seen that he was alive.
Who could see? Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was no one there.
The One who is in the shadows.
BOOK SEVENTH.THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
CHAPTER I. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
The days that follow weddings are solitary. People respect the meditations of the happy pair. And also, their
tardy slumbers, to some degree. The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later on. On the morning
of the 17th of February, it was a little past midday when Basque, with napkin and featherduster under his
arm, busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There had been no ring, which
was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the
drawingroom, still encumbered and topsyturvy, and which bore the air of a field of battle after the joys of
the preceding evening.
"Dame, sir," remarked Basque, "we all woke up late."
"Is your master up?" asked Jean Valjean.
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Page No 955
"How is Monsieur's arm?" replied Basque.
"Better. Is your master up?"
"Which one? the old one or the new one?"
"Monsieur Pontmercy."
"Monsieur le Baron," said Basque, drawing himself up.
A man is a Baron most of all to his servants. He counts for something with them; they are what a philosopher
would call, bespattered with the title, and that flatters them. Marius, be it said in passing, a militant
republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of himself. A small revolution had taken place in the
family in connection with this title. It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius who detached
himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: "My son will bear my title." Marius obeyed. And then,
Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.
"Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque. "I will go and see. I will tell him that M. Fauchelevent is here."
"No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to speak to him in private, and mention no
name."
"Ah!" ejaculated Basque.
"I wish to surprise him."
"Ah!" ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second "ah!" as an explanation of the first.
And he left the room.
Jean Valjean remained alone.
The drawingroom, as we have just said, was in great disorder. It seemed as though, by lending an air, one
might still hear the vague noise of the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers which had fallen
from garlands and headdresses. The wax candles, burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal
drops of the chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the corners, three or four
armchairs, drawn close together in a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole
effect was cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been a happy thing. On the chairs in
disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath those extinct lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had
succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the drawingroom.
Several minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot where Basque had left him. He was very
pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly disappeared in their
orbits. His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has been up all night. The elbows were whitened
with the down which the friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.
Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his feet by the sun.
There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.
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Page No 956
Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light on his countenance, his brow
expanded, his eyes triumphant. He had not slept either.
"It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean; "that idiot of a Basque had such a
mysterious air! But you have come too early. It is only half past twelve. Cosette is asleep."
That word: "Father," said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: supreme felicity. There had always
existed, as the reader knows, a lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be
broken or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication when the wall was lowered, when the ice
dissolved, and when M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.
He continued: his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine paroxysms of joy.
"How glad I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning, father. How is
your hand? Better, is it not?"
And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself, he pursued:
"We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a
chamber here, We want nothing more to do with the Rue de l'Homme Arme. We will have no more of it at
all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which
has a barrier at one end, where one is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install
yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose,
I warn you. You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the trouble with the
clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your
bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easychair covered with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it: `Stretch out
your arms to him.' A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two
months more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right. By night it will sing,
and by day Cosette will prattle. Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you, your
Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,Vancouver's and all your affairs. I believe that there is a little
valise to which you are attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my
grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather
with delight if you play whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when I am at the courts,
you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be
happy. And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with
us today?"
"Sir," said Jean Valjean, "I have something to say to you. I am an exconvict."
The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well in the case of the mind as in that of the ear.
These words: "I am an exconvict," proceeding from the mouth of M. Fauchelevent and entering the ear of
Marius overshot the possible. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him; but he did not know
what. He stood with his mouth wide open.
Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful. Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled
state, he had not, up to that moment, observed the other man's terrible pallor.
Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right arm, unrolled the linen from around his hand,
bared his thumb and showed it to Marius.
"There is nothing the matter with my hand," said he.
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Page No 957
Marius looked at the thumb.
"There has not been anything the matter with it," went on Jean Valjean.
There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.
Jean Valjean continued:
"It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented myself as much as was in my power. So
I invented this injury in order that I might not commit a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw into the
marriage documents, in order that I might escape from signing."
Marius stammered.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"The meaning of it is," replied Jean Valjean, "that I have been in the galleys."
"You are driving me mad!" exclaimed Marius in terror.
"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years in the galleys. For theft. Then, I was
condemned for life for theft, for a second offence. At the present moment, I have broken my ban."
In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact, resist the evidence, he was forced to give way. He
began to understand, and, as always happens in such cases, he understood too much. An inward shudder of
hideous enlightenment flashed through him; an idea which made him quiver traversed his mind. He caught a
glimpse of a wretched destiny for himself in the future.
"Say all, say all!" he cried. "You are Cosette's father!"
And he retreated a couple of paces with a movement of indescribable horror.
Jean Valjean elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude that he seemed to grow even to the ceiling.
"It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our oath to others may not be received in law . .
."
Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, he added, articulating slowly, and
emphasizing the syllables:
". . . You will believe me. I the father of Cosette! before God, no. Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy, I am a
peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean. I
am not related to Cosette. Reassure yourself."
Marius stammered:
"Who will prove that to me?"
"I. Since I tell you so."
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Page No 958
Marius looked at the man. He was melancholy yet tranquil. No lie could proceed from such a calm. That
which is icy is sincere. The truth could be felt in that chill of the tomb.
"I believe you," said Marius.
Jean Valjean bent his head, as though taking note of this, and continued:
"What am I to Cosette? A passerby. Ten years ago, I did not know that she was in existence. I love her, it is
true. One loves a child whom one has seen when very young, being old oneself. When one is old, one feels
oneself a grandfather towards all little children. You may, it seems to me, suppose that I have something
which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without either father or mother. She needed me. That is why I
began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like me, can become their protector. I
have fulfilled this duty towards Cosette. I do not think that so slight a thing can be called a good action; but if
it be a good action, well, say that I have done it. Register this attenuating circumstance. Today, Cosette
passes out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for her. She is Madame Pontmercy.
Her providence has changed. And Cosette gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand
francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit. How did that deposit
come into my hands? What does that matter? I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me. I
complete the restitution by announcing my true name. That concerns me. I have a reason for desiring that you
should know who I am."
And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.
All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain gusts of destiny produce these billows in
our souls.
We have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything within us is dispersed; we say the first things
that occur to us, which are not always precisely those which should be said. There are sudden revelations
which one cannot bear, and which intoxicate like baleful wine. Marius was stupefied by the novel situation
which presented itself to him, to the point of addressing that man almost like a person who was angry with
him for this avowal.
"But why," he exclaimed, "do you tell me all this? Who forces you to do so? You could have kept your secret
to yourself. You are neither denounced, nor tracked nor pursued. You have a reason for wantonly making
such a revelation. Conclude. There is something more. In what connection do you make this confession?
What is your motive?"
"My motive?" replied Jean Valjean in a voice so low and dull that one would have said that he was talking to
himself rather than to Marius. "From what motive, in fact, has this convict just said `I am a convict'? Well,
yes! the motive is strange. It is out of honesty. Stay, the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart,
which keeps me fast. It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly solid. All life falls in ruin
around one; one resists. Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, to go
far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are diligences in the Rue Bouloy; you are
happy; I am going. I have tried to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore my heart
with it. Then I said: `I cannot live anywhere else than here.' I must stay. Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool,
why not simply remain here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is sincerely attached
to me, she said to the armchair: `Stretch out your arms to him,' your grandfather demands nothing better
than to have me, I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common, I shall give Cosette my
arm . . . Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same
chimneycorner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that is everything.
We shall live as one family. One family!"
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At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his arms, glared at the floor beneath his feet as though he
would have excavated an abyss therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:
"As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In
houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the
sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I have a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On
the day when I gave that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and that she is with a
man whom she loves, and that there exists here a kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that
house, and that it was well, I said to myself: `Enter thou not.' I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you
all, and remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for
myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me
what has forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very easy, however. I
passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it; you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so
extraordinary that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself,
and I gave myself very good reasons, I have done what I could. But there are two things in which I have not
succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and sealed here by the heart, or in silencing
some one who speaks softly to me when I am alone. That is why I have come hither to tell you everything
this morning. Everything or nearly everything. It is useless to tell you that which concerns only myself; I
keep that to myself. You know the essential points. So I have taken my mystery and have brought it to you.
And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was not a resolution that was easy to take. I
struggled all night long. Ah! you think that I did not tell myself that this was no Champmathieu affair, that by
concealing my name I was doing no one any injury, that the name of Fauchelevent had been given to me by
Fauchelevent himself, out of gratitude for a service rendered to him, and that I might assuredly keep it, and
that I should be happy in that chamber which you offer me, that I should not be in any one's way, that I
should be in my own little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the idea that I was
in the same house with her. Each one of us would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to be
Monsieur Fauchelevent, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the exception of my soul. There was joy
everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one
must be content. Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have concealed my true
visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion, I should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full
noonday, I should have had shadows, thus, without crying `'ware,' I should have simply introduced the
galleys to your fireside, I should have taken my seat at your table with the thought that if you knew who I
was, you would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself to be served by domestics who, had they
known, would have said: `How horrible!' I should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right
to dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There would have existed in your house a division of
respect between venerable white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when all hearts
thought themselves open to the very bottom to all the rest, when we four were together, your grandfather, you
two and myself, a stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with you in your
existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the cover of my dreadful pit. Thus, I, a dead man, should
have thrust myself upon you who are living beings. I should have condemned her to myself forever. You and
Cosette and I would have had all three of our heads in the green cap! Does it not make you shudder? I am
only the most crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. And I should have committed
that crime every day! And I should have had that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! And I
should have communicated to you a share in my taint every day! every day! to you, my dearly beloved, my
children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is it nothing to hold one's peace? is it a simple matter to keep
silence? No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my fraud and my indignity, and
my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I should have drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out,
then swallowed it again, I should have finished at midnight and have begun again at midday, and my `good
morning' would have lied, and my `good night' would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have
eaten it, with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face, and I should have responded to the
smile of the angel by the smile of the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why
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should I do it? in order to be happy. In order to be happy. Have I the right to be happy? I stand outside of life,
Sir."
Jean Valjean paused. Marius listened. Such chains of ideas and of anguishes cannot be interrupted. Jean
Valjean lowered his voice once more, but it was no longer a dull voiceit was a sinister voice.
"You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked, you say. Yes! I am denounced!
yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself. It is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push
myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds oneself, one is firmly held."
And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and extending it towards Marius:
"Do you see that fist?" he continued. "Don't you think that it holds that collar in such a wise as not to release
it? Well! conscience is another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never understand duty; for, as
soon as one has comprehended it, it is implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it;
but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God beside you. One has no sooner lacerated
his own entrails than he is at peace with himself."
And, with a poignant accent, he added:
"Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It is by degrading myself in your eyes
that I elevate myself in my own. This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was a
mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through my fault, you had continued to esteem me;
now that you despise me, I am so. I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever have
anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates me, and crushes me inwardly, and, in order
that I may respect myself, it is necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again. I am a
galleyslave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is most improbable. But what would you have
me do about it? it is the fact. I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There are encounters
which bind us, there are chances which involve us in duties. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things
have happened to me in the course of my life."
Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as though his words had a bitter aftertaste,
and then he went on:
"When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to make others share it without their
knowledge, one has not the right to make them slip over one's own precipice without their perceiving it, one
has not the right to let one's red blouse drag upon them, one has no right to slyly encumber with one's misery
the happiness of others. It is hideous to approach those who are healthy, and to touch them in the dark with
one's ulcer. In spite of the fact that Fauchelevent lent me his name, I have no right to use it; he could give it to
me, but I could not take it. A name is an _I_. You see, sir, that I have thought somewhat, I have read a little,
although I am a peasant; and you see that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured
myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself under it is dishonest. Letters of the
alphabet can be filched, like a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a living false
key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their lock, never more to look straightforward, to forever
eye askance, to be infamous within the _I_, no! no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear
one's skin from the flesh with one's nails, to pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour oneself body and soul.
That is why I have just told you all this. Wantonly, as you say."
He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:
"In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; today, in order to live, I will not steal a name."
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"To live!" interrupted Marius. "You do not need that name in order to live?"
"Ah! I understand the matter," said Jean Valjean, raising and lowering his head several times in succession.
A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of thoughts. Marius was sitting near a table
and resting the corner of his mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. Jean Valjean was pacing to
and fro. He paused before a mirror, and remained motionless. Then, as though replying to some inward
course of reasoning, he said, as he gazed at the mirror, which he did not see:
"While, at present, I am relieved."
He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the drawingroom. At the moment when he
turned round, he perceived that Marius was watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible
intonation:
"I drag my leg a little. Now you understand why!"
Then he turned fully round towards Marius:
"And now, sir, imagine this: I have said nothing, I have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my
place in your house, I am one of you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in slippers, in
the evening all three of us go to the play, I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries, and to the Place
Royale, we are together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there, and I am there, we are
conversing, we are laughing; all at once, you hear a voice shouting this name: `Jean Valjean!' and behold, that
terrible hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly tears off my mask!"
Again he paused; Marius had sprung to his feet with a shudder. Jean Valjean resumed:
"What do you say to that?"
Marius' silence answered for him.
Jean Valjean continued:
"You see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in
the sun, be content therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor damned wretch takes
to open his breast and force his duty to come forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man."
Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Jean Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.
But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not offered, Jean Valjean let him have his
own way, and it seemed to Marius that he pressed a hand of marble.
"My grandfather has friends," said Marius; "I will procure your pardon."
"It is useless," replied Jean Valjean. "I am believed to be dead, and that suffices. The dead are not subjected
to surveillance. They are supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon."
And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort of inexorable dignity:
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"Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty; and I need but one pardon, that of my
conscience."
At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawingroom opened gently half way, and in the opening
Cosette's head appeared. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were
still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird, which thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first
at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed to behold a smile at
the heart of a rose:
"I will wager that you are talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being with me!"
Jean Valjean shuddered.
"Cosette! . . ." stammered Marius.
And he paused. One would have said that they were two criminals.
Cosette, who was radiant, continued to gaze at both of them. There was something in her eyes like gleams of
paradise.
"I have caught you in the very act," said Cosette. "Just now, I heard my father Fauchelevent through the door
saying: `Conscience . . . doing my duty . . .' That is politics, indeed it is. I will not have it. People should not
talk politics the very next day. It is not right."
"You are mistaken. Cosette," said Marius, "we are talking business. We are discussing the best investment of
your six hundred thousand francs . . ."
"That is not it at all " interrupted Cosette. "I am coming. Does any body want me here?"
And, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawingroom. She was dressed in a voluminous
white dressinggown, with a thousand folds and large sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet.
In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures, there are these charming sacks fit to clothe the angels.
She contemplated herself from head to foot in a long mirror, then exclaimed, in an outburst of ineffable
ecstasy:
"There was once a King and a Queen. Oh! how happy I am!"
That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean.
"There," said she, "I am going to install myself near you in an easychair, we breakfast in half an hour, you
shall say anything you like, I know well that men must talk, and I will be very good."
Marius took her by the arm and said lovingly to her:
"We are talking business."
"By the way," said Cosette, "I have opened my window, a flock of pierrots has arrived in the garden,Birds,
not maskers. Today is AshWednesday; but not for the birds."
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"I tell you that we are talking business, go, my little Cosette, leave us alone for a moment. We are talking
figures. That will bore you."
"You have a charming cravat on this morning, Marius. You are very dandified, monseigneur. No, it will not
bore me."
"I assure you that it will bore you."
"No. Since it is you. I shall not understand you, but I shall listen to you. When one hears the voices of those
whom one loves, one does not need to understand the words that they utter. That we should be here
togetherthat is all that I desire. I shall remain with you, bah!"
"You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible."
"Impossible!"
"Yes."
"Very good," said Cosette. "I was going to tell you some news. I could have told you that your grandfather is
still asleep, that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent's room smokes, that
Nicolette has sent for the chimneysweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette have already quarrelled, that
Nicolette makes sport of Toussaint's stammer. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible? you shall
see, gentlemen, that I, in my turn, can say: It is impossible. Then who will be caught? I beseech you, my little
Marius, let me stay here with you two."
"I swear to you, that it is indispensable that we should be alone."
"Well, am I anybody?"
Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word. Cosette turned to him:
"In the first place, father, I want you to come and embrace me. What do you mean by not saying anything
instead of taking my part? who gave me such a father as that? You must perceive that my family life is very
unhappy. My husband beats me. Come, embrace me instantly."
Jean Valjean approached.
Cosette turned toward Marius.
"As for you, I shall make a face at you."
Then she presented her brow to Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean advanced a step toward her.
Cosette recoiled.
"Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?"
