Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/V.Hugo/LesMiserables.vol5.4-9

Text File | 1994-06-14 | 316.5 KB | 7,069 lines

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 uncertainty--with the hands behind
the back--had 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
Notre-Dame. There, between the Notre-Dame 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 re-appear; 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?

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 galley-slave 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 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 Filles-du-Calvaire; 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 re-appeared 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 soul--admiration for a convict.
Respect for a galley-slave--is 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 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 turn--what 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.

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 galley-slave 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
watch-dog, 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 man-projectile 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 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 ex-ruffian, 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; facts--it 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 bull-dog 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 station-house 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 station-house. 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 straw-seated chair, is an institution;
it exists in all police stations; it is invariably ornamented with a
box-wood 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.

"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 Sainte-Marie-l'Egyptienne.

"Ninthly:  it is a fact that any day gendarmes can be overheard
relating in the court-yard 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 mouse-trap
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 paving-stone
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;
Notre-Dame and the towers of the Court-House 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.

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 passer-by 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 road-mender 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.

Road-mender 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 passers-by.

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 road-mender's turf-thatched cot, here it is:

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 country-side. 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 Patron-Minette 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 pick-axe 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 beech-tree 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 chestnut-tree
bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark.
This glade was the one which was formerly called the Blaru-bottom.
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!

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 bee-line, 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 Blaru-bottom, 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 pick-axe, 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 re-absorbed, 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 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 collar-bone. 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
arm-chair 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 cooling-draught.
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!

"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 half-open 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 hackney-coach, to the Rue
des Filles-du-Calvaire; 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, 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,
Saint-Juste 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 collar-bone, 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?"

"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 well-beloved
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."

"Agreed again, you shall see her to-morrow."

"Father!"

"What?"

"Why not to-day?"

"Well, to-day then.  Let it be to-day. 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 bed-chamber, 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.

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 fear-inspiring
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.

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 turtle-doves, 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.

"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 Saint-Denis du Saint Sacrament,
but I will get a dispensation so that you can be married at
Saint-Paul. 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 Saint-Loup. 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 Sainte-Catherine 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 Sainte-Catherine, "to
remain unmarried."


The grandfather executed a pirouette on his eighty-year-old 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 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 bank-notes.
They were turned over and counted.  There were five hundred notes
for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixty-eight
of five hundred.  In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

"This is a fine book," said M. Gillenormand.

"Five hundred and eighty-four 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 eighty-four thousand francs!" repeated Mademoiselle
Gillenormand, in a low tone.  "Five hundred and eighty-four!
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 Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that fearing that he might be recaptured,--
which eventually happened--he had buried and hidden that sum in the
forest of Montfermeil, in the locality known as the Blaru-bottom.
The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-bills,
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 Montreuil-sur-Mer. 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 Blaru-bottom. Hence
the absences which we have mentioned.  He had a pickaxe somewhere
in the heather, in a hiding-place 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 eighty-four 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 chimney-piece,
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 Pont-Neuf, 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."

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 Petit-Picpus. 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 ninety-four 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 pot-bellied 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 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 bon-bon
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 Filles-du-Calvaire.

Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-a-brac 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 tea-rose 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 corn-flowers, 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 three-story 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 clock-face 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 pell-mell
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 clean-shaven.
Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless.
The dreams of 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
Clutch-penny. 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 band-box, 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
dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd 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 now-a-days 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 fine-spun
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 humming-bird
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.  To-day, 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
ballet-dancers, 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. Royer-Collard. 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
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:  sky-blue 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 conch-shell
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 despot-turned 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 half-million
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 with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered
with velvet auricula blossoms.--"It was with that stuff," said he,
"that the bed of the Duchesse d'Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped."--
On the chimney-piece, 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 arm-chairs of the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire, 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 language--still 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 grape-shot, 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 himself--was 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.

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 pre-occupations.

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.

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 Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards,
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 re-captured, 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 Filles-du-Calvaire on
the evening of the 6th of June.

The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience
to the commands of a police-agent, he had stood from three o'clock
in the afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des Champs-Elysees,
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 police-agent, he,
the coachman, had taken "all those folks" into his carriage;
that they had first driven to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire;
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 police-agent 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 police-agent on the banks of the Seine,
near the Pont des Invalides?

Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the
Champs-Elysees. And how?  Through the sewer.  Unheard-of 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
hackney-coachman. 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 police-agent 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 blood-stained 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.

