Plongez au cœur du chef-d’œuvre intemporel de Victor Hugo, *Les Misérables – Tome I : Fantine*, une fresque humaine bouleversante qui explore la misère, la rédemption et la lutte pour la justice 💔⚖️. Ce premier tome nous entraîne dans la France du XIXe siècle, où se croisent des destins marqués par la pauvreté et l’injustice sociale.
Dans cette partie de l’œuvre, nous suivons Jean Valjean, ancien forçat en quête de rédemption, et Fantine, une jeune femme tombée dans la misère après avoir été abandonnée avec un enfant. Leurs vies s’entrelacent dans un contexte d’inégalités profondes, où la compassion et le sacrifice deviennent des actes de résistance contre un monde impitoyable.
🌟 **Ce que vous découvrirez dans ce livre audio** :
– Une peinture magistrale de la société française post-napoléonienne 🏛️
– Des personnages inoubliables : Fantine, Jean Valjean, Javert, Cosette 💞
– Les thèmes universels de l’amour, du pardon et de la justice ✊
– Une écriture poétique et puissante qui traverse les âges 📜
🎧 Laissez-vous emporter par ce récit poignant, idéal pour les amateurs de littérature classique et d’histoires humaines profondes. Chaque chapitre vous plongera un peu plus dans les tourments et les espoirs des protagonistes.
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-📚⛪ Notre-Dame de Paris – Tome 1 | Victor Hugo 🎭🔥 [https://youtu.be/C7x9c3_bITo]
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Let’s dive together into one of Victor Hugo’s timeless masterpieces : Les Misérables, Volume I – Fantine. In this first installment, the author takes us into a 19th century marked by social misery , injustice, and hope. We follow Jean Valjean, a former convict in search of redemption, whose destiny intersects with that of Fantine, a young woman sacrificed by life’s cruelties. Through striking portraits and powerful narration, Hugo paints a moving picture of the human condition, where each character embodies a part of light or shadow. Prepare yourself for a deeply moving and universal story. Chapter 1. Monsieur Myriel. In 1815, Mr. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. He was an old man of about seventy-five years old; he had occupied the seat of Digne since 1806. Although this detail does not in any way touch on the very substance of what we have to tell, it is perhaps not useless, if only to be exact in all, to indicate here the rumors and the talk that had circulated about him at the time when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, what is said about men often holds as much place in their life and especially in their destiny as what they do. M. Myriel was the son of a councilor in the parliament of Aix; nobility of the robe. It was said of him that his father, reserving him to inherit his office, had married him very early, at eighteen or twenty years old, following a custom quite widespread in parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, notwithstanding this marriage, had, it was said, made a lot of noise. He was well made in his person, although of rather small stature, elegant, graceful, witty; The entire first part of his life had been given to the world and to gallantry. The revolution came, events moved quickly, the parliamentary families were decimated, driven out, hounded, and dispersed. M. Charles Myriel, in the first days of the revolution, emigrated to Italy. His wife died there of a chest disease from which she had suffered for a long time. They had no children. What happened next in M. Myriel’s destiny? Did the collapse of the old French society, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, perhaps even more frightening for the émigrés who saw them from afar with the magnification of terror, make ideas of renunciation and solitude germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of one of those distractions and affections that occupied his life, suddenly struck by one of those mysterious and terrible blows that sometimes come to overthrow, by striking him to the heart, the man whom public catastrophes would not shake by striking him in his existence and his fortune? No one could have said; all that was known was that, when he returned from Italy, he was a priest. In 1804, M. Myriel was parish priest of Brignolles. He was already old, and lived in deep retirement. Around the time of the coronation, a small matter of his parish, we no longer know exactly what, brought him to Paris. Among other powerful people, he went to solicit M. Cardinal Fesch for his parishioners. One day when the Emperor came to visit his uncle, the worthy parish priest, who was waiting in the antechamber, happened to be in the way of His Majesty. Napoleon, seeing himself looked at with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned around and said abruptly: “Who is this fellow who is looking at me?” “Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you are looking at a fellow, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us can profit. ” The Emperor, that same evening, asked the cardinal the name of this priest, and some time later M. Myriel was quite surprised to learn that he had been named Bishop of Digne. What truth was there, moreover, in the stories told about the first part of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Few families had known the Myriel family before the revolution. M.
Myriel had to suffer the fate of any newcomer in a small a city where there are many mouths that speak and very few heads that think. He had to endure it, although he was a bishop and because he was a bishop. But, after all, the talk that was mixed with his name was perhaps only talk; noise, words, talk; less than talk, palaver, as the energetic language of the south says. Whatever the case, after nine years of episcopate and residence in Digne, all these stories, topics of conversation that occupy small towns and small people in the first moment, had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to speak of it, no one would even have dared to remember it. M. Myriel had arrived in Digne accompanied by an old maid, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister and who was ten years younger than him. Their only servant was a maid of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and called Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of Monsieur le Curé, now took the double title of lady’s maid and housekeeper of Monseigneur. Mademoiselle Baptistine was a tall, pale, thin, gentle person; she realized the ideal of what the word respectable expresses; for it seems that it is necessary for a woman to be a mother to be venerable. She had never been pretty; all her life, which had been only a series of holy works, had ended by putting on her a sort of whiteness and clarity; and, as she grew older, she had gained what one might call the beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth had become, in her maturity, transparency; and this diaphaneity revealed the angel. She was a soul even more than she was a virgin. Her person seemed made of shadow; barely enough body for there to be a sex there; a little matter containing a glow; large eyes always lowered; a pretext for a soul to remain on earth. Madame Magloire was a little old woman, white, fat, plump, busy, always panting, first because of her activity, then because of asthma. Upon her arrival, M. Myriel was installed in his episcopal palace with the honors required by the imperial decrees which rank the bishop immediately after the field marshal. The mayor and the president paid him the first visit, and he, for his part, paid the first visit to the general and the prefect. The installation completed, the town awaited its bishop at work. Chapter 2. M. Myriel becomes Monseigneur Bienvenu. The episcopal palace of Digne was adjacent to the hospital. The Episcopal Palace was a vast and beautiful stone mansion built at the beginning of the last century by Monseigneur Henri Puget, doctor of theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbot of Simore, who was Bishop of Digne in 1712. This palace was a true seigneurial residence. Everything had a grand air, the bishop’s apartments, the salons, the bedrooms, the main courtyard, very wide, with arcaded promenades, according to the old Florentine fashion, the gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining room, a long and superb gallery on the ground floor that opened onto the gardens, Monseigneur Henri Puget had ceremoniously given a meal on July 29, 1714, to Messrs. Charles Brûlart de Genlis, Archbishop-Prince of Embrun, Antoine de Mesgrigny, Capuchin, Bishop of Grasse, Philippe de Vendôme, Grand Prior of France, Abbot of Saint-Honoré de Lérins, François de Berton de Grillon, Bishop-Baron of Vence, César de Sabran de Forcalquier, Bishop-Lord of Glandève, and Jean Soanen, priest of the oratory, ordinary preacher to the king, Bishop-Lord of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend figures decorated this room, and this memorable date, July 29, 1714, was engraved in gold letters on a white marble table. The hospital was a narrow, low, single-story house with a small garden. Three days after his arrival, the bishop visited the hospital. The visit over, he asked the director to come to his house. “Mr. Director of the hospital,” he said to him, “how many sick people do you have at the moment?” “Twenty-six, my lord. ” “That is what I had counted,” said the bishop. “The beds,” continued the director, “are very close together . ” “That is what I had noticed. ” “The wards are only rooms, and the air is hardly renewed there. ” “That is what I think.” “And then, when there is a ray of sunshine, the garden is very small for convalescents. ” “That is what I was saying.” “During the epidemics, we had typhus this year, we had a military sweating sickness two years ago, a hundred sick people sometimes; we don’t know what to do. ” “That is the thought that came to me. ” “What do you want, my lord?” said the director, we must resign ourselves. This conversation was taking place in the dining room-gallery on the ground floor. The bishop remained silent for a moment, then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital: “Sir,” he said, “how many beds do you think would fit in this room alone? ” “Monseigneur’s dining room!” cried the director, astonished. The bishop looked around the room and seemed to be making measurements and calculations with his eyes . “It would fit twenty beds!” he said, as if speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice: “Here, Mr. Director of the hospital, I’ll tell you. There’s obviously a mistake. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There’s a mistake, I tell you. You have my home, and I have yours. Give me back my house. This is your home.” The next day, the twenty-six poor people were installed in the bishop’s palace and the bishop was in the hospital. Mr. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the revolution. His sister received a life annuity of five hundred francs which, at the presbytery, was sufficient for her personal expenses. Mr. Myriel received from the state as bishop a salary of fifteen thousand francs. The very day he came to live in the hospital house, Mr. Myriel determined the use of this sum once and for all in the following manner. We transcribe here a note written in his hand. Note to settle the expenses of my house. For the minor seminary: fifteen hundred pounds Congregation of the mission: one hundred pounds For the Lazarists of Montdidier: one hundred pounds Seminary of foreign missions in Paris: two hundred pounds Congregation of the Holy Spirit: one hundred and fifty pounds Religious establishments of the Holy Land: one hundred pounds Societies of maternal charity: three hundred pounds In addition, for that of Arles: fifty pounds Work for the improvement of prisons: four hundred pounds Work for the relief and deliverance of prisoners: five hundred pounds To free fathers of families imprisoned for debt: one thousand pounds Supplement to the salary of poor schoolmasters of the diocese: two thousand pounds Granary of abundance of the Hautes-Alpes: one hundred pounds Congregation of the ladies of Digne, Manosque and Sisteron, for the free education of indigent girls: fifteen hundred pounds For the poor: six thousand pounds My personal expenditure: one thousand pounds Total: fifteen thousand pounds During the entire time he occupied the seat of Digne, Mr. Myriel changed almost nothing in this arrangement. He called this, as we see, having settled the expenses of his house. This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine. For this saintly girl, M. de Digne was at once her brother and her bishop, her friend according to nature and her superior according to the church. She loved him and she simply venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she adhered. The servant alone, Madame Magloire, murmured a little. The Bishop, as has been noted, had only set aside a thousand pounds for himself, which, added to Mademoiselle Baptistine’s pension, made fifteen hundred francs a year. With these fifteen hundred francs, these two old women and this old man lived.
And when a village priest came to Digne, the Bishop still found a way to treat him, thanks to the strict economy of Madame Magloire and the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine. One day—he had been in Digne for about three months—the Bishop said: “With all this, I am very embarrassed! ” “I can well believe it!” cried Madame Magloire. “Monseigneur has not even claimed the income that the department owes him for his carriage expenses in town and for tours in the diocese. For bishops in the past, this was the custom. ” “Well!” said the bishop, you are right, Madame Magloire. He made his claim. Some time later, the general council, taking this request into consideration, voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance to the bishop for carriage expenses, postage and pastoral tour expenses. This caused a great outcry among the local bourgeoisie, and, on this occasion, a senator of the empire, a former member of the council of five hundred in favor of the eighteenth Brumaire and provided near the town of Digne with a magnificent senatorial residence, wrote to the minister of worship, Mr. Bigot de Préameneu, a short, angry and confidential note from which we extract these authentic lines: –Carriage expenses? Why do it in a town of less than four thousand inhabitants? Postage and tour expenses? What is the point of these tours in the first place? Then how can one run the post in a mountainous country? There are no roads. One only goes on horseback. The very bridge over the Durance at Château-Arnoux can barely carry oxcarts. These priests are all like that. Greedy and miserly. This one played the good apostle when he arrived. Now he does like the others. He needs a carriage and a post-chaise. He needs luxury like the bishops of old. Oh! all this priesthood! Count, things will only go well when the Emperor has freed us from the priests. Down with the Pope! (affairs were falling out with Rome). As for me, I am for Caesar all alone. Etc., etc. This, on the other hand, greatly delights Madame Magloire. “Well,” she said to Mademoiselle Baptistine, “Monseigneur began with the others, but he had to finish with himself. He has paid for all his charities. Here are three thousand livres for us. Finally!” That same evening, the bishop wrote and gave his sister a note worded as follows: Coach and tour expenses. To give meat broth to the sick in the hospital: fifteen hundred pounds For the maternal charity society of Aix: two hundred and fifty pounds For the maternal charity society of Draguignan: two hundred and fifty pounds For foundlings: five hundred pounds For orphans: five hundred pounds Total: three thousand pounds Such was Mr. Myriel’s budget. As for episcopal casuals, redemptions of banns, dispensations, undoings, preaching, blessings of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the bishop collected them from the rich with all the more harshness as he gave them to the poor. After a short time, the money offerings poured in. Those who have and those who lack knocked at Mr. Myriel’s door, some coming to seek the alms that others came to leave there. The bishop, in less than a year, became the treasurer of all benefactions and the cashier of all distress. Considerable sums passed through his hands; but nothing could make him change anything in his way of life or add the slightest superfluity to his necessities. Far from it. As there is always more misery below than fraternity above, everything was given, so to speak, before being received; it was like water on dry land; he received money in vain, but he never had any. So he stripped himself. It being customary for bishops to state their baptismal names at the head of their pastoral letters and pastoral letters, the poor people of the country had chosen, with a sort of affectionate instinct, from the bishop’s first and last names, the one that presented a meaning to them, and they called him only Monseigneur Bienvenu. We will do as they did, and we will call him thus on occasion. Besides, this appellation pleased him. “I like that name,” he said. Bienvenu corrects Monseigneur. We do not pretend that the portrait we paint here is plausible; we limit ourselves to saying that it is a likeness. Chapter 3. A good bishop, a hard bishopric. The bishop, for having converted his carriage into alms, nevertheless made his rounds. Digne is a tiring diocese. It has very few plains, many mountains, almost no roads, as we saw earlier; thirty-two parishes, forty-one vicariates, and two hundred and eighty-five branches. Visiting all this is a task. The bishop managed it. He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, by cart on the plains, by horse-drawn carriage in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the journey was too difficult for them, he went alone. One day, he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal town, mounted on a donkey. His purse, very dry at that moment, had not allowed him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to receive him at the gate of the bishopric and watched him dismount from his donkey with scandalized eyes . Some bourgeois laughed around him. “Mr. Mayor,” said the bishop, “and gentlemen of the bourgeoisie, I see what scandalizes you; you find it very proud for a poor priest to ride a mount that was that of Jesus Christ. I did it out of necessity, I assure you, not out of vanity. In his tours, he was indulgent and gentle, and preached less than he spoke. He placed no virtue on an inaccessible platform. He never went far to seek his reasoning and his models. To the inhabitants of a country he cited the example of the neighboring country. In the cantons where they were hard on the needy, he said: “Look at the people of Briançon. They gave the poor, widows, and orphans the right to have their meadows mowed three days before everyone else. They rebuild their houses for free when they are in ruins. Also, it is a country blessed by God. During a whole century of one hundred years, there was not a single murderer.” In villages eager for profit and harvest, he would say: “Look at those of Embrun. If a father of a family, at harvest time, has his sons serving in the army and his daughters serving in the city, and he is sick and unable to attend, the priest recommends him to the sermon; and on Sunday, after mass, all the people of the village, men, women, children, go to the poor man’s field to harvest his harvest, and bring him straw and grain to his granary. To families divided by questions of money and inheritance, he would say: “Look at the mountaineers of Devoluy, a country so wild that you don’t hear the nightingale once in fifty years. Well, when the father dies in a family, the boys go off to seek their fortune, and leave the wealth to the girls, so that they can find husbands.” To the cantons that have a taste for lawsuits and where farmers ruin themselves on stamped paper, he said: “Look at those good peasants in the Queyras Valley. There are three thousand souls there. My God! It’s like a small republic. There’s no judge or bailiff. The mayor does everything. He distributes the tax, taxes everyone according to his conscience, judges disputes free of charge, divides assets without fees, makes sentences without costs; and he is obeyed, because that he is a just man among simple men. In the villages where he could not find a schoolmaster, he also cited those of Queyras: “Do you know how they do it?” he said. “As a small country of twelve or fifteen households cannot always support a magister, they have schoolmasters paid by the whole valley who travel from village to village, spending eight days in this one, ten in that one, and teaching. These magisters go to the fairs, where I have seen them. You can recognize them by the writing quills they carry in the strap of their hats. Those who teach only reading have one quill, those who teach reading and arithmetic have two quills; those who teach reading, arithmetic and Latin have three quills. These are great scholars. But what a shame to be ignorant! Do as the people of Queyras do.” He spoke thus, gravely and paternally, in the absence of examples inventing parables, going straight to the point, with few sentences and many images, which was the very eloquence of Jesus Christ, convinced and persuasive. Chapter 4. Works similar to words. His conversation was affable and cheerful. He put himself within reach of the two old women who spent their lives near him; when he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire readily called him Your Grandeur. One day, he got up from his armchair and went to his library to look for a book. This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather small, he could not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” he said, “bring me a chair. My grandeur does not extend to this board.” One of her distant relatives, Madame the Countess of Lô, rarely let slip an opportunity to enumerate in her presence what she called the hopes of her three sons. She had several very old ancestors, close to death, to whom her sons were naturally the heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a great-aunt a good hundred thousand livres in income; the second was to be substituted for his uncle’s title of Duke; the eldest was to succeed to his grandfather’s peerage. The bishop usually listened in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal displays. Once, however, he seemed more dreamy than usual, while Madame de Lô repeated the details of all these successions and all these hopes. She interrupted herself with some impatience: “My God, cousin! what are you thinking about?” “I am thinking,” said the bishop, “of something singular which is, I believe, in Saint Augustine: Place your hope in him who is not succeeded.” Another time, receiving a letter announcing the death of a gentleman of the country, where were displayed on a long page, besides the dignities of the deceased, all the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives: “What a good back death has!” he cried. “What an admirable load of titles they cheerfully make it bear, and how clever men must be to use the tomb for vanity in this way! ” He had on the occasion a gentle mockery which almost always contained a serious meaning. During a Lent, a young vicar came to Digne and preached in the cathedral. He was quite eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He invited the rich to give to the poor, in order to avoid the hell he painted as dreadful as he could and to gain the paradise he made desirable and charming. There was in the audience a rich retired merchant, a bit of a usurer, named M. Géborand, who had earned half a million making coarse cloth, serges, cadis, and gasquets. In his life M. Géborand had never given alms to a poor person. From this sermon, it was noticed that every Sunday he gave a penny to the old beggars at the cathedral gate. There were six of them who shared it. One day, the bishop saw him doing his charity and said to his sister with a smile: –There’s Monsieur Géborand, who buys paradise for a penny. When it came to charity, he didn’t give up, even when refused, and then he found words that made people think. Once, he was collecting for the poor in a town hall. There was the Marquis de Champtercier there, old, rich, and avaricious, who found a way to be both an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairean. This variety existed. The bishop, coming up to him, touched his arm. –Monsieur le Marquis, you must give me something. The Marquis turned and replied curtly: –Monseigneur, I have my poor. –Give them to me, said the bishop. One day, in the cathedral, he delivered this sermon. My dearest brothers, my good friends, in France there are thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasant houses that have only three openings, eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand that have two openings, the door and a window, and finally three hundred and forty-six thousand huts that have only one opening, the door.
And this is because of something called the tax on doors and windows. Put poor families, old women, little children, in those dwellings, and see the fevers and illnesses. Alas! God gives air to men, the law sells it to them. I do not accuse the law, but I bless God. In Isère, in Var, in the two Alps, the high and the low, the peasants do not even have wheelbarrows, they carry fertilizer on men’s backs; they have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks and pieces of rope dipped in resinous pitch. It’s like that all over the upper Dauphiné region. They make bread for six months, they bake it with dried cow dung. In winter, they break this bread with axes and soak it in water for twenty-four hours so they can eat it. My brothers, have pity! See how people are suffering around you. Born in Provence, he easily became familiar with all the dialects of the south. He said: Eh bé! moussu, sès sagé? as in lower Languedoc. Onté anaras passa? as in the lower Alps. Puerte un bouen moutou embe un bouen fromage grase, as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased the people, and contributed not a little to giving him access to all minds. He was at home in the cottage and in the mountains. He knew how to say the greatest things in the most vulgar idioms. Speaking all languages, he entered into all souls. Besides, he was the same for people of the world and for the common people. He condemned nothing hastily, and without taking into account the surrounding circumstances. He said: “Let us see the path by which the fault has passed.” Being, as he called himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none of the precipices of rigorism, and he professed quite loudly, and without the frown of the fiercely virtuous, a doctrine that could be summarized more or less thus: Man has upon him the flesh which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it along and yields to it. He must watch over it, contain it, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. In this obedience, there may still be fault; but fault, thus made, is venial. It is a fall, but a fall on the knees, which can end in prayer. To be a saint is the exception; to be righteous is the rule. Err, faint, sin, but be righteous. The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the angel’s dream. Everything earthly is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation. When he saw everyone shouting loudly and quickly becoming indignant: “Oh! oh!” he would say, smiling, “it seems that this is a big crime that everyone is committing. Here are the frightened hypocrisies who hurry to protest and take cover. He was indulgent towards women and the poor on whom the weight of human society falls. He would say: –The faults of women, children, servants, the weak, the poor, and the ignorant are the fault of husbands, fathers, masters, the strong, the rich, and the learned. He also said: –To those who are ignorant, teach them as much as you can; society is guilty of not giving instruction for free; it is responsible for the darkness it produces. This soul is full of shadow, sin is committed there. The guilty party is not the one who commits the sin, but the one who has created the shadow. As we see, he had a strange and unique way of judging things. I suspect that he had taken this from the Gospel. One day, in a salon, he heard a story of a criminal trial that was being investigated and was about to be judged. A miserable man, out of love for a woman and the child he had by her, at the end of his resources, had made counterfeit money. Counterfeiting money was still punishable by death at that time. The woman had been arrested for issuing the first counterfeit coin made by man. She was caught, but the evidence was against her alone. Only she could accuse her lover and lose him by confessing. She denied it. They insisted. She persisted in denying it. At that, the king’s prosecutor had an idea. He had assumed the lover’s infidelity, and had managed, with cleverly presented fragments of letters , to persuade the unfortunate woman that she had a rival and that this man was cheating on her. Then, exasperated with jealousy, she had denounced her lover, confessed everything, proven everything. The man was lost. He would soon be tried in Aix with his accomplice. The story was recounted, and everyone was ecstatic about the magistrate’s skill. By bringing jealousy into play, he had brought out the truth through anger, he had brought justice out of vengeance. The bishop listened to all this in silence. When it was over, he asked: “Where will this man and this woman be tried?” “At the Assize Court.” He continued: “And where will the King’s Prosecutor be tried?” A tragic incident occurred in Digne. A man was condemned to death for murder. He was an unfortunate man, not entirely literate, not entirely ignorant, who had been a juggler at fairs and a public writer. The trial kept the town very busy. The day before the day set for the condemned man’s execution, the prison chaplain fell ill. A priest was needed to assist the patient in his last moments. The priest was fetched. It seems he refused, saying: “That’s none of my business. I have no use for this chore and this acrobat; I, too, am ill.” Besides, that is not my place. This response was reported to the bishop, who said: “The priest is right. That is not his place, it is mine.” He went immediately to the prison, went down to the acrobat’s cabin, called him by name, took his hand, and spoke to him. He spent the whole day and all night with him, forgetting food and sleep, praying to God for the condemned man’s soul and praying the condemned man for his own. He told him the best and simplest truths. He was father, brother, friend; a bishop only to bless. He taught him everything, reassuring and consoling him. This man was going to die in despair. Death was like an abyss to him. Standing and trembling on that gloomy threshold, he recoiled with horror. He was not ignorant enough to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, a profound shock, had in a way broken here and there around him that partition which separates us from the mystery of things and which we call life. He constantly looked outside this world through these fatal breaches, and saw only darkness. The bishop showed him a light. The next day, when they came to fetch the unfortunate man, the bishop was there. He followed him. He appeared before the crowd in a purple cape and with his episcopal cross around his neck, side by side with this wretch bound with ropes. He climbed into the cart with him, he climbed onto the scaffold with him. The patient, so gloomy and so overwhelmed the day before, was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled and he hoped in God. The bishop embraced him, and, at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him: “He whom man kills, God resurrects; he whom the brothers cast out finds the Father. Pray, believe, enter into life! The Father is there.” When he came down from the scaffold, there was something in his look that made the people fall into line. It was difficult to know which was more admirable, his pallor or his serenity. On returning to this humble dwelling which he called with a smile his palace, he said to his sister: “I have just officiated pontifically.” As the most sublime things are often also the least understood, there were people in the city who said, commenting on this conduct of the bishop: “It is affectation.” This, moreover, was only a conversation in salons. The people, who do not understand malice in holy actions, were moved and admired. As for the bishop, seeing the guillotine was a shock for him, and it took him a long time to recover. The scaffold, in fact, when it is there, erect and standing, has something hallucinatory about it. One can have a certain indifference about the death penalty, not pronounce oneself, say yes and no, until one has seen a guillotine with one’s own eyes; but if one encounters one, the shock is violent, one must decide and take sides for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others loathe it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindictiveness; it is not neutral, and does not allow you to remain neutral. Whoever sees it shudders with the most mysterious of shudders. All social questions raise their question mark around this axe. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a framework, the scaffold is not a machine, the scaffold is not an inert mechanism made of wood, iron , and ropes. It seems to be a kind of being that has some dark initiative; one would say that this framework sees, that this machine hears, that this mechanism understands, that this wood, this iron, and these ropes want. In the dreadful reverie into which its presence throws the soul, the scaffold appears terrible and meddling in what it does. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours; it eats flesh, it drinks blood. The scaffold is a kind of monster created by the judge and the carpenter, a specter that seems to live a kind of dreadful life made of all the death it has given. Thus the impression was horrible and profound; The day after the execution and for many days afterward, the bishop appeared overwhelmed. The almost violent serenity of the funeral moment had disappeared: the ghost of social justice obsessed him. He, who usually returned from all his actions with such radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times, he spoke to himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues under his breath. Here is one that his sister heard one evening and picked up: “I did not believe it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become so absorbed in divine law that we no longer notice human law . Death belongs only to God. By what right do men touch this unknown thing?” With time these impressions diminished, and probably faded. However, it was noted that the bishop henceforth avoided passing through the place of executions. Mr. Myriel could be called at any time to the bedside of the sick and the dying. He was well aware that this was his greatest duty and his greatest work. Widowed or orphaned families did not need to ask for him; he came of his own accord. He knew how to sit and remain silent for long hours beside the man who had lost the woman he loved, the mother who had lost her child. As he knew when to be silent, he also knew the moment to speak. O admirable consoler! he did not seek to erase pain by forgetting, but to enlarge and dignify it by hope. He said: “Be careful how you turn toward the dead. Do not think about what rots. Look fixedly. You will see the living light of your beloved dead in the depths of the sky.” He knew that belief is healthy. He sought to advise and calm the desperate man by pointing out the resigned man, and to transform the pain that looks at a grave by showing him the pain that looks at a star. Chapter 5. That Monseigneur Bienvenu made his cassocks last too long. The inner life of M. Myriel was full of the same thoughts as his public life. For anyone who could have seen it up close, it would have been a grave and charming spectacle, this voluntary poverty in which M. l’évêque de Digne lived. Like all old men and like most thinkers, he slept little. This short sleep was deep. In the morning he would meditate for an hour, then he would say his mass, either in the cathedral or in his oratory. Once his mass was said, he would have breakfast on rye bread soaked in the milk of his cows. Then he would work. A bishop is a very busy man; he must receive every day the secretary of the bishopric, who is usually a canon, and almost every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to control, privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine, parishioners, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc. ,
mandates to write, sermons to authorize, curates and mayors to agree on, clerical correspondence, administrative correspondence, on one side the state, on the other the Holy See, a thousand matters. The time that these thousand affairs, his offices and his breviary left him, he gave first to the needy, the sick and the afflicted; the time that the afflicted, the sick and the needy left him, he gave to work. Sometimes he dug the earth in his garden, sometimes he read and wrote. He had only one word for these two kinds of work; he called it gardening. “The mind is a garden,” he said. At noon, he had dinner. Dinner was like lunch. Around two o’clock, when the weather was fine, he went out and walked in the countryside or in the city, often entering hovels . He was seen walking alone, lost in thought, his eyes lowered, leaning on his long cane, dressed in his warm, padded violet snug, wearing violet stockings over large shoes, and wearing his flat hat, which had three golden tassels with spinach seeds sticking out of its three horns . It was a celebration wherever he appeared. It seemed as if his passage had something warming and luminous about it. Children and old people came to the thresholds for the bishop as for the sun. He blessed and he was blessed. Anyone who needed something was shown his house . Here and there, he stopped, spoke to little boys and girls , and smiled at the mothers. He visited the poor as long as he had money; when he had none left, he visited the rich. As he made his cassocks last a long time, and he didn’t want anyone to notice, he never went out into the city except in his purple nightgown. This bothered him a little in the summer. In the evening at eight thirty he had supper with his sister, Madame Magloire standing behind them and waiting on them at table. Nothing could be more frugal than this meal. If, however, the bishop had one of his priests for supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur some excellent fish from the lakes or some fine game from the mountains. Every priest was a pretext for a good meal; the bishop let himself be taken advantage of. Apart from that, his daily fare consisted of little more than vegetables cooked in water and oil soup. So it was said in the town: –When the bishop is not cheap as a priest, he is cheap as a Trappist. After his supper, he would chat for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he would return to his room and start writing again, sometimes on loose sheets of paper, sometimes on the margin of some folio. He was well-read and somewhat learned. He left five or six rather curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on the verse from Genesis: In the beginning the spirit of God floated upon the waters. He compares three texts with this verse: the Arabic version which says: The winds of God blew; Flavius Josephus which says: A wind from above rushed upon the earth, and finally the Chaldean paraphrase of Onkelos which says: A wind coming from God blew upon the face of the waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais, great-great-uncle of the one who writes this book, and he establishes that the various pamphlets published in the last century under the pseudonym of Barleycourt must be attributed to this bishop. Sometimes in the middle of reading, whatever book he had in his hands, he would suddenly fall into a deep meditation, from which he would emerge only to write a few lines on the very pages of the volume. These lines often have no connection with the book that contains them. We have before us a note written by him on one of the margins of a quarto entitled: Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis and the Admirals of the Station of America. At Versailles, at Poinçot, bookseller, and in Paris, at Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins. Here is this note: O you who are! Ecclesiastes calls you Omnipotence, the Maccabees call you Creator, the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you Liberty, Baruch calls you Immensity, the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth, John calls you Light, the Kings call you Lord, Exodus calls you Providence, Leviticus Holiness, Ezra Justice, creation calls you God, man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Mercy, and that is the most beautiful of all your names. Around nine o’clock in the evening, the two women retired and went up to their rooms on the first floor, leaving him alone until morning on the ground floor. Here it is necessary that we give an exact idea of the dwelling of the Bishop of Digne. Chapter 6. By whom he had his house guarded. The house he lived in consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor and a single story: three rooms on the ground floor, three bedrooms on the first, and above an attic. Behind the house was a quarter-acre garden. The two women occupied the first floor. The bishop lived downstairs. The first room, which opened onto the street, served as his dining room, the second as his bedroom, and the third as his oratory. One could not leave this oratory without passing through the bedroom, and leave the bedroom without passing through the dining room. In the oratory, at the back, there was a closed alcove with a bed for cases of hospitality. The bishop offered this bed to country priests who were brought to Digne by business or the needs of their parish. The hospital pharmacy, a small building added to the house and taken from the garden, had been converted into a kitchen and a storeroom. There was also a stable in the garden which was the old kitchen of the hospice and where the bishop kept two cows. Whatever the quantity of milk they gave him, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick of the hospital. “I pay my tithe,” he said. His room was quite large and rather difficult to heat in the bad season. As wood is very expensive in Digne, he had thought of making a compartment in the cowshed closed with a partition of planks. It was there that he spent his evenings in the great cold. He called it his winter salon. In this winter salon, as in the dining room, there was no other furniture than a square white wooden table and four straw chairs. The dining room was further decorated with an old sideboard painted pink in tempera. From the same sideboard, suitably dressed with white placemats and false lace, the bishop had made the altar that decorated his oratory. His wealthy penitents and the holy women of Digne had often clubbed together to cover the cost of a beautiful new altar for the oratory of Monseigneur; each time he had taken the money and given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,” he said, “is the soul of a consoled unfortunate who gives thanks to God. ” He had two straw prie-Dieu chairs in his oratory, and an armchair with arms also made of straw in his bedroom. When by chance he received seven or eight people at a time, the prefect, or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or some students from the minor seminary, they were obliged to go and fetch the chairs from the winter salon from the stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the bedroom; in this way, they could gather up to eleven seats for the visitors. At each new visit, a room was unfurnished. Sometimes there were twelve of us; then the bishop concealed the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front of the fireplace if it was winter, or by suggesting a walk in the garden if it was summer.