"It is well," said Jean Valjean.
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"Did you sleep badly?"
"No."
"Are you sad?"
"No."
"Embrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content, I will not scold you."
And again she offered him her brow.
Jean Valjean dropped a kiss upon that brow whereon rested a celestial gleam.
"Smile."
Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.
"Now, defend me against my husband."
"Cosette! . . ." ejaculated Marius.
"Get angry, father. Say that I must stay. You can certainly talk before me. So you think me very silly. What
you say is astonishing! business, placing money in a bank a great matter truly. Men make mysteries out of
nothing. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius."
And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably exquisite pout, she glanced at Marius.
"I love you!" said Marius.
"I adore you!" said Cosette.
And they fell irresistibly into each other's arms.
"Now," said Cosette, adjusting a fold of her dressinggown, with a triumphant little grimace, "I shall stay."
"No, not that," said Marius, in a supplicating tone. "We have to finish something."
"Still no?"
Marius assumed a grave tone:
"I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."
"Ah! you put on your man's voice, sir. That is well, I go. You, father, have not upheld me. Monsieur my
father, monsieur my husband, you are tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you think that I am going to
return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I shall wait for you now. You shall see, that it
is you who are going to be bored without me. I am going, it is well."
And she left the room.
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Two seconds later, the door opened once more, her fresh and rosy head was again thrust between the two
leaves, and she cried to them:
"I am very angry indeed."
The door closed again, and the shadows descended once more.
It was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed the night, without itself being conscious of
it.
Marius made sure that the door was securely closed.
"Poor Cosette!" he murmured, "when she finds out . . ."
At that word Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed on Marius a bewildered eye.
"Cosette! oh yes, it is true, you are going to tell Cosette about this. That is right. Stay, I had not thought of
that. One has the strength for one thing, but not for another. Sir, I conjure you, I entreat now, sir, give me
your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell her. Is it not enough that you should know it? I have
been able to say it myself without being forced to it, I could have told it to the universe, to the whole
world,it was all one to me. But she, she does not know what it is, it would terrify her. What, a convict! we
should be obliged to explain matters to her, to say to her: `He is a man who has been in the galleys.' She saw
the chaingang pass by one day. Oh! My God!" . . . He dropped into an armchair and hid his face in his
hands.
His grief was not audible, but from the quivering of his shoulders it was evident that he was weeping. Silent
tears, terrible tears.
There is something of suffocation in the sob. He was seized with a sort of convulsion, he threw himself
against the back of the chair as though to gain breath, letting his arms fall, and allowing Marius to see his face
inundated with tears, and Marius heard him murmur, so low that his voice seemed to issue from fathomless
depths:
"Oh! would that I could die!"
"Be at your ease," said Marius, "I will keep your secret for myself alone." x And, less touched, perhaps, than
he ought to have been, but forced, for the last hour, to familiarize himself with something as unexpected as it
was dreadful, gradually beholding the convict superposed before his very eyes, upon M. Fauchelevent,
overcome, little by little, by that lugubrious reality, and led, by the natural inclination of the situation, to
recognize the space which had just been placed between that man and himself, Marius added:
"It is impossible that I should not speak a word to you with regard to the deposit which you have so faithfully
and honestly remitted. That is an act of probity. It is just that some recompense should be bestowed on you.
Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not fear to set it very high."
"I thank you, sir," replied Jean Valjean, gently.
He remained in thought for a moment, mechanically passing the tip of his forefinger across his thumbnail,
then he lifted up his voice:
"All is nearly over. But one last thing remains for me . . ."
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"What is it?"
Jean Valjean struggled with what seemed a last hesitation, and, without voice, without breath, he stammered
rather than said:
"Now that you know, do you think, sir, you, who are the master, that I ought not to see Cosette any more?"
"I think that would be better," replied Marius coldly.
"I shall never see her more," murmured Jean Valjean. And he directed his steps towards the door.
He laid his hand on the knob, the latch yielded, the door opened. Jean Valjean pushed it open far enough to
pass through, stood motionless for a second, then closed the door again and turned to Marius.
He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer any tears in his eyes, but only a sort of tragic
flame. His voice had regained a strange composure.
"Stay, sir," he said. "If you will allow it, I will come to see her. I assure you that I desire it greatly. If I had
not cared to see Cosette, I should not have made to you the confession that I have made, I should have gone
away; but, as I desired to remain in the place where Cosette is, and to continue to see her, I had to tell you
about it honestly. You follow my reasoning, do you not? it is a matter easily understood. You see, I have had
her with me for more than nine years. We lived first in that hut on the boulevard, then in the convent, then
near the Luxembourg. That was where you saw her for the first time. You remember her blue plush hat. Then
we went to the Quartier des Invalides, where there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet. I lived in a little
back courtyard, whence I could hear her piano. That was my life. We never left each other. That lasted for
nine years and some months. I was like her own father, and she was my child. I do not know whether you
understand, Monsieur Pontmercy, but to go away now, never to see her again, never to speak to her again, to
no longer have anything, would be hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see Cosette from time
to time. I will not come often. I will not remain long. You shall give orders that I am to be received in the
little waitingroom. On the ground floor. I could enter perfectly well by the back door, but that might create
surprise perhaps, and it would be better, I think, for me to enter by the usual door. Truly, sir, I should like to
see a little more of Cosette. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, I have nothing left but that.
And then, we must be cautious. If I no longer come at all, it would produce a bad effect, it would be
considered singular. What I can do, by the way, is to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning to fall."
"You shall come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will be waiting for you."
"You are kind, sir," said Jean Valjean.
Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door, and these two men parted.
CHAPTER II. THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN
Marius was quite upset.
The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man beside whom he had seen Cosette, was
now explained to him. There was something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned
him.
This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M. Fauchelevent was the convict Jean
Valjean.
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To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest
of turtledoves.
Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a neighborhood? Was this an
accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of that man form a part of the marriage now consummated? Was there
nothing to be done?
Had Marius wedded the convict as well?
In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste the grand purple hour of life, happy
love, such shocks would force even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to shudder.
As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked himself whether he had nothing with
which to reproach himself. Had he been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he
involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his
marriage to Cosette, without taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He
admitted,it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life
amends us, little by little,he admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of internal
cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow, dilates as the
temperature of the soul changes, and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing more
than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more than once indicated this characteristic element of Marius'
individuality.
He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks,
he had not even spoke to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken up such a
singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing flight. How had it happened that he had not
mentioned this to Cosette? Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had not even
named the Thenardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he had encountered Eponine? He now found it
almost difficult to explain his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He recalled his
benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other
into the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent and
charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that
redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did not wish to play any part, his agency
in which he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an accuser.
Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been no time for anything except love.
In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his mind, examined everything, whatever
might have been the consequences if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had
discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would that have changed
her, Cosette? Would he have drawn back? Would he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained
from marrying her? No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need reproach himself. All
was well. There is a deity for those drunken men who are called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path
which he would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. Love had bandaged his eyes, in order
to lead him whither? To paradise.
But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal accompaniment.
Marius' ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean,
was at present mingled with horror.
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Page No 968
In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain surprise.
This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred
thousand francs.
He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all, he had restored it all.
Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to this. If any one learned who he was, it
was through himself. In this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there was
acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter. A false name is security, and
he had rejected that false name. He, the galleyslave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family;
he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive? Through a conscientious scruple. He himself
explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was,
undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There existed some mysterious rehabilitation which had
begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man. Such fits of justice
and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it
caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.
What did Jean Valjean inspire? confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius struck, he admitted the active
principle, he admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.
But all this went on as in a storm. Marius, while endeavoring to form a clear idea of this man, and while
pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist.
The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession these were good. This produced a lightening of
the cloud, then the cloud became black once more.
Troubled as were Marius' memories, a shadow of them returned to him.
After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the
police, instead of entering a complaint?
Here Marius found the answer. Because that man was a fugitive from justice, who had broken his ban.
Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?
For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had reappeared in his emotions like
sympathetic ink at the application of heat. This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. What
had he come there for? In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied: "Javert."
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the
barricade, and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that frightful pistol shot.
Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galleyslave. The one was in the other's way.
Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late. He probably
knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has
become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good;
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and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the
matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that
seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply. This question Marius felt like pincers.
How had it come to pass that Jean Valjean's existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that child in contact with that man? Are
there then chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with
the demon? So a crime and an innocence can be roommates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In
that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side, the one
ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever
blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off? In
what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life been established between this
celestial little creature and that old criminal?
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more incomprehensible, have attached the
wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for, during the
space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her point of support. Cosette's childhood and girlhood,
her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous
devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of
abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without becoming dizzy. What was this
manprecipice?
The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall
effect a change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the one which is
according to good is Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was
this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, rearing her, guarding her,
dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity?
What was that cesspool which had venerated that innocence to such a point as not to leave upon it a single
spot? What was this Jean Valjean educating Cosette? What was this figure of the shadows which had for its
only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every shadow and from every cloud?
That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's secret.
In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled. The one, in some sort, reassured him as to the other.
God was as visible in this affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He makes use of the tool
which he wills. He is not responsible to men. Do we know how God sets about the work? Jean Valjean had
labored over Cosette. He had, to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what then? The
workman was horrible; but the work was admirable. God produces his miracles as seems good to him. He had
constructed that charming Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean. It had pleased him to choose this
strange collaborator for himself. What account have we to demand of him? Is this the first time that the
dungheap has aided the spring to create the rose?
Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself that they were good. He had not dared to press
Jean Valjean on all the points which we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that he did not
dare to do it. He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette, Cosette was splendidly pure. That was sufficient for
him. What enlightenment did he need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He had
everything; what more could he desire? All, is not that enough? Jean Valjean's personal affairs did not
concern him.
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And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast, convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that
unhappy wretch: "I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not know that she was in existence."
Jean Valjean was a passerby. He had said so himself. Well, he had passed. Whatever he was, his part was
finished.
Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence to Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in
a person like herself, in her lover, her husband, her celestial male. Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and
transfigured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.
In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned to a certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred
horror, perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out, he felt a quid divinum in that man. But do what he would,
and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall back upon this: the man was a convict;
that is to say, a being who has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower than the very lowest
rung. After the very last of men comes the convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of
the living. The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.
Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system, though he was a democrat and he entertained
all the ideas of the law on the subject of those whom the law strikes. He had not yet accomplished all
progress, we admit. He had not yet come to distinguish between that which is written by man and that which
is written by God, between law and right. He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes to
dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not shocked by the word vindicte. He found it quite
simple that certain breaches of the written law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he accepted, as
the process of civilization, social damnation. He still stood at this point, though safe to advance infallibly
later on, since his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress.
In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him hideous and repulsive. He was a man reproved, he
was the convict. That word was for him like the sound of the trump on the Day of Judgment; and, after
having reflected upon Jean Valjean for a long time, his final gesture had been to turn away his head. Vade
retro.
Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact, while interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point
that Jean Valjean had said: "You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three decisive
questions.
It was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind, but that he had been afraid of them. The
Jondrette attic? The barricade? Javert? Who knows where these revelations would have stopped? Jean
Valjean did not seem like a man who would draw back, and who knows whether Marius, after having urged
him on, would not have himself desired to hold him back?
Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures, to stop our ears in order that we may not
hear the reply, after we have asked a question? It is especially when one loves that one gives way to these
exhibitions of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister situations to the last point, particularly when the
indissoluble side of our life is fatally intermingled with them. What a terrible light might have proceeded
from the despairing explanations of Jean Valjean, and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have
darted forth as far as Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not have lingered behind it
on the brow of that angel? The spattering of a lightningflash is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of
juncture where innocence itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the reflections which give color.
The purest figures may forever preserve the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius
had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to dull his senses rather than to gain further light.
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In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean Valjean.
That man was the night, the living and horrible night. How should he dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a
terrible thing to interrogate the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened
forever by it.
In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth, come into any contact whatever with
Cosette was a heartrending perplexity to Marius.
He now almost reproached himself for not having put those formidable questions, before which he had
recoiled, and from which an implacable and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too
good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say the word. This weakness had led him to an imprudent concession.
He had allowed himself to be touched. He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely
rejected Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean played the part of fire, and that is what he should have done, and have
freed his house from that man.
He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and
carried him away. He was displeased with himself.
What was he to do now? Jean Valjean's visits were profoundly repugnant to him. What was the use in having
that man in his house? What did the man want? Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he
did not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. He had promised, he had allowed himself
to be drawn into a promise; Jean Valjean held his promise; one must keep one's word even to a convict,
above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short, he was carried away by the repugnance
which dominated him.
Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind, passing from one to the other, and moved by all of
them. Hence arose a profound trouble.
It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette, but love is a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing
it.
However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette, who was as candid as a dove is white and who
suspected nothing; he talked of her childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that
that convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a man can be towards Cosette. All that
Marius had caught a glimpse of and had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved and protected that
lily.
BOOK EIGHTH.FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT
CHAPTER I. THE LOWER CHAMBER
On the following day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the carriage gate of the Gillenormand house. It
was Basque who received him. Basque was in the courtyard at the appointed hour, as though he had received
his orders. It sometimes happens that one says to a servant: "You will watch for Mr. So and So, when he
arrives."
Basque addressed Jean Valjean without waiting for the latter to approach him:
"Monsieur le Baron has charged me to inquire whether monsieur desires to go upstairs or to remain below?"
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"I will remain below," replied Jean Valjean.
Basque, who was perfectly respectful, opened the door of the waitingroom and said:
"I will go and inform Madame."
The room which Jean Valjean entered was a damp, vaulted room on the ground floor, which served as a cellar
on occasion, which opened on the street, was paved with red squares and was badly lighted by a grated
window.
This chamber was not one of those which are harassed by the featherduster, the pope's head brush, and the
broom. The dust rested tranquilly there. Persecution of the spiders was not organized there. A fine web,
which spread far and wide, and was very black and ornamented with dead flies, formed a wheel on one of the
windowpanes. The room, which was small and lowceiled, was furnished with a heap of empty bottles piled
up in one corner.
The wall, which was daubed with an ochre yellow wash, was scaling off in large flakes. At one end there was
a chimneypiece painted in black with a narrow shelf. A fire was burning there; which indicated that Jean
Valjean's reply: "I will remain below," had been foreseen.
Two armchairs were placed at the two corners of the fireplace. Between the chairs an old bedside rug, which
displayed more foundation thread than wool, had been spread by way of a carpet.
The chamber was lighted by the fire on the hearth and the twilight falling through the window.
Jean Valjean was fatigued. For days he had neither eaten nor slept. He threw himself into one of the
armchairs.
Basque returned, set a lighted candle on the chimneypiece and retired. Jean Valjean, his head drooping and
his chin resting on his breast, perceived neither Basque nor the candle.
All at once, he drew himself up with a start. Cosette was standing beside him.
He had not seen her enter, but he had felt that she was there.
He turned round. He gazed at her. She was adorably lovely. But what he was contemplating with that
profound gaze was not her beauty but her soul.
"Well," exclaimed Cosette, "father, I knew that you were peculiar, but I never should have expected this.
What an idea! Marius told me that you wish me to receive you here."
"Yes, it is my wish."
"I expected that reply. Good. I warn you that I am going to make a scene for you. Let us begin at the
beginning. Embrace me, father."
And she offered him her cheek.
Jean Valjean remained motionless.
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Page No 973
"You do not stir. I take note of it. Attitude of guilt. But never mind, I pardon you. Jesus Christ said: Offer the
other cheek. Here it is."
And she presented her other cheek.
Jean Valjean did not move. It seemed as though his feet were nailed to the pavement.
"This is becoming serious," said Cosette. "What have I done to you? I declare that I am perplexed. You owe
me reparation. You will dine with us."
"I have dined."
"That is not true. I will get M. Gillenormand to scold you. Grandfathers are made to reprimand fathers.
Come. Go upstairs with me to the drawingroom. Immediately."
"Impossible."
Here Cosette lost ground a little. She ceased to command and passed to questioning.
"But why? and you choose the ugliest chamber in the house in which to see me. It's horrible here."
"Thou knowest . . ."
Jean Valjean caught himself up.
"You know, madame, that I am peculiar, I have my freaks."
Cosette struck her tiny hands together.
"Madame! . . . You know! . . . more novelties! What is the meaning of this?"
Jean Valjean directed upon her that heartrending smile to which he occasionally had recourse:
"You wished to be Madame. You are so."
"Not for you, father."
"Do not call me father."
"What?"
"Call me `Monsieur Jean.' `Jean,' if you like."