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 cess-pool,--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 to-day.
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 posting-chaise, of breaking
up their mystery with clic-clacs, 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
pell-mell with the tete-a-tete of the conductor of the diligence
and the maid-servant 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, knee-breeches 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 post-chaise of the
bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of
worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough,
or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day 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 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 Shrove-Tuesday 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 eighty-four 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.

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 supervising-guardian, 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 Filles-du-Calvaire to the church
of Saint-Paul.

At that epoch, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint-Louis was in
process of repaving.  It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du
Pare-Royal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly
to Saint-Paul. 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 Filles-du-Calvaire, 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, Merry-Andrew, 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
now-a-days. 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 procession--peculiar 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.
Police-sergeants 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 Saint-Antoine. 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 post-chaise, harassed by a nickname from the populace,
passed with great noise.

In the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like
sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts
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.

The wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille,
and skirting the right side of the Boulevard.  At the top of the
Pont-aux-Choux, 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 carriage-load
of maskers.

These carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagon-loads
of maskers are very familiar to Parisians.  If they were missing on
a Shrove Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, 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 passers-by,
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,
three-cornered 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 hackney-coach 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 semi-nudity, having at the present day
lost her shape under the soaked rags of the North, has finally
come to be called the Jack-pudding.

The tradition of carriage-loads 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 cross-roads." 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 carriage-loads 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 twenty-headed hydras of joy.
But what can be done about it?  These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils
of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public.
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 Merry-Andrew. 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 it--willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy.
She only demands of her masters--when she has masters--one 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 carriage-load 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 carriage-load 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 passers-by 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 low-necked 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 wedding-cart, on our side."

"The one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?"

"Yes."

"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 to-day."

"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?"

"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 to-day."

"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?"

"I can't go out otherwise than masked.  Here I'm concealed, no one
knows that I'm here.  But to-morrow, 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 wedding-party went to."

"Where it went?"

"Yes."

"I know."

"Where is it going then?"

"To the Cadran-Bleu."

"In the first place, it's not in that direction."

"Well! to la Rapee."

"Or elsewhere."

"It's free.  Wedding-parties 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
wedding-party that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday,
a week afterwards.  A pin in a hay-mow! 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 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 lines--the 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.

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 mid-day and of dreaming
of midnight is indescribable.  The delights of these two hearts
overflowed upon the crowd, and inspired the passers-by with cheerfulness.

People halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine, in front of Saint-Paul,
to gaze through the windows of the carriage at the orange-flowers
quivering on Cosette's head.

Then they returned home to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. 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 dining-room.

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 dining-room 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.

In the antechamber, three violins and a flute softly played
quartettes by Haydn.

Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room,
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 dining-room, and arranged themselves in the proper order
around the table.

Two large arm-chairs 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 arm-chair 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 to-morrow. He has just taken his departure."

That empty arm-chair 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 arm-chair being occupied, M. Fauchelevent was obliterated;
and nothing was lacking.

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 hand--only 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 turtle-doves 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 rose-buds, 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 omnipotence--women.  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
fleur-de-lys, 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 trip-gallant is called
the cholera-morbus, 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 re-enter 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; to-day 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 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.
Ventre-saint-gris! 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 dove-like,
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! vertu-bamboche! 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 key-note 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 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, knee-breeches, 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 dining-room 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 Filles-du-Calvaire, and returned to the Rue
de l'Homme Arme.

In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue
Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; 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 Filles-du-Calvaire, in order
to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vielle-du-Temple.

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.

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, half-naked,
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!

Unheard-of 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 red-hot pincers, it had said to him,
as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil:  "Now, go
in peace!"

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 heart-rending 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 drawing-room 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.

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
well-being, 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 self-sacrifice 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 re-entrance 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?

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
un-nailed, and flung face down on the earth.  There he remained
for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long winter's night,
ice-cold, 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 feather-duster 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 drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, 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.

"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 drawing-room, 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 head-dresses. 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 arm-chairs, 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 drawing-room.

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.

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, easy-chair 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 to-day?"

"Sir," said Jean Valjean, "I have something to say to you.
I am an ex-convict."

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 ex-convict," 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.

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."

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 passer-by. 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.  To-day, 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 arm-chair: `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
chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy,
that is happiness, that is everything.  We shall live as one family.
One family!"

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 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 voice--it 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 galley-slave 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 after-taste, 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;
to-day, in order to live, I will not steal a name."

"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
drawing-room. 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:

"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 drawing-room 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 drawing-room.
She was dressed in a voluminous white dressing-gown, 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
easy-chair, 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.
To-day is Ash-Wednesday; but not for the birds."

"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 together--that 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 chimney-sweep, 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.

"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 dressing-gown,
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.