There was still a chair in the closed alcove, but it was half unpeeled and only supported on three legs, which meant that it could only be used leaning against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine also had in her room a very large wooden armchair, once gilded and upholstered in flowered Pekin, but this armchair had been brought up to the first floor by the window, the staircase being too narrow; it could therefore not be counted among the furniture. Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition would have been to be able to buy a drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet with rosettes and in swan-neck mahogany, with a sofa. But that would have cost at least five hundred francs, and, having seen that she had only managed to save for this object forty-two francs ten sous in five years, she had finally given up on it. Besides, who achieves her ideal? Nothing is simpler to imagine than the bishop’s bedroom. A French window opening onto the garden, opposite the bed; a hospital bed, in iron with a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, the toilet utensils still betraying the old elegant habits of the man of the world; two doors, one near the fireplace, opening into the oratory; the other, near the library, opening into the dining room; the library, a large glass cabinet full of books; the fireplace, of wood painted in marble, usually without a fire; in the fireplace, a pair of iron andirons decorated with two vases with garlands and flutings formerly silvered with chopped silver , which was a kind of episcopal luxury; above, in the place where the mirror is usually placed, a crucifix of de-silvered copper fixed on a threadbare black velvet in a frame of gilded wood. Near the French window, a large table with an inkstand, laden with jumbled papers and large volumes. In front of the table, the straw armchair. In front of the bed, a prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory. Two portraits in oval frames hung on the wall on either side of the bed. Small gold inscriptions on the neutral background of the canvas next to the figures indicated that the portraits represented, one, the Abbot of Chaliot, Bishop of Saint-Claude, the other, the Abbot Tourteau, Vicar General of Agde, Abbot of Grand-Champ, Order of Cîteaux, Diocese of Chartres. The bishop, on succeeding the sick of the hospital in this room, had found these portraits there and had left. They were priests, probably donors: two reasons for him to respect them. All he knew about these two people was that they had been appointed by the king, one to his bishopric, the other to his benefit, on the same day, April 27, 1785. Madame Magloire having taken down the paintings to shake the dust off them, the bishop had found this peculiarity written in whitish ink on a small square of paper yellowed by time, stuck with four sealing wafers behind the portrait of the Abbé de Grand-Champ. He had an ancient curtain of coarse wool at his window which ended up becoming so old that, to avoid the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was obliged to make a large seam right down the middle. This seam formed a cross. The bishop often pointed this out. “How nice it looks!” he said. All the rooms in the house, on the ground floor as well as on the first, without exception, were whitewashed, which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals. However, in later years, Madame Magloire found, as we shall see later, under the whitewashed paper, paintings that had decorated Mademoiselle Baptistine’s apartment. Before being the hospital, this house had been the parlor for the bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The rooms were paved with red bricks that were washed every week, with mats of woven straw in front of all the beds. Moreover, this dwelling, kept by two women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. It was the only luxury the bishop permitted. He said: “It takes nothing from the poor.” It must be admitted, however, that what he had once owned remained six silver cutlery sets and a large soup spoon, which Madame Magloire watched with pleasure every day shining splendidly on the large white linen tablecloth. And since we are here painting the Bishop of Digne as he was, we must add that he had more than once said: “I would find it difficult to give up eating from silverware.” To this silverware must be added two large solid silver candlesticks which he inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles and usually appeared on the Bishop’s mantelpiece. When he had someone to dine, Madame Magloire would light the two candles and place the two candlesticks on the table. In the Bishop’s own room, at the head of his bed, there was a small cupboard in which Madame Magloire kept the six silver cutlery sets and the large spoon every evening . It must be said that the key was never removed. The garden, somewhat spoiled by the rather ugly buildings we have mentioned, consisted of four cross-shaped paths radiating around a well; another path ran all the way around the garden and along the white wall by which it was enclosed. These paths left between them four squares bordered by boxwood. In three, Madame Magloire grew vegetables; in the fourth, the bishop had planted flowers. There were a few fruit trees here and there. Once Madame Magloire had said to him with a sort of gentle malice: “Monseigneur, you who make the most of everything, yet this is a useless square . It would be better to have lettuces there than bouquets. ” “Madame Magloire,” replied the bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a silence: “Perhaps more so.” This square, composed of three or four flowerbeds, occupied the Bishop almost as much as his books. He would gladly spend an hour or two there, cutting, weeding, and digging holes in the ground here and there where he put seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener would have liked. Besides, he had no pretensions to botany; he was ignorant of groups and solidism; he did not seek in the least to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took party neither for the utricles against the cotyledons, nor for Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected scholars greatly, he respected the ignorant even more, and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flowerbeds every summer evening with a tin watering can painted green. The house did not have a door that locked. The door of the dining room which, as we have said, opened directly onto the cathedral square, was formerly armed with locks and bolts like a prison door. The bishop had had all these ironworks removed, and this door, night and day, was closed only by the latch. The first passerby who came along, at whatever hour, had only to push it. In the beginning, the two women had been very tormented by this door which was never closed; but M. de Digne had said to them: “Have your rooms locked, if that pleases you.” They had ended up sharing his confidence, or at least acting as if they did. Madame Magloire alone had occasional fears. As for the bishop, one can find his thoughts explained, or at least indicated, in these three lines written by him on the margin of a Bible: Here is the nuance: the doctor’s door must never be closed; the priest’s door must always be open. In another book, entitled Philosophy of Medical Science, he had written this other note: “Am I not a doctor like them? I too have my patients; first I have theirs, whom they call the sick; and then I have mine, whom I call the unfortunate.” Elsewhere again he had written: “Do not ask the name of anyone who asks you for shelter. It is especially the one whose name embarrasses him who needs shelter.” It so happened that a worthy priest, I no longer know whether it was the priest of Couloubroux or the priest of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, if Monseigneur was quite sure that he was not committing a certain imprudence in leaving his door open day and night to anyone who wanted to enter, and if he was not finally afraid that some misfortune might happen in a house so poorly guarded. The bishop touched his shoulder with gentle gravity and said to him: – Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam . Then he spoke of something else. He said quite willingly: – There is the bravery of the priest as there is the bravery of the colonel of dragoons. Only, he added, ours must be tranquil. Chapter 7. Tie. Here naturally comes a fact that we must not omit, because it is one of those that best demonstrate what a man the Bishop of Digne was. After the destruction of Gaspard Bes’s band that had infested the Ollioules gorges, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. He hid for a time with his bandits, the remnants of Gaspard Bes’s troop, in the county of Nice, then reached Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, near Barcelonnette. He was seen first at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid in the caves of Joug-de-l’Aigle, and from there he descended towards the hamlets and villages by the ravines of the Ubaye and the Ubayette. He even dared to go as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night and robbed the sacristy. His robberies devastated the countryside. The gendarmerie was put on his trail, but in vain. He always escaped; sometimes he resisted with all his might. He was a bold wretch. In the midst of all this terror, the bishop arrived. He was making his rounds. At Chastelar, the mayor came to find him and urged him to turn back. Cravatte held the mountain as far as the Arch, and beyond. There was danger, even with an escort. It was needlessly exposing three or four unfortunate gendarmes. “Therefore,” said the bishop, “I intend to go without an escort.” “Are you thinking about it, Monseigneur?” cried the mayor. “I’m thinking about it so much that I absolutely refuse the gendarmes and I ‘m going to leave in an hour. ” “Leave? ” “Leave. ” “Alone? ” “Alone. ” “Monseigneur! You won’t do that. ” “There, in the mountains,” continued the bishop, “is a humble little commune about this big, which I haven’t seen for three years. They are my good friends. Gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of thirty that they keep. They make very pretty woolen cords of various colors, and they play mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need someone to talk to them from time to time about the good Lord. What would they say about a bishop who is afraid? What would they say if I didn’t go there? ” “But, Monseigneur, the brigands! If you meet the brigands!” “Well,” said the bishop, “I’m thinking about it. You’re right. I can meet them. They too must need someone to talk to them about the good Lord. ” “My Lord! But they’re a gang! They’re a flock of wolves! ” “Mr. Mayor, perhaps it’s precisely this flock that Jesus is making me the shepherd of. Who knows the ways of Providence? ” “My Lord, they’ll rob you. ” “I have nothing. ” “They’ll kill you. ” “An old priest who passes by muttering his mummery? Bah! What’s the use? ” “Ah! My God! If only you would go and meet them! ” “I’ll ask them for alms for my poor.” “My Lord, don’t go there, in heaven’s name! You’re risking your life. ” “Mr. Mayor,” said the bishop, “is that really all it is? I ‘m not in this world to save my life, but to save souls.” He had to be allowed to do so. He left, accompanied only by a child who offered to serve as his guide. His obstinacy caused a stir in the country, and caused great fear. He would not take either his sister or Madame Magloire with him. He crossed the mountain on a mule, met no one, and arrived safe and sound at the home of his good friends the shepherds. He stayed there for two weeks, preaching, administering, teaching, moralizing. When he was close to his departure, he resolved to sing a pontifical Te Deum. He spoke to the priest about it. But how could he do it? No episcopal vestments. The only thing that could be put at his disposal was a poor village sacristy with a few old chasubles of worn damask adorned with false braid. “Bah!” said the bishop. “Monsieur le curé, let us always announce our Te Deum from the sermon. That will be arranged.” They looked in the surrounding churches. All the magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have been enough to properly clothe a cathedral cantor. As they were in this predicament, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the bishop by two unknown riders who left immediately. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre adorned with diamonds, an archiepiscopal cross, a magnificent crozier, all the pontifical vestments stolen a month before from the treasury of Notre-Dame d’Embrun. In the chest, there was a piece of paper on which were written these words: Tie to Monseigneur Bienvenu. “When I said that things would be arranged!” said the bishop. Then he added with a smile: “To those who are content with a priest’s surplice, God sends an archbishop’s cope.” “My lord,” murmured the priest, nodding his head with a smile, “God, or the devil.” The bishop looked fixedly at the priest and continued with authority: “God!” When he returned to Chastelar, and all along the road, people came to look at him out of curiosity. He found Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire waiting for him at the presbytery of Chastelar , and he said to his sister: “Well, was I right? The poor priest went to these poor mountaineers empty-handed, he comes back with his hands full. I left taking only my trust in God; I am bringing back the treasure of a cathedral.” In the evening, before going to bed, he said again: “Let us never fear thieves or murderers. These are the dangers from without, the small dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices, those are the thieves; vices, those are the murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of what threatens our soul.” Then turning to his sister: “My sister, on the part of the priest, never any precaution against our neighbor. What our neighbor does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to praying to God when we believe that danger is coming upon us. Let us pray to him, not for ourselves, but so that our brother does not fall into error on our occasion.” Besides, events were rare in his life. We recount those that we know; but ordinarily he spent his life always doing the same things at the same times. A month of his year resembled an hour of his day. As for what became of the treasure of Embrun Cathedral, we would be embarrassed to ask ourselves that. These were very fine things, and very tempting, and very good to steal for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen, they were already stolen, moreover. Half the adventure was accomplished; all that remained was to change the direction of the theft, and to make it take a little way towards the poor. We affirm nothing else on this subject. Only a rather obscure note was found in the bishop’s papers which perhaps relates to this affair, and which is worded as follows: The question is whether it should return to the cathedral or to the hospital. Chapter 8. Philosophy after drinking. The senator mentioned above was a learned man who had made his way with a rectitude inattentive to all those encounters which create obstacles and which are called conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty; he had marched straight to his goal and without flinching once in the line of his advancement and his interest. He was a former prosecutor, softened by success, not a bad man at all, rendering all the little services he could to his sons, his sons-in-law, his parents, even to friends; having wisely taken from life the good sides, the good opportunities, the good windfalls. The rest seemed rather stupid to him. He was witty, and just learned enough to believe himself a disciple of Epicurus while perhaps being only a product of Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed willingly, and agreeably, at the infinite and eternal things, and the nonsense of the good bishop. He laughed at times, with amiable authority, in front of M. Myriel himself, who was listening. At some semi-official ceremony, the Count*** (this senator) and M. Myriel had to dine at the prefect’s. At dessert, the senator, a little brightened, though still dignified, cried: “By Jove, Bishop, let’s talk. A senator and a bishop hardly look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I’m going to make a confession to you. I have my philosophy. ” “And you’re right,” replied the bishop. “As one does one’s philosophy, one goes to bed. You are on the purple bed, Senator. ” The senator, encouraged, continued: “Let’s be good children. ” “Good devils even,” said the bishop. “I declare to you,” resumed the senator, “that the Marquis d’Argens, Pyrrho, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are not scoundrels. I have all my philosophers in my library gilt-edged. ” “Like yourself, Count,” interrupted the bishop. The senator continued: “I hate Diderot; he is an ideologue, a declaimer and a revolutionary, at heart a believer in God, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire mocked Needham, and he was wrong; for Needham’s eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste makes up for the fiat lux. Suppose the drop larger and the spoonful larger, you have the world. Man, It’s the eel. So what good is the Eternal Father? Bishop, the Jehovah hypothesis tires me. It’s only good for producing thin people who think hollowly. Down with this great Whole that worries me! Long live Zero who leaves me alone! Between you and me, and to get it off my chest, and to confess to my pastor as is proper, I admit that I have common sense. I’m not crazy about your Jesus who preaches renunciation and sacrifice at every turn. A miser’s advice to beggars . Renunciation! Why? Sacrifice! To what? I don’t see that a wolf would sacrifice itself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us therefore remain in nature. We are at the summit; let us have the superior philosophy. What’s the use of being at the top, if we can’t see beyond the end of others’ noses? Let us live happily. Life is everything. That man has another future, elsewhere, up there, over there, somewhere, I don’t believe a single word of it. Ah! I am recommended sacrifice and renunciation, I must be careful in everything I do, I must rack my brains over good and evil, just and unjust, fas and nefas . Why? Because I will have to account for my actions. When? After my death. What a good dream! After my death, a very fine one that will pinch me. So have a shadowy hand grasp a handful of ashes. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiates and who have lifted the skirt of Isis: there is neither good nor evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek reality. Let us dig completely. Let us go to the bottom, for heaven’s sake! We must smell the truth, dig underground, and grasp it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you become strong, and you laugh. I’m square to the core, me. Bishop, man’s immortality is a rain-listener. Oh! the charming promise! Trust it. The good note that Adam has! We are souls, we will be angels, we will have blue wings on our shoulder blades. Help me then, isn’t it Tertullian who says that the blessed will go from one star to another? So be it. We will be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, we will see God. Ta ta ta. All these paradises are nonsense . God is a monstrous bell. I wouldn’t say that in the Moniteur, by Jove! but I whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. Sacrificing the earth to paradise is to let go of the prey for the shadow. To be duped by infinity! Not so stupid. I am nothing. My name is Count Nothing, senator. Was I before my birth? No. Will I be after my death? No. What am I? A bit of dust aggregated by an organism. What do I have to do on this earth? I have a choice. To suffer or to enjoy. Where will suffering lead me? To nothingness. But I will have suffered. Where will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness. But I will have enjoyed. My choice is made. I must be eating or eaten. I eat. Better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go as I push you, the gravedigger is there, the Pantheon for us others, everything falls into the great hole. The end. Finished. Total liquidation. This is the place of fainting. Death is dead, believe me. That there is someone there who has something to say to me, I laugh to think of it. Invention of nurses. Bogey for children, Jehovah for men. No, our tomorrow is night. Behind the tomb, there are only equal nothings. You were Sardanapalus, you were Vincent de Paul, it makes the same nothing. That is the truth. So live, above all. Use your self while you have it. Truly, I tell you, Bishop, I have my philosophy, and I have my philosophers. I do not let myself be harangued by nonsense. After that, those who are below, the barefoot, the low-earners, the wretched, must have something. They are given legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars to swallow. They chew it. They put it on their dry bread. He who has nothing has the good Lord. That is the least. I Don’t stand in the way, but I’ll keep Monsieur Naigeon to myself. The good Lord is good to the people. The bishop clapped his hands. “That’s talk!” he cried. “What an excellent thing, and truly marvelous, this materialism is! Not everyone can have it. Ah! when you have it, you are no longer fooled; you don’t stupidly allow yourself to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like Stephen, nor burned alive like Joan of Arc. Those who have succeeded in acquiring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything, without worry, the positions, the sinecures, the dignities, the power well or ill acquired, the lucrative recantations, the useful betrayals, the delicious capitulations of conscience, and that they will enter the grave, their digestion complete. How pleasant! I’m not saying this for you, Mr. Senator.” However, it is impossible for me not to congratulate you. You other great lords, you have, you say, a philosophy of your own and for yourselves, exquisite, refined, accessible only to the rich, good in every sauce, admirably seasoning the pleasures of life. This philosophy is taken from the depths and unearthed by special researchers. But you are good princes, and you do not find it wrong that belief in the good Lord is the philosophy of the people, much as the goose with chestnuts is the turkey with truffles of the poor. Chapter 9. The brother told by the sister. To give an idea of the inner housekeeping of the Bishop of Digne and of the way in which these two saintly girls subordinated their actions, their thoughts, even their instincts as easily frightened women, to the habits and intentions of the Bishop, without him even having to take the trouble to express them, we can do no better than to transcribe here a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame la Vicomtesse de Boischevron, her childhood friend. This letter is in our hands. Digne, December 16, 18…. My good Madam, not a day goes by without us talking about you. It is quite our custom, but there is one more reason. Imagine that while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madame Magloire made some discoveries; now our two rooms, lined with old whitewashed paper, would not be out of place in a castle like yours. Madame Magloire tore up all the paper. There were things underneath. My living room, which has no furniture, and which we use to hang out the washing after the wash, is fifteen feet high, eighteen squares wide, with a ceiling painted in the old days with gilding, and joists like at your house. It was covered with canvas, when it was the hospital. Finally, woodwork from our grandmothers’ time. But it’s my room that you must see. Madame Magloire discovered, under at least ten pieces of paper stuck on it, paintings, though not good, that can be endured. It’s Telemachus knighted by Minerva, it’s him still in the gardens. The name escapes me. Finally, where the Roman ladies used to go for a single night. What can I tell you? I have Romans, Roman women (here an illegible word), and the whole suite. Madame Magloire has cleaned all that up, and this summer she’s going to repair a few small damages, bring it all back, and my room will be a real museum. She also found in a corner of the attic two wooden consoles, old style. They asked for two six-pound crowns to regild them, but it would be much better to give them to the poor; besides, they are very ugly, and I would prefer a round mahogany table. I am always very happy. My brother is so kind. He gives everything he has to the poor and the sick. We are very hard up. The country is harsh in winter, and we must do something for those who lack. We are more or less heated and lit. You see that these are great blessings. My brother has his own habits. When he talks, he says that’s how a bishop should be. Just imagine, the door of the house is never closed. Anyone who wants to can come in, and you’re immediately at my brother’s house. He fears nothing, even at night. That’s his bravery, as he says. He doesn’t want me to fear for him, nor Madame Magloire. He exposes himself to all dangers, and he doesn’t even want us to seem to notice. You have to know how to understand him. He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He’s not afraid of the night, of suspicious roads, or of encounters. Last year, he went all alone to a country of thieves. He didn’t want to take us with him. He stayed away for two weeks. When he came back, he had nothing, they thought he was dead, and he was well, and he said: “That’s how I was robbed!” And he opened a trunk full of all the jewels from Embrun Cathedral, which the thieves had given him. That time, on my way back, as I had gone to meet him two leagues away with some of his other friends, I couldn’t help but scold him a little, taking care to speak only while the carriage was making noise, so that no one else could hear. At first, I said to myself: there are no dangers that can stop him, he’s terrible. Now I’ve gotten used to it. I signal to Madame Magloire so that she doesn’t upset him. He risks himself as he pleases. I take Madame Magloire, go back to my room, pray for him, and fall asleep. I am calm, because I know very well that if anything happened to him, it would be the end of me. I would go to God with my brother and my bishop. Madame Magloire had more trouble than I did getting used to what she called his imprudence. But now the habit is formed. We both pray , we are afraid together, and we fall asleep. The devil could enter the house and we would let him do it. After all, what do we fear in this house? There is always someone with us, who is the strongest. The devil can pass through it, but the good Lord lives there. That is enough for me. My brother does not even need to say a word to me now. I understand him without him speaking, and we abandon ourselves to Providence. That is how one should be with a man who has something great in his mind. I questioned my brother for the information you are asking me about Faux’s family. You know how he knows everything and how he has memories, because he is always a very good royalist. It is truly a very old Norman family from the generality of Caen. Five hundred years ago, there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, including a lord of Rochefort. The last was Guy-Étienne-Alexandre, and was a camp master, and something in the light cavalry of Brittany. His daughter Marie-Louise married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards, and lieutenant general of the armies. We write Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq. Good madam, recommend us to the prayers of your holy relative, Mr. Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she did well not to take the short moments she spends with you to write to me. She is well, works according to your wishes, and still loves me. That’s all I want. His memory through you has reached me. I am happy about it. My health is not too bad, and yet I am losing more weight every day. Farewell, I miss the paper and force me to leave you. A thousand good things. Baptistine. PS Your sister-in-law is still here with her young family. Your great-nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be five years old! Yesterday he saw a horse go by that had knee pads put on it, and he said: “What’s wrong with his knees?” He is so nice, this child! His little brother drags an old broom around the apartment like a car, and says: “Huh!” As we see from this letter, these two women knew how to adapt to the bishop’s ways with that particular genius of the woman who understands man better than man understands himself. The Bishop of Digne, under that gentle and candid air that never failed, sometimes did great, bold, and magnificent things, without even seeming to suspect it. They trembled, but they let him do it. Sometimes Madame Magloire tried a remonstrance before; never during or after. He was never disturbed, even by a sign, in an action that had begun. At certain moments, without him needing to say so, when he was perhaps not aware of it himself, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him passively, and if disappearing meant obeying, they disappeared. They knew, with admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain concerns can be annoying. Also, even believing him to be in danger, they understood, I do not say his thoughts, but his nature, to the point of no longer watching over him. They entrusted him to God. Besides, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that the end of her brother would be hers. Madame Magloire did not say so, but she knew it. Chapter 10. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light. At a time a little later than the date of the letter quoted in the preceding pages, he did something, according to the whole town, even riskier than his walk through the bandit mountains. There was near Digne, in the countryside, a man who lived alone. This man, let us say the dirty word at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G. The Convention member G. was spoken of in the small world of Digne with a sort of horror. A Convention member, can you imagine that? They existed when people addressed each other informally and called themselves citizens. This man was almost a monster. He hadn’t voted for the king’s death, but almost. He was a quasi-regicide. He had been terrible. How could it be that, upon the return of the legitimate princes, this man hadn’t been brought before a provost court? They wouldn’t have cut off his head, if you like, clemency is needed, fine; but a good banishment for life. An example at last! etc., etc. He was an atheist, moreover, like all those people.–Goose gossip about the vulture. Was G., after all, a vulture? Yes, if one judged by the fierceness in his solitude. Not having voted for the king’s death, he had not been included in the decrees of exile and had been able to remain in France. He lived three-quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some lost corner of a very wild valley. He had there, it was said, a kind of field, a hole, a lair. No neighbors; not even passers-by. Since he had lived in this valley, the path leading to it had disappeared under the grass. People spoke of this place as the executioner’s house. Yet the bishop was thinking, and from time to time he looked at the horizon at the place where a clump of trees marked the valley of the old member of the Convention, and he said: “There is a soul there who is alone.” And deep in his thoughts he added: I owe my visit to her. But, let us admit it, this idea, at first sight natural, appeared to him, after a moment of reflection, as strange and impossible, and almost repulsive. For, deep down, he shared the general impression, and the Convention member inspired in him, without his clearly realizing it, that feeling which is like the frontier of hatred and which the word estrangement expresses so well. However, should the itch of the sheep make the shepherd retreat? No. But what a sheep! The good bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he went that way, then he came back. One day finally the rumor spread through the town that a sort of young shepherd who served the Convention member G. in his den had come to look for a doctor; that the old scoundrel was dying, that paralysis was overtaking him, and that he would not last the night. “Thank God!” added some. The bishop took his staff, put on his overcoat because his cassock was a little too worn, as we have said, and also because of the evening wind that would soon blow, and left. The sun was setting and almost touching the horizon when the bishop arrived at the excommunicated place. He recognized with a certain fluttering of his heart that he was near the den. He stepped over a ditch, crossed a hedge, raised a stile, entered a dilapidated courtyard, took a few steps rather boldly, and suddenly, at the bottom of the wasteland, behind a tall bush, he saw the cave. It was a very low, poor hut, small and clean, with a trellis nailed to the facade. In front of the door, in an old chair on wheels, a peasant’s armchair, there was a man with white hair who was smiling at the sun. Near the seated old man stood a young boy, the little shepherd. He was offering the old man a bowl of milk. While the bishop looked on, the old man raised his voice: “Thank you,” he said, “I have no more need.” And his smile left the sun to rest on the child. The bishop came forward. At the noise he made as he walked, the old man who was sitting turned his head, and his face expressed all the surprise one can have after a long life. “Since I have been here,” he said, “this is the first time anyone has entered my house. Who are you, sir? ” The bishop replied: “My name is Bienvenu Myriel. ” “Bienvenu Myriel! I have heard that name mentioned. Is it you that the people call Monseigneur Bienvenu? ” “It is I.” The old man continued with a half-smile: “In that case, you are my bishop? ” “A little. ” “Come in, sir.” The member of the Convention extended his hand to the bishop, but the bishop did not take it . The bishop merely said: “I am satisfied to see that I was deceived. You certainly do not seem ill to me . ” “Sir,” replied the old man, “I am going to recover.” He paused and said: “I shall die in three hours.” Then he continued: “I’m a bit of a doctor; I know how the last hour comes. Yesterday, my feet were only cold; today, the cold has reached my knees; now I feel it rising to my waist; when it reaches my heart, I’ll stop. The sun is beautiful, isn’t it ? I rolled myself outside to take a last look at things, you can talk to me, it doesn’t tire me out. You’re right to come and look at a man who is going to die. It’s good that this moment has witnesses. One has manias; I would have liked to go until dawn. But I know that I have barely three hours. It will be dark. In fact, what does it matter! Finishing is a simple matter. One doesn’t need morning for that. So be it. I’ll die under the stars.” The old man turned to the shepherd. “You, go to bed. You stayed up the other night. You’re tired.” The child returned to the hut. The old man followed him with his eyes and added as if speaking to himself: “While he sleeps, I will die. The two sleeps can be good neighbors. ” The bishop was not moved as it seems he might have been. He did not believe he felt God in this way of dying. Let us say everything, for the little contradictions of great hearts must be indicated like the rest, he who, on the occasion, laughed so willingly at His Grandeur, was somewhat shocked not to be called monsignor, and he was almost tempted to reply: citizen. A surly familiarity came over him , quite common to doctors and priests, but not usual to him. This man, after all, this member of the Convention, this representative of the people, had been a powerful man of the earth; for the first time in his life perhaps, the bishop felt himself in a severe mood. The member of the Convention, however, regarded him with a modest cordiality, in which one could have discerned the humility that is appropriate when one is so close to being reduced to dust. The bishop, for his part, although he ordinarily guarded himself against curiosity, which, according to him, was contiguous to offense, could not help examining the member of the Convention with an attention which, not having its source in sympathy, would probably have been reproached to him by his conscience with regard to any other man. A member of the Convention gave him the impression of being an outlaw, even an outlaw of charity. G., calm, his chest almost erect, his voice vibrant, was one of those tall octogenarians who astonish the physiologist. The Revolution had many of these proportionate men at the time. One felt in this old man a man on trial. So close to his end, he had retained all the gestures of health. There was in his clear glance, in his firm accent, in his robust movement of the shoulders, enough to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back and thought he had come to the wrong door. G. seemed to be dying because he wanted to. There was freedom in his agony. Only his legs were motionless. The darkness held him by them. His feet were dead and cold, and his head lived with all the power of life and appeared in full light. G., at this grave moment, resembled that king in the oriental tale, flesh above, marble below. A stone was there. The bishop sat down on it. The introduction was ex abrupto. “I congratulate you,” he said in the tone of one who reprimands. “You still have not voted for the death of the king.” The member of the Convention did not seem to notice the bitter implication hidden in the word: always. He replied. All smiles had disappeared from his face. “Don’t congratulate me too much, sir; I voted for the end of the tyrant.” It was the austere tone in the presence of the severe tone. “What do you mean?” the bishop continued. “I mean that man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the end of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority taken from falsehood, while science is authority taken from truth. Man should be governed only by science. “And conscience,” added the bishop. “It’s the same thing. Conscience is the amount of innate knowledge we have within us. ” Monseigneur Bienvenu listened, a little astonished, to this language, which was very new to him. The member of the Convention continued: “As for Louis XVI, I said no. I don’t believe I have the right to kill a man; but I feel it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted for the end of the tyrant. That is to say, the end of prostitution for women, the end of slavery for men, the end of the night for children. By voting for the republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn! I helped bring about the fall of prejudices and errors. The collapse of errors and prejudices brings light.” We have brought down the old world, we others, and the old world, a vessel of misery, by spilling over the human race, has become an urn of joy. “Mixed joy,” said the bishop. “You could say troubled joy, and today, after this fatal return of the past that we call 1814, vanished joy. Alas, the work has been incomplete, I agree; we have demolished the old regime in fact, we have not been able to entirely suppress it in ideas. Destroying abuses is not enough; morals must be modified. The mill there is more, the wind is still there. –You have demolished. Demolition can be useful; but I distrust a demolition complicated by anger. –The law has its anger, Bishop, and the anger of the law is an element of progress. No matter, and whatever one may say, the French Revolution is the most powerful step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, yes; but sublime. It has cleared away all the social unknowns. It has softened minds; it has calmed, soothed, enlightened; it has made waves of civilization flow over the earth. It was good. The French Revolution is the coronation of humanity. The bishop could not help murmuring: –Yes? 93! The member of the Convention rose up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and, as much as a dying man can exclaim, he cried: –Ah! Here you are! 93! I was waiting for that word. A cloud formed for fifteen hundred years. After fifteen centuries, it burst. You bring the case to trial by thunder. The bishop felt, without perhaps admitting it to himself, that something within him had been affected. Yet he put on a brave face. He replied: “The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name of pity, which is nothing other than a higher justice. A thunderclap must not be mistaken.” And he added, looking fixedly at the member of the Convention. “Louis XVII? ” The member of the Convention stretched out his hand and seized the bishop’s arm: “Louis XVII! Come now, for whom are you weeping? Is it for the innocent child? Then so be it. I weep with you. Is it for the royal child? I ask to reflect.” For me, Cartouche’s brother, an innocent child, hanged under the armpits in Place de Grève until death , for the sole crime of having been Cartouche’s brother, is no less painful than Louis XV’s grandson, an innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple for the sole crime of having been Louis XV’s grandson. “Sir,” said the bishop, “I do not like these connections of names.” “Cartouche? Louis XV? For which of the two are you claiming?” There was a moment of silence. The bishop almost regretted having come, and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken. The member of the Convention continued: “Ah! Monsieur le Priest, you do not like the crudities of truth. Christ did. He took a rod and dusted the temple. His whip full of lightning was a harsh truth-teller.” When he cried: Sinite parvulos …, he did not distinguish between little children. He would not have hesitated to compare the Dauphin of Barabbas with the Dauphin of Herod. Sir, innocence is its own crown. Innocence has no use for being high. It is as august in rags as it is in fleur-de-lis. “That is true,” said the bishop in a low voice. “I insist,” continued Convention member G. “You named me Louis XVII. Let us understand each other. Do we weep for all the innocents, for all the martyrs, for all the children, for those below as well as for those above ? I am one of them. But then, I told you, we must go back further than 93, and it is before Louis XVII that we must begin our tears. I will weep for the children of kings with you, provided that you weep with me for the little ones of the people.” “I weep for everyone,” said the bishop. “Equally!” cried G., “and if the balance must tip, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer.” There was another silence. It was the member of the Convention who broke it. He raised himself on one elbow, took a little of his cheek between his thumb and his bent forefinger , as one does mechanically when questioning and judging, and challenged the bishop with a look full of all the energies of agony. It was almost an explosion. “Yes, sir, the people have been suffering for a long time. And then, look, that’s not all, what are you coming to question me and talk to me about?” Louis XVII? I don’t know you. Since I’ve been in this country, I’ve lived in this enclosure, alone, never setting foot outside, no one comes except this child who helps me. Your name has, it’s true, reached me in a confused way, and, I must say, not very badly pronounced; but that means nothing; clever people have so many ways of making this good fellow of the people believe it. By the way, I didn’t hear the noise of your carriage, you must have left it behind the copse, over there, at the fork in the road. I don’t know you, I tell you. You told me you were the bishop, but that doesn’t tell me anything about your legal person. In short, I repeat my question to you. Who are you? You are a bishop, that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded, armorial, rented men, who have large prebends—the bishopric of Digne, fifteen thousand francs fixed, ten thousand francs casual, total, twenty-five thousand francs—, who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good food, who eat moorhens on Fridays, who strut around, footmen in front, footmen behind, in a gala sedan, and who have palaces, and who drive a carriage in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate; incomes, palaces, horses, servants, good food, all the sensualities of life, you have that like the others, and like the others you enjoy it, that’s good, but that says too much or not enough; it doesn’t enlighten me on your intrinsic and essential value, you who come with the probable pretension of bringing me wisdom. Who am I speaking to? Who are you? The bishop bowed his head and replied: “Vermis sum. ” “An earthworm in a carriage!” grumbled the member of the Convention. It was the Convention’s turn to be haughty, and the bishop’s to be humble. The bishop continued gently. “Sir, so be it. But explain to me how my carriage, which is there two steps behind the trees, how my good table and the moorhens I eat on Fridays, how my twenty-five thousand livres income, how my palace and my footmen prove that pity is not a virtue, that clemency is not a duty, and that 93 has not been inexorable. ” The member of the Convention passed his hand over his forehead as if to brush away a cloud. “Before answering you,” he said, “I beg you to forgive me. I have just done something wrong, sir. You are in my house, you are my guest.” I owe you courtesy. You are discussing my ideas; it is fitting that I confine myself to combating your reasoning. Your wealth and your enjoyments are advantages I have over you in the debate, but it is in good taste not to use them. I promise not to use them again. “Thank you,” said the bishop. G. continued: “Let us return to the explanation you asked me for. Where were we? What were you telling me? That ’93 was inexorable? ” “Inexorable, yes,” said the bishop. “What do you think of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine? “What do you think of Bossuet singing the Te Deum on the dragonnades?” The answer was harsh, but it went to the point with the rigidity of a steel point. The bishop shuddered; no retort came to him, but he was offended by this way of naming Bossuet. The best minds have their fetishes, and sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the lack of respect for logic. The member of the Convention was beginning to gasp; the asthma of agony, which mingles with the last breaths, interrupted his voice; however, he still had a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He continued: –Let us say a few more words here and there, I will. Apart from the revolution which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, 93, alas! is a reply. You find it inexorable, but the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tinville is a beggar, but what is your opinion on Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is awful, but Saulx-Tavannes, please? Father Duchêne is ferocious, but what epithet will you grant me for Father Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tête is a monster, but less than the Marquis de Louvois. Sir, sir, I pity Marie-Antoinette, archduchess and queen, but I also pity that poor Huguenot woman who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, breastfeeding her child, was tied, naked to the waist, to a post, the child held at a distance; the breast swelled with milk and the heart with anguish. The little one, starving and pale, saw this breast, died and cried out, and the executioner said to the woman, mother and nurse: Abjure! giving her the choice between the death of her child and the death of her conscience. What do you say to this Tantalus torture accommodated to a mother? Sir, remember this well: the French Revolution had its reasons. Its anger will be absolved by the future. Its result is a better world. From its most terrible blows, it issues a caress for the human race. I’ll cut it short. I’ll stop, I’m playing too easy. Besides, I’m dying. And, ceasing to look at the bishop, the member of the Convention finished his thought in these few calm words: “Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, we recognize this: that the human race has been bullied, but that it has marched on. ” The member of the Convention did not suspect that he had just successively carried away, one after the other, all the bishop’s inner entrenchments. There remained one, however, and from this entrenchment, the supreme resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s resistance, came these words in which almost all the harshness of the beginning reappeared: “Progress must believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servant. He who is an atheist is a bad leader of the human race. ” The old representative of the people did not reply. He trembled. He looked at the sky, and a tear slowly sprouted in that look. When the eyelid was full, the tear rolled down his livid cheek, and he said almost stammering, low and speaking to himself, his eye lost in the depths: “O you! O ideal! You alone exist!” The bishop had a sort of inexpressible commotion. After a silence, the old man raised a finger to the sky, and said: “The infinite is. It is there. If the infinite had no self, the self would be its limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, he would not be. But he is. Therefore he has a self. This self of the infinite is God. The dying man had spoken these last words in a loud voice and with the trembling of ecstasy, as if he were seeing someone. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived in a minute the few hours that remained to him. What he had just said had brought him closer to the one who is in death. The supreme moment was arriving. The bishop understood, the moment was pressing, it was as a priest that he had come; from extreme coldness, he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion ; he looked at those closed eyes, he took that old, wrinkled and icy hand, and leaned towards the dying man: “This hour is God’s. Don’t you think it would be regrettable if we had met in vain? ” The member of the Convention reopened his eyes. A gravity in which there was shadow was imprinted on his face. “Monsieur l’évêque,” he said, with a slowness which perhaps came more from the dignity of the soul than from the failure of the forces, “I have spent my life in meditation, study and contemplation. I was sixty years old when my country called me, and ordered me to meddle in its affairs. I obeyed. There were abuses, I fought them; there were tyrannies, I destroyed them; there were rights and principles, I proclaimed and confessed them. The territory was invaded, I defended it; France was threatened, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I was one of the masters of the State, the cellars of the Treasury were cluttered with species to the point that they were forced to shore up the walls, ready to crack under the weight of gold and silver, I dined in the rue de l’Arbre-Sec at twenty-two sous per head. I helped the oppressed, I relieved the suffering. I tore the altar cloth, it is true; but it was to heal the wounds of the fatherland. I have always supported the forward march of the human race towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity. I have, on occasion, protected my own adversaries, you others. And there is at Peteghem in Flanders, on the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte-Claire in Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I did my duty according to my strength, and the good I could. After which I was hunted, hounded, pursued, persecuted, blackened, mocked, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years now, with my white hair, I feel that many people believe they have the right to scorn me; I have the face of the damned to the poor ignorant crowd , and I accept, hating no one, the isolation of hatred . Now I am eighty-six years old; I am going to die. What do you come to ask of me? “Your blessing,” said the bishop. And he knelt. When the bishop raised his head, the face of the member of the Convention had become august. He had just expired. The bishop returned home deeply absorbed in who knows what thoughts. He spent the whole night in prayer. The next day, some brave onlookers tried to talk to him about the Convention member G.; he limited himself to pointing to the sky. From that moment on, he redoubled his tenderness and fraternity for the little ones and the suffering. Any allusion to that old scoundrel G. made him fall into a singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of this mind before his own and the reflection of this great conscience on his own did not play a part in his approach to perfection. This pastoral visit was naturally an occasion for buzzing among the small local cliques: “Was the bedside of such a dying man the place of a bishop? There was obviously no conversion to be expected. All these revolutionaries are relapsed. So why go there? What was he looking at there?” So he must have been very curious about a devilish rage . One day, a dowager, of the impertinent variety who fancies herself witty, addressed this sally to him: “Monseigneur, they ask when Your Highness will have the red cap. ” “Oh! oh! that’s a big color,” replied the bishop. “Fortunately, those who despise it in a cap venerate it in a hat.” Chapter 11. A Restriction. One would be very likely to be mistaken if one concluded from this that Monseigneur Bienvenu was a philosophical bishop or a patriotic priest. His meeting, what one could almost call his conjunction with the member of the Convention, G., left him with a sort of astonishment that made him even more gentle. That’s all. Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was nothing less than a politician, this is perhaps the place to indicate, very briefly, what his attitude was in the events of the time, assuming that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever thought of having an attitude. Let us go back a few years. Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the Emperor had made him Baron of the Empire, at the same time as several other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as we know, on the night of July 5-6, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened in Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame and assembled for the first time on June 15, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was among the ninety-five bishops who attended. But he only attended one session and three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so close to nature, in rusticity and destitution, it seems that he brought ideas among these eminent people that changed the temperature of the assembly. He quickly returned to Digne. When he was questioned about this quick return, he replied: “I was bothering them. The outside air came to them through me. I gave them the effect of an open door.” Another time he said: “What do you want? These gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.” The fact is that he had displeased them. Among other strange things, he supposedly said one evening when he was at the home of one of his most qualified colleagues: “The beautiful clocks! The beautiful carpets! The beautiful liveries! It must be very annoying! Oh! how I would hate to have all that superfluity to shout in my ears constantly: There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!” Let us say in passing, hatred of luxury would not be an intelligent hatred . This hatred would imply hatred of the arts. However, among church people, outside of representation and ceremonies, luxury is a wrong. It seems to reveal habits that are not really charitable. An opulent priest is a contradiction in terms. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one touch constantly, night and day, all the distresses, all the misfortunes, all the indigences, without having on oneself a little of this holy misery, like the dust of work? Can one imagine a man who is near a brazier, and who is not warm? Can one imagine a worker who works constantly at a furnace, and who has neither a burnt hair, nor a blackened nail, nor a drop of sweat, nor a grain of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty. This was doubtless what the Bishop of Digne thought. It should not be believed, moreover, that he shared on certain delicate points what we would call the ideas of the century. He mixed little with the theological quarrels of the moment and remained silent on questions where the Church and the State are compromised; but if he had been pressed hard, it seems that he would have been found more ultramontane than Gallican. Since we are painting a portrait and do not want to hide anything, we are forced to add that he was icy towards the declining Napoleon. From 1813 onwards, he adhered to or applauded all hostile demonstrations. He refused to see him when he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and abstained from ordering public prayers for the emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days. Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers: one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote quite often to both of them. He held a grudge against the first for some time, because, having a command in Provence, at the time of the landing at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the emperor like someone who wanted to let him escape. His correspondence remained more affectionate for the other brother, the former prefect, a brave and worthy man who lived retired in Paris, rue Cassette. Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his moment of partisan spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment crossed this gentle and great mind occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have deserved not to have political opinions. Let no one misunderstand our thoughts, we do not confuse what we call political opinions with the great aspiration for progress, with the sublime patriotic, democratic and human faith, which, in our day, must be the very foundation of all generous intelligence. Without delving into questions that only indirectly touch on the subject of this book, we simply say this: It would have been beautiful if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a royalist and if his gaze had not been diverted for a single instant from this serene contemplation where one sees distinctly radiating, above the stormy coming and going of human affairs, these three pure lights, Truth, Justice, Charity. While agreeing that it was not for a political function that God had created Monseigneur Bienvenu, we would have understood and admired the protest in the name of law and liberty, the proud opposition, the perilous and just resistance to all-powerful Napoleon. But what pleases us in relation to those who rise pleases us less in relation to those who fall. We only love combat as long as there is danger; and, in any case, the combatants of the first hour alone have the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser during prosperity must remain silent in the face of collapse. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate avenger of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it do its thing . 1812 is beginning to disarm us. In 1813, the cowardly breaking of silence by this taciturn legislative body emboldened by catastrophes had only cause for indignation, and it was wrong to applaud; in 1814, in the face of these treasonous marshals, in the face of this senate passing from one mire to another, insulting after having deified, in the face of this idolatry giving way and spitting on the idol, it was a duty to turn one’s head away; in 1815, as the supreme disasters were in the air, as France shuddered at their sinister approach, as one could vaguely distinguish Waterloo open before Napoleon, the painful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable about it, and, all reservations made about the despot, a heart like the Bishop of Digne should perhaps not have failed to recognize what was august and touching, on the edge of the abyss, the close embrace of a great nation and a great man. Apart from that, he was and he was, in all things, just, true, equitable, intelligent, humble and dignified; benevolent, and kind, which is another benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. Even, it must be said, in this political opinion for which we have just reproached him and which we are disposed to judge almost severely, he was tolerant and easy, perhaps more so than we who speak here. The porter of the town house had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a legionnaire of Austerlitz, Bonapartist as the eagle. He occasionally escaped from this poor devil those ill-considered words which the law of the time qualified as seditious remarks. Since the imperial profile had disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never dressed in the orderly, as he said, so as not to be forced to wear his cross. He himself had devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the cross that Napoleon had given him; it made a hole, and he had not wanted to put anything in its place. I would rather die, he said, than wear the three toads on my heart! He readily mocked Louis XVIII aloud. Old gouty man in English gaiters! he said, let him go to Prussia with his salsify! Happy to unite in the same imprecation the two things he hated most, Prussia and England. He did so much that he lost his job. There he was, left without bread on the pavement with his wife and children. The bishop summoned him, scolded him gently, and appointed him Swiss of the cathedral. M. Myriel was the true pastor in the diocese, the friend of all. In nine years, by dint of holy deeds and gentle manners, Monseigneur Bienvenu had filled the town of Digne with a sort of tender and filial veneration. His very conduct toward Napoleon had been accepted and, as it were, tacitly forgiven by the people, a good, weak flock, who adored their emperor, but who loved their bishop. Chapter 12. Solitude of Monsignor Bienvenu. There is almost always around a bishop a squad of minor abbots, as around a general a flock of young officers. This is what that charming Saint Francis de Sales somewhere calls the “young priests.” Every career has its aspirants who form a procession for the newcomers. No power that does not have its entourage; no fortune that does not have its court. Those seeking the future swirl around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff. Every bishop of any influence has near him his patrol of cherubic seminarians, who make the rounds and maintain good order in the episcopal palace, and who stand guard around the smiling monsignor. To be acceptable to a bishop is a step in the right direction for a subdeacon. One must make one’s way; the apostolate does not disdain the canonry. Just as there are big shots elsewhere, there are big mitres in the church. They are the bishops well-regarded, rich, well-paid, skillful, accepted by the world, knowing how to pray, no doubt, but also knowing how to solicit, unscrupulous about having an entire diocese act as an antechamber in their person, links between the sacristy and diplomacy, more abbots than priests, more prelates than bishops. Happy is he who approaches them! People of credit that they are, they rain down around them, on the eager and the favored, and on all this youth who knows how to please, fat parishes, prebends, archdeaconries, chaplaincies and cathedral functions, while waiting for episcopal dignities. By advancing themselves, they advance their satellites; it’s a whole solar system in motion. Their radiance crimson their retinue. Their prosperity crumbles into small promotions. Larger diocese for the boss, bigger cure for the favorite. And then Rome is there. A bishop who knows how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, takes you as a conclavist, you enter the rota, you have the pallium, there you are an auditor, there you are a chamberlain, there you are a monsignor, and from Grandeur to Imminence there is only one step, and between Imminence and Sainthood there is only the smoke of a ballot. Any skullcap can dream of the tiara. The priest is these days the only man who can regularly become king; and what a king! the supreme king. Also, what a hotbed of aspirations a seminary is! How many blushing choirboys, how many young abbots have Perrette’s milk jug on their heads! How easily ambition calls itself a vocation, who knows? In good faith perhaps, and deceiving itself, blissful as it is! Monsignor Bienvenu, humble, poor, peculiar, was not counted among the big miters. This was evident from the complete absence of young priests around him. It was seen that in Paris he had not taken. No future dreamed of grafting itself onto this solitary old man. No budding ambition was foolish enough to grow green in his shadow. His canons and his vicars-general were good old men, a bit like him, walled up like him in this diocese with no way out on the cardinalate, and who resembled their bishop, with this difference: they were finished, and he was finished. The impossibility of growing near Monsignor Bienvenu was so clearly felt that, as soon as they left the seminary, the young people ordained by him had themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or Auch, and left very quickly. For, after all, we repeat, one wants to be pushed. A saint who lives in an excess of self-denial is a dangerous neighbor; he could well communicate to you by contagion an incurable poverty, ankylosis of the joints useful for advancement, and, in short, more of renunciation than you want; and one flees this mangy virtue. Hence the isolation of Monsignor Bienvenu. We live in a dark society. To succeed, that is the teaching that falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. Incidentally, success is a rather hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the crowd, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, this Menechmus of talent, has a dupe: history. Only Juvenal and Tacitus grumble about it. Nowadays, a more or less official philosophy has entered into domestic service with him, wears the livery of success, and serves in his antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity presupposes Capacity. Win the lottery, there you are, a clever man. Whoever triumphs is venerated. Be born with a hairdo, that’s all there is to it. Be lucky, you’ll have the rest; be happy, people will think you’re great. Apart from the five or six immense exceptions that make a century brilliant, contemporary admiration is little more than myopia. Gilding is gold. Being the first comer doesn’t hurt anything, provided one is the parvenu. The vulgar is an old Narcissus who adores himself and applauds the vulgar. This enormous faculty by which one is Moses, Aeschylus, Dante, Michelangelo or Napoleon, the multitude awards it immediately and by acclamation to anyone who achieves his goal in anything. Let a notary be transformed into a deputy, let a false Corneille play Tiridates, let a eunuch succeed in possessing a harem, let a military Prud’homme accidentally win the decisive battle of an era, let an apothecary invent cardboard soles for the army of Sambre-et-Meuse and build for himself, with this cardboard sold for leather, four hundred thousand livres of income, let a ball carrier embrace usury and make it give birth to seven or eight million of which he is the father and of which she is the mother, let a preacher become a bishop by nasalizing, let a steward of a good house be so rich on leaving service that he is made Minister of Finance, men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton Beauty and the neck of Claude Majesty. They
confuse with the constellations of the abyss the stars that the feet of ducks make in the soft mud of the quagmire. Chapter 13. What he believed. From the point of view of orthodoxy, we do not have to probe the Bishop of Digne. Before such a soul, we feel only a mood of respect. The conscience of the just must be taken at face value. Besides, given certain natures, we admit the possible development of all the beauties of human virtue in a belief different from our own. What did he think of this dogma or that mystery? These secrets of the innermost being known only to the tomb where souls enter naked. What we are certain of is that the difficulties of faith were never resolved for him in hypocrisy. No decay is possible in a diamond. He believed as much as he could. Credo in Patrem, he often cried. Drawing from good works that quantity of satisfaction which is sufficient for the conscience, and which says to you in a low voice: You are with God. What we believe we should note is that, apart, so to speak, and beyond his faith, the bishop had an excess of love. It was through this, quia multum amavit, that he was judged vulnerable by serious men , grave persons and reasonable people; favorite expressions of our sad world where egoism receives the watchword of pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence, overflowing men, as we have already indicated, and, on occasion, extending to things. He lived without disdain. He was indulgent towards God’s creation. Every man, even the best, has within him an unthinking hardness which he keeps in reserve for the animal. The Bishop of Digne did not have this harshness, peculiar to many priests, however. He did not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have meditated on these words from Ecclesiastes: Do we know where the soul of animals goes? The ugliness of appearance, the deformities of instinct, did not trouble him or indignant him. He was moved by them, almost softened. It seemed that, pensive, he went to seek, beyond apparent life, the cause, the explanation or the excuse. He seemed at times to ask God for commutations. He examined without anger, and with the eye of the linguist who deciphers a palimpsest, the quantity of chaos that is still in nature. This reverie sometimes brought strange words from him. One morning, he was in his garden; he thought he was alone, but his sister was walking behind him without his seeing her; Suddenly, he stopped and looked at something on the ground; it was a large spider, black, hairy, horrible. His sister heard him say: “Poor beast! It’s not his fault. Why not say those almost divine childish things about goodness? Puerilities, fine; but these sublime childish things were those of Saint Francis of Assisi and Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his ankle for not wanting to crush an ant. Such was the life of this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then he was nothing more venerable. Monseigneur Bienvenu had once been, if we are to believe the stories about his youth and even his virility, a passionate, perhaps violent man. His universal gentleness was less a natural instinct than the result of a great conviction filtered into his heart through life and slowly fallen into him, thought by thought; for, in a character as in a rock, there can be holes from drops of water. These hollows are ineffaceable; these formations are indestructible. In 1815, we believe we have said, he reached seventy-five years of age, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall; he had some stoutness, and to combat it, he willingly took long walks on foot, he had a firm step and was only very slightly bent, a detail from which we do not claim to conclude anything; Gregory XVI, at eighty, stood straight and smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monsignor Bienvenu had what the people call a handsome face, but so amiable that one forgot that it was handsome. When he talked with that childish health which was one of his graces, and of which we have already spoken, one felt at ease near him, it seemed that his whole person was bursting with joy. His fresh, colored complexion, all his very white teeth which he had preserved and which his laughter showed, gave him that open and easy air which makes one say of a man: He is a good child, and of an old man: He is a good man. This, one remembers, was the effect he had made on Napoleon. At first sight, and for one who saw him for the first time, he was hardly anything but a good man in fact. But if one remained a few hours near him, and if one saw him pensive, the good man was transformed little by little and took on something imposing; his broad and serious forehead, august by the white hair, became august also by meditation; majesty emanated from this goodness, without the goodness ceasing to radiate; one felt something of the emotion one would have if one saw a smiling angel slowly opening its wings without ceasing to smile. Respect, an inexpressible respect, penetrated you by degrees and rose to your heart, and one felt that one had before one of those strong, tested and indulgent souls, where the thought is so great that it can no longer be anything but sweet. As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of religious services, almsgiving, consolation to the afflicted, the cultivation of a corner of land, the Brotherhood, frugality, hospitality, renunciation, trust, study, and work filled each day of his life. Filled is indeed the word, and certainly this day of the bishop was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. However, it was not complete if the cold or rainy weather prevented him from spending, in the evening, when the two women had retired, an hour or two in his garden before going to sleep. It seemed that it was a sort of rite for him to prepare himself for sleep by meditation in the presence of the great spectacles of the night sky. Sometimes, even at a fairly late hour of the night, if the two old maids were not asleep, they heard him walking slowly along the paths. He was there, alone with himself, collected, peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart to the serenity of the ether, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations and the invisible splendors of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the unknown. In those moments, offering his heart at the hour when the nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, lit like a lamp in the center of the starry night, spreading in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not perhaps have said himself what was passing in his mind, he felt something fly out of him and something descend into him. Mysterious exchanges of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of the universe! He thought of the grandeur and the presence of God; of eternity future, a strange mystery; of eternity past, a mystery stranger still; to all the infinities that sank beneath his eyes in every direction; and, without seeking to understand the incomprehensible, he gazed at it. He did not study God, he was dazzled by it. He contemplated these magnificent encounters of atoms which give aspects to matter, reveal forces by observing them, create individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the innumerable in infinity, and through light produce beauty. These encounters are constantly formed and unformed; hence life and death. He sat on a wooden bench leaning against a decrepit trellis, and he gazed at the stars through the puny and rickety silhouettes of his fruit trees. This quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, so cluttered with hovels and sheds, was dear to him and enough for him. What more did this old man need, who divided the leisure of his life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening by day and contemplation by night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, enough to be able to worship God alternately in his most charming works and in his most sublime works? Is not that all, indeed, and what more could one desire? A small garden to walk in, and the immensity to dream about. At his feet what one can cultivate and gather; on his head what one can study and meditate on; a few flowers on the earth and all the stars in the sky. Chapter 14. What he thought. A last word. As this kind of detail could, particularly at the moment we are in, and to use an expression currently in fashion, give the Bishop of Digne a certain pantheistic physiognomy, and make people believe, either to his blame or to his praise, that there was in him one of those personal philosophies, specific to our century, which sometimes germinate in solitary minds and are built and grown there until they replace religions, we insist on this that not one of those who knew Monseigneur Bienvenu would have believed himself authorized to think anything like that. What enlightened this man was the heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes from there. No systems, many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; nothing indicates that he risked his mind in the apocalypses. The apostle may be bold, but the bishop must be timid. He would probably have scrupled about probing too deeply into certain problems reserved, as it were, for great and terrible minds. There is sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; these dark openings are gaping there, but something tells you, you passing from life, that one cannot enter. Woe to him who penetrates there! Geniuses, in the unheard-of depths of abstraction and pure speculation, situated, so to speak, above dogmas, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer boldly offers discussion. Their adoration questions. This is direct religion, full of anxiety and responsibility for those who attempt its steep slopes. Human meditation has no limits. At its own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs into its own dazzling wonder. One could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it dazzles nature; The mysterious world that surrounds us gives back what it receives, it is likely that the contemplators are contemplated. Be that as it may, there are men on earth—are they men?