"You are no longer my father? I am no longer Cosette? `Monsieur Jean'? What does this mean? why, these
are revolutions, aren't they? what has taken place? come, look me in the face. And you won't live with us!
And you won't have my chamber! What have I done to you? Has anything happened?"
"Nothing."
"Well then?"
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Page No 974
"Everything is as usual."
"Why do you change your name?"
"You have changed yours, surely."
He smiled again with the same smile as before and added:
"Since you are Madame Pontmercy, I certainly can be Monsieur Jean."
"I don't understand anything about it. All this is idiotic. I shall ask permission of my husband for you to be
`Monsieur Jean.' I hope that he will not consent to it. You cause me a great deal of pain. One does have
freaks, but one does not cause one's little Cosette grief. That is wrong. You have no right to be wicked, you
who are so good."
He made no reply.
She seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face with an irresistible movement, she pressed
them against her neck beneath her chin, which is a gesture of profound tenderness.
"Oh!" she said to him, "be good!"
And she went on:
"This is what I call being good: being nice and coming and living here, there are birds here as there are in
the Rue Plumet,living with us, quitting that hole of a Rue de l'Homme Arme, not giving us riddles to
guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father."
He loosed her hands.
"You no longer need a father, you have a husband."
Cosette became angry.
"I no longer need a father! One really does not know what to say to things like that, which are not common
sense!"
"If Toussaint were here," resumed Jean Valjean, like a person who is driven to seek authorities, and who
clutches at every branch, "she would be the first to agree that it is true that I have always had ways of my
own. There is nothing new in this. I always have loved my black corner."
"But it is cold here. One cannot see distinctly. It is abominable, that it is, to wish to be Monsieur Jean! I will
not have you say `you' to me.
"Just now, as I was coming hither," replied Jean Valjean, "I saw a piece of furniture in the Rue Saint Louis. It
was at a cabinetmaker's. If I were a pretty woman, I would treat myself to that bit of furniture. A very neat
toilet table in the reigning style. What you call rosewood, I think. It is inlaid. The mirror is quite large. There
are drawers. It is pretty."
"Hou! the villainous bear!" replied Cosette.
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And with supreme grace, setting her teeth and drawing back her lips, she blew at Jean Valjean. She was a
Grace copying a cat.
"I am furious," she resumed. "Ever since yesterday, you have made me rage, all of you. I am greatly vexed. I
don't understand. You do not defend me against Marius. Marius will not uphold me against you. I am all
alone. I arrange a chamber prettily. If I could have put the good God there I would have done it. My chamber
is left on my hands. My lodger sends me into bankruptcy. I order a nice little dinner of Nicolette. We will
have nothing to do with your dinner, Madame. And my father Fauchelevent wants me to call him `Monsieur
Jean,' and to receive him in a frightful, old, ugly cellar, where the walls have beards, and where the crystal
consists of empty bottles, and the curtains are of spiders' webs! You are singular, I admit, that is your style,
but people who get married are granted a truce. You ought not to have begun being singular again instantly.
So you are going to be perfectly contented in your abominable Rue de l'Homme Arme. I was very desperate
indeed there, that I was. What have you against me? You cause me a great deal of grief. Fi!"
And, becoming suddenly serious, she gazed intently at Jean Valjean and added:
"Are you angry with me because I am happy?"
Ingenuousness sometimes unconsciously penetrates deep. This question, which was simple for Cosette, was
profound for Jean Valjean. Cosette had meant to scratch, and she lacerated.
Jean Valjean turned pale.
He remained for a moment without replying, then, with an inexpressible intonation, and speaking to himself,
he murmured:
"Her happiness was the object of my life. Now God may sign my dismissal. Cosette, thou art happy; my day
is over."
"Ah, you have said thou to me!" exclaimed Cosette.
And she sprang to his neck.
Jean Valjean, in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. It almost seemed to him as though he were
taking her back.
"Thanks, father!" said Cosette.
This enthusiastic impulse was on the point of becoming poignant for Jean Valjean. He gently removed
Cosette's arms, and took his hat.
"Well?" said Cosette.
"I leave you, Madame, they are waiting for you."
And, from the threshold, he added:
"I have said thou to you. Tell your husband that this shall not happen again. Pardon me."
Jean Valjean quitted the room, leaving Cosette stupefied at this enigmatical farewell.
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Page No 976
CHAPTER II. ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS
On the following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came.
Cosette asked him no questions, was no longer astonished, no longer exclaimed that she was cold, no longer
spoke of the drawingroom, she avoided saying either "father" or "Monsieur Jean." She allowed herself to be
addressed as you. She allowed herself to be called Madame. Only, her joy had undergone a certain
diminution. She would have been sad, if sadness had been possible to her.
It is probable that she had had with Marius one of those conversations in which the beloved man says what he
pleases, explains nothing, and satisfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of lovers does not extend very far
beyond their own love.
The lower room had made a little toilet. Basque had suppressed the bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.
All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He came every day, because he had not
the strength to take Marius' words otherwise than literally. Marius arranged matters so as to be absent at the
hours when Jean Valjean came. The house grew accustomed to the novel ways of M. Fauchelevent. Toussaint
helped in this direction: "Monsieur has always been like that," she repeated. The grandfather issued this
decree:"He's an original." And all was said. Moreover, at the age of ninetysix, no bond is any longer
possible, all is merely juxtaposition; a newcomer is in the way. There is no longer any room; all habits are
acquired. M. Fauchelevent, M. Tranchelevent, Father Gillenormand asked nothing better than to be relieved
from "that gentleman." He added:"Nothing is more common than those originals. They do all sorts of
queer things. They have no reason. The Marquis de Canaples was still worse. He bought a palace that he
might lodge in the garret. These are fantastic appearances that people affect."
No one caught a glimpse of the sinister foundation. And moreover, who could have guessed such a thing?
There are marshes of this description in India. The water seems extraordinary, inexplicable, rippling though
there is no wind, and agitated where it should be calm. One gazes at the surface of these causeless ebullitions;
one does not perceive the hydra which crawls on the bottom.
Many men have a secret monster in this same manner, a dragon which gnaws them, a despair which inhabits
their night. Such a man resembles other men, he goes and comes. No one knows that he bears within him a
frightful parasitic pain with a thousand teeth, which lives within the unhappy man, and of which he is dying.
No one knows that this man is a gulf. He is stagnant but deep. From time to time, a trouble of which the
onlooker understands nothing appears on his surface. A mysterious wrinkle is formed, then vanishes, then
reappears; an airbubble rises and bursts. It is the breathing of the unknown beast.
Certain strange habits: arriving at the hour when other people are taking their leave, keeping in the
background when other people are displaying themselves, preserving on all occasions what may be
designated as the wallcolored mantle, seeking the solitary walk, preferring the deserted street, avoiding any
share in conversation, avoiding crowds and festivals, seeming at one's ease and living poorly, having one's
key in one's pocket, and one's candle at the porter's lodge, however rich one may be, entering by the side
door, ascending the private staircase,all these insignificant singularities, fugitive folds on the surface, often
proceed from a formidable foundation.
Many weeks passed in this manner. A new life gradually took possession of Cosette: the relations which
marriage creates, visits, the care of the house, pleasures, great matters. Cosette's pleasures were not costly,
they consisted in one thing: being with Marius. The great occupation of her life was to go out with him, to
remain with him. It was for them a joy that was always fresh, to go out arm in arm, in the face of the sun, in
the open street, without hiding themselves, before the whole world, both of them completely alone.
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Cosette had one vexation. Toussaint could not get on with Nicolette, the soldering of two elderly maids being
impossible, and she went away. The grandfather was well; Marius argued a case here and there; Aunt
Gillenormand peacefully led that life aside which sufficed for her, beside the new household. Jean Valjean
came every day.
The address as thou disappeared, the you, the "Madame," the "Monsieur Jean," rendered him another person
to Cosette. The care which he had himself taken to detach her from him was succeeding. She became more
and more gay and less and less tender. Yet she still loved him sincerely, and he felt it.
One day she said to him suddenly: "You used to be my father, you are no longer my father, you were my
uncle, you are no longer my uncle, you were Monsieur Fauchelevent, you are Jean. Who are you then? I don't
like all this. If I did not know how good you are, I should be afraid of you."
He still lived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, because he could not make up his mind to remove to a distance
from the quarter where Cosette dwelt.
At first, he only remained a few minutes with Cosette, and then went away.
Little by little he acquired the habit of making his visits less brief. One would have said that he was taking
advantage of the authorization of the days which were lengthening, he arrived earlier and departed later.
One day Cosette chanced to say "father" to him. A flash of joy illuminated Jean Valjean's melancholy old
countenance. He caught her up: "Say Jean.""Ah! truly," she replied with a burst of laughter, "Monsieur
Jean.""That is right," said he. And he turned aside so that she might not see him wipe his eyes.
CHAPTER III. THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET
This was the last time. After that last flash of light, complete extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more
goodmorning with a kiss, never more that word so profoundly sweet: "My father!" He was at his own
request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this
sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.
The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In short, it sufficed for him to have an
apparition of Cosette every day. His whole life was concentrated in that one hour.
He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he talked to her of years gone by, of her
childhood, of the convent, of her little friends of those bygone days.
One afternoon,it was on one of those early days in April, already warm and fresh, the moment of the sun's
great gayety, the gardens which surrounded the windows of Marius and Cosette felt the emotion of waking,
the hawthorn was on the point of budding, a jewelled garniture of gillyflowers spread over the ancient walls,
snapdragons yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming beginning of
daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance, the wind, that
minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which
the old poets called the springtide,Marius said to Cosette:"We said that we would go back to take a look
at our garden in the Rue Plumet. Let us go thither. We must not be ungrateful."And away they flitted, like
two swallows towards the spring. This garden of the Rue Plumet produced on them the effect of the dawn.
They already had behind them in life something which was like the springtime of their love. The house in the
Rue Plumet being held on a lease, still belonged to Cosette. They went to that garden and that house. There
they found themselves again, there they forgot themselves. That evening, at the usual hour, Jean Valjean
came to the Rue des FillesduCalvaire."Madame went out with Monsieur and has not yet returned,"
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Basque said to him. He seated himself in silence, and waited an hour. Cosette did not return. He departed
with drooping head.
Cosette was so intoxicated with her walk to "their garden," and so joyous at having "lived a whole day in her
past," that she talked of nothing else on the morrow. She did not notice that she had not seen Jean Valjean.
"In what way did you go thither?" Jean Valjean asked her."
"On foot."
"And how did you return?"
"In a hackney carriage."
For some time, Jean Valjean had noticed the economical life led by the young people. He was troubled by it.
Marius' economy was severe, and that word had its absolute meaning for Jean Valjean. He hazarded a query:
"Why do you not have a carriage of your own? A pretty coupe would only cost you five hundred francs a
month. You are rich."
"I don't know," replied Cosette.
"It is like Toussaint," resumed Jean Valjean. "She is gone. You have not replaced her. Why?"
"Nicolette suffices."
"But you ought to have a maid."
"Have I not Marius?"
"You ought to have a house of your own, your own servants, a carriage, a box at the theatre. There is nothing
too fine for you. Why not profit by your riches? Wealth adds to happiness."
Cosette made no reply.
Jean Valjean's visits were not abridged. Far from it. When it is the heart which is slipping, one does not halt
on the downward slope.
When Jean Valjean wished to prolong his visit and to induce forgetfulness of the hour, he sang the praises of
Marius; he pronounced him handsome, noble, courageous, witty, eloquent, good. Cosette outdid him. Jean
Valjean began again. They were never weary. Mariusthat word was inexhaustible; those six letters
contained volumes. In this manner, Jean Valjean contrived to remain a long time.
It was so sweet to see Cosette, to forget by her side! It alleviated his wounds. It frequently happened that
Basque came twice to announce: "M. Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame la Baronne that dinner is
served."
On those days, Jean Valjean was very thoughtful on his return home.
Was there, then, any truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which had presented itself to the mind of
Marius? Was Jean Valjean really a chrysalis who would persist, and who would come to visit his butterfly?
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One day he remained still longer than usual. On the following day he observed that there was no fire on the
hearth."Hello!" he thought. "No fire."And he furnished the explanation for himself."It is perfectly
simple. It is April. The cold weather has ceased."
"Heavens! how cold it is here!" exclaimed Cosette when she entered.
"Why, no," said Jean Valjean.
"Was it you who told Basque not to make a fire then?"
"Yes, since we are now in the month of May."
"But we have a fire until June. One is needed all the year in this cellar."
"I thought that a fire was unnecessary."
"That is exactly like one of your ideas!" retorted Cosette.
On the following day there was a fire. But the two armchairs were arranged at the other end of the room
near the door. "What is the meaning of this?" thought Jean Valjean.
He went for the armchairs and restored them to their ordinary place near the hearth.
This fire lighted once more encouraged him, however. He prolonged the conversation even beyond its
customary limits. As he rose to take his leave, Cosette said to him:
"My husband said a queer thing to me yesterday."
"What was it?"
"He said to me: `Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand livres. Twentyseven that you own, and three
that my grandfather gives me.' I replied: `That makes thirty.' He went on: `Would you have the courage to
live on the three thousand?' I answered: `Yes, on nothing. Provided that it was with you.' And then I asked:
`Why do you say that to me?' He replied: `I wanted to know.'"
Jean Valjean found not a word to answer. Cosette probably expected some explanation from him; he listened
in gloomy silence. He went back to the Rue de l'Homme Arme; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook
the door and instead of entering his own house, he entered the adjoining dwelling. It was only after having
ascended nearly two stories that he perceived his error and went down again.
His mind was swarming with conjectures. It was evident that Marius had his doubts as to the origin of the six
hundred thousand francs, that he feared some source that was not pure, who knows? that he had even,
perhaps, discovered that the money came from him, Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this suspicious
fortune, and was disinclined to take it as his own,preferring that both he and Cosette should remain poor,
rather than that they should be rich with wealth that was not clean.
Moreover, Jean Valjean began vaguely to surmise that he was being shown the door.
On the following day, he underwent something like a shock on entering the groundfloor room. The
armchairs had disappeared. There was not a single chair of any sort.
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"Ah, what's this!" exclaimed Cosette as she entered, "no chairs! Where are the armchairs?"
"They are no longer here," replied Jean Valjean.
"This is too much!"
Jean Valjean stammered:
"It was I who told Basque to remove them."
"And your reason?"
"I have only a few minutes to stay today."
"A brief stay is no reason for remaining standing."
"I think that Basque needed the chairs for the drawingroom.
"Why?"
"You have company this evening, no doubt."
"We expect no one."
Jean Valjean had not another word to say.
Cosette shrugged her shoulders.
"To have the chairs carried off! The other day you had the fire put out. How odd you are!"
"Adieu!" murmured Jean Valjean.
He did not say: "Adieu, Cosette." But he had not the strength to say: "Adieu, Madame."
He went away utterly overwhelmed.
This time he had understood.
On the following day he did not come. Cosette only observed the fact in the evening.
"Why," said she, "Monsieur Jean has not been here today."
And she felt a slight twinge at her heart, but she hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss
from Marius.
On the following day he did not come.
Cosette paid no heed to this, passed her evening and slept well that night, as usual, and thought of it only
when she woke. She was so happy! She speedily despatched Nicolette to M. Jean's house to inquire whether
he were ill, and why he had not come on the previous evening. Nicolette brought back the reply of M. Jean
that he was not ill. He was busy. He would come soon. As soon as he was able. Moreover, he was on the
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point of taking a little journey. Madame must remember that it was his custom to take trips from time to time.
They were not to worry about him. They were not to think of him.
Nicolette on entering M. Jean's had repeated to him her mistress' very words. That Madame had sent her to
inquire why M. Jean bad not come on the preceding evening."It is two days since I have been there," said
Jean Valjean gently.
But the remark passed unnoticed by Nicolette, who did not report it to Cosette.
CHAPTER IV. ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION
During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passersby in the Marais, the
petty shopkeepers, the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in black, who emerged every
day at the same hour, towards nightfall, from the Rue de l'Homme Arme, on the side of the Rue
SainteCroixdelaBretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, gained the Rue
CultureSainteCatherine, and, on arriving at the Rue de l'Echarpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue
SaintLouis.