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 chain-gang pass by one day.  Oh!  My God!" . . . He
dropped into an arm-chair 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 fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice:

"All is nearly over.  But one last thing remains for me . . ."

"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 court-yard, 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 waiting-room. 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.

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.

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 galley-slave, 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
re-habilitation 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 re-appeared 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 galley-slave. 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; 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 room-mates 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 man-precipice?

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 cess-pool 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 dung-heap 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.

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 passer-by. 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 lightning-flash 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.

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?"

"I will remain below," replied Jean Valjean.

Basque, who was perfectly respectful, opened the door of the
waiting-room 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 feather-duster, 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 window-panes. The room, which was small and low-ceiled,
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 chimney-piece
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 arm-chairs 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 arm-chairs.

Basque returned, set a lighted candle on the chimney-piece 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.

"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 drawing-room. 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?"

"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 cabinet-maker'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.

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.



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 drawing-room,
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 ninety-six, 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 re-appears; an air-bubble 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 wall-colored 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.

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 good-morning 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
Filles-du-Calvaire.--"Madame went out with Monsieur and has not
yet returned," 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.  Marius--that 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?

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 arm-chairs
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 arm-chairs 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.
Twenty-seven 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 ground-floor room.  The arm-chairs had disappeared.
There was not a single chair of any sort.

"Ah, what's this!" exclaimed Cosette as she entered, "no chairs!
Where are the arm-chairs?"

"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 to-day."

"A brief stay is no reason for remaining standing."

"I think that Basque needed the chairs for the drawing-room.

"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 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
Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux,
gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and, on arriving at
the Rue de l'Echarpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue Saint-Louis.

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 Filles-du-Calvaire. 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 Filles-du-Calvaire; 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 Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in the Rue Saint-Louis;
sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer.

One day he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine
and looked at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire 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 Saint-Louis. He got as far
as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; then he went no
further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep
the Blancs-Manteaux. 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 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 eye-lid; 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 all-sufficient 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 all-powerful 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.

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 to-morrow."

"Or at Trinity day.  Why not to-day? Is it the thing to say:
`I will eat to-morrow'? 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?"

"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 chimney-piece. 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.

Night had come.  He laboriously dragged a table and the old
arm-chair 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."

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 folded--the 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 well-known 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 bank-notes, put
them in his pocket, closed the secretary again, and rang the bell.
Basque half opened the door.

"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 low-lived 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 green-room whence theft emerged,
and into which roguery retreated.  A tattered knave arrived at this
dressing-room, 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:
ex-ambassador, and a note which we also copy:  "In a separate box,
a neatly frizzed peruke, green glasses, seals, and two small
quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton."  All this belonged
to the statesman, the ex-ambassador. This whole costume was,
if we may so express ourselves, debilitated; the seams were white,
a vague button-hole 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 pick-me-down-that 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 drawing-rooms
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 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,
trap-doors, 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.
Self-interest--that'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."

"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 ex-convict."

"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 vent-hole of the thought,
glows with it; spectacles hide nothing; try putting a pane of glass
over hell!

The stranger resumed with a smile:

"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 to-day, 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 pot-house at Montfermeil."

"A pot-house! Never."

"And I tell you that your name is Thenardier."

"I deny it."

"And that you are a rascal.  Here."

And Marius drew a bank-note 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 bank-bill,
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.

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 revelation--and 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 well-informed
and well-armed 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 secret--the 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
police-agent Javert."

"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 foster-father 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:

"Police-agent-Ja-vert-was-found-drowned-un-der-a-boat-of-the-Pont-au-Change."


"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 cashier-clerk 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, assassin--those words which Marius thought had disappeared
and which returned, fell upon him like an ice-cold shower-bath.

"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 self-abnegation 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 ex-convict, 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.  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 passer-by
were forced to bid each other good-day, greatly to the regret
of both.  The passer-by 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."

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 bank-notes 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 second-hand 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 to-morrow, 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 bank-bills.

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 slave-dealer.

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."

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 unheard-of 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 hackney-carriage 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.

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:

"`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 more--he 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."

"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 to-morrow."

"To-morrow," 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
red-breast 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 `good-day,'
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?"

"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
red-breast 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.

"Good-day, 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?"

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 semi-swoon, 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 half-open 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.

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 chimney-piece. They are of silver,
but to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles
which are placed in them into wax-tapers. 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 bank-bill 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 water-bucket? 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 name--Fantine.  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, 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 well-beloved 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 Pere-Lachaise, 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, to-day, 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'elle-meme 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.

                               HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, 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 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 war-budget 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.

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 Man-People, 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.