—who distinctly perceive in the depths of the horizons of dreams the heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Bienvenu was not one of these men, Monseigneur Bienvenu was not a genius. He would have feared these sublimities from which some, even very great ones, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into madness. Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous roads one approaches ideal perfection. He took the path that shortens: the gospel. He did not try to make his chasuble fold like Elijah’s mantle, he did not project any ray of the future onto the dark rolling of events, he did not seek to condense the glimmer of things into flame, he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician. This simple soul loved, that was all. That he dilated prayer to a superhuman aspiration is probable; but one can no more pray too much than love too much; and, if it were heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics. He bent over what groans and what expiates. The universe appeared to him like an immense illness; he felt fever everywhere, he auscultated suffering everywhere, and, without seeking to divine the enigma, he tried to dress the wound. The formidable spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him; He was only occupied with finding for himself and inspiring others the best way to pity and relieve. What exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent source of sadness seeking to console. There are men who work at extracting gold; he worked at extracting pity. Universal misery was his mine. Pain everywhere was only an occasion for kindness always. Love one another; he declared this complete, desired nothing more, and that was his entire doctrine. One day, this man who believed himself to be a philosopher, this senator, already named, said to the bishop: “But look at the spectacle of the world; war of all against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love one another is stupidity. ” “Well,” replied Monseigneur Bienvenu without arguing, “if it is stupidity, the soul must be enclosed in it like the pearl in the oyster.” So he shut himself up there, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving aside the prodigious questions which attract and which frighten, the unfathomable perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics, all these converging depths, for the apostle to God, for the atheist to nothingness: destiny, good and evil, the war of being against being, the consciousness of man, the pensive somnambulism of the animal, the transformation by death, the recapitulation of existences contained in the tomb, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves onto the persistent self, essence, substance, the Nile and the Ens, the soul, nature, freedom, necessity; sheer problems, sinister depths, where the gigantic archangels of the human spirit lean; formidable abysses that Lucretius, Manu, Saint Paul and Dante contemplate with that dazzling eye which seems, by gazing fixedly into infinity, to make stars bloom there. Monsignor Bienvenu was simply a man who observed mysterious questions from the outside without scrutinizing them, without stirring them up, and without disturbing his own mind, and who had in his soul the grave respect for the shadow. Book Two–The Fall Chapter 15. The Evening of a Day’s Walk. In the first days of October 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man traveling on foot entered the small town of Digne. The few inhabitants who were at that moment at their windows or on the thresholds of their houses looked at this traveler with a sort of anxiety. It was difficult to meet a passer-by of a more miserable appearance. He was a man of medium height, stocky and robust, in the prime of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a leather peak pulled down partially hid his face, burnt by the sun and the tan, and streaming with sweat. His shirt of coarse yellow cloth, fastened at the collar by a small silver anchor, revealed his hairy chest; he had a tie twisted into a rope, blue ticking trousers, worn and threadbare, white at one knee, with a hole in the other, an old gray blouse in rags, patched at one elbow with a piece of green cloth sewn with string, on his back a very full soldier’s bag, well buckled and brand new, in his hand an enormous knotted stick, his feet without stockings in iron-shod shoes, his head shaved and his beard long. The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added something sordid to this dilapidated ensemble. His hair was close-cropped, and yet bristling; for it was beginning to grow a little, and seemed not to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him. He was evidently only a passer-by. Where did he come from? From the south. From the seaside perhaps. For he was making his entrance into Digne by the same street which, seven months before, had seen the Emperor Napoleon pass by on his way from Cannes to Paris. This man must have walked all day. He seemed very tired. Women from the old village at the bottom of the town had seen him stop under the trees on Boulevard Gassendi and drink from the fountain at the end of the promenade. He must have been very thirsty, because some children who were following him saw him stop again and drink, two hundred paces further on, from the fountain in the market square. Arriving at the corner of Rue Poichevert, he turned left and headed towards the town hall. He went in, then left a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was sitting near the door on the stone bench where General Drouot climbed on March 4 to read the proclamation of Golfe Juan to the terrified crowd of Digne’s inhabitants. The man took off his cap and humbly saluted the gendarme. The gendarme, without responding to his greeting, looked at him attentively, followed him for a while with his eyes, then entered the town hall. There was then in Digne a fine inn with the sign of the Croix-de-Colbas. This inn had as its innkeeper a man named Jacquin Labarre, a man respected in the town for his relationship with another Labarre, who ran the Auberge des Trois-Dauphins in Grenoble and who had served in the guides. At the time of the Emperor’s landing, many rumors had circulated in the country about this Auberge des Trois-Dauphins. It was said that General Bertrand, disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips there in the month of January, and that he had distributed crosses of honor to soldiers and handfuls of Napoleons to bourgeois. The reality is that the emperor, having entered Grenoble, had refused to settle in the prefecture hotel ; he had thanked the mayor by saying: I am going to the house of a good man I know, and he had gone to the Trois-Dauphins. This glory of the Labarre of the Trois-Dauphins was reflected twenty-five leagues away, even on the Labarre of the Croix-de-Colbas. It was said of him in the city: He is the cousin of the one in Grenoble. The man went towards this inn, which was the best in the country. He entered the kitchen, which opened directly onto the street. All the stoves were lit; a large fire blazed cheerfully in the fireplace. The host, who was also the chef, was going from the hearth to the saucepans, very busy and supervising an excellent dinner intended for carters who could be heard laughing and talking loudly in a neighboring room. Anyone who has traveled knows that no one makes better food than carters. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and grouse, was turning on a long spit in front of the fire; on the stoves were cooking two large carp from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz. The host, hearing the door open and a newcomer enter, said without raising his eyes from his stoves: “What does monsieur want? ” “Eat and sleep,” said the man. “Nothing easier,” continued the host. At that moment he turned his head, took in the traveler’s entire ensemble at a glance , and added: “… by paying.” The man took a large leather purse from his blouse pocket and replied, “I have money. ” “In that case, we’re yours,” said the host. The man put his purse back in his pocket, unloaded his bag, placed it on the ground near the door, kept his staff in his hand, and went to sit on a low stool near the fire. Digne is in the mountains. October evenings are cold there. However, as he walked back and forth, the man considered the traveler. “Shall we have dinner soon?” said the man. “Soon,” said the host. While the newcomer was warming himself with his back to him, the worthy innkeeper Jacquin Labarre took a pencil from his pocket, then tore the corner of an old newspaper lying on a small table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or two, folded it without sealing, and handed this scrap of paper to a child who seemed to be serving him both as scullion and footman. The innkeeper whispered a word in the scullion’s ear, and the child ran off in the direction of the town hall. The traveler had seen nothing of all this. He asked once more: “Are we having dinner soon? ” “Soon,” said the host. The child returned. He was bringing the paper. The host unfolded it eagerly, like someone waiting for an answer. He seemed to read it attentively, then nodded, and remained thoughtful for a moment. Finally, he took a step toward the traveler, who seemed lost in some rather uneasy reflection . “Sir,” he said, “I cannot receive you.” The man half sat up. “What! Are you afraid I won’t pay?” Do you want me to pay in advance? I have money, I tell you. “That’s not it.” “What then? ” “You have money… ” “Yes,” said the man. “And I,” said the host, “don’t have a room. ” The man continued calmly: “Put me in the stable. ” “I can’t. ” “Why? ” “The horses take up all the space. ” “Well,” replied the man, “a corner in the attic. A bale of straw. We’ll see about that after dinner. ” “I can’t give you dinner.” This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, seemed serious to the stranger. He stood up. “Ah, well! But I’m dying of hunger. I’ve been walking since sunrise. I’ve traveled twelve leagues. I’m paying. I want to eat. ” “I have nothing,” said the host. The man burst out laughing and turned toward the fireplace and the stoves. “Nothing! And all that? ” “All that is being withheld from me. ” “By whom? ” “By those gentlemen, the carters. ” “How many are there? ” “Twelve. ” “There’s enough food here for twenty. ” “They’ve withheld everything and paid for everything in advance.” The man sat down again and said without raising his voice: “I’m at the inn, I’m hungry, and I’m staying. ” The host then leaned over to his ear and said in an accent that made him shudder: “Go away.” The traveler was bent over at this moment and pushing some embers into the fire with the iron end of his stick. He turned quickly, and as he opened his mouth to reply, the host looked at him fixedly and added, still in a low voice: “There, enough of this talk. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name is Jean Valjean. Now do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw you come in, I suspected something , I sent to the town hall, and this is what they answered me. Do you know how to read?” As he spoke, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper which had just traveled from the inn to the town hall, and from the town hall to the inn. The man glanced at it. The innkeeper continued after a silence: “I am in the habit of being polite to everyone. Go away.” The man lowered his head, picked up the bag he had left on the ground, and left. He took the main street. He walked in front of him at random, keeping close to the houses, like a humiliated and sad man. He did not look back once. If he had, he would have seen the innkeeper of the Croix-de-Colbas on the threshold of his door, surrounded by all the travelers from his inn and all the passersby in the street, talking briskly and pointing at him, and, from the looks of distrust and fear in the group, he would have guessed that before long his arrival would be the event of the whole town. He saw none of this. Overwhelmed people do not look behind them. They know only too well that bad luck follows them. He walked like this for some time, always walking, going at random through streets he did not know, forgetting fatigue, as happens in sadness. Suddenly he felt acutely hungry. Night was approaching. He looked around to see if he could find some lodging. The fine inn had closed for him; he was looking for some humble tavern, some poor dive. Just then a light came on at the end of the street; a pine branch , hanging from an iron gallows, stood out against the white twilight sky. He went there. It was indeed a tavern. The tavern in the Rue de Chaffaut. The traveler stopped for a moment and looked through the window into the lower room of the tavern, lit by a small lamp on a table and a large fire in the fireplace. A few men were drinking there. The host was warming himself. The flame made an iron pot hanging from the rack rattle. One enters this tavern, which is also a kind of inn, through two doors. One opens onto the street, the other onto a small courtyard full of manure. The traveler did not dare enter through the street door. He slipped into the courtyard, stopped again, then timidly lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
“Who goes there?” said the master. “Someone who would like to have supper and sleep. ” “That’s good. Here we have supper and sleep.” He went in. All the people who were drinking turned around. The lamp lit him from one side, the fire from the other. They examined him for a while while he unpacked his bag. The host said to him: “Here’s a fire. Supper is cooking in the pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade. ” He went to sit near the hearth. He stretched out his tired feet before the fire; a good smell was coming from the pot. All that could be distinguished of his face under his lowered cap took on a vague appearance of well-being mixed with that other, so poignant aspect that the habit of suffering gives. It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and sad profile. This physiognomy was strangely composed; it began by appearing humble and ended by seeming severe. The eye shone under the eyebrows like a fire under a bush. However, one of the men seated at the table was a fishmonger who, before entering the cabaret on the Rue de Chaffaut, had gone to stable his horse at Labarre’s. As chance would have it, that very morning he had met this ill-looking stranger, walking between Bras d’Asse and… I forget the name. (I think it’s Escoublon). Now, upon meeting him, the man, who already seemed very tired, had asked him to take him behind; to which the fishmonger had only responded by quickening his pace. This fishmonger had been part, half an hour earlier, of the group surrounding Jacquin Labarre, and he himself had recounted his unpleasant encounter that morning to the people of Croix-de-Colbas. He made an imperceptible sign to the innkeeper from his place . The innkeeper came to him. They exchanged a few words in low voices. The man had fallen back into his thoughts. The innkeeper returned to the fireplace, abruptly placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, and said to him: “You’re going to leave here.” The stranger turned and replied gently. “Ah! You know? ” “Yes. ” “I was sent away from the other inn. ” “And you’re being sent away from this one.” “Where do you want me to go?” “Elsewhere.” The man took his stick and bag and left. As he left, some children, who had followed him from the Croix-de-Colbas and who seemed to be waiting for him, threw stones at him. He retraced his steps angrily and threatened them with his stick; the children scattered like a flock of birds. He passed in front of the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a bell. He rang. A wicket opened. “Mr. Turnkey,” he said, respectfully removing his cap, “would you be so kind as to open the door and put me up for the night? ” A voice replied: “A prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested. They will let you in. ” The wicket closed. He entered a small street where there are many gardens. Some are enclosed only by hedges, which brightens the street. Among these gardens and hedges, he saw a small, one-story house with a lit window. He looked through this window as he had done at the tavern. It was a large, whitewashed room, with a bed draped in printed calico, and a cradle in a corner, a few wooden chairs, and a double-barreled shotgun hanging on the wall. A table was set in the middle of the room. A copper lamp lit the coarse white linen tablecloth, the pewter pitcher shining like silver and full of wine, and the brown soup tureen steaming. At this table sat a man of about forty, with a joyful, open face, who was bouncing a small child on his knee. Near him, a very young woman was nursing another child. The father laughed, the child laughed, the mother smiled. The stranger remained pensive for a moment before this sweet and calming spectacle. What was happening inside him? He alone could have said. It is likely that he thought that this cheerful house would be hospitable, and that where he saw so much happiness he might perhaps find a little pity. He knocked on the windowpane with a very faint tap. No one heard. He knocked a second time. He heard the wife say: “My man, it seems to me there’s someone knocking. ” “No,” replied the husband. He knocked a third time. The husband got up, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened. He was a tall man, half-peasant, half-artisan. He wore a large leather apron that reached up to his left shoulder, and into which hung a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder flask , all sorts of objects that the belt held in place as if in a pocket. He threw back his head; his shirt, wide open and turned down, showed his bull’s neck, white and bare. He had thick eyebrows, enormous black whiskers, eyes set high against his head, the lower part of his face like a muzzle, and over all this that air of being at home which is an inexpressible thing. “Sir,” said the traveler, “pardon me.” For a fee, could you give me a plate of soup and a place to sleep in that shed over there in the garden? Tell me, could you? For a fee? “Who are you?” asked the master of the house. The man replied, “I’ve just come from Puy-Moisson. I’ve been walking all day. I’ve traveled twelve leagues. Could you? For a fee? ” “I wouldn’t refuse,” said the peasant, “to lodge a decent person who would pay. But why don’t you go to the inn? ” “There’s no room. ” “Bah! Not possible. It’s not a fair or market day. Did you go to Labarre’s? ” “Yes. ” “Well?” The traveler replied with embarrassment, “I don’t know, he didn’t see me. ” “Did you go to something in the Rue de Chaffaut? ” The stranger’s embarrassment grew. He stammered: “He didn’t receive me either.” The peasant’s face took on an expression of distrust, he looked the newcomer from head to toe, and suddenly he cried out with a sort of shudder: “Are you the man?” He glanced at the stranger again, took three steps back, placed the lamp on the table, and took his rifle down from the wall. However, at the peasant’s words: “Are you the man?” the woman got up, took her two children in her arms, and hurriedly took refuge behind her husband, looking at the stranger with terror, her throat bare, her eyes frightened, murmuring softly: “Tso-maraude.” All this happened in less time than it takes to imagine it. After examining the man for a few moments as one might examine a viper, the master of the house returned to the door and said: “Go away.”
“Please,” the man continued, “a glass of water. ” “A shot!” said the peasant. Then he slammed the door shut, and the man heard him pull two large bolts. A moment later, the window shuttered shut, and the sound of an iron bar being put in reached outside. Night continued to fall. The cold Alpine wind blew. In the light of the dying day, the stranger saw in one of the gardens bordering the street a sort of hut which seemed to him to be built of turf . He resolutely crossed a wooden barrier and found himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door was a narrow, very low opening and it resembled those constructions that road workers build for themselves at the side of the road. He probably thought that it was indeed a road worker’s lodging; he was suffering from cold and hunger ; he had resigned himself to hunger, but at least it was a shelter from the cold. These kinds of lodgings are not usually occupied at night. He lay down on his stomach and slipped into the hut. It was warm there, and he found a fairly good bed of straw. He remained stretched out on this bed for a while, unable to move, he was so tired. Then, as the bag on his back was bothering him and it was, moreover, a readily available pillow, he began to unbuckle one of the belts. At that moment a fierce growl was heard. He looked up. The head of an enormous mastiff stood out in the shadows at the opening of the hut. It was a dog’s kennel. He himself was vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his staff, made a shield out of his bag, and left the kennel as best he could, not without widening the tears in his rags. He also left the garden, but backward, obliged, to keep the mastiff in check, to resort to that stick maneuver that the masters of this kind of fencing call the covered rose. When he had, not without difficulty, crossed the barrier again and found himself in the street, alone, without shelter, without a roof, without shelter, driven even from this bed of straw and this miserable niche, he let himself fall rather than sit down on a stone, and it seems that a passer-by who was crossing heard him cry out: “I am not even a dog!” Soon he got up and started walking again. He left the town, hoping to find some tree or some haystack in the fields, and there to shelter himself. He walked like this for some time, his head always bowed. When he felt far from any human habitation, he raised his eyes and looked around him. He was in a field; before him was one of those low hills covered with closely cut stubble, which after the harvest resemble shorn heads. The horizon was completely black; it was not only the darkness of night; They were very low clouds which seemed to rest on the hill itself and which rose, filling the whole sky. However, as the moon was about to rise and there was still a remnant of twilight light floating at the zenith, these clouds formed a sort of whitish vault at the top of the sky from which a light fell on the earth. The earth was therefore more illuminated than the sky, which is a particularly sinister effect, and the hill, with a poor and puny outline, stood out vague and pale on the dark horizon. The whole ensemble was hideous, small, lugubrious and limited. Nothing in the field or on the hill but a misshapen tree which writhed and shivered a few steps from the traveler. This man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits of intelligence and mind which make one sensitive to the mysterious aspects of things; However, there was something so profoundly desolate in this sky, in this hill, in this plain, and in this tree, that after a moment of stillness and reverie, he abruptly turned back. There are moments when nature seems hostile. He retraced his steps. The gates of Digne were closed. Digne, which had withstood sieges in the Wars of Religion, was still surrounded in 1815 by old walls flanked by square towers that have since been demolished. He passed through a breach and re-entered the town. It might have been eight o’clock in the evening. As he did not know the streets, he began his wanderings again. He thus reached the prefecture, then the seminary. As he passed through the cathedral square, he shook his fist at the church. There is a printing press at the corner of this square. It was there that the proclamations of the Emperor and the Imperial Guard to the army were first printed , brought from the island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon himself. Exhausted with fatigue and no longer hoping for anything, he lay down on the stone bench at the door of this printing house. An old woman was coming out of the church at that moment. She saw this man stretched out in the shadows. “What are you doing here, my friend?” she said. He replied harshly and angrily: “You see, good woman, I am lying down. The good woman, indeed well worthy of the name, was Madame la Marquise de R. ” “On this bench?” she continued. “I had a wooden mattress for nineteen years,” said the man, “I have today a stone mattress. –You were a soldier? –Yes, good woman. Soldier. –Why don’t you go to the inn? –Because I have no money. –Alas, said Madame de R., I only have four sous in my purse. –Always give. The man took the four sous. Madame de R. continued: –You cannot lodge yourself in an inn with so little. Have you tried? It is impossible for you to spend the night like this. You are doubtless cold and hungry. They could have housed you out of charity. –I knocked on every door. –Well? –Everywhere I was chased away. The good woman touched the man’s arm and pointed to a small, low house on the other side of the square next to the bishop’s palace. –You,” she continued, “knocked on every door? ” –Yes. –Did you knock on that one? –No. –Knock there. Chapter 16. Prudence advised to wisdom. That evening, the Bishop of Digne, after his walk in the town, had stayed up quite late locked in his room. He was busy with a great work on Duties, which unfortunately remained unfinished. He carefully examined everything that the Fathers and Doctors had said on this serious matter. His book was divided into two parts; firstly, the duties of all; secondly, the duties of each, according to the class to which he belongs. The duties of all are the great duties. There are four of them. Saint Matthew indicates them: duties towards God (Matthew 6), duties towards oneself (Matthew 5, 29, 30), duties towards one’s neighbor (Matthew 7, 12), duties towards creatures (Matthew 6, 20, 25). As for the other duties, the bishop had found them indicated and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the Epistle to the Romans; to magistrates, wives, mothers, and young men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children, and servants, in the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians. He laboriously made of all these prescriptions a harmonious whole that he wanted to present to souls. He was still working at eight o’clock, writing rather inconveniently on small squares of paper with a large book open on his knees, when Madame Magloire came in, as was her custom, to take the silverware from the cupboard near the bed. A moment later, the bishop, sensing that the table was set and that his sister was perhaps waiting for him, closed his book, got up from his table, and went into the dining room. The dining room was an oblong room with a fireplace, a door onto the street (as we have said), and a window onto the garden. Madame Magloire was in fact finishing setting the table. While attending to the service, she was talking with Mademoiselle Baptistine. A lamp was on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A fairly good fire was lit. One can easily imagine these two women who were both over sixty: Madame Magloire small, plump, lively; Mademoiselle Baptistine, sweet, slim, frail, a little taller than her brother, dressed in a puce silk dress, the fashionable color in 1806, which she had bought then in Paris and which still lasted her. To borrow vulgar expressions which have the merit of expressing in a single word an idea that a page would hardly suffice to express, Madame Magloire had the air of a peasant girl and Mademoiselle Baptistine of a lady. Madame Magloire had a white bonnet with piping, a gold jeannette around her neck, the only woman’s jewel in the house, a very white kerchief coming out of the black sackcloth dress with wide, short sleeves, a cotton canvas apron with red and green checks, tied at the waist with a green ribbon, with a similar stomach piece attached by two pins at the two top corners, on her feet large shoes and yellow stockings like the women of Marseille. Mademoiselle Baptistine’s dress was cut according to the patterns of 1806, short waist, narrow sheath, sleeves with epaulettes, with tabs and buttons. She hid her gray hair under a curly wig called à l’enfant. Madame Magloire looked intelligent, lively and good; the two unequally raised corners of her mouth and the upper lip thicker than the lower lip gave her something gruff and imperious. As long as Monseigneur was silent, she spoke to him resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom; but as soon as Monseigneur spoke, as we have seen, she obeyed passively like Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak . She limited herself to obeying and pleasing. Even when she was young, she was not pretty, she had large blue eyes set high on the surface of her head and a long, hooked nose; but her whole face, her whole person, as we said at the beginning, breathed an ineffable goodness. She had always been predestined to meekness; but faith, charity, hope, these three virtues which gently warm the soul, had little by little raised this meekness to holiness. Nature had made her only a sheep, religion had made her an angel. Poor holy girl! Sweet memory vanished! Mademoiselle Baptistine has since recounted so many times what had happened at the bishop’s house that evening, that several people who are still alive remember the smallest details. At the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was speaking with some liveliness. She was discussing with Mademoiselle a subject which was familiar to her and to which the Bishop was accustomed. It was the latch of the front door. It seems that, while going to get some provisions for supper, Madame Magloire had heard things said in various places. There was talk of a prowler with a bad face; that a suspicious vagrant had arrived, that he must be somewhere in the town, and that there might be unpleasant encounters for those who took it into their heads to return home late that night. That the police were very badly organized, moreover, since the prefect and the mayor did not like each other , and were trying to harm each other by making things happen. That it was therefore up to wise people to police themselves and to keep themselves safe, and that care should be taken to duly close, lock and barricade one’s house, and to keep one’s doors securely closed. Madame Magloire emphasized this last word; but the bishop came from his room where he had been quite cold, he had sat down in front of the fireplace and was warming himself, and then he was thinking of something else. He did not notice the sharp remark that Madame Magloire had just dropped. She repeated it. Then, Mademoiselle Baptistine, wishing to satisfy Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother, ventured to say timidly: “My brother, do you hear what Madame Magloire is saying? ” “I heard something vaguely,” replied the bishop. Then, half turning his chair, placing both hands on his knees, and raising his cordial and easily cheerful face, which the fire lit up from below, towards the old servant: “Come now. What is it? What is it? Are we then in some great danger?” Then Madame Magloire began the whole story again, exaggerating it somewhat, without suspecting it. It seems that a gypsy, a barefoot tramp, a kind of dangerous beggar is in the town at this moment. He had come to stay with Jacquin Labarre, who had refused to receive him. He had been seen arriving by Boulevard Gassendi and prowling the streets in the mist. A man of sackcloth and rope with a terrible face. “Really?” said the bishop. This consent to question him encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed to her to indicate that the bishop was not far from being alarmed; she continued triumphantly: “Yes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some misfortune this night in the city. Everyone says so. With that the police are so badly organized (useless repetition). Living in a mountainous country, and not even having lanterns at night in the streets! We go out. Ovens, what! And I say, my lord, and mademoiselle that here says like me…. “I,” interrupted the sister, “I say nothing. What my brother does is well done. ” Madame Magloire continued as if there had been no protest: “We say that this house is not at all safe; that, if my lord permits, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and replace the old bolts on the door; we have them here, it’s a minute; and I say that we need bolts, my lord, if only for this night; for I say that a door that opens from the outside with a latch, by the first passer-by who comes along, nothing is more terrible; with that my lord is in the habit of always saying to enter, and that besides, even in the middle of the night, oh my God! one does not need to ask permission…. At that moment, there was a rather violent knock at the door. “Come in,” said the bishop. Chapter 17. Heroism of Passive Obedience. The door opened. It opened quickly, wide, as if someone were pushing it with energy and resolution. A man entered. This man, we already know him. It is the traveler we saw just now wandering looking for shelter. He entered, took a step, and stopped, leaving the door open behind him. He had his bag on his shoulder, his staff in his hand, a rough, bold, tired and violent expression in his eyes. The fire in the fireplace lit it up. It was hideous. It was a sinister apparition. Madame Magloire did not even have the strength to utter a cry. She shuddered and remained gaping. Mademoiselle Baptistine turned around, saw the man entering and half stood up in terror, then, gradually bringing her head back towards the fireplace, she began to look at her brother and her face became profoundly calm and serene again. The bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man. As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the newcomer what he desired, the man rested both hands at once on his staff, cast his eyes alternately over the old man and the women, and, without waiting for the bishop to speak, said in a loud voice: “Here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a galley slave. I spent nineteen years in the penal colony.” I have been free for four days and on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. Four days and I have been walking since Toulon. Today, I walked twelve leagues. This evening, when I arrived in this country, I stayed at an inn, they turned me away because of my yellow passport that I had shown at the town hall. It was necessary. I went to another inn. They told me: Go away! To this one, to the other. No one wanted me. I went to prison, the ticket office did not open. I was in a dog’s kennel. This dog bit me and chased me away, as if it had been a man. It was as if it knew who I was. I went into the fields to sleep under the stars . There were no stars. I thought it would rain, and that there was no good God to prevent it, and I went back into the town to find the recess of a door. There, in the square, I was going to lie down on a stone. A good woman showed me your house and said: Knock here. I knocked. What is this? Are you an inn? I have money. My lump. One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous that I earned in the penal colony by my work over nineteen years. I will pay. What does that matter to me? I have money. I am very tired, twelve leagues on foot, I am very hungry. Do you want me to stay? “Madame Magloire,” said the bishop, “you will set one more place.” The man took three steps and approached the lamp on the table. “Here,” he continued, as if he hadn’t quite understood, “that’s not it. Did you hear? I’m a galley slave. A convict. I come from the galleys. ” He took a large sheet of yellow paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “Here’s my passport. Yellow, as you see. It’s used to get me chased from wherever I am. Do you want to read? I know how to read. I learned in the galleys. There’s a school for those who want to. Here, this is what they put on the passport: Jean Valjean, freed convict, born in… – it’s all the same to you… – Spent nineteen years in the galleys. Five years for burglary. Fourteen years for having attempted to escape four times. This man is very dangerous.” – There! Everyone threw me out. Will you receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me food and a place to sleep? Do you have a stable? “Madame Magloire,” said the bishop, “you will put white sheets on the bed in the alcove. We have already explained the nature of the two women’s obedience .” Madame Magloire went out to carry out these orders. The bishop turned to the man. “Sir, sit down and warm yourself. We will have supper in a moment, and your bed will be made while you have supper.” Here the man understood completely. The expression on his face, until then dark and hard, became filled with stupefaction, doubt, joy, and became extraordinary. He began to stammer like a madman: “True? What? You’re keeping me? You’re not turning me out! A convict! You call me sir! You don’t address me informally! Go away, dog!” that they always tell me . I thought you would chase me away. So I said right away who I am. Oh! the good woman who taught me here! I’m going to have supper! A bed! A bed with mattresses and sheets! Like everyone else ! It’s nineteen years since I slept in a bed! You’re willing that I not go away! You are worthy people! Besides, I have money. I’ll pay well. Excuse me, Mr. Innkeeper, what is your name? I’ll pay whatever anyone wants. You are a good man. You are an innkeeper, aren’t you? “I am,” said the bishop, “a priest who lives here. ” “A priest!” the man continued. “Oh! a good man of a priest! So you do n’t ask me for money? The priest, isn’t he? The priest of this great church? Why! It’s true, how stupid I am!” I hadn’t seen your skullcap!