There he walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye
immovably fixed on a point which seemed to be a star to him, which never varied, and which was no other
than the corner of the Rue des FillesduCalvaire. The nearer he approached the corner of the street the more
his eye lighted up; a sort of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora, he had a fascinated and much
affected air, his lips indulged in obscure movements, as though he were talking to some one whom he did not
see, he smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible. One would have said that, while desirous of
reaching his destination, he feared the moment when he should be close at hand. When only a few houses
remained between him and that street which appeared to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree that,
at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. The vacillation of his head and the
fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. Whatever time he spent
on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last; he reached the Rue des FillesduCalvaire; then he halted, he
trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity round the corner of the last house, and gazed
into that street, and there was in that tragic look something which resembled the dazzling light of the
impossible, and the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. Then a tear, which had slowly gathered
in the corner of his lids, and had become large enough to fall, trickled down his cheek, and sometimes
stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitter flavor. Thus he remained for several minutes as though
made of stone, then he returned by the same road and with the same step, and, in proportion as he retreated,
his glance died out.
Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the Rue des FillesduCalvaire; he halted half
way in the Rue SaintLouis; sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer.
One day he stopped at the corner of the Rue CultureSainteCatherine and looked at the Rue des
FillesduCalvaire from a distance. Then he shook his head slowly from right to left, as though refusing
himself something, and retraced his steps.
Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue SaintLouis. He got as far as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and
turned back; then he went no further than the Rue des TroisPavillons; then he did not overstep the
BlancsManteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose
oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether.
Every day he emerged from his house at the same hour, he undertook the same trip, but he no longer
completed it, and, perhaps without himself being aware of the fact, he constantly shortened it. His whole
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countenance expressed this single idea: What is the use? His eye was dim; no more radiance. His tears
were also exhausted; they no longer collected in the corner of his eyelid; that thoughtful eye was dry. The
old man's head was still craned forward; his chin moved at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to
behold. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm, but he never opened it.
The good women of the quarter said: "He is an innocent." The children followed him and laughed.
BOOK NINTH.SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
CHAPTER I. PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE
HAPPY
It is a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How allsufficient one finds it! How, being in
possession of the false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object, duty!
Let us say, however, that the reader would do wrong were he to blame Marius.
Marius, as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions to M. Fauchelevent, and, since that
time, he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed
himself to be drawn. He had often said to himself that he had done wrong in making that concession to
despair. He had confined himself to gradually estranging Jean Valjean from his house and to effacing him, as
much as possible, from Cosette's mind. He had, in a manner, always placed himself between Cosette and Jean
Valjean, sure that, in this way, she would not perceive nor think of the latter. It was more than effacement, it
was an eclipse.
Marius did what he considered necessary and just. He thought that he had serious reasons which the reader
has already seen, and others which will be seen later on, for getting rid of Jean Valjean without harshness, but
without weakness.
Chance having ordained that he should encounter, in a case which he had argued, a former employee of the
Laffitte establishment, he had acquired mysterious information, without seeking it, which he had not been
able, it is true, to probe, out of respect for the secret which he had promised to guard, and out of consideration
for Jean Valjean's perilous position. He believed at that moment that he had a grave duty to perform: the
restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to some one whom he sought with all possible discretion. In the
meanwhile, he abstained from touching that money.
As for Cosette, she had not been initiated into any of these secrets; but it would be harsh to condemn her also.
There existed between Marius and her an allpowerful magnetism, which caused her to do, instinctively and
almost mechanically, what Marius wished. She was conscious of Marius' will in the direction of "Monsieur
Jean," she conformed to it. Her husband had not been obliged to say anything to her; she yielded to the vague
but clear pressure of his tacit intentions, and obeyed blindly. Her obedience in this instance consisted in not
remembering what Marius forgot. She was not obliged to make any effort to accomplish this. Without her
knowing why herself, and without his having any cause to accuse her of it, her soul had become so wholly
her husband's that that which was shrouded in gloom in Marius' mind became overcast in hers.
Let us not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean, this forgetfulness and obliteration were merely
superficial. She was rather heedless than forgetful. At bottom, she was sincerely attached to the man whom
she had so long called her father; but she loved her husband still more dearly. This was what had somewhat
disturbed the balance of her heart, which leaned to one side only.
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It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean and expressed her surprise. Then Marius calmed
her: "He is absent, I think. Did not he say that he was setting out on a journey?""That is true," thought
Cosette. "He had a habit of disappearing in this fashion. But not for so long." Two or three times she
despatched Nicolette to inquire in the Rue de l'Homme Arme whether M. Jean had returned from his journey.
Jean Valjean caused the answer "no" to be given.
Cosette asked nothing more, since she had but one need on earth, Marius.
Let us also say that, on their side, Cosette and Marius had also been absent. They had been to Vernon. Marius
had taken Cosette to his father's grave.
Marius gradually won Cosette away from Jean Valjean. Cosette allowed it.
Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always a
thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have elsewhere
said, "looks before her." Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are
departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light.
Hence a gulf which is fatal on the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. This breach, at
first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without becoming detached
from the trunk, grow away from it. It is no fault of theirs. Youth goes where there is joy, festivals, vivid
lights, love. Old age goes towards the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer a close
connection. Young people feel the cooling off of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these
poor children.
CHAPTER II. LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL
One day, Jean Valjean descended his staircase, took three steps in the street, seated himself on a post, on that
same stone post where Gavroche had found him meditating on the night between the 5th and the 6th of June;
he remained there a few moments, then went up stairs again. This was the last oscillation of the pendulum.
On the following day he did not leave his apartment. On the day after that, he did not leave his bed.
His portress, who prepared his scanty repasts, a few cabbages or potatoes with bacon, glanced at the brown
earthenware plate and exclaimed:
"But you ate nothing yesterday, poor, dear man!"
"Certainly I did," replied Jean Valjean.
"The plate is quite full."
"Look at the water jug. It is empty."
"That proves that you have drunk; it does not prove that you have eaten."
"Well," said Jean Valjean, "what if I felt hungry only for water?"
"That is called thirst, and, when one does not eat at the same time, it is called fever."
"I will eat tomorrow."
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"Or at Trinity day. Why not today? Is it the thing to say: `I will eat tomorrow'? The idea of leaving my
platter without even touching it! My ladyfinger potatoes were so good!"
Jean Valjean took the old woman's hand:
"I promise you that I will eat them," he said, in his benevolent voice.
"I am not pleased with you," replied the portress.
Jean Valjean saw no other human creature than this good woman. There are streets in Paris through which no
one ever passes, and houses to which no one ever comes. He was in one of those streets and one of those
houses.
While he still went out, he had purchased of a coppersmith, for a few sous, a little copper crucifix which he
had hung up on a nail opposite his bed. That gibbet is always good to look at.
A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said
to her husband:"The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long.
That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won't get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad
marriage."
The porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:
"If he's rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him go without. If he has no doctor he will die."
"And if he has one?"
"He will die," said the porter.
The portress set to scraping away the grass from what she called her pavement, with an old knife, and, as she
tore out the blades, she grumbled:
"It's a shame. Such a neat old man! He's as white as a chicken."
She caught sight of the doctor of the quarter as he passed the end of the street; she took it upon herself to
request him to come up stairs.
"It's on the second floor," said she. "You have only to enter. As the good man no longer stirs from his bed, the
door is always unlocked."
The doctor saw Jean Valjean and spoke with him.
When he came down again the portress interrogated him:
"Well, doctor?"
"Your sick man is very ill indeed."
"What is the matter with him?"
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Page No 985
"Everything and nothing. He is a man who, to all appearances, has lost some person who is dear to him.
People die of that."
"What did he say to you?"
"He told me that he was in good health."
"Shall you come again, doctor?"
"Yes," replied the doctor. "But some one else besides must come."
CHAPTER III. A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE
FAUCHELEVENT'S CART
One evening Jean Valjean found difficulty in raising himself on his elbow; he felt of his wrist and could not
find his pulse; his breath was short and halted at times; he recognized the fact that he was weaker than he had
ever been before. Then, no doubt under the pressure of some supreme preoccupation, he made an effort, drew
himself up into a sitting posture and dressed himself. He put on his old workingman's clothes. As he no
longer went out, he had returned to them and preferred them. He was obliged to pause many times while
dressing himself; merely putting his arms through his waistcoat made the perspiration trickle from his
forehead.
Since he had been alone, he had placed his bed in the antechamber, in order to inhabit that deserted apartment
as little as possible.
He opened the valise and drew from it Cosette's outfit.
He spread it out on his bed.
The Bishop's candlesticks were in their place on the chimneypiece. He took from a drawer two wax candles
and put them in the candlesticks. Then, although it was still broad daylight,it was summer, he lighted
them. In the same way candles are to be seen lighted in broad daylight in chambers where there is a corpse.
Every step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another exhausted him, and he was obliged to
sit down. It was not ordinary fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it; it was the remnant of all
movement possible to him, it was life drained which flows away drop by drop in overwhelming efforts and
which will never be renewed.
The chair into which he allowed himself to fall was placed in front of that mirror, so fatal for him, so
providential for Marius, in which he had read Cosette's reversed writing on the blotting book. He caught sight
of himself in this mirror, and did not recognize himself. He was eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, he
would have hardly been taken for fifty; that year had counted for thirty. What he bore on his brow was no
longer the wrinkles of age, it was the mysterious mark of death. The hollowing of that pitiless nail could be
felt there. His cheeks were pendulous; the skin of his face had the color which would lead one to think that it
already had earth upon it; the corners of his mouth drooped as in the mask which the ancients sculptured on
tombs. He gazed into space with an air of reproach; one would have said that he was one of those grand tragic
beings who have cause to complain of some one.
He was in that condition, the last phase of dejection, in which sorrow no longer flows; it is coagulated, so to
speak; there is something on the soul like a clot of despair.
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Night had come. He laboriously dragged a table and the old armchair to the fireside, and placed upon the
table a pen, some ink and some paper.
That done, he had a fainting fit. When he recovered consciousness, he was thirsty. As he could not lift the
jug, he tipped it over painfully towards his mouth, and swallowed a draught.
As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the point of the pen had curled up, the ink had
dried away, he was forced to rise and put a few drops of water in the ink, which he did not accomplish
without pausing and sitting down two or three times, and he was compelled to write with the back of the pen.
He wiped his brow from time to time.
Then he turned towards the bed, and, still seated, for he could not stand, he gazed at the little black gown and
all those beloved objects.
These contemplations lasted for hours which seemed minutes.
All at once he shivered, he felt that a child was taking possession of him; he rested his elbows on the table,
which was illuminated by the Bishop's candles and took up the pen. His hand trembled. He wrote slowly the
few following lines:
"Cosette, I bless thee. I am going to explain to thee. Thy husband was right in giving me to understand that I
ought to go away; but there is a little error in what he believed, though he was in the right. He is excellent.
Love him well even after I am dead. Monsieur Pontmercy, love my darling child well. Cosette, this paper will
be found; this is what I wish to say to thee, thou wilt see the figures, if I have the strength to recall them,
listen well, this money is really thine. Here is the whole matter: White jet comes from Norway, black jet
comes from England, black glass jewellery comes from Germany. Jet is the lightest, the most precious, the
most costly. Imitations can be made in France as well as in Germany. What is needed is a little anvil two
inches square, and a lamp burning spirits of wine to soften the wax. The wax was formerly made with resin
and lampblack, and cost four livres the pound. I invented a way of making it with gum shellac and turpentine.
It does not cost more than thirty sous, and is much better. Buckles are made with a violet glass which is stuck
fast, by means of this wax, to a little framework of black iron. The glass must be violet for iron jewellery, and
black for gold jewellery. Spain buys a great deal of it. It is the country of jet . . ."
Here he paused, the pen fell from his fingers, he was seized by one of those sobs which at times welled up
from the very depths of his being; the poor man clasped his head in both hands, and meditated.
"Oh!" he exclaimed within himself [lamentable cries, heard by God alone], "all is over. I shall never see her
more. She is a smile which passed over me. I am about to plunge into the night without even seeing her again.
Oh! one minute, one instant, to hear her voice, to touch her dress, to gaze upon her, upon her, the angel! and
then to die! It is nothing to die, what is frightful is to die without seeing her. She would smile on me, she
would say a word to me, would that do any harm to any one? No, all is over, and forever. Here I am all alone.
My God! My God! I shall never see her again!" At that moment there came a knock at the door.
CHAPTER IV. A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN
WHITENING
That same day, or to speak more accurately, that same evening, as Marius left the table, and was on the point
of withdrawing to his study, having a case to look over, Basque handed him a letter saying: "The person who
wrote the letter is in the antechamber."
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Page No 987
Cosette had taken the grandfather's arm and was strolling in the garden.
A letter, like a man, may have an unprepossessing exterior. Coarse paper, coarsely foldedthe very sight of
certain missives is displeasing.
The letter which Basque had brought was of this sort.
Marius took it. It smelled of tobacco. Nothing evokes a memory like an odor. Marius recognized that tobacco.
He looked at the superscription: "To Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron Pommerci. At his hotel." The recognition
of the tobacco caused him to recognize the writing as well. It may be said that amazement has its lightning
flashes.
Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of these flashes.
The sense of smell, that mysterious aid to memory, had just revived a whole world within him. This was
certainly the paper, the fashion of folding, the dull tint of ink; it was certainly the wellknown handwriting,
especially was it the same tobacco.
The Jondrette garret rose before his mind.
Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two scents which he had so diligently sought, the one in connection
with which he had lately again exerted so many efforts and which he supposed to be forever lost, had come
and presented itself to him of its own accord.
He eagerly broke the seal, and read:
"Monsieur le Baron:If the Supreme Being had given me the talents, I might have been baron Thenard,
member of the Institute [academy of ciences], but I am not. I only bear the same as him, happy if this
memory recommends me to the eccellence of your kindnesses. The benefit with which you will honor me
will be reciprocle. I am in possession of a secret concerning an individual. This individual concerns you. I
hold the secret at your disposal desiring to have the honor to be huseful to you. I will furnish you with the
simple means of driving from your honorabel family that individual who has no right there, madame la
baronne being of lofty birth. The sanctuary of virtue cannot cohabit longer with crime without abdicating.
I awate in the entichamber the orders of monsieur le baron.
"With respect."
The letter was signed "Thenard."
This signature was not false. It was merely a trifle abridged.
Moreover, the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation. The certificate of origin was
complete.
Marius' emotion was profound. After a start of surprise, he underwent a feeling of happiness. If he could now
but find that other man of whom he was in search, the man who had saved him, Marius, there would be
nothing left for him to desire.
He opened the drawer of his secretary, took out several banknotes, put them in his pocket, closed the
secretary again, and rang the bell. Basque half opened the door.
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Page No 988
"Show the man in," said Marius.
Basque announced:
"Monsieur Thenard."
A man entered.
A fresh surprise for Marius. The man who entered was an utter stranger to him.
This man, who was old, moreover, had a thick nose, his chin swathed in a cravat, green spectacles with a
double screen of green taffeta over his eyes, and his hair was plastered and flattened down on his brow on a
level with his eyebrows like the wigs of English coachmen in "high life." His hair was gray. He was dressed
in black from head to foot, in garments that were very threadbare but clean; a bunch of seals depending from
his fob suggested the idea of a watch. He held in his hand an old hat! He walked in a bent attitude, and the
curve in his spine augmented the profundity of his bow.
The first thing that struck the observer was, that this personage's coat, which was too ample although
carefully buttoned, had not been made for him.
Here a short digression becomes necessary.
There was in Paris at that epoch, in a lowlived old lodging in the Rue Beautreillis, near the Arsenal, an
ingenious Jew whose profession was to change villains into honest men. Not for too long, which might have
proved embarrassing for the villain. The change was on sight, for a day or two, at the rate of thirty sous a day,
by means of a costume which resembled the honesty of the world in general as nearly as possible. This
costumer was called "the Changer"; the pickpockets of Paris had given him this name and knew him by no
other. He had a tolerably complete wardrobe. The rags with which he tricked out people were almost
probable. He had specialties and categories; on each nail of his shop hung a social status, threadbare and
worn; here the suit of a magistrate, there the outfit of a Cure, beyond the outfit of a banker, in one corner the
costume of a retired military man, elsewhere the habiliments of a man of letters, and further on the dress of a
statesman.
This creature was the costumer of the immense drama which knavery plays in Paris. His lair was the
greenroom whence theft emerged, and into which roguery retreated. A tattered knave arrived at this
dressingroom, deposited his thirty sous and selected, according to the part which he wished to play, the
costume which suited him, and on descending the stairs once more, the knave was a somebody. On the
following day, the clothes were faithfully returned, and the Changer, who trusted the thieves with everything,
was never robbed. There was one inconvenience about these clothes, they "did not fit"; not having been made
for those who wore them, they were too tight for one, too loose for another and did not adjust themselves to
any one. Every pickpocket who exceeded or fell short of the human average was ill at his ease in the
Changer's costumes. It was necessary that one should not be either too fat or too lean. The changer had
foreseen only ordinary men. He had taken the measure of the species from the first rascal who came to hand,
who is neither stout nor thin, neither tall nor short. Hence adaptations which were sometimes difficult and
from which the Changer's clients extricated themselves as best they might. So much the worse for the
exceptions! The suit of the statesman, for instance, black from head to foot, and consequently proper, would
have been too large for Pitt and too small for Castelcicala. The costume of a statesman was designated as
follows in the Changer's catalogue; we copy:
"A coat of black cloth, trowsers of black wool, a silk waistcoat, boots and linen." On the margin there stood:
exambassador, and a note which we also copy: "In a separate box, a neatly frizzed peruke, green glasses,
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seals, and two small quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton." All this belonged to the statesman, the
exambassador. This whole costume was, if we may so express ourselves, debilitated; the seams were white,
a vague buttonhole yawned at one of the elbows; moreover, one of the coat buttons was missing on the
breast; but this was only detail; as the hand of the statesman should always be thrust into his coat and laid
upon his heart, its function was to conceal the absent button.
If Marius had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris, he would instantly have recognized upon the
back of the visitor whom Basque had just shown in, the statesman's suit borrowed from the
pickmedownthat shop of the Changer.
Marius' disappointment on beholding another man than the one whom he expected to see turned to the
newcomer's disadvantage.
He surveyed him from head to foot, while that personage made exaggerated bows, and demanded in a curt
tone:
"What do you want?"
The man replied with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a crocodile will furnish some idea:
"It seems to me impossible that I should not have already had the honor of seeing Monsieur le Baron in
society. I think I actually did meet monsieur personally, several years ago, at the house of Madame la
Princesse Bagration and in the drawingrooms of his Lordship the Vicomte Dambray, peer of France."
It is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize some one whom one does not know.
Marius paid attention to the manner of this man's speech. He spied on his accent and gesture, but his
disappointment increased; the pronunciation was nasal and absolutely unlike the dry, shrill tone which he had
expected.
He was utterly routed.
"I know neither Madame Bagration nor M. Dambray," said he. "I have never set foot in the house of either of
them in my life."
The reply was ungracious. The personage, determined to be gracious at any cost, insisted.
"Then it must have been at Chateaubriand's that I have seen Monsieur! I know Chateaubriand very well. He is
very affable. He sometimes says to me: `Thenard, my friend . . . won't you drink a glass of wine with me?'"
Marius' brow grew more and more severe:
"I have never had the honor of being received by M. de Chateaubriand. Let us cut it short. What do you
want?"
The man bowed lower at that harsh voice.
"Monsieur le Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a district near Panama, a village called la
Joya. That village is composed of a single house, a large, square house of three stories, built of bricks dried in
the sun, each side of the square five hundred feet in length, each story retreating twelve feet back of the story
below, in such a manner as to leave in front a terrace which makes the circuit of the edifice, in the centre an
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inner court where the provisions and munitions are kept; no windows, loopholes, no doors, ladders, ladders to
mount from the ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the second, and from the second to the third,
ladders to descend into the inner court, no doors to the chambers, trapdoors, no staircases to the chambers,
ladders; in the evening the traps are closed, the ladders are withdrawn carbines and blunderbusses trained
from the loopholes; no means of entering, a house by day, a citadel by night, eight hundred inhabitants,
that is the village. Why so many precautions? because the country is dangerous; it is full of cannibals. Then
why do people go there? because the country is marvellous; gold is found there."
"What are you driving at?" interrupted Marius, who had passed from disappointment to impatience.
"At this, Monsieur le Baron. I am an old and weary diplomat. Ancient civilization has thrown me on my own
devices. I want to try savages."
"Well?"
"Monsieur le Baron, egotism is the law of the world. The proletarian peasant woman, who toils by the day,
turns round when the diligence passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field, does not turn round.
The dog of the poor man barks at the rich man, the dog of the rich man barks at the poor man. Each one for
himself. Selfinterestthat's the object of men. Gold, that's the loadstone."
"What then? Finish."
"I should like to go and establish myself at la Joya. There are three of us. I have my spouse and my young
lady; a very beautiful girl. The journey is long and costly. I need a little money."
"What concern is that of mine?" demanded Marius.
The stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a gesture characteristic of the vulture, and replied with an
augmented smile.
"Has not Monsieur le Baron perused my letter?"
There was some truth in this. The fact is, that the contents of the epistle had slipped Marius' mind. He had
seen the writing rather than read the letter. He could hardly recall it. But a moment ago a fresh start had been
given him. He had noted that detail: "my spouse and my young lady."
He fixed a penetrating glance on the stranger. An examining judge could not have done the look better. He
almost lay in wait for him.
He confined himself to replying:
"State the case precisely."
The stranger inserted his two hands in both his fobs, drew himself up without straightening his dorsal
column, but scrutinizing Marius in his turn, with the green gaze of his spectacles.
"So be it, Monsieur le Baron. I will be precise. I have a secret to sell to you."
"A secret?"
"A secret."
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"Which concerns me?"
"Somewhat."
"What is the secret?"
Marius scrutinized the man more and more as he listened to him.
"I commence gratis," said the stranger. "You will see that I am interesting."
"Speak."
"Monsieur le Baron, you have in your house a thief and an assassin."
Marius shuddered.
"In my house? no," said he.
The imperturbable stranger brushed his hat with his elbow and went on:
"An assassin and a thief. Remark, Monsieur le Baron, that I do not here speak of ancient deeds, deeds of the
past which have lapsed, which can be effaced by limitation before the law and by repentance before God. I
speak of recent deeds, of actual facts as still unknown to justice at this hour. I continue. This man has
insinuated himself into your confidence, and almost into your family under a false name. I am about to tell
you his real name. And to tell it to you for nothing."
"I am listening."
"His name is Jean Valjean."
"I know it."
"I am going to tell you, equally for nothing, who he is."
"Say on."
"He is an exconvict."
"I know it."
"You know it since I have had the honor of telling you."
"No. I knew it before."
Marius' cold tone, that double reply of "I know it," his laconicism, which was not favorable to dialogue,
stirred up some smouldering wrath in the stranger. He launched a furious glance on the sly at Marius, which
was instantly extinguished. Rapid as it was, this glance was of the kind which a man recognizes when he has
once beheld it; it did not escape Marius. Certain flashes can only proceed from certain souls; the eye, that
venthole of the thought, glows with it; spectacles hide nothing; try putting a pane of glass over hell!
The stranger resumed with a smile:
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"I will not permit myself to contradict Monsieur le Baron. In any case, you ought to perceive that I am well
informed. Now what I have to tell you is known to myself alone. This concerns the fortune of Madame la
Baronne. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale I make you the first offer of it. Cheap. Twenty thousand
francs."
"I know that secret as well as the others," said Marius.
The personage felt the necessity of lowering his price a trifle.
"Monsieur le Baron, say ten thousand francs and I will speak."
"I repeat to you that there is nothing which you can tell me. I know what you wish to say to me."
A fresh flash gleamed in the man's eye. He exclaimed:
"But I must dine today, nevertheless. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur le Baron, I will
speak. I speak. Give me twenty francs."
Marius gazed intently at him:
"I know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew Jean Valjean's name, just as I know your name."
"My name?"
"Yes."
"That is not difficult, Monsieur le Baron. I had the honor to write to you and to tell it to you. Thenard."
"Dier."
"Hey?"
"Thenardier."
"Who's that?"
In danger the porcupine bristles up, the beetle feigns death, the old guard forms in a square; this man burst
into laughter.
Then he flicked a grain of dust from the sleeve of his coat with a fillip.
Marius continued:
"You are also Jondrette the workman, Fabantou the comedian, Genflot the poet, Don Alvares the Spaniard,
and Mistress Balizard."
"Mistress what?"
"And you kept a pothouse at Montfermeil."
"A pothouse! Never."
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"And I tell you that your name is Thenardier."
"I deny it."
"And that you are a rascal. Here."
And Marius drew a banknote from his pocket and flung it in his face.
"Thanks! Pardon me! five hundred francs! Monsieur le Baron!"
And the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it.
"Five hundred francs!" he began again, taken aback. And he stammered in a low voice: "An honest
rustler."[69]
[69] Un fafiot serieux. Fafiot is the slang term for a bankbill, derived from its rustling noise.
Then brusquely:
"Well, so be it!" he exclaimed. "Let us put ourselves at our ease."
And with the agility of a monkey, flinging back his hair, tearing off his spectacles, and withdrawing from his
nose by sleight of hand the two quills of which mention was recently made, and which the reader has also met
with on another page of this book, he took off his face as the man takes off his hat.
His eye lighted up; his uneven brow, with hollows in some places and bumps in others, hideously wrinkled at
the top, was laid bare, his nose had become as sharp as a beak; the fierce and sagacious profile of the man of
prey reappeared.
"Monsieur le Baron is infallible," he said in a clear voice whence all nasal twang had disappeared, "I am
Thenardier."
And he straightened up his crooked back.
Thenardier, for it was really he, was strangely surprised; he would have been troubled, had he been capable of
such a thing. He had come to bring astonishment, and it was he who had received it. This humiliation had
been worth five hundred francs to him, and, taking it all in all, he accepted it; but he was none the less
bewildered.
He beheld this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and, in spite of his disguise, this Baron Pontmercy
recognized him, and recognized him thoroughly. And not only was this Baron perfectly informed as to
Thenardier, but he seemed well posted as to Jean Valjean. Who was this almost beardless young man, who
was so glacial and so generous, who knew people's names, who knew all their names, and who opened his
purse to them, who bullied rascals like a judge, and who paid them like a dupe?
Thenardier, the reader will remember, although he had been Marius' neighbor, had never seen him, which is
not unusual in Paris; he had formerly, in a vague way, heard his daughters talk of a very poor young man
named Marius who lived in the house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter with which the
reader is acquainted.
No connection between that Marius and M. le Baron Pontmercy was possible in his mind.
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As for the name Pontmercy, it will be recalled that, on the battlefield of Waterloo, he had only heard the last
two syllables, for which he always entertained the legitimate scorn which one owes to what is merely an
expression of thanks.
However, through his daughter Azelma, who had started on the scent of the married pair on the 16th of
February, and through his own personal researches, he had succeeded in learning many things, and, from the
depths of his own gloom, he had contrived to grasp more than one mysterious clew. He had discovered, by
dint of industry, or, at least, by dint of induction, he had guessed who the man was whom he had encountered
on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man he had easily reached the name. He knew that Madame la
Baronne Pontmercy was Cosette. But he meant to be discreet in that quarter.
Who was Cosette? He did not know exactly himself. He did, indeed, catch an inkling of illegitimacy, the
history of Fantine had always seemed to him equivocal; but what was the use of talking about that? in order
to cause himself to be paid for his silence? He had, or thought he had, better wares than that for sale. And,
according to all appearances, if he were to come and make to the Baron Pontmercy this revelationand
without proof: "Your wife is a bastard," the only result would be to attract the boot of the husband towards
the loins of the revealer.
From Thenardier's point of view, the conversation with Marius had not yet begun. He ought to have drawn
back, to have modified his strategy, to have abandoned his position, to have changed his front; but nothing
essential had been compromised as yet, and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had
something decisive to say, and, even against this very wellinformed and wellarmed Baron Pontmercy, he
felt himself strong. For men of Thenardier's nature, every dialogue is a combat. In the one in which he was
about to engage, what was his situation? He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he did know of what
he was speaking, he made this rapid review of his inner forces, and after having said: "I am Thenardier," he
waited.
Marius had become thoughtful. So he had hold of Thenardier at last. That man whom he had so greatly
desired to find was before him. He could honor Colonel Pontmercy's recommendation.
He felt humiliated that that hero should have owned anything to this villain, and that the letter of change
drawn from the depths of the tomb by his father upon him, Marius, had been protested up to that day. It also
seemed to him, in the complex state of his mind towards Thenardier, that there was occasion to avenge the
Colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. In any case, he was content. He was about
to deliver the Colonel's shade from this unworthy creditor at last, and it seemed to him that he was on the
point of rescuing his father's memory from the debtors' prison. By the side of this duty there was another to
elucidate, if possible, the source of Cosette's fortune. The opportunity appeared to present itself. Perhaps
Thenardier knew something. It might prove useful to see the bottom of this man.
He commenced with this.
Thenardier had caused the "honest rustler" to disappear in his fob, and was gazing at Marius with a gentleness
that was almost tender.
Marius broke the silence.
"Thenardier, I have told you your name. Now, would you like to have me tell you your secretthe one that
you came here to reveal to me? I have information of my own, also. You shall see that I know more about it
than you do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a thief. A thief, because he robbed a wealthy
manufacturer, whose ruin he brought about. An assassin, because he assassinated policeagent Javert."
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"I don't understand, sir," ejaculated Thenardier.
"I will make myself intelligible. In a certain arrondissement of the Pas de Calais, there was, in 1822, a man
who had fallen out with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had regained his status and
rehabilitated himself. This man had become a just man in the full force of the term. In a trade, the
manufacture of black glass goods, he made the fortune of an entire city. As far as his personal fortune was
concerned he made that also, but as a secondary matter, and in some sort, by accident. He was the
fosterfather of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, dowered young girls,
supported widows, and adopted orphans; he was like the guardian angel of the country. He refused the cross,
he was appointed Mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty incurred by this man in former
days; he denounced him, and had him arrested, and profited by the arrest to come to Paris and cause the
banker Laffitte,I have the fact from the cashier himself,by means of a false signature, to hand over to
him the sum of over half a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine
was Jean Valjean. As for the other fact, you have nothing to tell me about it either. Jean Valjean killed the
agent Javert; he shot him with a pistol. I, the person who is speaking to you, was present."
Thenardier cast upon Marius the sovereign glance of a conquered man who lays his hand once more upon the
victory, and who has just regained, in one instant, all the ground which he has lost. But the smile returned
instantly. The inferior's triumph in the presence of his superior must be wheedling.
Thenardier contented himself with saying to Marius:
"Monsieur le Baron, we are on the wrong track."
And he emphasized this phrase by making his bunch of seals execute an expressive whirl.
"What!" broke forth Marius, "do you dispute that? These are facts."
"They are chimeras. The confidence with which Monsieur le Baron honors me renders it my duty to tell him
so. Truth and justice before all things. I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. Monsieur le Baron, Jean
Valjean did not rob M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean did not kill Javert."
"This is too much! How is this?"
"For two reasons."
"What are they? Speak."
"This is the first: he did not rob M. Madeleine, because it is Jean Valjean himself who was M. Madeleine."
"What tale are you telling me?"
"And this is the second: he did not assassinate Javert, because the person who killed Javert was Javert."
"What do you mean to say?"
"That Javert committed suicide."
"Prove it! prove it!" cried Marius beside himself.
Thenardier resumed, scanning his phrase after the manner of the ancient Alexandrine measure:
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"PoliceagentJavertwasfounddrownedunderaboatofthePontauChange."
"But prove it!"
Thenardier drew from his pocket a large envelope of gray paper, which seemed to contain sheets folded in
different sizes.
"I have my papers," he said calmly.
And he added:
"Monsieur le Baron, in your interests I desired to know Jean Valjean thoroughly. I say that Jean Valjean and
M. Madeleine are one and the same man, and I say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert. If I speak, it
is because I have proofs. Not manuscript proofs writing is suspicious, handwriting is complaisant,but
printed proofs."
As he spoke, Thenardier extracted from the envelope two copies of newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly
saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, broken at every fold and falling into rags, seemed
much older than the other.
"Two facts, two proofs," remarked Thenardier. And he offered the two newspapers, unfolded, to Marius,
The reader is acquainted with these two papers. One, the most ancient, a number of the Drapeau Blanc of the
25th of July, 1823, the text of which can be seen in the first volume, established the identity of M. Madeleine
and Jean Valjean.
The other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from
a verbal report of Javert to the prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, holding him under his pistol, had
fired into the air, instead of blowing out his brains.
Marius read. He had evidence, a certain date, irrefragable proof, these two newspapers had not been printed
expressly for the purpose of backing up Thenardier's statements; the note printed in the Moniteur had been an
administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Marius could not doubt.
The information of the cashierclerk had been false, and he himself had been deceived.
Jean Valjean, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged from his cloud. Marius could not repress a cry of joy.
"Well, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man! the whole of that fortune really belonged to him! he is
Madeleine, the providence of a whole countryside! he is Jean Valjean, Javert's savior! he is a hero! he is a
saint!"
"He's not a saint, and he's not a hero!" said Thenardier. "He's an assassin and a robber."
And he added, in the tone of a man who begins to feel that he possesses some authority:
"Let us be calm."
Robber, assassinthose words which Marius thought had disappeared and which returned, fell upon him like
an icecold showerbath.
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"Again!" said he.
"Always," ejaculated Thenardier. "Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine, but he is a thief. He did not kill
Javert, but he is a murderer."
"Will you speak," retorted Marius, "of that miserable theft, committed forty years ago, and expiated, as your
own newspapers prove, by a whole life of repentance, of selfabnegation and of virtue?"
"I say assassination and theft, Monsieur le Baron, and I repeat that I am speaking of actual facts. What I have
to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to unpublished matter. And perhaps you will find in it the
source of the fortune so skilfully presented to Madame la Baronne by Jean Valjean. I say skilfully, because,
by a gift of that nature it would not be so very unskilful to slip into an honorable house whose comforts one
would then share, and, at the same stroke, to conceal one's crime, and to enjoy one's theft, to bury one's name
and to create for oneself a family."
"I might interrupt you at this point," said Marius, "but go on."
"Monsieur le Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your generosity. This secret is worth
massive gold. You will say to me: `Why do not you apply to Jean Valjean?' For a very simple reason; I know
that he has stripped himself, and stripped himself in your favor, and I consider the combination ingenious; but
he has no longer a son, he would show me his empty hands, and, since I am in need of some money for my
trip to la Joya, I prefer you, you who have it all, to him who has nothing. I am a little fatigued, permit me to
take a chair."
Marius seated himself and motioned to him to do the same.
Thenardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up his two newspapers, thrust them back into their
envelope, and murmured as he pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: "It cost me a good deal of trouble
to get this one."
That done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back of the chair, an attitude characteristic of
people who are sure of what they are saying, then he entered upon his subject gravely, emphasizing his
words:
"Monsieur le Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, on the day of the insurrection, a man was in
the Grand Sewer of Paris, at the point where the sewer enters the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and
the Pont de Jena."
Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Thenardier. Thenardier noticed this movement and continued
with the deliberation of an orator who holds his interlocutor and who feels his adversary palpitating under his
words:
"This man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons, moreover, which are foreign to politics, had adopted
the sewer as his domicile and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, on the 6th of June; it might have been eight
o'clock in the evening. The man hears a noise in the sewer. Greatly surprised, he hides himself and lies in
wait. It was the sound of footsteps, some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his direction. Strange to
say, there was another man in the sewer besides himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far
off. A little light which fell through it permitted him to recognize the newcomer, and to see that the man was
carrying something on his back. He was walking in a bent attitude. The man who was walking in a bent
attitude was an exconvict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders was a corpse. Assassination caught in
the very act, if ever there was such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood; one does not kill a man gratis.
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This convict was on his way to fling the body into the river. One fact is to be noticed, that before reaching the
exit grating, this convict, who had come a long distance in the sewer, must, necessarily, have encountered a
frightful quagmire where it seems as though he might have left the body, but the sewermen would have found
the assassinated man the very next day, while at work on the quagmire, and that did not suit the assassin's
plans. He had preferred to traverse that quagmire with his burden, and his exertions must have been terrible,
for it is impossible to risk one's life more completely; I don't understand how he could have come out of that
alive."
Marius' chair approached still nearer. Thenardier took advantage of this to draw a long breath. He went on:
"Monsieur le Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything there, even room. When two
men are there, they must meet. That is what happened. The man domiciled there and the passerby were
forced to bid each other goodday, greatly to the regret of both. The passerby said to the inhabitant:"You
see what I have on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me." That convict was a man of
terrible strength. There was no way of refusing. Nevertheless, the man who had the key parleyed, simply to
gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except that the latter was young, well
dressed, with the air of being rich, and all disfigured with blood. While talking, the man contrived to tear and
pull off behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a bit of the assassinated man's coat. A document for
conviction, you understand; a means of recovering the trace of things and of bringing home the crime to the
criminal. He put this document for conviction in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, made the man
go out with his embarrassment on his back, closed the grating again, and ran off, not caring to be mixed up
with the remainder of the adventure and above all, not wishing to be present when the assassin threw the
assassinated man into the river. Now you comprehend. The man who was carrying the corpse was Jean
Valjean; the one who had the key is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of the coat . . ."
Thenardier completed his phrase by drawing from his pocket, and holding, on a level with his eyes, nipped
between his two thumbs and his two forefingers, a strip of torn black cloth, all covered with dark spots.
Marius had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath, with his eyes riveted on the fragment of
black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without taking his eyes from that fragment, he retreated to the wall
and fumbled with his right hand along the wall for a key which was in the lock of a cupboard near the
chimney.
He found the key, opened the cupboard, plunged his arm into it without looking, and without his frightened
gaze quitting the rag which Thenardier still held outspread.
But Thenardier continued:
"Monsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing that the assassinated young man was an
opulent stranger lured into a trap by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money."
"The young man was myself, and here is the coat!" cried Marius, and he flung upon the floor an old black
coat all covered with blood.
Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thenardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn
morsel against the tattered skirt. The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.
Thenardier was petrified.
This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap."
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Marius rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant.
He fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Thenardier, presenting to him and almost thrusting in his
face his fist filled with banknotes for five hundred and a thousand francs.
"You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. You came to accuse that man, you have
only justified him; you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him. And it is you who are
the thief! And it is you who are the assassin! I saw you, Thenardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de
l'Hopital. I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further if I choose. Here are a
thousand francs, bully that you are!"
And he flung a thousand franc note at Thenardier.
"Ah! Jondrette Thenardier, vile rascal! Let this serve you as a lesson, you dealer in secondhand secrets,
merchant of mysteries, rummager of the shadows, wretch! Take these five hundred francs and get out of here!
Waterloo protects you."
"Waterloo!" growled Thenardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along with the thousand.
"Yes, assassin! You there saved the life of a Colonel. . ."
"Of a General," said Thenardier, elevating his head.
"Of a Colonel!" repeated Marius in a rage. "I wouldn't give a ha'penny for a general. And you come here to
commit infamies! I tell you that you have committed all crimes. Go! disappear! Only be happy, that is all that
I desire. Ah! monster! here are three thousand francs more. Take them. You will depart tomorrow, for
America, with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar. I shall watch over your departure,
you ruffian, and at that moment I will count out to you twenty thousand francs. Go get yourself hung
elsewhere!"
"Monsieur le Baron!" replied Thenardier, bowing to the very earth, "eternal gratitude." And Thenardier left
the room, understanding nothing, stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold, and
with that thunder which had burst forth over his head in bankbills.
Struck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and he would have been greatly angered had he had a
lightning rod to ward off such lightning as that.
Let us finish with this man at once.
Two days after the events which we are at this moment narrating, he set out, thanks to Marius' care, for
America under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, furnished with a draft on New York for twenty
thousand francs.
The moral wretchedness of Thenardier, the bourgeois who had missed his vocation, was irremediable. He
was in America what he had been in Europe. Contact with an evil man sometimes suffices to corrupt a good
action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, Thenardier set up as a slavedealer.
As soon as Thenardier had left the house, Marius rushed to the garden, where Cosette was still walking.
"Cosette! Cosette!" he cried. "Come! come quick! Let us go. Basque, a carriage! Cosette, come. Ah! My
God! It was he who saved my life! Let us not lose a minute! Put on your shawl."
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Cosette thought him mad and obeyed.
He could not breathe, he laid his hand on his heart to restrain its throbbing. He paced back and forth with
huge strides, he embraced Cosette:
"Ah! Cosette! I am an unhappy wretch!" said he.
Marius was bewildered. He began to catch a glimpse in Jean Valjean of some indescribably lofty and
melancholy figure. An unheardof virtue, supreme and sweet, humble in its immensity, appeared to him. The
convict was transfigured into Christ.
Marius was dazzled by this prodigy. He did not know precisely what he beheld, but it was grand.
In an instant, a hackneycarriage stood in front of the door.
Marius helped Cosette in and darted in himself.
"Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, Number 7."
The carriage drove off.
"Ah! what happiness!" ejaculated Cosette. "Rue de l'Homme Arme, I did not dare to speak to you of that. We
are going to see M. Jean."
"Thy father! Cosette, thy father more than ever. Cosette, I guess it. You told me that you had never received
the letter that I sent you by Gavroche. It must have fallen into his hands. Cosette, he went to the barricade to
save me. As it is a necessity with him to be an angel, he saved others also; he saved Javert. He rescued me
from that gulf to give me to you. He carried me on his back through that frightful sewer. Ah! I am a monster
of ingratitude. Cosette, after having been your providence, he became mine. Just imagine, there was a terrible
quagmire enough to drown one a hundred times over, to drown one in mire. Cosette! he made me traverse it. I
was unconscious; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own adventure. We are going
to bring him back, to take him with us, whether he is willing or not, he shall never leave us again. If only he
is at home! Provided only that we can find him, I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him. Yes, that is
how it should be, do you see, Cosette? Gavroche must have delivered my letter to him. All is explained. You
understand."
Cosette did not understand a word.
"You are right," she said to him.
Meanwhile the carriage rolled on.
CHAPTER V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY
Jean Valjean turned round at the knock which he heard on his door.
"Come in," he said feebly.
The door opened.
Cosette and Marius made their appearance.
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Cosette rushed into the room.
Marius remained on the threshold, leaning against the jamb of the door.
"Cosette!" said Jean Valjean.
And he sat erect in his chair, his arms outstretched and trembling, haggard, livid, gloomy, an immense joy in
his eyes.
Cosette, stifling with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast.
"Father!" said she.
Jean Valjean, overcome, stammered:
"Cosette! she! you! Madame! it is thou! Ah! my God!"
And, pressed close in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed:
"It is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!"
Marius, lowering his eyelids, in order to keep his tears from flowing, took a step forward and murmured
between lips convulsively contracted to repress his sobs:
"My father!"
"And you also, you pardon me!" Jean Valjean said to him.
Marius could find no words, and Jean Valjean added:
"Thanks."
Cosette tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed.
"It embarrasses me," said she.
And, seating herself on the old man's knees, she put aside his white locks with an adorable movement, and
kissed his brow.
Jean Valjean, bewildered, let her have her own way.
Cosette, who only understood in a very confused manner, redoubled her caresses, as though she desired to
pay Marius' debt.
Jean Valjean stammered:
"How stupid people are! I thought that I should never see her again. Imagine, Monsieur Pontmercy, at the
very moment when you entered, I was saying to myself: `All is over. Here is her little gown, I am a miserable
man, I shall never see Cosette again,' and I was saying that at the very moment when you were mounting the
stairs. Was not I an idiot? Just see how idiotic one can be! One reckons without the good God. The good God
says:
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"`You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a good
man yonder who is in need of an angel.' And the angel comes, and one sees one's Cosette again! and one sees
one's little Cosette once more! Ah! I was very unhappy."
For a moment he could not speak, then he went on:
"I really needed to see Cosette a little bit now and then. A heart needs a bone to gnaw. But I was perfectly
conscious that I was in the way. I gave myself reasons: `They do not want you, keep in your own course, one
has not the right to cling eternally.' Ah! God be praised, I see her once more! Dost thou know, Cosette, thy
husband is very handsome? Ah! what a pretty embroidered collar thou hast on, luckily. I am fond of that
pattern. It was thy husband who chose it, was it not? And then, thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls.
Let me call her thou, Monsieur Pontmercy. It will not be for long."
And Cosette began again:
"How wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have you stayed away so long?
Formerly your journeys only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: `He is absent.'
How long have you been back? Why did you not let us know? Do you know that you are very much
changed? Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! Stay, Marius, feel how cold
his hand is!"
"So you are here! Monsieur Pontmercy, you pardon me!" repeated Jean Valjean.
At that word which Jean Valjean had just uttered once more, all that was swelling Marius' heart found vent.
He burst forth:
"Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for
me, Cosette? He has saved my life. He has done morehe has given you to me. And after having saved me,
and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold
the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks!
Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that
furnace, that cesspool,all that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through all the
deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism,
every sanctity he possesses! Cosette, that man is an angel!"
"Hush! hush!" said Jean Valjean in a low voice. "Why tell all that?"
"But you!" cried Marius with a wrath in which there was veneration, "why did you not tell it to me? It is your
own fault, too. You save people's lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of
unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful."
"I told the truth," replied Jean Valjean.
"No," retorted Marius, "the truth is the whole truth; and that you did not tell. You were Monsieur Madeleine,
why not have said so? You saved Javert, why not have said so? I owed my life to you, why not have said so?"
"Because I thought as you do. I thought that you were in the right. It was necessary that I should go away. If
you had known about that affair, of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. I was therefore
forced to hold my peace. If I had spoken, it would have caused embarrassment in every way."
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"It would have embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?" retorted Marius. "Do you think that you are going to
stay here? We shall carry you off. Ah! good heavens! when I reflect that it was by an accident that I have
learned all this. You form a part of ourselves. You are her father, and mine. You shall not pass another day in
this dreadful house. Do not imagine that you will be here tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall not be here, but I shall not be with you."
"What do you mean?" replied Marius. "Ah! come now, we are not going to permit any more journeys. You
shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We shall not loose our hold of you."
"This time it is for good," added Cosette. "We have a carriage at the door. I shall run away with you. If
necessary, I shall employ force."
And she laughingly made a movement to lift the old man in her arms.
"Your chamber still stands ready in our house," she went on. "If you only knew how pretty the garden is now!
The azaleas are doing very well there. The walks are sanded with river sand; there are tiny violet shells. You
shall eat my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more `madame,' no more `Monsieur Jean,' we are
living under a Republic, everybody says thou, don't they, Marius? The programme is changed. If you only
knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall,
and a horrible cat ate her. My poor, pretty, little robin redbreast which used to put her head out of her
window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have liked to kill the cat. But now nobody cries any more.
Everybody laughs, everybody is happy. You are going to come with us. How delighted grandfather will be!
You shall have your plot in the garden, you shall cultivate it, and we shall see whether your strawberries are
as fine as mine. And, then, I shall do everything that you wish, and then, you will obey me prettily."
Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music of her voice rather than the sense of her
words; one of those large tears which are the sombre pearls of the soul welled up slowly in his eyes.
He murmured:
"The proof that God is good is that she is here."
"Father!" said Cosette.
Jean Valjean continued:
"It is quite true that it would be charming for us to live together. Their trees are full of birds. I would walk
with Cosette. It is sweet to be among living people who bid each other `goodday,' who call to each other in
the garden. People see each other from early morning. We should each cultivate our own little corner. She
would make me eat her strawberries. I would make her gather my roses. That would be charming. Only . . ."
He paused and said gently:
"It is a pity."
The tear did not fall, it retreated, and Jean Valjean replaced it with a smile.
Cosette took both the old man's hands in hers.
"My God!" said she, "your hands are still colder than before. Are you ill? Do you suffer?"
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Page No 1004
"I? No," replied Jean Valjean. "I am very well. Only . . ."
He paused.
"Only what?"
"I am going to die presently."
Cosette and Marius shuddered.
"To die!" exclaimed Marius.
"Yes, but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.
He took breath, smiled and resumed:
"Cosette, thou wert talking to me, go on, so thy little robin redbreast is dead? Speak, so that I may hear thy
voice."
Marius gazed at the old man in amazement.
Cosette uttered a heartrending cry.
"Father! my father! you will live. You are going to live. I insist upon your living, do you hear?"
Jean Valjean raised his head towards her with adoration.
"Oh! yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on the verge of dying when you came.
That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again."
"You are full of strength and life," cried Marius. "Do you imagine that a person can die like this? You have
had sorrow, you shall have no more. It is I who ask your forgiveness, and on my knees! You are going to live,
and to live with us, and to live a long time. We take possession of you once more. There are two of us here
who will henceforth have no other thought than your happiness."
"You see," resumed Cosette, all bathed in tears, "that Marius says that you shall not die."
Jean Valjean continued to smile.
"Even if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that make me other than I am? No,
God has thought like you and myself, and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a
good arrangement. God knows better than we what we need. May you be happy, may Monsieur Pontmercy
have Cosette, may youth wed the morning, may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales;
may your life be a beautiful, sunny lawn, may all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now let me,
who am good for nothing, die; it is certain that all this is right. Come, be reasonable, nothing is possible now,
I am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last night, I drank that whole jug of water. How good thy
husband is, Cosette! Thou art much better off with him than with me."
A noise became audible at the door.
It was the doctor entering.
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Page No 1005
"Goodday, and farewell, doctor," said Jean Valjean. "Here are my poor children."
Marius stepped up to the doctor. He addressed to him only this single word: "Monsieur? . . ." But his manner
of pronouncing it contained a complete question.
The doctor replied to the question by an expressive glance.
"Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God."
A silence ensued.
All breasts were oppressed.
Jean Valjean turned to Cosette. He began to gaze at her as though he wished to retain her features for eternity.
In the depths of the shadow into which he had already descended, ecstasy was still possible to him when
gazing at Cosette. The reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.
The doctor felt of his pulse.
"Ah! it was you that he wanted!" he murmured, looking at Cosette and Marius.
And bending down to Marius' ear, he added in a very low voice:
"Too late."
Jean Valjean surveyed the doctor and Marius serenely, almost without ceasing to gaze at Cosette.
These barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:
"It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live."
All at once he rose to his feet. These accesses of strength are sometimes the sign of the death agony. He
walked with a firm step to the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried to help him, detached
from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom
of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the table:
"Behold the great martyr."
Then his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication of the tomb were seizing hold upon him.
His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into the stuff of his trousers.
Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, but could not.
Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, they distinguished words like
the following:
"Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you only to lose you again?"
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It might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, advances towards the sepulchre, and returns towards life.
There is groping in the action of dying.
Jean Valjean rallied after this semiswoon, shook his brow as though to make the shadows fall away from it
and became almost perfectly lucid once more.
He took a fold of Cosette's sleeve and kissed it.
"He is coming back! doctor, he is coming back," cried Marius.
"You are good, both of you," said Jean Valjean. "I am going to tell you what has caused me pain. What has
pained me, Monsieur Pontmercy, is that you have not been willing to touch that money. That money really
belongs to your wife. I will explain to you, my children, and for that reason, also, I am glad to see you. Black
jet comes from England, white jet comes from Norway. All this is in this paper, which you will read. For
bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered sheet iron, slides of iron laid together. It is
prettier, better and less costly. You will understand how much money can be made in that way. So Cosette's
fortune is really hers. I give you these details, in order that your mind may be set at rest."
The portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the halfopen door. The doctor dismissed her.
But he could not prevent this zealous woman from exclaiming to the dying man before she disappeared:
"Would you like a priest?"
"I have had one," replied Jean Valjean.
And with his finger he seemed to indicate a point above his head where one would have said that he saw
some one.
It is probable, in fact, that the Bishop was present at this death agony.
Cosette gently slipped a pillow under his loins.
Jean Valjean resumed:
"Have no fear, Monsieur Pontmercy, I adjure you. The six hundred thousand francs really belong to Cosette.
My life will have been wasted if you do not enjoy them! We managed to do very well with those glass goods.
We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. However, we could not equal the black glass of England. A
gross, which contains twelve hundred very well cut grains, only costs three francs."
When a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze upon him with a look which clings
convulsively to him and which would fain hold him back.
Cosette gave her hand to Marius, and both, mute with anguish, not knowing what to say to the dying man,
stood trembling and despairing before him.
Jean Valjean sank moment by moment. He was failing; he was drawing near to the gloomy horizon.
His breath had become intermittent; a little rattling interrupted it. He found some difficulty in moving his
forearm, his feet had lost all movement, and in proportion as the wretchedness of limb and feebleness of body
increased, all the majesty of his soul was displayed and spread over his brow. The light of the unknown world
was already visible in his eyes.
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Page No 1007
His face paled and smiled. Life was no longer there, it was something else.
His breath sank, his glance grew grander. He was a corpse on which the wings could be felt.
He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last minute of the last hour had, evidently,
arrived.
He began to speak to them in a voice so feeble that it seemed to come from a distance, and one would have
said that a wall now rose between them and him.
"Draw near, draw near, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! how good it is to die like this! And thou lovest me
also, my Cosette. I knew well that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. How kind it was of thee
to place that pillow under my loins! Thou wilt weep for me a little, wilt thou not? Not too much. I do not
wish thee to have any real griefs. You must enjoy yourselves a great deal, my children. I forgot to tell you
that the profit was greater still on the buckles without tongues than on all the rest. A gross of a dozen dozens
cost ten francs and sold for sixty. It really was a good business. So there is no occasion for surprise at the six
hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Pontmercy. It is honest money. You may be rich with a tranquil mind.
Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theatres now and then, and handsome ball dresses, my Cosette, and
then, thou must give good dinners to thy friends, and be very happy. I was writing to Cosette a while ago. She
will find my letter. I bequeath to her the two candlesticks which stand on the chimneypiece. They are of
silver, but to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles which are placed in them into
waxtapers. I do not know whether the person who gave them to me is pleased with me yonder on high. I
have done what I could. My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will have me buried in the
first plot of earth that you find, under a stone to mark the spot. This is my wish. No name on the stone. If
Cosette cares to come for a little while now and then, it will give me pleasure. And you too, Monsieur
Pontmercy. I must admit that I have not always loved you. I ask your pardon for that. Now she and you form
but one for me. I feel very grateful to you. I am sure that you make Cosette happy. If you only knew,
Monsieur Pontmercy, her pretty rosy cheeks were my delight; when I saw her in the least pale, I was sad. In
the chest of drawers, there is a bankbill for five hundred francs. I have not touched it. It is for the poor.
Cosette, dost thou see thy little gown yonder on the bed? dost thou recognize it? That was ten years ago,
however. How time flies! We have been very happy. All is over. Do not weep, my children, I am not going
very far, I shall see you from there, you will only have to look at night, and you will see me smile. Cosette,
dost thou remember Montfermeil? Thou wert in the forest, thou wert greatly terrified; dost thou remember
how I took hold of the handle of the waterbucket? That was the first time that I touched thy poor, little hand.
It was so cold! Ah! your hands were red then, mademoiselle, they are very white now. And the big doll! dost
thou remember? Thou didst call her Catherine. Thou regrettedest not having taken her to the convent! How
thou didst make me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel! When it had been raining, thou didst float bits of
straw on the gutters, and watch them pass away. One day I gave thee a willow battledore and a shuttlecock
with yellow, blue and green feathers. Thou hast forgotten it. Thou wert roguish so young! Thou didst play.
Thou didst put cherries in thy ears. Those are things of the past. The forests through which one has passed
with one's child, the trees under which one has strolled, the convents where one has concealed oneself, the
games, the hearty laughs of childhood, are shadows. I imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my
stupidity. Those Thenardiers were wicked. Thou must forgive them. Cosette, the moment has come to tell
thee the name of thy mother. She was called Fantine. Remember that nameFantine. Kneel whenever thou
utterest it. She suffered much. She loved thee dearly. She had as much unhappiness as thou hast had
happiness. That is the way God apportions things. He is there on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he
does in the midst of his great stars. I am on the verge of departure, my children. Love each other well and
always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other. You will think sometimes of the poor
old man who died here. Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut
me to the heart; I went as far as the corner of the street, I must have produced a queer effect on the people
who saw me pass, I was like a madman, I once went out without my hat. I no longer see clearly, my children,
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I had still other things to say, but never mind. Think a little of me. Come still nearer. I die happy. Give me
your dear and wellbeloved heads, so that I may lay my hands upon them."
Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, in despair, suffocating with tears, each beneath one of Jean Valjean's
hands. Those august hands no longer moved.
He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.
His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to cover his hands with kisses.
He was dead.
The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with
wings outspread, awaiting that soul.
CHAPTER VI. THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES
In the cemetery of PereLachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that
city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous
fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the
wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others
from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it
green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because
the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither.
All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.
This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other
care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.
No name is to be read there.
Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible
beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, today, probably effaced:
Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d'ellememe arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va.[70]
[70] He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The
thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.
LETTER TO M. DAELLI
Publisher of the Italian translation of Les Miserables in Milan.
HAUTEVILLEHOUSE, October 18, 1862.
You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Miserables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it
will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to
France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have
serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the
Les Miserables
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Page No 1009
globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and
despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book
which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Miserables knocks at
the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's
name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the
face of it. Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are more
deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome,
Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic
history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered
with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent
rags on man.
Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant
customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it.
You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for
us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not
much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different
names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same
quality. To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly.
Is it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have
you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance,
whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate
before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization
acknowledges?
Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of
Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent
warbudget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily
converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of
firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to
examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the
woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded
that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris?
What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your
tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public
prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with
us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a
government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you
grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in
review, let each one contribute his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two
condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the
judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like
ourselves, Miserables.
From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant
and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.
Les Miserables
CHAPTER VI. THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES 998
Page No 1010
I resume. This book, Les Miserables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in
revolt against this book, I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not
prevent them from being of use.
As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed
by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I
become more and more patriotic for humanity.
This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of the French Revolution; books must
cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more,
human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.
Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition which modify everything, even the
conditions, formerly narrow, of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.
In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight, with having transgressed the bounds of
what they call "French taste"; I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.
In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess
only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: "Help me!"
This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and for your country. If I have insisted so
strongly, it is because of one phrase in your letter. You write:
"There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say: `This book, Les Miserables, is a French book. It does
not concern us. Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.'"Alas! I repeat, whether we be
Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has
meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off
that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the ManPeople, the sinister fragment of the past with the
grand purple robe of the dawn.
If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are
at liberty to publish it, sir. Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished sentiments.
VICTOR HUGO.
Les Miserables
CHAPTER VI. THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES 999
Bookmarks
1. Table of Contents, page = 3
2. Les Miserables, page = 13
3. Victor Hugo, page = 13
4. VOLUME I. FANTINE., page = 21
5. PREFACE, page = 21
6. BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN, page = 21
7. CHAPTER I. M. MYRIEL, page = 21
8. CHAPTER II. M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME, page = 23
9. CHAPTER III. A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP, page = 27
10. CHAPTER IV. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS, page = 28
11. CHAPTER V. MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG, page = 32
12. CHAPTER VI. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM, page = 33
13. CHAPTER VII. CRAVATTE, page = 36
14. CHAPTER VIII. PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING, page = 39
15. CHAPTER IX. THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER, page = 41
16. CHAPTER X. THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT, page = 43
17. CHAPTER XI. A RESTRICTION, page = 51
18. CHAPTER XII. THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME, page = 53
19. CHAPTER XIII. WHAT HE BELIEVED, page = 54
20. CHAPTER XIV. WHAT HE THOUGHT, page = 56
21. BOOK SECOND--THE FALL, page = 58
22. CHAPTER I. THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING, page = 58
23. CHAPTER II. PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM., page = 67
24. CHAPTER III. THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE., page = 69
25. CHAPTER IV. DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER., page = 73
26. CHAPTER V. TRANQUILLITY, page = 75
27. CHAPTER VI. JEAN VALJEAN, page = 76
28. CHAPTER VII. THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR, page = 79
29. CHAPTER VIII. BILLOWS AND SHADOWS, page = 83
30. CHAPTER IX. NEW TROUBLES, page = 84
31. CHAPTER X. THE MAN AROUSED, page = 85
32. CHAPTER XI. WHAT HE DOES, page = 87
33. CHAPTER XII. THE BISHOP WORKS, page = 89
34. CHAPTER XIII. LITTLE GERVAIS, page = 92
35. BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817, page = 98
36. CHAPTER I. THE YEAR 1817, page = 98
37. CHAPTER II. A DOUBLE QUARTETTE, page = 100
38. CHAPTER III. FOUR AND FOUR, page = 103
39. CHAPTER IV. THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY, page = 105
40. CHAPTER V. AT BOMBARDA'S, page = 106
41. CHAPTER VI. A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER, page = 108
42. CHAPTER VII. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES, page = 109
43. CHAPTER VIII. THE DEATH OF A HORSE, page = 112
44. CHAPTER IX. A MERRY END TO MIRTH, page = 114
45. BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER, page = 116
46. CHAPTER I. ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER, page = 116
47. CHAPTER II. FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES, page = 122
48. CHAPTER III. THE LARK, page = 123
49. BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT., page = 125
50. CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS, page = 125
51. CHAPTER II. MADELEINE, page = 126
52. CHAPTER III. SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE, page = 128
53. CHAPTER IV. M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING, page = 130
54. CHAPTER V. VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON, page = 131
55. CHAPTER VI. FATHER FAUCHELEVENT, page = 134
56. CHAPTER VII. FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS, page = 136
57. CHAPTER VIII. MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY, page = 137
58. CHAPTER IX. MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS, page = 139
59. CHAPTER X. RESULT OF THE SUCCESS, page = 140
60. CHAPTER XI. CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT, page = 144
61. CHAPTER XII. M. BAMATABOIS'S INACTIVITY, page = 145
62. CHAPTER XIII. THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE MUNICIPAL POLICE, page = 146
63. BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT, page = 152
64. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE, page = 152
65. CHAPTER II. HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP, page = 155
66. BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR, page = 161
67. CHAPTER I. SISTER SIMPLICE, page = 161
68. CHAPTER II. THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE, page = 163
69. CHAPTER III. A TEMPEST IN A SKULL, page = 167
70. CHAPTER IV. FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP, page = 178
71. CHAPTER V. HINDRANCES, page = 181
72. CHAPTER VI. SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF, page = 191
73. CHAPTER VII. THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR DEPARTURE, page = 195
74. CHAPTER VIII. AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR, page = 199
75. CHAPTER IX. A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION, page = 201
76. CHAPTER X. THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS, page = 205
77. CHAPTER XI. CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED, page = 209
78. BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW, page = 212
79. CHAPTER I. IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR, page = 212
80. CHAPTER II. FANTINE HAPPY, page = 214
81. CHAPTER III. JAVERT SATISFIED, page = 216
82. CHAPTER IV. AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS, page = 219
83. CHAPTER V. A SUITABLE TOMB, page = 222
84. VOLUME II. COSETTE, page = 226
85. BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO, page = 226
86. CHAPTER I. WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES, page = 226
87. CHAPTER II. HOUGOMONT, page = 227
88. CHAPTER III. THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815, page = 231
89. CHAPTER IV. A, page = 232
90. CHAPTER V. THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES, page = 234
91. CHAPTER VI. FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON, page = 235
92. CHAPTER VII. NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR, page = 237
93. CHAPTER VIII. THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE, page = 239
94. CHAPTER IX. THE UNEXPECTED, page = 241
95. CHAPTER X. THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN, page = 243
96. CHAPTER XI. A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW, page = 246
97. CHAPTER XII. THE GUARD, page = 247
98. CHAPTER XIII. THE CATASTROPHE, page = 248
99. CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST SQUARE, page = 249
100. CHAPTER XV. CAMBRONNE, page = 249
101. CHAPTER XVI. QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?, page = 251
102. CHAPTER XVII. IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?, page = 253
103. CHAPTER XVIII. A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT, page = 254
104. CHAPTER XIX. THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT, page = 256
105. BOOK SECOND.--THE SHIP ORION, page = 260
106. CHAPTER I. NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430, page = 260
107. CHAPTER II. IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE DEVIL'S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY, page = 262
108. CHAPTER III. THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER, page = 264
109. BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN, page = 268
110. CHAPTER I. THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL, page = 268
111. CHAPTER II. TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS, page = 270
112. CHAPTER III. MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER, page = 273
113. CHAPTER IV. ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL, page = 275
114. CHAPTER V. THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE, page = 276
115. CHAPTER VI. WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE, page = 279
116. CHAPTER VII. COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK, page = 282
117. CHAPTER VIII. THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A POOR MAN WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN, page = 286
118. CHAPTER IX. THENARDIER AND HIS MANOEUVRES, page = 299
119. CHAPTER X. HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION WORSE, page = 304
120. CHAPTER XI. NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY, page = 308
121. BOOK FOURTH.--THE GORBEAU HOVEL, page = 309
122. CHAPTER I. MASTER GORBEAU, page = 309
123. CHAPTER II. A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER, page = 312
124. CHAPTER III. TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE, page = 314
125. CHAPTER IV. THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT, page = 316
126. CHAPTER V. A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT, page = 317
127. BOOK FIFTH.--FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK, page = 320
128. CHAPTER I. THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY, page = 320
129. CHAPTER II. IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D'AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES, page = 322
130. CHAPTER III. TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727, page = 323
131. CHAPTER IV. THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT, page = 325
132. CHAPTER V. WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS, page = 326
133. CHAPTER VI. THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA, page = 329
134. CHAPTER VII. CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA, page = 330
135. CHAPTER VIII. THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS, page = 332
136. CHAPTER IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELL, page = 333
137. CHAPTER X. WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT, page = 337
138. BOOK SIXTH.--LE PETIT-PICPUS, page = 341
139. CHAPTER I. NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS, page = 341
140. CHAPTER II. THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA, page = 343
141. CHAPTER III. AUSTERITIES, page = 347
142. CHAPTER IV. GAYETIES, page = 348
143. CHAPTER V. DISTRACTIONS, page = 351
144. CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE CONVENT, page = 353
145. CHAPTER VII. SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS, page = 355
146. CHAPTER VIII. POST CORDA LAPIDES, page = 356
147. CHAPTER IX. A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE, page = 357
148. CHAPTER X. ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION, page = 358
149. CHAPTER XI. END OF THE PETIT-PICPUS, page = 358
150. BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS, page = 359
151. CHAPTER I. THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA, page = 360
152. CHAPTER II. THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT, page = 360
153. CHAPTER III. ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST, page = 361
154. CHAPTER IV. THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES, page = 363
155. CHAPTER V. PRAYER, page = 364
156. CHAPTER VI. THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER, page = 364
157. CHAPTER VII. PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME, page = 366
158. CHAPTER VIII. FAITH, LAW, page = 367
159. BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM, page = 368
160. CHAPTER I. WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING A CONVENT, page = 368
161. CHAPTER II. FAUCHELEVENT IN THE PRESENCE OF A DIFFICULTY, page = 373
162. CHAPTER III. MOTHER INNOCENTE, page = 375
163. CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ AUSTIN CASTILLEJO, page = 384
164. CHAPTER V. IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL, page = 390
165. CHAPTER VI. BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS, page = 394
166. CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T LOSE THE CARD, page = 396
167. CHAPTER VIII. A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY, page = 403
168. CHAPTER IX. CLOISTERED, page = 406
169. VOLUME III. MARIUS., page = 410
170. BOOK FIRST.--PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM, page = 410
171. CHAPTER I. PARVULUS, page = 410
172. CHAPTER II. SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS, page = 411
173. CHAPTER III. HE IS AGREEABLE, page = 412
174. CHAPTER IV. HE MAY BE OF USE, page = 412
175. CHAPTER V. HIS FRONTIERS, page = 413
176. CHAPTER VI. A BIT OF HISTORY, page = 414
177. CHAPTER VII. THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA, page = 415
178. CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE LAST KING, page = 416
179. CHAPTER IX. THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL, page = 417
180. CHAPTER X. ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO, page = 417
181. CHAPTER XI. TO SCOFF, TO REIGN, page = 419
182. CHAPTER XII. THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE, page = 420
183. CHAPTER XIII. LITTLE GAVROCHE, page = 420
184. BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS, page = 422
185. CHAPTER I. NINETY YEARS AND THIRTY-TWO TEETH, page = 422
186. CHAPTER II. LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE, page = 423
187. CHAPTER III. LUC-ESPRIT, page = 423
188. CHAPTER IV. A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT, page = 424
189. CHAPTER V. BASQUE AND NICOLETTE, page = 424
190. CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN, page = 425
191. CHAPTER VII. RULE: RECEIVE NO ONE EXCEPT IN THE EVENING, page = 426
192. CHAPTER VIII. TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR, page = 426
193. BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON, page = 427
194. CHAPTER I. AN ANCIENT SALON, page = 427
195. CHAPTER II. ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT EPOCH, page = 430
196. CHAPTER III. REQUIESCANT, page = 433
197. CHAPTER IV. END OF THE BRIGAND, page = 437
198. CHAPTER V. THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONIST, page = 439
199. CHAPTER VI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN, page = 440
200. CHAPTER VII. SOME PETTICOAT, page = 444
201. CHAPTER VIII. MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE, page = 449
202. BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC, page = 452
203. CHAPTER I. A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC, page = 452
204. CHAPTER II. BLONDEAU'S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET, page = 459
205. CHAPTER III. MARIUS' ASTONISHMENTS, page = 462
206. CHAPTER IV. THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFE MUSAIN, page = 464
207. CHAPTER V. ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON, page = 468
208. CHAPTER VI. RES ANGUSTA, page = 470
209. BOOK FIFTH.--THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE, page = 473
210. CHAPTER I. MARIUS INDIGENT, page = 473
211. CHAPTER II. MARIUS POOR, page = 474
212. CHAPTER III. MARIUS GROWN UP, page = 476
213. CHAPTER IV. M. MABEUF, page = 478
214. CHAPTER V. POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY, page = 481
215. CHAPTER VI. THE SUBSTITUTE, page = 482
216. BOOK SIXTH.--THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS, page = 485
217. CHAPTER I. THE SOBRIQUET: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY NAMES, page = 485
218. CHAPTER II. LUX FACTA EST, page = 487
219. CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF THE SPRING, page = 488
220. CHAPTER IV. BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY, page = 489
221. CHAPTER V. DIVRS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON, page = 490
222. CHAPTER VI. TAKEN PRISONER, page = 491
223. CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO CONJECTURES, page = 493
224. CHAPTER VIII. THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY, page = 494
225. CHAPTER IX. ECLIPSE, page = 495
226. BOOK SEVENTH.--PATRON MINETTE, page = 497
227. CHAPTER I. MINES AND MINERS, page = 497
228. CHAPTER II. THE LOWEST DEPTHS, page = 498
229. CHAPTER III. BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE, page = 499
230. CHAPTER IV. COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE, page = 500
231. BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN, page = 502
232. CHAPTER I. MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN A CAP, page = 502
233. CHAPTER II. TREASURE TROVE, page = 503
234. CHAPTER III. QUADRIFRONS, page = 505
235. CHAPTER IV. A ROSE IN MISERY, page = 508
236. CHAPTER V. A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE, page = 513
237. CHAPTER VI. THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR, page = 514
238. CHAPTER VII. STRATEGY AND TACTICS, page = 517
239. CHAPTER VIII. THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL, page = 520
240. CHAPTER IX. JONDRETTE COMES NEAR WEEPING, page = 522
241. CHAPTER X. TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR, page = 525
242. CHAPTER XI. OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS, page = 527
243. CHAPTER XII. THE USE MADE OF M. LEBLANC'S FIVE-FRANC PIECE, page = 529
244. CHAPTER XIII. SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABUNTUR ORARE PATER NOSTER, page = 534
245. CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS ON A LAWYER, page = 536
246. CHAPTER XV. JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES, page = 539
247. CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN ENGLISH AIR WHICH WAS IN FASHION IN 1832, page = 541
248. CHAPTER XVII. THE USE MADE OF MARIUS' FIVE-FRANC PIECE, page = 545
249. CHAPTER XVIII. MARIUS' TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS, page = 548
250. CHAPTER XIX. OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS, page = 549
251. CHAPTER XX. THE TRAP, page = 552
252. CHAPTER XXI. ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS, page = 570
253. CHAPTER XXII. THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO, page = 574
254. VOLUME IV. SAINT-DENIS. THE IDYL IN THE RUE PLUMET AND THE EPIC IN THE RUE SAINT-DENIS, page = 576
255. BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY, page = 576
256. CHAPTER I. WELL CUT, page = 576
257. CHAPTER II. BADLY SEWED, page = 579
258. CHAPTER III. LOUIS PHILIPPE, page = 582
259. CHAPTER IV. CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION, page = 585
260. CHAPTER V. FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES, page = 590
261. CHAPTER VI. ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS, page = 597
262. BOOK SECOND.--EPONINE, page = 601
263. CHAPTER I. THE LARK'S MEADOW, page = 601
264. CHAPTER II. EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS, page = 604
265. CHAPTER III. APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF, page = 607
266. CHAPTER IV. AN APPARITION TO MARIUS, page = 610
267. BOOK THIRD.--THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET, page = 614
268. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET, page = 614
269. CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD, page = 616
270. CHAPTER III. FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS, page = 618
271. CHAPTER IV. CHANGE OF GATE, page = 619
272. CHAPTER V. THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR, page = 622
273. CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE BEGUN, page = 625
274. CHAPTER VII. TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF, page = 627
275. CHAPTER VIII. THE CHAIN-GANG, page = 630
276. BOOK FOURTH.--SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH, page = 636
277. CHAPTER I. A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN, page = 636
278. CHAPTER II. MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON, page = 637
279. BOOK FIFTH.--THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING, page = 643
280. CHAPTER I. SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED, page = 643
281. CHAPTER II. COSETTE'S APPREHENSIONS, page = 644
282. CHAPTER III. ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT, page = 646
283. CHAPTER IV. A HEART BENEATH A STONE, page = 648
284. CHAPTER V. COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER, page = 651
285. CHAPTER VI. OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY, page = 652
286. BOOK SIXTH.--LITTLE GAVROCHE, page = 654
287. CHAPTER I. THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND, page = 654
288. CHAPTER II. IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT, page = 656
289. CHAPTER III. THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT, page = 675
290. BOOK SEVENTH.--SLANG, page = 684
291. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN, page = 684
292. CHAPTER II. ROOTS, page = 688
293. CHAPTER III. SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS, page = 693
294. CHAPTER IV. THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE, page = 695
295. BOOK EIGHTH.--ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS, page = 697
296. CHAPTER I. FULL LIGHT, page = 697
297. CHAPTER II. THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS, page = 701
298. CHAPTER III. THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW, page = 702
299. CHAPTER IV. A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG, page = 704
300. CHAPTER V. THINGS OF THE NIGHT, page = 711
301. CHAPTER VI. MARIUS BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE EXTENT OF GIVING COSETTE HIS ADDRESS, page = 711
302. CHAPTER VII. THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF EACH OTHER, page = 716
303. BOOK NINTH.--WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?, page = 725
304. CHAPTER I. JEAN VALJEAN, page = 725
305. CHAPTER II. MARIUS, page = 726
306. CHAPTER III. M. MABEUF, page = 728
307. BOOK TENTH.--THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832, page = 730
308. CHAPTER I. THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION, page = 730
309. CHAPTER II. THE ROOT OF THE MATTER, page = 732
310. CHAPTER III. A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN, page = 736
311. CHAPTER IV. THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS, page = 738
312. CHAPTER V. ORIGINALITY OF PARIS, page = 741
313. BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE, page = 743
314. CHAPTER I. SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF GAVROCHE'S POETRY. THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN ON THIS POETRY, page = 743
315. CHAPTER II. GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH, page = 745
316. CHAPTER III. JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIR-DRESSER, page = 748
317. CHAPTER IV. THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN, page = 749
318. CHAPTER V. THE OLD MAN, page = 750
319. CHAPTER VI. RECRUITS, page = 752
320. BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE, page = 754
321. CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION, page = 754
322. CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARY GAYETIES, page = 757
323. CHAPTER III. NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE, page = 763
324. CHAPTER IV. AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP, page = 766
325. CHAPTER V. PREPARATIONS, page = 768
326. CHAPTER VI. WAITING, page = 769
327. CHAPTER VII. THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES, page = 772
328. CHAPTER VIII. MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC, page = 774
329. BOOK THIRTEENTH.--MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW, page = 778
330. CHAPTER I. FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS, page = 778
331. CHAPTER II. AN OWL'S VIEW OF PARIS, page = 780
332. CHAPTER III. THE EXTREME EDGE, page = 781
333. BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR, page = 784
334. CHAPTER I. THE FLAG: ACT FIRST, page = 784
335. CHAPTER II. THE FLAG: ACT SECOND, page = 786
336. CHAPTER III. GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS' CARBINE, page = 788
337. CHAPTER IV. THE BARREL OF POWDER, page = 789
338. CHAPTER V. END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE, page = 791
339. CHAPTER VI. THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE, page = 792
340. CHAPTER VII. GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES, page = 797
341. BOOK FIFTEENTH.--THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME, page = 799
342. CHAPTER I. A DRINKER IS A BABBLER, page = 799
343. CHAPTER II. THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT, page = 804
344. CHAPTER III. WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP, page = 808
345. CHAPTER IV. GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL, page = 808
346. VOLUME V. JEAN VALJEAN, page = 813
347. BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS, page = 813
348. CHAPTER I. THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE, page = 813
349. CHAPTER II. WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE, page = 817
350. CHAPTER III. LIGHT AND SHADOW, page = 820
351. CHAPTER IV. MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE, page = 821
352. CHAPTER V. THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A BARRICADE, page = 826
353. CHAPTER VI. MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC, page = 827
354. CHAPTER VII. THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED, page = 829
355. CHAPTER VIII. THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY, page = 831
356. CHAPTER IX. EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT INFALLIBLE MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONDEMNATION OF 1796, page = 834
357. CHAPTER X. DAWN, page = 835
358. CHAPTER XI. THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE, page = 837
359. CHAPTER XII. DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER, page = 838
360. CHAPTER XIII. PASSING GLEAMS, page = 840
361. CHAPTER XIV. WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS' MISTRESS, page = 841
362. CHAPTER XV. GAVROCHE OUTSIDE, page = 843
363. CHAPTER XVI. HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER, page = 845
364. CHAPTER XVII. MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT, page = 850
365. CHAPTER XVIII. THE VULTURE BECOME PREY, page = 851
366. CHAPTER XIX. JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE, page = 855
367. CHAPTER XX. THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE WRONG, page = 857
368. CHAPTER XXI. THE HEROES, page = 863
369. CHAPTER XXII. FOOT TO FOOT, page = 865
370. CHAPTER XXIII. ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK, page = 867
371. CHAPTER XXIV. PRISONER, page = 869
372. BOOK SECOND.--THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN, page = 871
373. CHAPTER I. THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA, page = 871
374. CHAPTER II. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER, page = 874
375. CHAPTER III. BRUNESEAU, page = 875
376. CHAPTER IV, page = 877
377. CHAPTER V. PRESENT PROGRESS, page = 879
378. CHAPTER VI. FUTURE PROGRESS, page = 879
379. BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL, page = 882
380. CHAPTER I. THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES, page = 882
381. CHAPTER II. EXPLANATION, page = 885
382. CHAPTER III. THE "SPUN" MAN, page = 886
383. CHAPTER IV. HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS, page = 889
384. CHAPTER V. IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS WHICH IS TREACHEROUS, page = 891
385. CHAPTER VI. THE FONTIS, page = 894
386. CHAPTER VII. ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING, page = 895
387. CHAPTER VIII. THE TORN COAT-TAIL, page = 896
388. CHAPTER IX. MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD, page = 900
389. CHAPTER X. RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE, page = 903
390. CHAPTER XI. CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE, page = 905
391. CHAPTER XII. THE GRANDFATHER, page = 906
392. BOOK FOURTH.--JAVERT DERAILED, page = 910
393. CHAPTER I, page = 910
394. BOOK FIFTH.--GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER, page = 917
395. CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN, page = 917
396. CHAPTER II. MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR DOMESTIC WAR, page = 919
397. CHAPTER III. MARIUS ATTACKED, page = 922
398. CHAPTER IV. MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND ENDS BY NO LONGER THINKING IT A BAD THING THAT M. FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD HAVE ENTERED WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM, page = 924
399. CHAPTER V. DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY, page = 928
400. CHAPTER VI. THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY, page = 929
401. CHAPTER VII. THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS, page = 934
402. CHAPTER VIII. TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND, page = 935
403. BOOK SIXTH.--THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT., page = 938
404. CHAPTER I. THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833, page = 938
405. CHAPTER II. JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING, page = 945
406. CHAPTER III. THE INSEPARABLE, page = 951
407. CHAPTER IV. THE IMMORTAL LIVER, page = 952
408. BOOK SEVENTH.--THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP, page = 955
409. CHAPTER I. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN, page = 955
410. CHAPTER II. THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN, page = 967
411. BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT, page = 972
412. CHAPTER I. THE LOWER CHAMBER, page = 972
413. CHAPTER II. ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS, page = 977
414. CHAPTER III. THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET, page = 978
415. CHAPTER IV. ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION, page = 982
416. BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN, page = 983
417. CHAPTER I. PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY, page = 983
418. CHAPTER II. LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL, page = 984
419. CHAPTER III. A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE FAUCHELEVENT'S CART, page = 986
420. CHAPTER IV. A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN WHITENING, page = 987
421. CHAPTER V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY, page = 1001
422. CHAPTER VI. THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES, page = 1009