While speaking, he had put his bag and his staff in a corner, then put his passport back in his pocket, and he sat down. Mademoiselle Baptistine looked at him gently. He continued: “You are human, Monsieur le Curé. You have no contempt. A good priest is very good. So you don’t need me to pay? ” “No,” said the bishop, “keep your money. How much do you have? Didn’t you tell me 109 francs? ” “Fifteen sous,” added the man. “109 francs 15 sous. And how long did it take you to earn that? ” “Nineteen years. ” “Nineteen years! ” The bishop sighed deeply. The man continued: “I still have all my money. For the past four days I have spent only 25 sous, which I earned helping to unload carriages in Grasse. Since you are an abbot, I will tell you, we had a chaplain in the penal colony.” And then one day I saw a bishop. Monsignor, they call him. He was the Bishop of La Majore, in Marseille. He is the priest who is over priests. You know, sorry, I say this badly, but for me, it’s so far away! You understand, us others! He said mass in the middle of the penal colony, on an altar, he had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head. In broad daylight at noon, it shone. We were in line. On three sides. With the cannons, lit fuses, facing us. We couldn’t see not well. He spoke, but he was too far back, we couldn’t hear. That’s what a bishop is. While he was speaking, the bishop went to push open the door, which had remained wide open. Madame Magloire came in. She brought a place setting and placed it on the table. “Madame Magloire,” said the bishop, “put this place setting as close as possible to the fire.”
And turning to his guest: “The night wind is harsh in the Alps. You must be cold, sir?” Every time he said the word “sir,” in his gently deep , good-natured voice, the man’s face lit up. “Sir to a convict is a glass of water to a shipwrecked man on the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for consideration. ” “Here,” continued the bishop, “is a lamp that gives very poor light.” Madame Magloire understood, and she went to fetch the two silver candlesticks from the mantelpiece in Monseigneur’s bedroom, which she placed on the table, all lit. “Monsieur le curé,” said the man, “you are kind. You do not despise me. You receive me into your home. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not hidden from you where I come from and that I am an unhappy man.” The bishop, sitting near him, gently touched his hand. “You could have not told me who you were. This is not my house, it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not ask the one who enters if he has a name, but if he has a pain. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome. And do not thank me, do not tell me that I receive you into my home. No one is at home here, except those who need shelter.” I tell you who pass by, you are more at home here than I am. Everything that is here is yours. What need do I have to know your name? Besides, before you told me, you have one that I knew. The man opened his eyes in astonishment. “True? You knew my name? ” “Yes,” replied the bishop, “your name is my brother. ” “Here, Father!” cried the man, “I was very hungry when I came in here; but you are so kind that now I don’t know what’s wrong with me; it has passed. ” The bishop looked at him and said: “You have suffered well? ” “Oh! The red coat, the ball and chain, a plank to sleep on, the heat, the cold, the work, the galley slaves, the beatings! The double chain for nothing. The dungeon for a word. Even sick in bed, the chain. Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I have forty-six. Now, the yellow passport! There. “Yes,” the bishop continued, “you are coming out of a place of sadness. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a repentant sinner than over the white robe of a hundred righteous people. If you come out of this sorrowful place with thoughts of hatred and anger against men, you are worthy of pity; if you come out with thoughts of benevolence, gentleness, and peace, you are worth more than any of us.” Meanwhile, Madame Magloire had served supper. A soup made with water, oil, bread and salt, a little bacon, a piece of mutton, some figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had herself added to the Bishop’s usual fare a bottle of old Mauves wine. The bishop’s face suddenly assumed that expression of gaiety peculiar to hospitable natures: “To the table!” he said briskly. As was his custom when a stranger was supping with him, he had the man sit on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceful and natural, took a seat on his left. The bishop said grace, then served the soup himself, as was his custom. The man began to eat greedily. Suddenly the bishop said: “But it seems to me that something is missing from this table. Madame Magloire had indeed only set the three places absolutely necessary. Now it was the custom of the house, when the bishop had someone for supper, to arrange the six silver place settings on the tablecloth, an innocent display. This graceful semblance of luxury was a sort of childishness full of charm in this gentle and severe house which elevated poverty to dignity. Madame Magloire understood the observation, left without saying a word, and a moment later the three place settings requested by the bishop shone on the tablecloth, symmetrically arranged in front of each of the three guests. Chapter 18. Details on the cheese dairies of Pontarlier. Now, to give an idea of what happened at this table, we could do no better than to transcribe here a passage from a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame de Boischevron, where the conversation between the convict and the bishop is recounted with naive detail: …This man paid no attention to anyone. He ate with the voracity of a starving man. However, after the soup, he said: “Monsieur le curé du bon Dieu, all this is still much too good for me, but I must say that the carters who would not let me eat with them are making better food than you. Between us, the observation shocked me a little. My brother replied: “They are more tired than I am. ” “No,” the man continued, “they have more money. You are poor. I can see that. Perhaps you are not even a curate. Are you even a curate? Ah! for example, if the good Lord were just, you should be a curate. ” “The good Lord is more than just,” my brother said. A moment later he added: “Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going? ” “With an obligatory itinerary.” I believe that is what the man said. Then he continued: “I must be on my way tomorrow at daybreak. It is a hard journey.” If the nights are cold, the days are warm. “You’re going there,” my brother continued, “to a good country. During the Revolution, my family was ruined, I took refuge in Franche-Comté first, and I lived there for a time by working with my hands. I had good will. I found something to do there. One only has to choose. There are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil mills, large watchmaking factories, steel factories, copper factories, at least twenty ironworks, including four in Lods, Châtillon, Audincourt and Beure which are very considerable…. I believe I am not mistaken and that these are indeed the names my brother mentioned, then he interrupted himself and addressed me: “Dear sister, don’t we have relatives in that country?” I replied: “We had some, among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the gates at Pontarlier in the old regime. ” “Yes,” my brother continued, “but in ’93 we no longer had any relatives, we only had our arms. I worked. They have in the Pontarlier region, where you are going, Monsieur Valjean, a very patriarchal and charming industry, my sister. These are their cheese dairies , which they call fruitières. ” Then my brother, while making this man eat, explained to him in great detail what the fruitières of Pontarlier were; that there were two kinds: the large barns, which belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows, which produce seven to eight thousand cheeses per summer; the fruitières d’association, which belong to the poor; These are the peasants of the middle mountains who pool their cows and share the products. They hire a cheesemaker whom they call the grurin; the grurin receives the milk from the partners three times a day and marks the quantities on a double size; it is towards the end of April that the work of the cheese factories begins; it is towards mid-June that the cheesemakers drive their cows into the mountains. The man revived while eating. My brother made him drink some of this good Mauves wine which he himself does not drink because he says it is expensive wine. My brother told him all these details with that easy gaiety that you know him to have, interspersing his words in ways that were gracious to me. He returned a lot to this good state of the convict, as if he had wished that this man would understand, without advising him directly and harshly, that it would be a refuge for him. One thing struck me. This man was what I told you. Well! my brother, during the whole supper, nor during the whole evening, with the exception of a few words about Jesus when he came in, did not say a word that could remind this man who he was or teach this man who my brother was. It was indeed an opportunity in appearance to give a little sermon and to support the bishop on the galley slave to leave the mark of the passage. It might have seemed to another that it was the case, having this unfortunate man at hand, to nourish his soul as well as his body and to give him some rebuke seasoned with morality and advice, or even a little commiseration with an exhortation to behave better in the future. My brother did not even ask him what country he was from, nor his story. For in his story there is his fault, and my brother seemed to avoid everything that could remind him of it. It is to the point that at a certain moment, when my brother was speaking of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, who have a sweet work near heaven and who, he added, are happy because they are innocent, he stopped short, fearing that there was something in this word that escaped him that could offend the man. By dint of reflecting on it, I believe I have understood what was going on in my brother’s heart. He doubtless thought that this man, who is called Jean Valjean, had his misery only too present in his mind, that the best thing was to distract him from it, and to make him believe, if only for a moment, that he was a person like any other, while being quite ordinary to him. Is this not indeed a good understanding of charity? Is there not, good madame, something truly evangelical in that delicacy which abstains from sermons, morals and allusions, and is not the best pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It seemed to me that this might be my brother’s inner thought. In any case, what I can say is that, if he had all these ideas, he showed nothing of them, even to me; He was from beginning to end the same man as every evening, and he ate supper with this Jean Valjean with the same air and in the same way that he would have suppered with M. Gédéon Le Prévost or with the parish priest. Towards the end, as we were eating figs, there was a knock at the door. It was Mother Gerbaud with her little one in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the forehead, and borrowed fifteen sous that I had on me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man during this time was not paying much attention. He no longer spoke and seemed very tired. When poor old Gerbaud had left, my brother said grace, then he turned to this man, and he said to him: You must be in great need of your bed. Madame Magloire quickly removed the cover. I understood that we must retire to let this traveler sleep, and we both went upstairs. However, I sent Madame Magloire a moment later to take to this man’s bed a deer skin from the Black Forest which is in my room. The nights are freezing, and it keeps one warm. It’s a pity that this skin is old; all the hair is coming off. My brother bought it when he was in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the little ivory-handled knife which I use at table. Madame Magloire came back up almost immediately, we began to pray to God in the living room where the washing is hung out, and then we We each returned to our rooms without saying anything to each other. Chapter 19. Tranquility. After saying goodnight to his sister, Monsignor Bienvenu took one of the two silver torches from the table, gave the other to his host, and said to him:
“Sir, I will show you to your room.” The man followed him. As we have seen from what has been said above, the dwelling was laid out in such a way that, to pass into the oratory where the alcove was or to leave it, one had to cross the bishop ‘s bedroom . As they crossed this room, Madame Magloire was putting the silverware away in the cupboard at the head of the bed. This was the last thing she did each evening before going to bed. The bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh, white bed was made there. The man placed the torch on a small table. “Come,” said the bishop, “have a good night.” Tomorrow morning, before leaving, you will drink a cup of our cows’ milk, piping hot. “Thank you, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the man. Hardly had he uttered these words full of peace than, suddenly and without transition, he made a strange movement which would have frozen the two holy girls with terror if they had been witnesses. Even today it is difficult for us to understand what drove him at that moment. Did he want to give a warning or issue a threat? Was he simply obeying some sort of instinctive impulse , obscure to himself? He turned abruptly towards the old man, crossed his arms, and, fixing his host with a wild look, he cried out in a hoarse voice: “Ah, really! You are putting me up in your house near you like that!” He broke off and added with a laugh in which there was something monstrous: “Have you thought this through?” Who tells you that I have not murdered? The bishop raised his eyes to the ceiling and replied: “That is God’s business.” Then, gravely and moving his lips like someone praying or speaking to himself, he raised the two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who did not bend down, and, without turning his head or looking behind him, he returned to his room. When the alcove was occupied, a large serge curtain drawn from side to side in the oratory hid the altar. The bishop knelt as he passed in front of this curtain and said a short prayer. A moment later, he was in his garden, walking, dreaming, contemplating, his soul and thought entirely devoted to those great mysterious things that God shows at night to eyes that remain open. As for the man, he was truly so tired that he had not even taken advantage of those fine white sheets. He had blown out his candle with his nostril in the manner of convicts and had let himself fall fully dressed onto the bed, where he immediately fell soundly asleep. Midnight struck as the bishop returned from his garden to his apartment. A few minutes later, everyone in the little house was asleep. Chapter 20. Jean Valjean. Towards the middle of the night, Jean Valjean awoke. Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family in Brie. In his childhood, he had not learned to read. When he reached manhood, he was a pruner at Faverolles. His mother’s name was Jeanne Mathieu; his father’s name was Jean Valjean, or Vlajean, probably a nickname, and a contraction of Voilà Jean. Jean Valjean was of a pensive character without being sad, which is characteristic of affectionate natures. All in all, however, Jean Valjean was something rather dormant and rather insignificant, in appearance at least . He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. His mother had died of milk fever which had been poorly treated. His father, a tree-pruner like himself, had been killed by falling from a tree. Jean had only Valjean had only one sister older than him, a widow, with seven children, girls and boys. This sister had raised Jean Valjean, and as long as she had her husband, she housed and fed his younger brother. The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old, the youngest one. Jean Valjean had just reached his twenty-fifth year. He replaced his father, and in turn supported his sister who had raised him. This was done simply, as a duty, even with a touch of gruffness on Jean Valjean’s part. His youth was thus spent in hard and poorly paid work . He had never known a good girlfriend in the country. He had not had time to be in love. In the evening he came home tired and ate his soup without saying a word. His sister, Mother Jeanne, while he was eating, often took from his bowl the best of his meal, the piece of meat, the slice of bacon, the heart of cabbage, to give it to one of his children; he, always eating, bent over the table, almost with his head in his soup, his long hair falling around his bowl and hiding his eyes, seemed to see nothing and let it happen. There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjean cottage, on the other side of the lane, a farmer’s wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually hungry, sometimes went to borrow a pint of milk from Marie-Claude in their mother’s name , which they drank behind a hedge or in some corner of the alley, snatching the pot, and so hastily that the little girls spilled it on their aprons and in their spouts. The mother, if she had known of this marauding, would have severely punished the delinquents. Jean Valjean, brusque and grumpy, paid Marie-Claude a pint of milk behind his mother’s back, and the children were not punished. He earned twenty-four sous a day during the pruning season, then he hired himself out as a harvester, a laborer, a farmhand , a cowherd, a drudge. He did what he could. His sister worked on her side, but what could be done with seven little children? It was a sad group that misery enveloped and gradually squeezed. It happened that one winter was harsh. Jean had no work. The family had no bread. No bread. Literally. Seven children! One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, a baker on the Place de l’Église in Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed when he heard a violent knock on the grilled and glass front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm thrust through a hole made by a punch in the grille and the window. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau hurried out; the thief was running away as fast as he could; Isabeau ran after him and stopped him. The thief had thrown away the bread, but his arm was still bloody. It was Jean Valjean. This happened in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the courts of the time for burglary at night in an inhabited house. He had a gun which he used better than any other marksman in the world; he was something of a poacher; which harmed him. There is a legitimate prejudice against poachers . The poacher, like the smuggler, rubs shoulders very closely with the brigand. Yet, let us say in passing, there is still a gulf between these races of men and the hideous murderer of the cities. The poacher lives in the forest; the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. Cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountains, the sea, the forest, make savage men. They develop the ferocious side, but often without destroying the human side. Jean Valjean was declared guilty. The terms of the code were formal. There are in our civilization dreadful hours; they are the moments when the penalty pronounces a shipwreck. What a funereal moment is that when society drifts away and consummates the irreparable abandonment of a thinking being ! Jean Valjean was condemned to five years in the galleys. On April 22, 1796, people in Paris cried out that the victory of Montenotte had been won by the general-in-chief of the year of Italy, which the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of 2 Floréal, year IV, calls Buona-Parte; that same day a large chain was shoed at Bicêtre. Jean Valjean was part of this chain. A former prison turnkey, who is nearly ninety years old today, still remembers perfectly this unfortunate man who was shoed at the end of the fourth cord in the north corner of the courtyard. He was sitting on the ground like all the others. He seemed to understand nothing of his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he also discerned in it, through the vague ideas of a poor man ignorant of everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his pillory was being hammered behind his head , he wept; the tears choked him, they prevented him from speaking; he only managed to say from time to time: I was a pruner at Faverolles. Then, while sobbing, he raised his right hand and gradually lowered it seven times as if he were successively touching seven unequal heads, and by this gesture one guessed that whatever thing he had done, he had done it to clothe and feed seven little children. He left for Toulon. He arrived there after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain around his neck. At Toulon, he was clothed in the red coat. Everything that had been his life was effaced, even his name; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24601. What became of the sister? What became of the seven children? Who is concerned with this? What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree sawn off by the foot? It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God, henceforth without support, without guide, without asylum, went off at random, who knows? each on their own side perhaps, and sank little by little into that cold mist where solitary destinies are swallowed up, monastic darkness where so many unfortunate heads disappear successively in the somber march of the human race. They left the country. The steeple of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary stone of what had been their field forgot them; after a few years of residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart where there had been a wound, there was a scar. That was all. Hardly, during all the time he spent in Toulon, did he hear a single mention of his sister. It was, I believe, towards the end of the fourth year of her captivity. I no longer know by what means this information reached her. Someone who had known them in their country had seen her sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a poor street near Saint-Sulpice, the Rue du Geindre. She had only one child left with her, a little boy, the last. Where were the other six? Perhaps she herself did not know. Every morning she went to a printing shop at 3 Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stapler. She had to be there at six o’clock in the morning, well before daybreak in winter. In the printing house there was a school, she took her little boy, who was seven years old, to this school. Only, as she entered the printing shop at six o’clock and the school did not open until seven, the child had to wait in the courtyard for the school to open, for an hour; in winter, one hour at night, in the open air. They did not want the child to enter the printing shop, because he was a nuisance, they said. The workers would see this poor little creature sitting on the pavement in the morning , falling asleep, and often asleep in the shadows, crouching and bent over his basket. When it rained, an old woman, the doorkeeper, took pity on him; she would take him into her hovel where there was only a pallet, a spinning wheel and two wooden chairs, and the little one would sleep there in a corner, snuggling up to the cat to keep warm. At seven o’clock, the school opened and he would go in. This is what they told Jean Valjean. spoke to him about it one day, it was a moment, a flash, like a window suddenly opened onto the destiny of these beings he had loved, then everything closed again; he heard no more of them, and that was forever. Nothing more happened to him about them; he never saw them again, never met them, and, in the course of this painful story, they would never be found again. Towards the end of this fourth year, Jean Valjean’s turn to escape came. His comrades helped him as is customary in this sad place. He escaped. He wandered for two days at liberty in the fields; if it is to be free to be hunted; to turn one’s head every moment; to start at the slightest noise; to be afraid of everything, of the smoking roof, of the man who passes, of the barking dog, of the galloping horse, of the hour that strikes, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot see, of the road, of the path, of the bush, of sleep. On the evening of the second day, he was recaptured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours. The maritime court sentenced him for this offense to an extension of three years, which made his eight years. In the sixth year, it was again his turn to escape; he made use of it, but he could not complete his escape. He had missed the roll call. The cannon was fired, and at night the patrol men found him hidden under the keel of a ship under construction; he resisted the prison guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion. This act, provided for by the special code, was punished by an aggravated five years, including two years of double chain. Thirteen years. In the tenth year, his turn came again, and he took advantage of it again. He was no more successful. Three years for this new attempt. Sixteen years. Finally, it was, I believe, during the thirteenth year that he tried one last time and only succeeded in being caught after four hours of absence. Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In October 1815 he was freed; he had entered there in 1796 for breaking a window and stealing a loaf of bread. Time for a short parenthesis. This is the second time that, in his studies on the penal question and on damnation by law, the author of this book encounters the theft of a loaf of bread as the starting point for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gueux had stolen a loaf of bread; Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf of bread. An English statistic states that in London four out of five thefts have hunger as their immediate cause. Jean Valjean had entered the penal colony sobbing and trembling; he left impassive. He had entered in despair; he came out of it gloomy. What had happened in this soul? Chapter 21. The interior of despair. Let us try to say it. Society must look at these things since it is society that makes them. He was, as we have said, an ignorant man; but he was not an imbecile. The natural light was lit in him. Misfortune, which also has its clarity, increased the little daylight that there was in this mind. Under the stick, under the chain, in the dungeon, in fatigue, under the burning sun of the penal colony, on the bed of planks of the convicts, he withdrew into his conscience and reflected. He constituted himself a tribunal. He began by judging himself. He recognized that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted to himself that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy action; that perhaps he would not have been refused this bread if he had asked for it; that in any case it would have been better to wait for him, either out of pity or through work; that it is not entirely an unanswerable reason to say: can one wait when one is hungry? that first of all it is very rare that one literally dies of hunger; then that, unfortunately or fortunately, man is so made that he can suffer for a long time and a great deal, morally and physically, without dying; that patience was therefore necessary; that it would have been better even for these poor little children; that it was an act of madness, for him, an unfortunate, puny man, to violently take to the collar the whole of society and to imagine that one escapes from poverty by stealing; that it was, in all cases, a bad door to escape from poverty than the one by which one enters into infamy; finally that he had been wrong. Then he asked himself: If he was the only one who had been wrong in his fatal story? If first of all it was not a serious thing that he, a worker, had lacked work, he, a laborer, lacked bread. If, then, the fault committed and confessed, the punishment had not been ferocious and outrageous. If there had not been more abuse on the part of the law in the punishment than there had been abuse on the part of the guilty party in the fault. If there had not been excess weight in one of the pans of the scale, that where the expiation is. If the increased penalty was not the erasure of the crime, and did not achieve this result: to reverse the situation, to replace the fault of the offender with the fault of repression, to make the guilty party the victim and the debtor the creditor, and to definitively place the law on the side of the very one who had violated it. If this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for attempts at escape, did not end up being a sort of attack by the strongest on the weakest , a crime of society against the individual, a crime that began again every day, a crime that lasted nineteen years. He asked himself if human society could have the right to make its members suffer equally, in one case its unreasonable improvidence, and in the other case its pitiless foresight, and to seize forever a poor man between a defect and an excess, lack of work, excess of punishment. If it were not exorbitant that society should treat thus precisely its most poorly endowed members in the distribution of goods made by chance, and consequently those most worthy of consideration. These questions having been answered and resolved, he judged society and condemned it. He condemned it without hatred. He held it responsible for the fate he was undergoing, and said to himself that he would perhaps not hesitate to ask it to account for it one day. He declared to himself that there was no balance between the damage he had caused and the damage that was being caused to him; he concluded finally that his punishment was not, in truth, an injustice, but that it was certainly an iniquity. Anger can be mad and absurd; one can be irritated wrongly; one is indignant only when one is fundamentally right in some way. Jean Valjean felt indignant. And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm. He had never seen anything of her but that angry face which she calls her justice and which she shows to those she strikes. Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow to him. Never, since his childhood, since his mother, since his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kind look. From suffering to suffering he gradually arrived at the conviction that life was a war; and that in this war he was the vanquished. He had no other weapon than his hatred. He resolved to sharpen it in the galleys and to take it with him when he left. There was a school for the galley slaves in Toulon run by ignorant brothers where the most necessary things were taught to those unfortunates who had good will. He was one of the men of good will. He went to school at forty, and learned to read, write, and count. He felt that to strengthen his intelligence was to strengthen his hatred. In certain cases, instruction and enlightenment can serve as an extension of evil. It is sad to say that after having judged the society that had caused his misfortune, he judged the providence that had created society. He condemned it too. Thus, during these nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul rose and fell at the same time. There entered light on one side and darkness of the other. Jean Valjean was not, as we have seen, of an evil nature. He was still good when he arrived in the galleys. There he condemned society and felt that he was becoming wicked , there he condemned providence and felt that he was becoming impious. Here it is difficult not to meditate for a moment. Is human nature thus transformed from top to bottom and completely ? Can man, created good by God, be made wicked by man? Can the soul be remade entirely from one piece by destiny, and become evil, destiny being evil? Can the heart become deformed and contract incurable ugliness and infirmities under the pressure of a disproportionate misfortune, like the spine under too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the next, which good can develop, fan, kindle, inflame, and cause to shine splendidly, and which evil can never entirely extinguish? Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which any physiologist would probably have answered no, and without hesitation, if he had seen at Toulon, in the hours of rest which were for Jean Valjean hours of reverie, seated with folded arms on the tiller of some capstan, the end of his chain stuck in his pocket to prevent him from dragging, this gloomy, serious, silent, and pensive galley slave, an outcast of the laws who looked at man with anger, a damned man of civilization who looked at heaven with severity. Certainly, and we do not wish to conceal it, the observant physiologist would have seen there an irremediable misery, he would perhaps have pitied this sick man because of the law, but he would not even have tried treatment; he would have turned his gaze away from the caverns he would have glimpsed in this soul; and, like Dante from the gates of hell, he would have erased from this existence the word that the finger of God nevertheless writes on the brow of every man: Hope! Was this state of his soul that we have tried to analyze as perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to make it for those who read us? Did Jean Valjean see distinctly, after their formation, and had he seen distinctly, as they were forming, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had this rough and illiterate man clearly realized the succession of ideas by which he had, step by step, ascended and descended to the lugubrious aspects which had been for so many years already the interior horizon of his mind? Was he really conscious of all that had passed within him and of all that was stirring there? This is what we would not dare to say; it is even what we do not believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean for there not to remain, even after so much misfortune, a great deal of vagueness. At times he did not even know exactly what he felt. Jean Valjean was in darkness; he suffered in darkness; he hated in darkness; one might have said that he hated before him. He habitually lived in this shadow, groping like a blind man and like a dreamer. Only, at intervals, there would suddenly come to him, from himself or from outside, a jolt of anger, an increase in suffering, a pale and rapid flash which illuminated his whole soul, and made suddenly appear everywhere around him, before and behind, in the glimmers of a frightful light, the hideous precipices and the dark perspectives of his destiny. The flash having passed, night fell again, and where was he? he no longer knew. The characteristic of punishments of this nature, in which that which is pitiless, that is to say, that which is stupefying, dominates, is to transform little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, a man into a wild beast. Sometimes into a ferocious beast. The attempts to escape from Jean Valjean, successive and obstinate, would suffice to prove this strange work done by the law on the human soul. Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts, so perfectly useless and mad, as many times as the opportunity presented itself, without thinking for a moment of the result, or of the experiments already made. He escaped impetuously like the wolf who finds the cage open. Instinct told him: escape! Reason would have told him: stay! But, before such a violent temptation, reasoning had disappeared; there was nothing left but instinct. The beast alone acted. When he was recaptured, the new severities inflicted on him only served to frighten him more. A detail which we must not omit is that he was of a physical strength which was not approached by any of the inhabitants of the penal colony. In fatigue, to pay out a cable, to turn a capstan, Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and supported enormous weights on his back, and replaced on occasion this instrument which is called a jack and which was formerly called pride, from which, incidentally, the Rue Montorgueil near the market halls of Paris took its name. His comrades had nicknamed him Jean-le-Cric. Once, while the balcony of the town hall of Toulon was being repaired, one of Puget’s admirable caryatids which support this balcony came loose and almost fell. Jean Valjean, who happened to be there, supported the caryatid with his shoulder and gave time to the workmen to arrive. His suppleness still exceeded his vigor. Certain convicts, perpetual dreamers of escape, end up making a veritable science of strength and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. A whole mysterious static is practiced daily by prisoners, those eternal envious of flies and birds. Climbing a vertical, and finding points of support where one can barely see a projection, was a game for Jean Valjean. Given an angle of wall, with the tension of his back and his hamstrings, with his elbows and heels fitted into the roughness of the stone, he hoisted himself as if by magic to a third story. Sometimes he climbed thus to the roof of the penal colony. He spoke little. He did not laugh. It required some extreme emotion to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh of the convict which is like an echo of the laughter of the demon. To see him, he seemed occupied in continually gazing at something terrible. He was absorbed indeed. Through the morbid perceptions of an incomplete nature and an overwhelmed intelligence, he felt confusedly that something monstrous was upon him. In this dark and pale gloom in which he crawled, each time he turned his neck and tried to raise his gaze, he saw, with terror mingled with rage, building up, tiering and rising as far as the eye could see above him, with horrible escarpments, a sort of frightening heap of things, laws, prejudices, men and facts, whose contours escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing other than this prodigious pyramid that we call civilization. He distinguished here and there in this teeming and deformed ensemble, sometimes near him, sometimes far away and on inaccessible plateaus, some group, some brightly lit detail, here the guard and his staff, there the gendarme and his sabre, there the mitred archbishop, high up, in a sort of sun, the crowned and dazzling emperor. It seemed to him that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, made it more funereal and blacker. All this, laws, prejudices, facts, men, things, came and went above him, according to the complicated and mysterious movement that God imprints on civilization, marching upon him and crushing him with something peaceful in cruelty and something inexorable in indifference. Souls fallen to the depths of possible misfortune, wretched Men lost in the lowest depths of this limbo where one no longer looks, the outcasts of the law feel the full weight of this human society weighing down on their heads, so formidable for those outside, so terrifying for those below. In this situation, Jean Valjean was thinking, and what could be the nature of his reverie? If the grain of millet under the millstone had thoughts, it would doubtless think what Jean Valjean was thinking. All these things, realities full of specters, phantasmagoria full of realities, had ended up creating for him a sort of almost inexpressible interior state . At times, in the midst of his work in the penal colony, he would stop. He would begin to think. His reason, at once more mature and more troubled than before, rebelled. Everything that had happened to him seemed absurd; everything around him seemed impossible. He said to himself: it’s a dream. He looked at the guard standing a few paces from him; the guard seemed to him a phantom; suddenly the phantom gave him a blow with its stick. Visible nature barely existed for him. It would almost be true to say that for Jean Valjean there was no sun, nor beautiful summer days, nor radiant skies, nor fresh April dawns. I don’t know what daylight from the basement window habitually illuminated his soul. To sum up, in closing, what can be summarized and translated into positive results in all that we have just indicated, we will limit ourselves to noting that in nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the harmless pruner of Faverolles, the formidable galley slave of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the way in which the penal colony had shaped him, of two kinds of bad actions: first, of a bad action that was rapid, thoughtless, full of giddyness, entirely instinctive, a sort of reprisal for the evil suffered; second, of a bad action that was grave, serious, debated in conscience and meditated on with the false ideas that such a misfortune can give. His premeditations passed through the three successive phases that only natures of a certain stamp can go through: reasoning, will, obstinacy. His motives were habitual indignation, bitterness of soul, a profound sense of the iniquities suffered, and reaction, even against the good, the innocent, and the just, if there are any. The starting point as well as the point of arrival of all his thoughts was hatred of human law; this hatred which, if it is not arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomes, in a given time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, then hatred of creation, and is expressed by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to harm, no matter who, any living being whatsoever. As we see, it was not without reason that the passport described Jean Valjean as a very dangerous man. From year to year, this soul had dried up more and more, slowly, but fatally. Dry heart, dry eye. When he left the galleys, it was nineteen years since he had shed a tear. Chapter 22. The Wave and the Shadow. A Man Overboard! What does it matter? The ship doesn’t stop. The wind blows, that dark ship has a course it is forced to continue. It passes. The man disappears, then reappears, he dives and rises to the surface, he calls, he stretches out his arms, he is not heard; the ship, shivering under the hurricane, is completely at work, the sailors and passengers no longer even see the submerged man; his miserable head is only a dot in the enormity of the waves. He utters desperate cries into the depths. What a specter this sail is, vanishing! He looks at it, he looks at it frantically. It moves away, it turns pale, it diminishes. He was there just now, he was part of the crew, he came and went on deck with the others, he had his share of breathing and sun, he was a living being. Now what happened? He slipped, he fell, it’s over. He is in the monstrous water. He has nothing left under his feet but flight and collapse. The waves, torn and shredded by the wind, surround him hideously, the rolling of the abyss carries him away, all the rags of the water flutter around his head, a rabble of waves spits on him, confused openings half-devour him; each time he sinks, he glimpses precipices full of night; horrible unknown vegetation seizes him, ties his feet, pulls him towards them; he feels that he is becoming an abyss, he is part of the foam, the waves throw him from one to the other, he drinks the bitterness, the cowardly ocean strives to drown him, the enormity plays with his agony. It seems that all this water is hatred. He struggles nevertheless, he tries to defend himself, he tries to support himself, he makes an effort, he swims. He, this poor force immediately exhausted, he fights the inexhaustible. Where is the ship? Over there. Barely visible in the pale darkness of the horizon. The gusts blow; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his eyes and sees only the livid clouds. He witnesses, dying, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this madness. He hears noises foreign to man which seem to come from beyond the earth and from who knows what frightening outside. There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distress, but what can they do for him? They fly, sing, and soar, and he groans. He feels buried at once by these two infinities, the ocean and the sky; one is a tomb, the other is a shroud. Night is falling, he has been swimming for hours, his strength is at an end; this ship, this distant thing where there were men, has disappeared; he is alone in the formidable twilight abyss, he sinks, he stiffens, he writhes, he feels below him the monstrous waves of the invisible; he calls. There are no more men. Where is God? He calls. Someone! Someone! He is always calling. Nothing on the horizon. Nothing in the sky. He implores the expanse, the wave, the seaweed, the reef; it is deaf. He begs the storm; the imperturbable storm obeys only infinity. Around him, darkness, mist, solitude, the stormy and unconscious tumult, the indefinite folding of the wild waters. Within him, horror and fatigue. Beneath him, the fall. No point of support. He thinks of the dark adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands clench and close and take on nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, breaths, useless stars! What to do? The desperate abandons himself, who is weary decides to die, he lets himself go, he lets himself go, he lets go, and there he is, rolling forever in the gloomy depths of engulfment. O relentless march of human societies! Loss of men and souls along the way! Ocean where falls everything that the law lets fall! Sinister disappearance of help! O moral death! The sea is the inexorable social night into which punishment casts its damned. The sea is immense misery. The soul, tossed about in this abyss, can become a corpse. Who will resuscitate it? Chapter 23. New Grievances. When the hour of leaving the penal colony came, when Jean Valjean heard in his ear these strange words: you are free! the moment was improbable and unheard of, a ray of bright light, a ray of the true light of the living suddenly penetrated into him. But this ray was not long in fading. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He quickly saw what a liberty to which one gives a yellow passport was . And around that much bitterness. He had calculated that his mass, during his stay in the penal colony, should have amounted to one hundred and seventy-one francs. It is fair to add that he had forgotten to include in his calculations the enforced rest on Sundays and holidays which, for nineteen years, resulted in a reduction of about twenty-four francs. In any case, this mass had been reduced, by various local deductions, to the sum of one hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which had been paid to him upon his release. He had understood nothing of it, and believed himself wronged. Let us say it, robbed. The day after his release, in Grasse, he saw men unloading bales in front of the door of an orange blossom distillery . He offered his services. The work was urgent, they were accepted. He set to work. He was intelligent, robust and skillful; he did his best; the master seemed pleased. While he was working, a gendarme passed by, noticed him, and asked for his papers. The yellow passport had to be shown. This done, Jean Valjean resumed his work. A little earlier, he had questioned one of the workers about what they earned per day for this task; he had been told: thirty sous. When evening came, as he was forced to leave again the next morning, he presented himself before the master of the distillery and asked him to pay him. The
master did not utter a word, and gave him twenty-five sous. He demanded it. He was told: that is good enough for you. He insisted. The master looked him straight in the eye and said: Keep the block. Here again he considered himself robbed. Society, the state, by diminishing his wealth, had robbed him in a big way. Now it was the turn of the individual who robbed him in a small way. Liberation is not deliverance. One leaves the penal colony, but not the condemnation. This is what had happened to him at Grasse. We have seen how he had been received at Digne. Chapter 24. The Man Awakened. So, as the cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke. What awoke him was that the bed was too comfortable. It was almost twenty years since he had slept in a bed, and although he had not undressed, the sensation was too new not to disturb his sleep. He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue was over. He was accustomed to not giving many hours to rest. He opened his eyes and looked around him for a moment in the darkness, then he closed them again to go back to sleep. When many different sensations have agitated the day, when things preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep, but one does not go back to sleep. Sleep comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Jean Valjean. He could not go back to sleep, and he began to think. He was in one of those moments when the ideas in one’s mind are troubled. He had a sort of obscure coming and going in his brain. His old memories and his immediate memories floated there pell-mell and crossed confusedly, losing their forms, growing disproportionately large, then disappearing suddenly as in muddy and agitated water. Many thoughts came to him, but there was one that continually recurred and drove out all the others. This thought, we will say it at once: He had noticed the six silver place settings and the large spoon that Madame Magloire had placed on the table. These six silver cutlery sets obsessed him.–They were there.–A few steps away.–The moment he had crossed the next room to come into the one where he was, the old servant was putting them in a small cupboard at the head of the bed.– He had noticed this cupboard.–To the right, as you enter from the dining room.–They were massive.–And old silverware.–With the large spoon, one would get at least two hundred francs for them.–Double what he had earned in nineteen years.–It is true that he would have earned more if the administration had not stolen. His mind oscillated for a whole hour in fluctuations which were clearly mingled with some struggle. Three o’clock struck. He reopened his eyes, sat up suddenly, stretched out his arm and felt his knapsack which he had thrown into the corner of the alcove, then he let his legs hang down and put his feet on the ground, and found himself, almost without knowing how, sitting on his bed. He remained dreamy for some time in this attitude which would have had something sinister about it for someone who had seen him thus in this shadow, alone awake in the sleeping house. Suddenly he bent down, took off his shoes and placed them gently on the mat near the bed, then he resumed his dreamy posture and became motionless again. In the midst of this hideous meditation, the ideas which we have just indicated stirred his brain without respite, entered, left, returned, exerted a sort of weight on him; and then he also thought , without knowing why, and with that mechanical obstinacy of reverie, of a convict named Brevet whom he had known in the galleys, and whose trousers were held up by only a single knitted cotton strap. The checkered pattern of this strap came back to his mind constantly. He remained in this situation, and would perhaps have remained there indefinitely until daybreak, if the clock had not struck a stroke—the quarter or the half. It seemed that this stroke had said to him: come on! He stood up, hesitated a moment longer, and listened; all was silent in the house; then he walked straight and with short steps towards the window which he glimpsed. The night was not very dark; it was a full moon over which ran large clouds driven by the wind. This created outside alternating shade and light, eclipses, then clearings, and inside a sort of twilight. This twilight, sufficient to guide oneself, intermittent because of the clouds, resembled the kind of lividity which falls from a cellar window before which passers-by come and go. Arriving at the window, Jean Valjean examined it. It was without bars, looked out on the garden , and was closed, according to the fashion of the country, only with a small key. He opened it, but, as a cold and sharp air entered suddenly into the room, he closed it at once. He looked at the garden with that attentive gaze which studies even more than it looks. The garden was enclosed by a rather low white wall, easy to climb. At the far end, beyond it, he distinguished the heads of trees equally spaced, which indicated that this wall separated the garden from an avenue or a planted lane. Having glanced at this, he made the movement of a determined man, walked to his alcove, took his haversack, opened it, searched it, took out something which he placed on the bed, put his shoes in one of the pockets, closed everything, loaded the bag on his shoulders, covered himself with his cap, lowering the peak over his eyes, groped for his stick, and went to place it in the corner of the window, then returned to the bed and resolutely seized the object which he had placed there. It looked like a short iron bar, sharpened like a spear at one of its ends. It would have been difficult to distinguish in the darkness for what use this piece of iron could have been fashioned. Perhaps it was a lever? Perhaps it was a club? In the daylight one would have been able to recognize that it was nothing other than a miner’s candlestick. Convicts were sometimes employed to extract rock from the high hills surrounding Toulon, and it was not unusual for them to have miners’ tools at their disposal. The miners’ candlesticks are made of solid iron, ending at their lower end with a point by means of which they are driven into the rock. He took this candlestick in his right hand, and holding his breath, muffling his step, he went towards the door of the next room, that of the bishop, as we know. Arriving at this door, he found it half-open. The bishop had not closed it. Chapter 25. What he does. Jean Valjean listened. No sound. He pushed the door. He pushed it lightly with the tip of his finger, with the furtive and anxious gentleness of a cat trying to enter. The door yielded to the pressure and made an imperceptible and silent movement which widened the opening a little. He waited a moment, then pushed the door a second time, more boldly. It continued to give way in silence. The opening was now large enough for him to pass. But there was a small table near the door which formed an awkward angle with it and which barred the entrance. Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was absolutely necessary that the opening be widened still further. He made up his mind, and pushed the door a third time, more energetically than the first two. This time there was a badly oiled hinge which suddenly emitted into the darkness a hoarse and prolonged cry. Jean Valjean started. The noise of this hinge rang in his ear with something dazzling and formidable like the bugle of the Last Judgment. In the fantastic magnifications of the first minute, he almost imagined that this hinge had just come to life and suddenly assumed a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to warn everyone and wake the sleeping folk. He stopped, shivering, bewildered, and fell back from tiptoe to heel . He heard his arteries beating in his temples like two forge hammers, and it seemed to him that his breath was leaving his chest with the noise of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the horrible clamor of this irritated hinge had not shaken the whole house like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed open by him, had taken the alarm and called out; The old man was about to get up, the two old women were about to scream, help would be coming; within a quarter of an hour, the town would be in an uproar and the police would be on their feet. For a moment he thought he was lost. He remained where he was, petrified like a pillar of salt, not daring to move. A few minutes passed. The door had opened wide. He ventured to look into the room. Nothing had moved. He listened. Nothing stirred in the house. The noise of the rusty hinge had awakened no one. This first danger had passed, but there was still a terrible tumult within him. Yet he did not retreat. Even when he had thought he was lost, he had not retreated. His only thought was to finish quickly. He took a step and entered the room. This room was perfectly calm. Here and there one could distinguish confused and vague forms which, in the daylight, were papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled on a stool, an armchair laden with clothes, a prie-dieu, and which at this hour were nothing more than dark corners and whitish places. Jean Valjean advanced cautiously, avoiding bumping into the furniture. He heard at the far end of the room the even and tranquil breathing of the sleeping bishop. He stopped suddenly. He was near the bed. He had arrived there sooner than he would have thought. Nature sometimes mixes its effects and its spectacles with our actions with a sort of sombre and intelligent purpose, as if it wished to make us reflect. For nearly half an hour a great cloud had covered the sky. At the moment when Jean Valjean stopped opposite the bed, this cloud was torn, as if it had done so on purpose, and a ray of moonlight, crossing the long window, suddenly illuminated the pale face of the bishop. He was sleeping peacefully. He was almost dressed in his bed, because of the cold nights of the Basses-Alpes, in a brown woolen garment which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow in the abandoned attitude of repose; he let hang out of bed his hand adorned with the pastoral ring and from which had fallen so many good works and holy deeds. His whole face was illuminated by a vague expression of satisfaction, hope and beatitude. It was more than a smile and almost a radiance. There was on his forehead the inexpressible reverberation of a light that one could not see. The soul of the righteous during sleep contemplates a mysterious sky. A reflection of this sky was on the bishop. It was at the same time a luminous transparency, for this sky was within him. This sky was his conscience. At the moment when the moonbeam came to superimpose itself, so to speak, on this interior clarity, the sleeping bishop appeared as if in a glory. Yet it remained sweet and veiled by an ineffable half-light. This moon in the sky, this drowsy nature, this garden without a shiver, this house so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added something solemn and inexpressible to the venerable repose of this wise man, and enveloped in a sort of majestic and serene halo this white hair and these closed eyes, this face where all was hope and all was confidence, this old man’s head and this child’s sleep. There was almost divinity in this man so august without his knowing it. Jean Valjean, for his part, was in the shadows, his iron candlestick in his hand, standing, motionless, terrified by this luminous old man. He had never seen anything like it. This confidence terrified him. The moral world has no greater spectacle than that: a troubled and uneasy conscience, arrived at the edge of a bad action, and contemplating the sleep of a just man. This sleep, in this isolation, and with a neighbor like him, had something sublime about it that he felt vaguely, but imperiously. No one could have said what was happening inside him, not even himself. To try to understand it, one must dream the most violent in the presence of the sweetest. Even on his face one could not have distinguished anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He was looking at it. That was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to guess. What was evident was that he was moved and upset. But of what nature was this emotion? His eye did not detach itself from the old man. The only thing that emerged clearly from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange indecision. One would have said that he hesitated between the two abysses, the one where one is lost and the one where one is saved. He seemed ready to break that skull or kiss that hand. After a few moments, his left arm rose slowly towards his forehead, and he took off his cap, then his arm fell back with the same slowness, and Jean Valjean returned to his contemplation, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right, his hair bristling on his fierce head. The bishop continued to sleep in profound peace under that frightening gaze. A reflection of the moon made dimly visible above the chimney the crucifix which seemed to open its arms to them both, with a benediction for one and a pardon for the other. Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his forehead, then walked quickly along the bed, without looking at the bishop, straight to the cupboard which he glimpsed near the head; he raised the iron candlestick as if to force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing which appeared to him was the basket of silverware; he took it, crossed the room with great strides without precaution and without paying attention to the noise, reached the door, entered the oratory, opened the window, seized a stick, climbed over the sill of the ground floor, put the silverware in his bag, threw down the basket, crossed the garden, jumped over the wall like a tiger, and fled. Chapter 26. The Bishop Works. The next day, at sunrise, Monsignor Bienvenu was walking in his garden. Madame Magloire ran towards him, all upset. “Monseigneur, Monseigneur,” she cried, “does your lordship know where the basket of silverware is? ” “Yes,” said the bishop. “Jesus God be blessed!” she continued. “I didn’t know what had become of it.” The bishop had just picked up the basket from a flowerbed. He presented it to Madame Magloire. “Here it is. ” “Well?” she said. “Nothing in it! And the silverware? ” “Ah!” replied the bishop. “So it’s the silverware that’s occupying you? I don’t know where it is. ” “Great God! It’s stolen! It was the man from last night who stole it! ” In the twinkling of an eye, with all her alert old vivacity, Madame Magloire ran to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the bishop. The bishop had just bent down and was sighing at a Guillons cochlearia plant that the basket had broken when it fell across the flowerbed. He straightened up at Madame Magloire’s cry. “My lord, the man is gone! The silverware is stolen!” As he uttered this exclamation, his eyes fell on a corner of the garden where signs of climbing could be seen. The rafter of the wall had been torn off. “Look! That’s how he went. He jumped into the Cochefilet alley! Ah! the abomination! He stole our silverware! ” The bishop remained silent for a moment, then raised his serious eye and said gently to Madame Magloire: “And first of all, was this silverware ours?” Madame Magloire remained speechless. There was another silence, then the bishop continued: “Madame Magloire, I have been in possession of this silverware wrongly and for a long time . She was with the poor. What was this man? A poor man, obviously. “Alas, Jesus!” Madame Magloire replied. “It’s not for me or for mademoiselle. It’s all the same to us. But it’s for Monseigneur. What will Monseigneur eat from now?” The bishop looked at her with an astonished air. “Oh, but! Aren’t there pewter cutlery?” Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders. “Pewter has an odor. ” “Then iron cutlery.” Madame Magloire made a significant grimace. “Iron has a taste. ” “Well,” said the bishop, “wooden cutlery.” A few moments later, he was lunching at the same table where Jean Valjean had sat the day before. While eating breakfast, Monseigneur Bienvenu cheerfully remarked to his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame Magloire, who grumbled under her breath, that there is no need for a spoon or a fork, even a wooden one, to dip a piece of bread into a cup of milk. “So one has an idea!” Madame Magloire said to herself as she went back and forth, “to receive a man like that! And to lodge him next to oneself! And what a joy it was, that he did nothing but steal! Oh, my God! It makes one shudder when one thinks!” As the brother and sister were about to get up from the table, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” said the bishop. The door opened. A strange and violent group appeared on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the other was Jean Valjean. A sergeant of the gendarmerie, who seemed to be leading the group, was near the door. He entered and advanced towards the bishop, giving a military salute. “Monseigneur…” he said. At this word Jean Valjean, who was gloomy and seemed dejected, raised his head with a stupefied air. “Monseigneur!” he murmured. “So this is not the priest?” “Silence!” said a gendarme. “It is Monseigneur the bishop.” Meanwhile, Monseigneur Bienvenu had approached as quickly as his great age would allow . “Ah! Here you are!” he cried, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. Well, but! I gave you the candlesticks too, which are silver like the rest, and of which you can have two.” a hundred francs. Why didn’t you take them with your cutlery? Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the venerable bishop with an expression that no human tongue could render. “Monseigneur,” said the brigadier of gendarmerie, “what this man said was then true? We met him. He was going as if he were leaving. We stopped him to see. He had this silverware…. “And he told you,” interrupted the bishop, smiling, “that it had been given to him by an old priest with whom he had spent the night? I see the thing. And you brought him back here? It’s a mistake. ” “So,” continued the brigadier, “we can let him go? ” “No doubt,” replied the bishop. The gendarmes let go of Jean Valjean, who stepped back. “Is it true that they are leaving me?” he said in an almost inarticulate voice, as if he were speaking in his sleep. “Yes, we’ll leave you, can’t you hear?” said a gendarme. “My friend,” continued the bishop, “before you go, here are your candlesticks. Take them.” He went to the fireplace, took the two silver torches, and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women watched him do this without a word, without a gesture, without a glance that could disturb the bishop. Jean Valjean was trembling all over. He took the two candlesticks mechanically and with a bewildered air. “Now,” said the bishop, “go in peace. ” “By the way, when you come back, my friend, it’s useless to go through the garden. You can always go in and out by the street door . It is locked only with a latch day and night.” Then turning to the gendarmerie: “Gentlemen, you may withdraw.” The gendarmes moved away. Jean Valjean was like a man about to faint. The bishop approached him and said in a low voice: “Do not forget, never forget that you promised me to use this money to become an honest man.” Jean Valjean, who had no memory of having promised anything, remained speechless. The bishop had emphasized these words as he spoke them. He continued with a sort of solemnity: “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying from you; I am saving it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God.” Chapter 27. Petit-Gervais. Jean Valjean left the city as if he were escaping. He began to walk with all haste in the fields, taking the roads and paths that presented themselves without noticing that he was retracing his steps every moment. He wandered thus all morning, having not eaten and not being hungry. He was prey to a host of new sensations. He felt a sort of anger; he did not know against whom. He could not have said whether he was touched or humiliated. At times a strange tenderness came over him which he fought and to which he opposed the hardening of his last twenty years. This state tired him. He watched with anxiety the sort of dreadful calm which the injustice of his misfortune had given him being shaken within him. He wondered what would replace it. Sometimes he would really have preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and for things not to have happened this way; it would have agitated him less. Although the season was quite advanced, there were still here and there in the hedges a few late flowers whose scent, as he walked through them, reminded him of childhood memories. These memories were almost unbearable to him, so long had it been since they had appeared to him. Inexpressible thoughts piled up in him all day long. As the sun was setting, lengthening the shadow of the smallest pebble on the ground, Jean Valjean was sitting behind a bush in a great reddish plain, absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon but the Alps. Not even the steeple of a distant village. Jean Valjean might be three leagues from Digne. A path that cut through the plain passed a few steps from the bush. In the midst of this meditation, which would not have contributed a little to making his rags frightening to anyone who had encountered him, he heard a joyful noise. He turned his head and saw coming along the path a little Savoyard of about ten years old who was singing, his hurdy-gurdy at his side and his marmot box on his back; one of those sweet and gay children who go from country to country, letting their knees be seen through the holes in their trousers. While singing, the child interrupted his walk from time to time and played knucklebones with some coins he had in his hand, probably his entire fortune. Among this money was a forty-sou piece. The child stopped beside the bush without seeing Jean Valjean and tossed his handful of sous, which until then he had received with sufficient skill entirely on the back of his hand. This time the forty-sou piece slipped from his grasp and rolled towards the thicket to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean placed his foot on it. Meanwhile, the child had followed his coin with his eyes and had seen him. He was not surprised and walked straight towards the man. It was an absolutely solitary place. As far as the eye could see, there was no one in the plain or on the path. Only the faint little cries of a flock of migratory birds could be heard , crossing the sky at an immense height. The child turned his back to the sun, which put threads of gold in his hair and which flushed with a bloody glow the wild face of Jean Valjean. “Sir,” said the little Savoyard, with that confidence of childhood which is composed of ignorance and innocence, “my coin? ” “What is your name?” said Jean Valjean. “Little Gervais, sir. ” “Go away,” said Jean Valjean. “Sir,” replied the child, “give me back my coin.” Jean Valjean lowered his head and did not reply. The child began again: “My coin, sir! ” Jean Valjean’s eye remained fixed on the ground. “My coin!” cried the child, “my white coin! my money!” It seemed that Jean Valjean did not hear. The child took it by the collar of his blouse and shook it. And at the same time he made an effort to dislodge the large, iron-shod shoe lying on his treasure. “I want my coin! my forty-sou piece!” The child wept. Jean Valjean’s head was raised. He was still seated. His eyes were troubled. He looked at the child with a sort of astonishment, then he stretched out his hand towards his staff and cried in a terrible voice: “Who is there?” “I, sir,” replied the child. “Little Gervais! I! I! Give me back my forty sous, if you please! Take off your foot, sir, if you please! ” Then, irritated, although very small, and becoming almost threatening: “Ah, will you take off your foot? Take off your foot, come on. ” “Ah! It’s you again!” said Jean Valjean, and suddenly standing up, his foot still on the silver piece, he added: “Will you run away?” The frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from head to foot, and, after a few seconds of stupor, began to run away with all his might, without daring to turn his neck or utter a cry. However, at a certain distance, his shortness of breath forced him to stop, and Jean Valjean, through his reverie, heard him sobbing. In a few moments the child had disappeared. The sun had set. Shadows were gathering around Jean Valjean. He had not eaten all day; it is probable that he had a fever. He had remained standing and had not changed his attitude since the child had fled. His breath heaved at long and unequal intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces away in front of him, seemed to be studying with profound attention the shape of an old shard of blue earthenware that had fallen into the grass. Suddenly he shuddered; he had just felt the evening chill. He pressed his cap firmly onto his forehead, mechanically tried to cross and button his blouse, took a step, and bent down to pick up his stick from the ground. At that moment he saw the forty-sou piece that his foot had half sunk into the earth and which shone among the pebbles. It was like a galvanic commotion. What is that? he said between his teeth. He stepped back three steps, then stopped, unable to take his eyes off the spot where his foot had trodden a moment before, as if that thing that shone there in the darkness had been an open eye fixed on him. After a few minutes, he rushed convulsively toward the silver coin, seized it, and, straightening up, began to look far into the plain, casting his eyes at once toward all points of the horizon, standing and shivering like a frightened wild beast seeking refuge. He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague, great purple mists rose in the twilight light. He said: Ah! and began to walk quickly in a certain direction, toward the side where the child had disappeared. After a hundred paces, he stopped, looked, and saw nothing. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs: Little Gervais! Little Gervais! He fell silent and waited. There was no answer. The countryside was deserted and gloomy. He was surrounded by the expanse. There was nothing around him but a shadow in which his gaze was lost and a silence in which his voice was lost. An icy wind was blowing, and gave the things around him a sort of lugubrious life. Shrubs shook their thin little arms with incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing someone. He began to walk again, then he began to run, and from time to time he stopped and cried out in that solitude, with a voice that was the most formidable and desolate thing one could hear: Little Gervais! Little Gervais! Certainly, if the child had heard him, he would have been afraid and would have taken care not to show himself. But the child was doubtless already a long way off. He met a priest who was on horseback. He went to him and said to him: “Monsieur le curé, did you see a child go by? ” “No,” said the priest. “A man named Little Gervais? ” “I didn’t see anyone.” He took two five-franc pieces from his satchel and handed them to the priest. “Monsieur le curé, here are some for your poor.” “Monsieur le curé, it’s a little boy of about ten years old who has a marmot, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy.” He was going. One of those Savoyards, you know? ” “I haven’t seen him.” “Petit-Gervais? Isn’t he from the villages around here? Can you tell me? ” “If it’s as you say, my friend, it’s a little foreign child. That’s common in the country. They’re not known.” Jean Valjean violently took two more five-franc coins and gave them to the priest. “For your poor,” he said. Then he added wildly: “Monsieur l’abbé, have me arrested. I’m a thief.” The priest jumped and ran away in great fright. Jean Valjean resumed running in the direction he had first taken. He walked in this way for a long time, looking, calling, shouting, but he met no one again. Two or three times he ran across the plain towards something that gave him the impression of a being lying or crouching; it was only brushwood or rocks at ground level . Finally, at a place where three paths crossed, he stopped. The moon had risen. He looked far and wide and called out one last time: Little Gervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais! His cry died away in the mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured again: Little Gervais! but in a weak and almost inarticulate voice. This was his last effort; his hamstrings suddenly gave way beneath him as if an invisible power were suddenly overwhelming him with the weight of his bad conscience; he fell exhausted on a large stone, his fists in his hair and his face in his knees, and he cried: I am a wretch! Then his heart burst and he began to weep. It was the first time he had wept for nineteen years. When Jean Valjean left the bishop’s house, as we have seen, he was beyond all that had been his thought until then. He could not realize what was passing within him. He stiffened against the angelic action and against the old man’s gentle words. You promised me to become an honest man. I buy your soul from you. I take it away from the spirit of perversity and I give it to the good God. This came back to him constantly. To this heavenly indulgence he opposed pride, which is in us like the fortress of evil. He felt indistinctly that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack by which he had yet been shaken; that his hardening would be definitive if he resisted this clemency; that, if he yielded, he would have to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had filled his soul for so many years, and which pleased him; that this time he must conquer or be conquered, and that the struggle, a colossal and decisive struggle, was engaged between his own wickedness and the goodness of this man. In the presence of all these glimmers, he walked like a drunken man. While he walked thus, with haggard eyes, did he have a distinct perception of what might result for him from his adventure at Digne? Did he hear all those mysterious buzzings which warn or bother the mind at certain moments of life? Was a voice telling him in his ear that he had just passed through the solemn hour of his destiny, that there was no longer any middle ground for him, that if henceforth he were not the best of men he would be the worst, that he must now, so to speak, rise higher than the bishop or fall lower than the galley slave, that if he wished to become good he must become an angel; that if he wished to remain wicked he must become a monster? Here again we must ask ourselves the questions we have already asked elsewhere: did he vaguely gather some shadow of all this into his thoughts? Certainly, misfortune, as we have said, educates the intelligence; however, it is doubtful whether Jean Valjean was in a position to unravel all that we indicate here. If these ideas came to him, he glimpsed them rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into an unbearable and almost painful confusion. On leaving this deformed and black thing called the penal colony, the bishop had hurt his soul as a too bright light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from the darkness. The future life, the possible life which now offered itself to him, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety. He really did not know where he stood. Like an owl which suddenly sees the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and as if blinded by virtue. What was certain, what he did not suspect, was that he was already no longer the same man, that everything was changed in him, that it was no longer in his power to prevent the bishop from speaking to him and touching him. In this state of mind, he had met Petit-Gervais and stolen his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it; was it a last effect and, as it were, a supreme effort of the bad thoughts he had brought from the penal colony, a remnant of impulse, a result of what in statics is called acquired strength? It was that, and it was also perhaps even less than that. Let us say so. simply, it was not he who had stolen, it was not the man, it was the beast who, by habit and instinct, had stupidly set foot on this money, while the intelligence struggled in the midst of so many unheard-of and new obsessions. When the intelligence awoke and saw this action of the brute, Jean Valjean recoiled in anguish and uttered a cry of terror. This was because, a strange phenomenon and one which was only possible in the situation in which he was, in stealing this money from this child, he had done something of which he was already no longer capable. However that may be, this last bad action had a decisive effect on him; it suddenly crossed this chaos which he had in his intelligence and dissipated it, put the dark depths on one side and the light on the other, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it found itself, as certain chemical reagents act on a troubled mixture by precipitating one element and clarifying the other. First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, distraught, like someone who seeks to save himself, he tried to find the child to give him back his money, then, when he recognized that this was useless and impossible, he stopped in despair. At the moment when he cried out: I am a wretch! He had just perceived himself as he was, and he was already so far separated from himself that it seemed to him that he was nothing more than a phantom, and that he had there before him, in flesh and blood, stick in hand, blouse around his waist, his bag filled with stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy face, with his thoughts full of abominable projects, the hideous galley slave Jean Valjean. The excess of misfortune, as we have noticed, had made him in some way a visionary. This was therefore like a vision. He truly saw this Jean Valjean, this sinister face before him. He was almost at the point of asking himself who this man was, and he was horrified by it. His brain was in one of those violent and yet terribly calm moments when reverie is so profound that it absorbs reality. We no longer see the objects around us, and we see as outside ourselves the figures we have in our minds. He contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time, through this hallucination, he saw in a mysterious depth a sort of light which he at first took for a torch. Looking more attentively at this light which appeared to his consciousness, he recognized that it had a human form, and that this torch was the bishop. His consciousness considered in turn these two men thus placed before it, the bishop and Jean Valjean. It had taken no less than the first to drench the second. By one of those singular effects which are peculiar to these kinds of ecstasies, as his reverie was prolonged, the bishop grew larger and more resplendent in his eyes, Jean Valjean diminished and faded away. At a certain moment he was nothing more than a shadow. Suddenly he disappeared. The bishop alone remained. He filled the entire soul of this wretch with a magnificent radiance. Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept hot tears, he wept sobs, with more weakness than a woman, with more terror than a child. While he wept, daylight dawned more and more in his mind, an extraordinary daylight, a daylight both ravishing and terrible . His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his outward brutalization, his inward hardening, his release, delighted by so many plans of revenge, what had happened to him at the bishop’s, the last thing he had done, that theft of forty sous from a child, a crime all the more cowardly and all the more monstrous because it came after the bishop’s pardon, all this came back to him and appeared to him, clearly, but with a clarity he had never seen until then. He looked at his life, and it seemed horrible to him; his soul, and it seemed dreadful to him. However, a sweet day was upon this life and upon this soul. It seemed to him that he saw Satan in the light of paradise. How many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after weeping? Where did he go? No one has ever known. It only seems certain that, on that same night, the carrier who at that time was doing the service from Grenoble and who arrived at Digne around three o’clock in the morning, saw, while crossing the rue de l’évêché, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement, in the shadows, before the door of Monseigneur Bienvenu. Book Three–In the Year 1817 Chapter 28. The Year 1817. 1817 is the year that Louis XVIII, with a certain royal aplomb that was not lacking in pride, called the twenty-second of his reign. This was the year when Mr. Bruguière de Sorsum was famous. All the wigmakers’ shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were daubed with azure and fleur-de-lis. It was the candid time when Count Lynch sat every Sunday as churchwarden at the workbench of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the habit of a peer of France, with his red cord and long nose, and that majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a remarkable act. The remarkable act committed by Mr. Lynch was this: having, as mayor of Bordeaux, on March 12, 1814, given the city a little too early to the Duke of Angoulême. Hence his peerage. In 1817, fashion engulfed little boys from four to six years old under vast morocco leather caps with earflaps that looked rather like Eskimo miters. The French army was dressed in white, in the Austrian style; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names of the departments. Napoleon was at Saint Helena, and, as England refused him green cloth, he had his old clothes turned inside out. In 1817, Pellegrini sang, Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui succeeded Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just been affirmed by cutting off the fist, then the head, of Pleignier, Carbonneau and Tolleron. Prince Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain, and Abbé Louis, Minister- designate of Finance, looked at each other, laughing with the laughter of two augurs; both had celebrated, on July 14, 1790, the Mass of the Federation at the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it as deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, one could see large wooden cylinders, lying in the rain, rotting in the grass, painted blue with traces of eagles and degilded bees. These were the columns which, two years earlier, had supported the emperor’s platform at the Champ-de-Mai. They were blackened here and there from the burning of the Austrians’ bivouac camp near the Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in the fires of these bivouacs and had warmed the large hands of the kaiserlicks. The Champ de Mai had been remarkable in that it had been held in June and at the Champ de Mars. In this year 1817, two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuffbox with the Charter. The most recent Parisian emotion was the crime of Dautun , who had thrown his brother’s head into the basin of the Marché-aux-Fleurs. The Ministry of the Navy was beginning to conduct an investigation into the fatal frigate, the Méduse, which was to shame Chaumareix and bring glory to Géricault. Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Suleiman Pasha. The Palais des Thermes, rue de la Harpe, served as a cooper’s shop. On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hôtel de Cluny, one could still see the small wooden box that had served as an observatory for Messier, naval astronomer under Louis XVI. The Duchess of Duras was reading to three or four friends in her boudoir. furnished with Xs in sky blue satin, unpublished Ourika. We scratched the Ns at the Louvre. The Austerlitz bridge abdicated and was called the bridge of the King’s Garden, a double enigma that disguised both the Austerlitz bridge and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XVIII, preoccupied, while annotating Horace with the corner of his fingernail, with heroes who become emperors and clog makers who become dauphins, had two worries: Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy gave as a prize subject: The happiness that study procures. M. Bellart was officially eloquent. We saw sprouting in his shadow this future attorney general de Broè, promised to the sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier. There was a fake Chateaubriand called Marchangy, while waiting for there to be a fake Marchangy called d’Arlincourt. Claire d’Albe and Malek-Adel were masterpieces; Madame Cottin was declared the leading writer of the time. The institute allowed the academician Napoleon Bonaparte to be removed from its list. A royal ordinance established Angoulême as a naval school, because, the Duke of Angoulême being a Grand Admiral, it was obvious that the city of Angoulême had by right all the qualities of a seaport, without which the monarchical principle would have been undermined. The question was being discussed in the Council of Ministers as to whether the vignettes representing acrobatics which spiced up Franconi’s posters and which gathered the street urchins should be tolerated. M. Paër, author of Agnese, a square-faced fellow with a wart on his cheek, directed the small intimate concerts of the Marquise de Sassenaye, rue de la Ville-l’Évêque. All the young girls sang The Hermit of Saint-Avelle, words by Edmond Géraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transformed into The Mirror. The Café Lemblin supported the Emperor against the Café Valois, which supported the Bourbons. The Duke of Berry, already watched from the shadows by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of Sicily . Madame de Staël had died a year earlier. The bodyguards whistled at Mademoiselle Mars. The major newspapers were very small. The format was restricted, but the freedom was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional. La Minerve called Chateaubriand Chateaubriant. This t made the bourgeoisie laugh a lot at the expense of the great writer. In newspapers that were sold, prostitute journalists insulted the proscribed of 1815; David no longer had talent, Arnault no longer had wit, Carnot no longer had probity; Soult had not won a single battle; It is true that Napoleon no longer had any genius. No one is unaware that it is quite rare for letters addressed by post to an exile to reach him, the police making it their religious duty to intercept them. This is nothing new; the banished Descartes complained about it. Now, David having, in a Belgian newspaper, shown some displeasure at not receiving the letters written to him, this seemed pleasant to the royalist papers which on this occasion mocked the outlaw. To say: the regicides, or to say: the voters, to say: the enemies, or to say: the allies, to say: Napoleon, or to say: Buonaparte, that separated two men more than an abyss. All sensible people agreed that the era of revolutions was forever closed by King Louis XVIII, nicknamed the immortal author of the charter. On the central reservation of the Pont-Neuf, the word Redivivus was being sculpted on the pedestal that awaited the statue of Henri IV. Mr. Piet was sketching out, at 4 rue Thérèse, his secret meeting to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the right were saying in serious circumstances: We must write to Bacot. Messrs. Canuel, O’Mahony and de Chappedelaine were sketching out, with some approval from Monsieur, what was later to become the conspiracy of the water’s edge. L’Épgle Noire was plotting on his side. Delaverderie was getting in touch with Trogoff. Mr. Decazes, a somewhat liberal spirit, was dominant. Chateaubriand, standing every morning in front of his window at no. 27 rue Saint-Dominique, in trousers and slippers, his gray hair combed in madras, his eyes fixed on a mirror, a complete dental surgeon’s kit open in front of him, was picking his teeth, which he had charming, while dictating variants of the Monarchy according to the Charter to M. Pilorge, his secretary. The authoritative critics preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Féletz signed A.; M. Hoffmann signed Z. Charles Nodier wrote Thérèse Aubert. Divorce was abolished. Lycées were called collèges. The schoolboys, adorned on their collars with a golden fleur-de-lis, quarreled there about the King of Rome. The castle’s counter-police denounced to Her Royal Highness Madame the portrait, exhibited everywhere, of the Duke of Orléans, who looked better in the uniform of Colonel-General of the Houzards than the Duke of Berry in the uniform of Colonel-General of the Dragoons; a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides re-gilded at its own expense. Serious men wondered what, on such and such an occasion, M. de Trinquelague would do; M. Clausel de Montals was separating himself, on various points, from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The actor Picard, who was a member of the Academy which the actor Molière had been unable to attend, was having the two Philiberts performed at the Odéon, on the pediment of which the torn-off letters still allowed the distinct reading: THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS. People were taking sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was a revolutionary. The bookseller Pélicier published an edition of Voltaire, under this title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. This brings in buyers, said this naive publisher. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson, would be the genius of the century; envy began to bite him, a sign of glory; and this verse was written about him: Even when Loyson flies, one feels that he has legs. Cardinal Fesch refusing to resign, M. de Pins, archbishop of Amasia, administered the diocese of Lyon. The quarrel of the Dappes valley began between Switzerland and France with a memoir by Captain Dufour, since general. Saint-Simon, ignored, was building his sublime dream. There was at the Academy of Sciences a famous Fourier whom posterity has forgotten and in some attic an obscure Fourier whom the future will remember. Lord Byron began to emerge; a note from a poem by Millevoye announced it to France in these terms: a certain Lord Baron. David d’Angers was trying his hand at kneading marble. Abbé Caron spoke with praise, in a small group of seminarians, in the dead end of the Feuillantines, of an unknown priest named Félicité Robert who was later Lamennais. A thing that smoked and splashed on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog came and went under the windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV. It was a piece of machinery good for very little, a kind of toy, a dream of a dreamy inventor, a utopia: a steamboat. The Parisians looked at this uselessness with indifference. M. de Vaublanc, reformer of the Institute by coup d’état, order and batch, distinguished author of several academicians, after having made some, could not manage to be one. The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the Marsan pavilion wanted Mr. Delaveau as police prefect, because of his devotion. Dupuytren and Récamier quarreled in the amphitheater of the School of Medicine and threatened each other with their fists about the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please the bigoted reaction by making the fossils agree with the texts and by having Moses flattered by the mastodons. Mr. François de Neufchâteau, a laudable cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have potato pronounced parmentier, and did not succeed. Abbé Grégoire, former bishop, former member of the Convention, former senator, had passed in the royalist polemic to the state of infamous Gregory. This expression that we have just used: to pass to the state of , was denounced as a neologism by M. Royer-Collard. One could still distinguish by its whiteness, under the third arch of the bridge of Iéna, the new stone with which, two years previously, the mine hole made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been plugged. Justice called to its bar a man who, on seeing the Count of Artois enter Notre-Dame, had said aloud: “Gosh! I regret the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talma enter arm in arm at the Bal-Sauvage.” Seditious remarks. Six months in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; Men who had gone over to the enemy the day before a battle hid nothing of the reward and marched shamelessly in full sunlight in the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the disheveled state of their paid turpitude, displayed their monarchical devotion completely naked; forgetting what is written in England on the inside wall of public water closets: Please adjust your dress before leaving. This, pell-mell, is what vaguely floats from the year 1817, forgotten today. History neglects almost all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; infinity would invade it. Yet these details, which are wrongly called small—there are neither small facts in humanity, nor small leaves in vegetation—are useful. It is from the physiognomy of the years that the figure of the centuries is composed. In this year 1817, four young Parisians played a good joke. Chapter 29. Double quartet. These Parisians were one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students, and who says student says Parisian; to study in Paris is to be born in Paris. These young people were insignificant; everyone has seen these figures; four samples of the first comer; neither good nor bad, neither learned nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor imbeciles; handsome of that charming April that we call twenty. They were four ordinary Oscars, for at that time the Arthurs did not yet exist. Burn for him the perfumes of Arabia, cried the romance, Oscar comes forward, Oscar, I am going to see him! They were coming out of Ossian, elegance was Scandinavian and Caledonian, the pure English style was to prevail only later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had barely won the battle of Waterloo. These Oscars were one called Félix Tholomyès, from Toulouse; the other Listolier, from Cahors; the other Fameuil, from Limoges; the last Blachevelle, from Montauban. Naturally, each had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been to England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken the name of a flower as her nom de guerre ; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, short for Joséphine; Tholomyès had Fantine, called the Blonde because of her beautiful sun-colored hair. Favorite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four ravishing girls, fragrant and radiant, still a little bit like workers, not quite having left their needles, disturbed by love affairs, but having on their faces a remnant of the serenity of work and in their souls that flower of honesty which in a woman survives the first fall. There was one of the four who was called the young one, because she was the youngest; and one who was called the old one. The old one was twenty-three years old. To be honest, the first three were more experienced, more carefree, and more carried away by the noise of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was in her first illusion. Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favorite, could not have said as much. There was already more than one episode in their romance, barely begun, and the lover, who was called Adolphe in the first chapter, happened to be Alphonse in the second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counselors, one scolds, the other flatters; and the beautiful girls of the people have them both whispering in their ears, each on her own side. These poorly guarded souls listen. Hence the falls they make and the stones thrown at them. They are overwhelmed with the splendor of all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! if Yungfrau were hungry? Favorite, having been in England, had Zéphine and Dahlia as admirers. She had had a home very early. Her father was a brutal old professor of mathematics who spoke Gascony; unmarried, chasing after a fee despite his age. This professor, when young, had one day seen a maid’s dress caught on an ash pan; he had fallen in love with this accident. The result was Favorite. From time to time she met her father, who greeted her. One morning, a rather smug old woman came into her house and said: “Don’t you know me, mademoiselle? ” “No. ” “I’m your mother.” Then the old woman opened the sideboard, ate and drank, had a mattress she had brought, and settled down. This mother, grumpy and devout, never spoke to Favorite, remained for hours without a word, ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner like four, and went down to the porter’s house to make a salon, where she spoke ill of her daughter. What had drawn Dahlia to Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness, was having too pretty pink nails. How could one make those nails work? Whoever wants to remain virtuous must not feel sorry for their hands. As for Zéphine, she had won over Fameuil with her mischievous and caressing little way of saying: “Yes, sir.” The young men being comrades, the young girls were friends. These loves are always doubled by these friendships. Sage and philosopher, that’s two; and what proves it is that, all reservations made about these irregular little households, Favorite, Zéphine and Dahlia were philosopher girls, and Fantine a wise girl. Wise, one might say? And Tholomyès? Solomon would reply that love is part of wisdom. We limit ourselves to saying that Fantine’s love was a first love, a unique love, a faithful love. She was the only one of the four who was addressed informally by only one. Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, in the depths of the people. Emerging from the most unfathomable depths of social shadow , she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born in Montreuil-sur-mer. Of whose parents? Who could say? She had never been known to have either a father or a mother. Her name was Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never been known by any other name. At the time of her birth, the Directory still existed. No family name, she had no family; no baptismal name, the church was no longer there. She was called whatever pleased the first passerby who met her as a child, walking barefoot in the street. She received a name as the water from the clouds fell on her forehead when it rained. They called her little Fantine. No one knew any more. This human creature had come into life like that. At ten, Fantine left the city and went to work for farmers in the surrounding area. At fifteen , she came to Paris “to seek her fortune.” Fantine was beautiful and remained pure as long as she could. She was a pretty blonde with beautiful teeth. She had gold and pearls for a dowry, but her gold was on her head and her pearls were in her mouth. She worked to live; then, always to live, for the heart has its hunger too, she loved. She loved Tholomyès. A love affair for him, a passion for her. The streets of the Latin Quarter, filled with the swarm of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream. Fantine, in these labyrinths of the hill of Pantheon, where so many adventures are formed and unraveled, had long fled Tholomyès, but in such a way as to always encounter him. There is a way of avoiding him that resembles seeking him. In short, the eclogue took place. Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyès was the head. He was the one who had the spirit. Tholomyès was the ancient old student; he was rich; he had four thousand francs a year; four thousand francs a year, a splendid scandal on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain. Tholomyès was a thirty-year-old reveler, poorly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless; and he was beginning to bald, of which he himself said without sadness: skull at thirty, knees at forty. He digested poorly, and a tear had come to one eye. But as his youth faded, he kindled his gaiety; He replaced his teeth with jokes, his hair with joy, his health with irony, and his weeping eye laughed incessantly . He was dilapidated, but all in bloom. His youth, packing up well before its time, beat an orderly retreat, burst out laughing, and one saw nothing but fire. He had had a play rejected at the Vaudeville. He wrote here and there some ordinary verses. Moreover, he doubted everything supremely, a great strength in the eyes of the weak. Therefore, being ironic and bald, he was the leader. Iron is an English word which means iron. Could this be where irony comes from? One day Tholomyès took the other three aside, made an oracular gesture, and said to them: “For almost a year now, Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine and Favorite have been asking us to give them a surprise. We solemnly promised it to them . They always talk to us about it, especially me.” Just as in Naples the old women cry to Saint Januarius: Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo. Yellow face, perform your miracle! Our beauties are constantly saying to me: Tholomyès, when will you give birth to your surprise? At the same time our parents write to us. Saw on both sides. The moment seems to me to have come. Let us talk. At this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously articulated something so gay that a vast and enthusiastic snigger came from all four mouths at once and Blachevelle exclaimed: “That’s an idea!” A tavern full of smoke presented itself, they entered it, and the rest of their conference was lost in the shadows. The result of this darkness was a dazzling party which took place the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four young women. Chapter 30. Four by four. What a country outing of students and grisettes was like forty-five years ago is difficult to imagine today. Paris no longer has the same surroundings; the face of what one might call circum-Parisian life has completely changed in the last half century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway carriage; where there was the patache, there is the steamboat; we say Fécamp today as we said Saint-Cloud. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its suburbs. The four couples conscientiously accomplished all the rural follies possible then. The holidays were just beginning, and it was a warm, clear summer day. The day before, Favorite, the only one who knew how to write, had written this to Tholomyès on behalf of the four: It is a good time to emerge from happiness. That is why they got up at five o’clock in the morning. Then they went to Saint-Cloud by coach, looked at the dry waterfall, and exclaimed: It must be very beautiful when there is water! They lunched at the Tête-Noire, where Castaing had not yet passed, had a game of rings in the quincunx of the large basin, went up to the Diogenes lantern, played macaroons at the roulette table on the Pont de Sèvres, picked bouquets at Puteaux, bought mirlitons at Neuilly, ate apple turnovers everywhere, and were perfectly happy. The young girls rustled and chattered like escaped warblers . It was delirium. From time to time they gave the young men little pats. Morning intoxication of life! Adorable years! The wings of dragonflies quiver. Oh! Whoever you are, do you remember? Have you walked in the undergrowth, pushing aside the branches because of the charming head coming up behind you? Have you slipped laughing on some embankment wet with the rain with a beloved woman who holds your hand and cries: Ah! my brand new boots! What a state they are in! Let us say at once that this joyful annoyance, a shower, was missing from this good-natured company, although Favorite had said as she left, with a masterly and maternal accent: The slugs are walking in the paths. A sign of rain, my children. All four were madly pretty. A good old classical poet, then renowned, a good man who had an Eleanor, M. le Chevalier de Labouïsse, wandering that day under the chestnut trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass around ten o’clock in the morning; he cried out: There’s one too many, thinking of the Graces. Favorite, Blachevelle’s friend, the twenty-three-year-old, the old one, ran ahead under the great green branches, jumped the ditches, leaped wildly over the bushes, and presided over this gaiety with the verve of a young faun. Zéphine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way that they brought each other out of respect as they drew nearer and complemented each other, never left each other, out of an instinct for coquetry more than out of friendship, and, leaning on each other , assumed English poses; The first keepsakes had just appeared, melancholy was dawning for women, as, later, Byronism for men, and the hair of the tender sex was beginning to weep. Zéphine and Dahlia were wearing their hair in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, engaged in a discussion about their teachers, were explaining to Fantine the difference between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau. Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favorite’s lame ternaux shawl on his arm on Sundays. Tholomyès followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt the government in him; there was dictatorship in his joviality; his principal ornament was a pair of elephant-legged trousers, made of nankeen, with copper braid underfoot; he had a powerful rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he allowed himself everything, a strange thing called a cigar, in his mouth. Nothing being sacred to him, he smoked. “That Tholomyès is astonishing,” the others said with veneration. “What trousers! What energy!” As for Fantine, she was joy. Her splendid teeth had evidently been given a function by God: laughter. She carried her little sewn straw hat with long white straps in her hand more readily than on her head. Her thick blond hair, inclined to flow and easily untied, which had to be constantly tied back, seemed made for Galatea’s flight under the willows. Her pink lips chattered with enchantment. The corners of her mouth, voluptuously raised, like the antique masks of Erigone, seemed to encourage audacity; but her long eyelashes, full of shadow, lowered discreetly over the hubbub at the bottom of her face as if to put a stop to it. Her whole attire had something indescribably melodious and flamboyant about it. She wore a mauve barège dress, little bronze buskins whose ribbons traced Xs on her fine white openwork stockings, and this kind of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the word fifteenth of August pronounced at the Canebière, means good weather, heat and noon. The other three, less timid, as we have said, had completely low-cut necklines, which, in summer, under hats covered with flowers, has a lot of grace and annoyance; but, beside these bold adjustments, the canezou of the Blonde Fantine, with her transparencies, her indiscretions and her reticences, hiding and showing at the same time, seemed a provocative find of decency, and the famous court of love, presided over by the Viscountess of Cette with sea-green eyes, would perhaps have given the prize for coquetry to this canezou who competed for chastity. The most naive is sometimes the most learned. It happens. Radiant from the front, delicate in profile, with deep blue eyes, plump eyelids, small, arched feet, wrists and ankles admirably fitted together, white skin revealing here and there the azure arborescences of the veins, childish and frank cheek, the robust neck of the Aeginetian Junos, the strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modeled as if by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the center visible through the muslin; an icy gaiety of reverie; sculptural and exquisite; such was Fantine; and one could guess beneath these rags a statue, and in this statue a soul. Fantine was beautiful, without really knowing it. The rare dreamers, mysterious priests of beauty, who silently confront all things with perfection, would have glimpsed in this little worker, through the transparency of Parisian grace, the ancient sacred euphony. This girl of the shadows had race. She was beautiful in both species, which are style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement. We have said that Fantine was joy, Fantine was also modesty. For an observer who had studied her attentively, what emanated from her, through all this intoxication of age, season and love affair, was an invincible expression of restraint and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the nuance that separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white , slender fingers of the vestal virgin stirring the ashes of the sacred fire with a gold pin. Although she had refused nothing, as will be seen only too clearly in Tholomyès, her face, at rest, was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly invaded it at certain times, and nothing was more singular and disturbing than to see gaiety extinguish so quickly and contemplation succeed without transition to blossoming. This sudden gravity, sometimes severely accentuated, resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her forehead, her nose and her chin presented this balance of line, very distinct from the balance of proportion, and from which results the harmony of the face; in the characteristic interval that separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity that made Barbarossa fall in love with a Diana found in the excavations of Iconium. Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating on fault. Chapter 31. Tholomyès is so joyful that he sings a Spanish song. That day was made of dawn from one end to the other. All of nature seemed to have leave, and to laugh. The flowerbeds of Saint-Cloud were fragrant; the breath of the Seine vaguely stirred the leaves; the branches gesticulated in the wind; the bees were pillaging the jasmines; a whole swarm of butterflies frolicked in the yarrow, the clover and the wild oats; there was in the august park of the King of France a host of vagabonds, the birds. The four happy couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers, the trees, shone. And, in this community of paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing butterflies, picking bindweed, wetting their pink openwork stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, not at all wicked, all received here and there kisses from everyone, except Fantine, shut up in her vague, dreamy and fierce resistance, and who loved. “You,” Favorite said to her, “you always look like a thing.” These are the joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound call to life and nature, and bring out of everything caress and light. Once upon a time there was a fairy who made the meadows and the trees expressly for lovers. Hence this eternal truant school of lovers which begins again and again and which will last as long as there are bushes and schoolchildren. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician and the low-earner, the duke and peer and the robin, the people of the court and the people of the city, as we used to say, all are subjects of this fairy. We laugh, we seek each other, there is in the air a clarity of apotheosis, what a transfiguration to love! The notary’s clerks are gods. And the little cries, the chases in the grass, the cuts taken in flight, these jargons which are melodies, these adorations which burst forth in the way of saying a syllable, these cherries torn from one mouth to another, all this blazes and passes into celestial glories. The beautiful girls make a sweet waste of themselves. One believes that it will never end. Philosophers, poets, painters look at these ecstasies and do not know what to do with them, so dazzling are they. The departure for Cythera! cries Watteau; Lancret, the painter of the common people, contemplates his bourgeois flown into the blue; Diderot extends his arms to all these love affairs, and d’Urfé mixes in druids. After lunch the four couples had gone to see, in what was then called the King’s Square, a plant recently arrived from India, whose name escapes us at this moment, and which at that time attracted all of Paris to Saint-Cloud; it was a bizarre and charming shrub with a tall stem, whose innumerable branches, thin as threads, disheveled, without leaves, were covered with a million small white rosettes; which made the shrub look like a hair covered in lousy flowers. There were always crowds to admire it. Having seen the shrub, Tholomyès had exclaimed: I offer donkeys! and, having made a price with a donkey driver, they had returned by way of Vanves and Issy. At Issy, an incident occurred. The park, a National Property owned at that time by the munitionary Bourguin, was by chance completely open. They had crossed the gate, visited the mannequin anchorite in her cave, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous cabinet of mirrors, a lascivious trap worthy of a satyr turned millionaire or Turcaret transformed into Priapus. They had vigorously shaken the large net swing attached to the two chestnut trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. While swinging these beauties one after the other, which, amidst the universal laughter, created folds of flying skirts in which Greuze would have found his place, the Toulousain Tholomyès, somewhat Spanish, Toulouse is a cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholic melody, the old gallega song probably inspired by some beautiful girl thrown at full speed on a rope between two trees: Soy de Badajoz. Amor me llama. Toda mi alma Es en mi ojos Porque enseñas À tus piernas. Fantine alone refused to swing. “I don’t like people like that,” murmured Favorite rather sourly. The donkeys left, new joy; they crossed the Seine by boat, and from Passy, on foot, they reached the Barrière de l’Étoile. They had been, as you will remember, up since five o’clock in the morning; but, well! there’s no weariness on Sundays, said Favorite; on Sundays, fatigue doesn’t work. Around three o’clock the four couples, overcome with happiness, tumbled down the Russian mountain, a singular edifice which then occupied the heights of Beaujon and whose snaking line could be seen above the trees of the Champs-Élysées. From time to time Favorite cried out: “And the surprise? I ask for the surprise. ” “Patience,” replied Tholomyès. Chapter 32. At Bombarda’s. The roller coaster exhausted, they had thought about dinner; and the radiant eight-day trip, finally a little tired, had ended up at the Bombarda cabaret, a branch that the famous restaurateur Bombarda had established on the Champs-Élysées , whose sign could then be seen on the Rue de Rivoli next to the Passage Delorme. A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the back (given the fullness of the cabaret on Sundays, they had to accept this lodging); two windows from which one could contemplate, through the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent ray of August light brushing the windows; two tables; on one a triumphant mountain of bouquets mingled with men’s and women’s hats; at the other the four couples seated around a joyful clutter of dishes, plates, glasses and bottles; jugs of beer mixed with flagons of wine; little order on the table, some disorder underneath; They were making a noise under the table , a dreadful tric-trac of feet, said Molière. This was where the shepherdade had reached around four thirty in the evening, having begun at five in the morning. The sun was setting, appetite was fading. The Champs-Élysées, full of sunshine and crowds, were nothing but light and dust, two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, reared in a cloud of gold. The carriages came and went. A squadron of magnificent bodyguards , led by a bugle, was descending the Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, vaguely pink in the setting sun, fluttered over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, now once again the Place Louis XV, was teeming with contented strollers. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lis suspended from the white moiré ribbon which, in 1817, had not yet completely disappeared from buttonholes. Here and there, amidst the passers- by forming a circle and applauding, circles of little girls threw into the wind a Bourbon bourrée then famous, destined to strike down the Hundred Days, and which had as its refrain: Give us back our father of Ghent, Give us back our father. Lots of suburbanites in their Sunday best, sometimes even wearing fleur-de-lis like the bourgeoisie, scattered around the large square and the Marigny square, were playing rings and spinning on the wooden horses; others were drinking; a few, apprentice printers, had paper caps; their laughter could be heard. Everything was radiant. It was a time of incontestable peace and profound royalist security; It was the time when a personal and special report from the police prefect Anglès to the king on the suburbs of Paris ended with these lines: All things considered, sire, there is nothing to fear from these people. They are as carefree and indolent as cats. The common people of the provinces are restless, those of Paris are not. They are all small men. Sire, it would take two of them end to end to make one of your grenadiers. There is no fear on the part of the populace of the capital. It is remarkable that the size of this population has decreased again in the last fifty years; and the people of the suburbs of Paris are smaller than before the revolution. They are not dangerous. In short, they are good rabble. That a cat can change into a lion, the police prefects do not believe it possible; yet it is, and that is the miracle of the people of Paris. The cat, moreover, so despised by Count Anglès, had the esteem of the ancient republics; it embodied liberty in their eyes, and, as if to serve as a counterpart to the wingless Minerva of Piraeus, there was in the public square of Corinth the bronze colossus of a cat. The naive police of the Restoration saw the people of Paris in too good a light. They are not, as much as one believes, good rabble. The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greek; no one sleeps better than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy that he, no one better than he seems to forget; that one does not trust him, however; he is prone to all sorts of nonchalance, but, when there is glory at the end, he is admirable in all sorts of fury. Give him a pike, he will make the 10th of August; give him a rifle, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s support and Danton’s resource. Is it about the fatherland? he enlists; is it about liberty? he unpavers. Watch out! his hair full of anger is epic; his blouse is draped in chlamys. Beware. From the first Greneta street you come across, he will make Caudine pitchforks. If the hour strikes, this suburbanite will grow, this little man will stand up, and he will look in a terrible way, and his breath will become a storm, and from this poor, thin chest will come enough wind to disturb the folds of the Alps. It is thanks to the suburbanite of Paris that the revolution, mixed with the armies, conquers Europe. He sings, it is his joy. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as his only refrain is the Carmagnole, he overthrows only Louis XVI; make him sing the Marseillaise, he will deliver the world. This note written in the margin of the Anglès report, we return to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was ending. Chapter 33. Chapter where we adore each other Table talk and love talk; the one is as elusive as the other; love talk is clouds, table talk is smoke. Fameuil and Dahlia hummed; Tholomyès drank; Zéphine laughed, Fantine smiled. Listolier blew into a wooden trumpet bought in Saint-Cloud. Favorite looked tenderly at Blachevelle and said: “Blachevelle, I adore you.” This brought forth a question from Blachevelle: “What would you do, Favorite, if I stopped loving you? ” “Me!” cried Favorite. “Ah! don’t say that, not even in jest! If you stopped loving me, I would jump after you, I would scratch you, I would scratch you, I would throw water on you, I would have you arrested. ” Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous conceit of a man tickled to the point of vanity. Favorite continued: “Yes, I would cry out to the guard ! Ah! I would embarrass myself, for example! Scoundrel! ” Blachevelle, ecstatic, leaned back in his chair and proudly closed both his eyes. Dahlia, while eating, said quietly to Favorite in the hubbub: “So you really idolize your Blachevelle?” “I hate him,” replied Favorite in the same tone, picking up her fork. “He’s stingy. I like the boy across the street from me. He’s very nice, that young man, do you know him? You can see he’s got the makings of an actor. I like actors. As soon as he comes home, his mother says: “Oh, my God! My peace is gone. He’s going to scream.” But, my friend, you’re giving me a headache! Because he goes into the house, into rat-holes, into black holes, so high up that he can climb, and sing, and declaim, do I know? That he can be heard from downstairs! He’s already earning twenty sous a day from a lawyer writing jokes. He’s the son of a former cantor of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Oh! he’s very nice. ” He idolizes me so much that one day when he saw me making batter for pancakes, he said to me: “Misselle, make fritters out of your gloves and I’ll eat them.” Only artists say things like that. Ah! He’s very good. I’m starting to lose my temper over this little one. It doesn’t matter, I tell Blachevelle that I adore him. How I lie! Huh? How I lie! Favorite paused, and continued: “Dahlia, you see, I’m sad. It’s been raining all summer, the wind annoys me, the wind never lets up, Blachevelle is very stingy, there are hardly any peas at the market, we don’t know what to eat, I’m feeling blue, as the English say, butter is so expensive!” and then, see, it’s a horror, we dine in a place where there is a bed, it disgusts me with life. Chapter 34. Wisdom of Tholomyès. Meanwhile, while some sang, others chatted tumultuously, and all together; it was nothing but noise. Tholomyès intervened: “Let us not speak at random or too quickly,” he cried. “Let us meditate if we want to be dazzling. Too much improvisation stupidly empties the mind. Flowing beer gathers no foam. Gentlemen, no haste. Let us mingle majesty with the feast; let us eat with reverence; let us feast slowly. Let us not hurry. Look at spring; if it hurries, it is flambéed, that is to say, frozen. Excessive zeal destroys peach and apricot trees. Excessive zeal kills the grace and joy of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen! Grimod de la Reynière agrees with Talleyrand. A muffled rebellion rumbled through the group. “Tholomyès, leave us alone,” said Blachevelle. “Down with the tyrant!” said Fameuil. “Bombarda, Bombance, and Bamboche!” shouted Listolier. “Sunday exists,” continued Fameuil. “We are sober,” added Listolier. “Tholomyès,” said Blachevelle, “contemplate my calm. ” “You are the marquis,” replied Tholomyès. This poor play on words had the effect of a stone in a pond. The Marquis de Montcalm was a famous royalist at the time. All the frogs fell silent. “Friends,” cried Tholomyès, “in the tone of a man who is regaining the empire, pull yourselves together. We must not be too astonished to greet this pun that fell from the sky. Not everything that falls in this way is necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the droppings of the flying spirit. The joke falls anywhere; and the spirit, after laying a foolish egg, sinks into the azure. A whitish stain that flattens itself on the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring. Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All that is most august, most sublime and most charming in humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, has made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on Saint Peter, Moses on Isaac, Aeschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And note that this Cleopatra pun preceded the Battle of Actium, and that, without it, no one would remember the city of Toryne, a Greek name meaning pot spoon. That conceded, I return to my exhortation. My brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no hubbub, no excess, even in points, gaiety, jubilation and wordplay . Listen to me, I have the prudence of Amphiaraüs and the baldness of Caesar. There must be a limit, even to rebuses. Est modus in rebus . There must be a limit, even to dinners. You like apple turnovers, ladies, don’t overdo it. One needs, even in turnovers, common sense and art. Gluttony punishes the glutton. Gula punishes Gulax. Indigestion is charged by the good Lord to moralize stomachs. And remember this: each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overfilled. In all things, one must write the word finis in good time, one must restrain oneself when it becomes urgent, pull the bolt on one’s appetite, put one’s fancy to the test and lead oneself to the station. The wise man is the one who knows how to effect his own arrest at a given moment. Have some confidence in me. Because I have studied law a little, according to my exams, because I know the difference between the question being asked and the question pending, because I defended a thesis in Latin on the manner in which torture was administered in Rome at the time when Munatius Demens was quaestor of Parricide, because I am going to be a doctor, it seems, it does not necessarily follow that I should be an imbecile. I recommend moderation in your desires. True, as my name is Felix Tholomyès, I speak well. Happy is he who, when the hour has struck, takes a heroic stand, and abdicates like Sylla, or Origen! Favorite listened with profound attention. “Felix!” she said, “what a pretty word! I like that name. It’s in Latin. It means Prosper. ” Tholomyès continued: “Quirites, gentlemen, Caballeros, my friends! Do you want to feel no sting and to do without a nuptial bed and brave love? Nothing could be simpler.” Here’s the recipe: lemonade, excessive exercise, forced labor, wear yourself out, drag blocks, don’t sleep, stay awake, gorge yourself on nitrous drinks and water lily infusions, savor emulsions of poppies and agnuscastus, season this with a severe diet, starve to death, and add to it cold baths, herbal belts, the application of a lead plate, lotions with the liquor of Saturn and fomentations with oxycrat. “I prefer a woman,” said Listolier. “A woman!” replied Tholomyès, “beware of her. Woe to him who gives himself over to the fickle heart of a woman! A woman is treacherous and devious. She hates the serpent out of professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop opposite.” “Tholomyès,” cried Blachevelle, “you’re drunk! ” “Pardieu!” said Tholomyès. “Then be cheerful,” resumed Blachevelle. And , filling his glass, he stood up: “Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me, ladies, it’s Spanish. And the proof, señoras, is this: such people, such cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen liters, the cantaro of Alicante twelve, the almude of the Canaries twenty-five, the cuartin of the Balearics twenty-six, the boot of Czar Peter thirty. Long live this Czar who was great, and long live his boot which was even greater! Ladies, a word of friendly advice: choose the wrong neighbor, if you please. The nature of love is to wander.” Love is not made to squat and stupefy itself like an English maid who has calluses on her knees from scrobbling. She is not made for that, she wanders gaily, sweet love! It has been said: to err is human; I say: to err is amorous. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zéphine, O Joséphine, face more than crumpled, you would be charming, if you were not crooked . You have the air of a pretty face on which, by mistake, someone has sat. As for Favorite, O nymphs and muses! One day when Blachevelle was passing the stream on the rue Guérin-Boisseau, he saw a beautiful girl in well-drawn white stockings who showed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle loved. The one he loved was Favorite. O Favorite, you have Ionian lips. There was a Greek painter, named Euphorion, who was nicknamed the painter of lips. Only this Greek would have been worthy of painting your mouth! Listen! Before you, there was no creature worthy of the name. You were made to receive the apple like Venus or to eat it like Eve. Beauty begins with you. I just spoke of Eve; you created her. You deserve the patent for the pretty woman. Oh Favorite, I will stop using the familiar form of address with you because I am moving from poetry to prose. You were talking about my name just now. It touched me; but, whoever we are, let us be wary of names. They can be wrong. My name is Felix and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us not blindly accept the directions they give us. It would be a mistake to write to Liège for corks and to Pau for gloves. Miss Dahlia, if I were you, I would call myself Rosa. The flower must smell good and the woman must have wit. I say nothing about Fantine, she is a dreamer, a pensive, a sensitive person; she is a ghost in the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who strays into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions, and who sings, and who prays, and who looks at the azure without really knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed on the sky, wander in a garden where there are more birds than exist! Oh Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyès, am an illusion; but she doesn’t even hear me, the blonde daughter of chimeras! Besides, everything in her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light. Oh Fantine, girl worthy of calling yourself daisy or pearl, you are a woman of the most beautiful orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice: don’t get married; marriage is a graft; it takes well or badly; flee this risk. But, bah! what am I singing here? I’m losing my words. Girls are incurable about marriage; and all that we wise women can say will not prevent waistcoat makers and boot stitchers from dreaming of husbands enriched with diamonds. Anyway, so be it; but, beauties, remember this: you eat too much sugar. You have only one fault, oh women, and that is to nibble on sugar. O gnawing sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, listen carefully, sugar is a salt. All salt is drying. Sugar is the most drying of all salts. It pumps the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, then the solidification of the blood; hence the tubercles in the lung; hence death. And that is why diabetes borders on consumption. So do not crunch sugar, and you will live! I turn to men. Gentlemen, make conquests. Plunder each other ‘s beloveds without remorse. Chase and cross. In love, there are no friends. Wherever there is a pretty woman, hostility is open. No quarter, all-out war! A pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is a flagrant offense. All invasions in history are determined by petticoats. Woman is the right of man. Romulus carried off the Sabine women, William carried off the Saxon women, Caesar carried off the Roman women. The man who is not loved hovers like a vulture over the lovers of others; and as for me, to all these unfortunate widowers, I throw Bonaparte’s sublime proclamation to the army of Italy: Soldiers, you lack everything. The enemy has it. Tholomyès interrupted himself. “Breathe, Tholomyès,” said Blachevelle. At the same time, Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil, struck up to a lamenting tune one of those workshop songs composed of the first words that come along, richly rhymed and not at all, empty of meaning like the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind, which are born from the vapor of the pipes and dissipate and fly away with it. Here is the verse with which the group responded to Tholomyès’s speech: The turkey fathers gave money to an agent so that Mons Clermont-Tonnerre would be made pope on Saint John’s Day; But Clermont could not be made pope, not being a priest. Then their furious agent brought them their money. This did nothing to calm Tholomyès’s improvisation; he emptied his glass, refilled it, and started again. –Down with wisdom! Forget everything I said. Let us be neither prudish, nor prudent, nor prudent. I propose a toast to joy; let us be joyful! Let us complete our course of law with madness and food. Indigestion and digestibility. Let Justinian be the male and Ripaille the female! Joy in the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond! I am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a feast everywhere! The nightingale is a free Elleviou. Summer, I greet you. Oh Luxembourg, Oh Georgics of the Rue Madame and the Allée de l’Observatoire! Oh dreamy little peacocks! Oh all those charming maids who, while looking after children, amuse themselves by sketching them! The pampas of America would please me, if I did not have the arcades of the Odéon. My soul flies into the virgin forests and the savannahs. Everything is beautiful. The flies buzz in the rays. The sun has sneezed the hummingbird. Kiss me, Fantine! He was mistaken, and kissed Favorite. Chapter 35. Death of a Horse. “One dines better at Edon’s than at Bombarda’s,” cried Zéphine. “I prefer Bombarda to Edon,” declared Blachevelle. “It has more luxury. It’s more Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs. There are mirrors on the walls. ” “I like them better on my plate,” said Favorite. Blachevelle persisted: “Look at the knives. The handles are silver at Bombarda’s, and bone at Edon’s. Now, silver is more precious than bone. ” “Except for those who have a silver chin,” observed Tholomyès. He was at that moment looking at the dome of the Invalides, visible from Bombarda’s windows. There was a pause. “Tholomyès,” cried Fameuil, “just now, Listolier and I were having a discussion. ” “A discussion is good,” replied Tholomyès, “a quarrel is better.” “We were arguing about philosophy. ” “So be it.” “Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza? ” “Désaugiers,” said Tholomyès. Having made this decision, he drank and continued: “I consent to live. All is not over on earth, since one can still be unreasonable. I give thanks to the immortal gods. We lie, but we laugh. We affirm, but we doubt. The unexpected springs from the syllogism. It is beautiful. There are still humans here below who know how to joyfully open and close the surprise box of paradox. This, ladies, that you are drinking with a calm air, is Madeira wine, you should know, from the Coural das Freiras vintage, which is 317 fathoms above sea level! Be careful when drinking! 317 fathoms! And Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent restaurateur, gives you these 317 fathoms for 4 francs 50 centimes!” Fameuil interrupted again: “Tholomyès, your opinions are law. Who is your favorite author? ” “Ber…. ” “Quin? ” “No. Cabbage.” And Tholomyès continued: “Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could pluck me an almea, and Thygelion of Chaeronea if he could bring me a hetaira! For, oh ladies, there were Bombardas in Greece and Egypt. It is Apuleius who tells us. Alas! always the same things and nothing new. Nothing new in the creation of the creator! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon; amor omnibus idem, says Virgil; and Carabine climbs with Carabin into the galliot of Saint-Cloud, as Aspasia embarked with Pericles on the fleet of Samos. One last word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived in a time when women did not yet have souls, she was a soul; a soul of a shade of pink and purple, more fiery than fire, more frank than dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom the two extremes of womanhood met; she was the prostitute goddess. Socrates, plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case Prometheus needed a whore. Tholomyes, on the run, would have had difficulty stopping, if a horse had not fallen on the quay at that very moment. The cart and the orator were both left short by the impact. It was a Beauceron mare, old and thin and worthy of the knacker’s, which was pulling a very heavy cart . Arriving before Bombarda, the beast, exhausted and overwhelmed, had refused to go any further. This incident had caused a crowd. Hardly had the carter, swearing and indignant, had time to pronounce with the appropriate energy the sacramental word: mastiff! supported by an implacable blow of the whip, than the nag had fallen and never got up again. At the hubbub of the passers-by, Tholomyès’s cheerful listeners turned their heads, and Tholomyès took advantage of the situation to close his speech with this melancholy verse: She was from this world where cuckoos and carriages have the same destiny, and, nag, she lived what nags live, for the space of a: mastiff! –Poor horse, sighed Fantine. And Dahlia cried: –Now Fantine is going to start pitying the horses! Can one be What a damned beast! At that moment, Favorite, crossing her arms and throwing her head back, looked resolutely at Tholomyès and said: “Ah, now! And the surprise? ” “Exactly. The moment has arrived,” replied Tholomyès. “Gentlemen, the hour of the surprise has come. Ladies, wait for us a moment. ” “It begins with a kiss,” said Blachevelle. “On the forehead,” added Tholomyès. Each one gravely placed a kiss on his mistress’s forehead; then they all went to the door in a row, all four of them, putting their fingers to their lips. Favorite clapped her hands as they left. “That’s already amusing,” she said. “Don’t stay too long,” murmured Fantine. “We’re waiting for you.” Chapter 36. Joyful End of Joy. The young girls, left alone, leaned two by two on the windowsills, chatting, leaning their heads and speaking to each other from one window to the other.
They saw the young people leaving the Bombarda cabaret arm in arm ; they turned around, waved to them, laughing, and disappeared into that dusty Sunday throng that invades the Champs-Élysées every week. “Don’t stay long!” cried Fantine. “What are they going to bring us?” said Zéphine. “It will certainly be pretty,” said Dahlia. “I,” continued Favorite, “want it to be gold.” They were soon distracted by the movement of the water’s edge , which they could distinguish in the branches of the tall trees and which greatly amused them. It was the time for the departure of the mail coaches and stagecoaches. Almost all the couriers from the south and west then passed through the Champs-Élysées. Most of them followed the quay and left by the Passy barrier. From minute to minute, some large carriage painted yellow and black, heavily laden, noisily harnessed, deformed by the force of trunks, tarpaulins, and suitcases, full of heads that had immediately disappeared, grinding up the roadway, changing all the paving stones into lighters, rushed through the crowd with all the sparks of a forge, dust for smoke, and an air of fury. This din delighted the young girls. Favorite exclaimed: “What a racket! It’s like piles of chains flying off.” Once, one of these carriages, which was difficult to distinguish in the thick elms, stopped for a moment, then set off again at a gallop. This astonished Fantine. “That’s strange!” she said. “I thought the diligence never stopped .” Favorite shrugged her shoulders. “This Fantine is surprising. I came to see her out of curiosity.” She is dazzled by the simplest things. A supposition; I am a traveler, I say to the coach: I am going ahead, you will pick me up on the platform as it passes. The coach passes, sees me, stops, and picks me up. It happens every day. You don’t know life, my dear. Some time passed like this. Suddenly Favorite had the movement of someone waking up. “Well,” she said, “and the surprise? ” “By the way, yes,” Dahlia continued, “the famous surprise? ” “They have been here a long time!” said Fantine. As Fantine finished this sigh, the waiter who had served dinner came in. He was holding in his hand something that looked like a letter. “What is it?” asked Favorite. The waiter replied: “It is a paper that these gentlemen left for these ladies. ” “Why didn’t you bring it right away?” “Because these gentlemen,” the boy continued, “have ordered that it not be given to these ladies for an hour.” Favorite snatched the paper from the boy’s hands. It was indeed a letter. “Here!” she said. “There is no address. But this is what is written on it: This is the surprise. ” She quickly unsealed the letter, opened it, and read (she knew how to read): “Oh, our lovers! Know that we have relatives. You do not know relatives.” a lot of that. They’re called fathers and mothers in the civil code, childish and honest. Now, these parents groan, these old people claim us, these good men and women call us prodigal children, they wish for our return, and offer to kill calves for us. We obey them, being virtuous. At the hour when you read this, five fiery horses will bring us back to our fathers and mothers. We’re clearing out , as Bossuet says. We’re leaving, we’ve left. We’re fleeing in the arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence snatches us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, oh our beautiful little ones! We return to society, to duty and to order, at a brisk trot, at the rate of three leagues an hour. It is important to the fatherland that we be, like everyone else, prefects, fathers, rural guards, and state councilors. Venerate us. We sacrifice ourselves. Mourn us quickly and replace us quickly. If this letter tears you apart, give it back. Farewell. For nearly two years, we have made you happy. Do not hold a grudge against us. Signed: Blachevelle. Fameuil. Listolier. Félix Tholomyès Postscript. Dinner is paid for. The four young girls looked at each other. Favorite was the first to break the silence. “Well!” she cried, “it’s still a good joke. ” “It’s very funny,” said Zéphine. “It must have been Blachevelle who had that idea,” Favorite continued. “It makes me fall in love with him. No sooner left than loved. That’s the story.” “No,” said Dahlia, “that’s Tholomyès’s idea. It’s recognizable. ” “In that case,” continued Favorite, “death to Blachevelle and long live Tholomyès! ” “Long live Tholomyès!” cried Dahlia and Zéphine. And they burst out laughing. Fantine laughed like the others. An hour later, when she returned to her room, she wept. He was, as we have said, her first love; she had given herself to this Tholomyès as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child. Book Four–To entrust is sometimes to deliver Chapter 37. A mother who meets another. There was, in the first quarter of this century, in Montfermeil, near Paris, a kind of tavern which no longer exists today. This tavern was run by people named Thénardier, husband and wife. It was located in the Rue du Boulanger. Above the door, a board was nailed flat to the wall. On this board was painted something that looked like a man carrying on his back another man, who had large golden general’s epaulettes with large silver stars; red stains represented blood; the rest of the picture was smoke and probably represented a battle. At the bottom, one could read this inscription: To the Sergeant of Waterloo. Nothing is more ordinary than a cart or a wagon at the door of an inn. However, the vehicle, or rather, the fragment of a vehicle, which cluttered the street in front of the Sergeant of Waterloo’s tavern, one evening in the spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted the attention of a painter who had passed by by its sheer mass. It was the front end of one of those wagons, used in forest countries, and which are used to carry planks and tree trunks. This front end consisted of a massive iron axle with a pivot into which a heavy drawbar fitted, and which was supported by two enormous wheels. The whole assembly was squat, crushing and misshapen. It looked like the carriage of a giant cannon. The ruts had given the wheels, the rims, the hubs, the axle and the drawbar a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish coating rather similar to that with which cathedrals are often adorned. The wood was disappearing under the mud and the iron under rust. Under the axle hung like a drapery a large chain worthy of a convict Goliath. This chain brought to mind, not the beams it had the function of transporting, but to the mastodons and mammons that it could have harnessed; it had the air of a penal colony, but of a cyclopean and superhuman penal colony, and it seemed detached from some monster. Homer would have linked Polyphemus to it and Shakespeare to Caliban. Why was this front end of a wagon in this place in the street? First, to clutter the street; then to finish rusting. There are in the old social order a host of institutions that one finds in this way on its passage in the open air and which have no other reason for being there. The center of the chain hung below the axle quite close to the ground, and on the curve, as on the rope of a swing, were seated and grouped, that evening, in an exquisite interlacing, two little girls, one about two and a half years old, the other eighteen months old, the smaller in the arms of the larger. A skillfully knotted handkerchief prevented them from falling. A mother had seen this frightful chain and had said: Look! Here is a toy for my children. The two children, moreover gracefully attired, and with some refinement, radiated; they looked like two roses in iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks laughed. One was chestnut-haired, the other was brown. Their naive faces were two rapturous astonishments; a flowering bush which was nearby sent out perfumes to passers-by which seemed to come from them; the eighteen- month-old showed her lovely bare belly with that chaste indecency of smallness. Above and around these two delicate heads, kneaded in happiness and steeped in the light, the gigantic forequarters, black with rust, almost terrible, all tangled with curves and fierce angles , rounded like the porch of a cave. A few steps away, crouching on the threshold of the inn, the mother, a woman of otherwise unprepossessing appearance , but touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long string, watching them with her eyes for fear of an accident with that animal and celestial expression proper to motherhood; at each coming and going, the hideous rings emitted a strident noise which resembled a cry of anger; the little girls were in ecstasies, the setting sun mingled with this joy, and nothing was more charming than this caprice of chance, which had made a chain of titans into a swing of cherubs. While rocking her two little ones, the mother hummed in a falsetto a then famous song: Il le faut, dit un guerrier. Her song and the contemplation of her daughters prevented her from hearing and seeing what was happening in the street. Meanwhile, someone had approached her as she began the first verse of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very close to her ear: “You have two pretty children there, madame,” replied the mother, continuing her romance. ” To the beautiful and tender Imogine.” replied the mother, continuing her romance, then she turned her head. A woman was in front of her, a few steps away. This woman, too, had a child whom she was carrying in her arms. She was also carrying a rather large sleeping bag which seemed very heavy. This woman’s child was one of the most divine beings one could see. It was a girl of two or three years old. She could have vied with the other two for coquettishness of dress; she had a bib of fine linen, ribbons on her waistband and Valenciennes on her bonnet. The fold of her raised skirt revealed her white thigh, plump and firm. She was admirably pink and in good health. The beautiful little girl made you want to bite into the apples of her cheeks. Nothing could be said about her eyes, except that they must have been very large and had magnificent eyelashes. She was sleeping. She was sleeping with that sleep of absolute trust peculiar to her age. Mothers’ arms are made of tenderness; children sleep in them deeply. As for the mother, her appearance was poor and sad. She had the dress of a worker who is tending to become a peasant again. She was young. Was she beautiful? Perhaps; but with this dress it did not appear so. Her hair, from which escaped a blond lock, seemed very thick, but disappeared severely under a beguine’s headdress, ugly, tight, narrow, and tied at the chin. Laughter shows off beautiful teeth when one has them; but she was not laughing. Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time. She was pale; she looked very tired and a little ill; she looked at her daughter asleep in her arms with that particular air of a mother who has nursed her child. A large blue handkerchief, like those used by invalids, folded into a kerchief, heavily concealed her figure. Her hands were tanned and freckled, her index finger hardened and jagged by the needle, a rough brown woolen mantle, a linen dress, and heavy shoes. It was Fantine. It was Fantine. Hard to recognize. Yet, on close examination , she still had her beauty. A sad crease, which looked like the beginnings of irony, wrinkled her right cheek. As for her attire, that airy attire of muslin and ribbons which seemed to have been made with gaiety, madness, and music, full of bells and scented with lilac, it had vanished like those beautiful, dazzling frosts which one takes for diamonds in the sun; they melt and leave the branch all black. Ten months had passed since the good farce. What had happened during those ten months? One can guess. After the abandonment, the embarrassment. Fantine had immediately lost sight of Favorite, Zéphine, and Dahlia; the bond, broken on the men’s side, had been undone on the women’s side; they would have been very surprised, a fortnight later, if they had been told that they were friends; there was no longer any reason for it. Fantine was left alone. The father of her child having left—alas! such ruptures are irrevocable—she found herself absolutely isolated, with the habit of work gone and the taste for pleasure added. Led by her affair with Tholomyès to disdain the small trade she knew, she had neglected her opportunities; they had closed. No recourse. Fantine could barely read and did not know how to write; she had only been taught in her childhood to sign her name; she had had a public writer write a letter to Tholomyès, then a second, then a third. Tholomyès had not replied to any of them. One day, Fantine heard some gossips say, looking at her daughter: “Do they take these children seriously? They shrug their shoulders !” Then she thought of Tholomyès, who shrugged his child’s shoulders and did not take this innocent being seriously; and her heart became dark toward this man. What course to take, however? She no longer knew to whom to turn. She had committed a fault, but the bottom of her nature, we remember, was modesty and virtue. She felt vaguely that she was on the verge of falling into distress, and sliding into the worst. It took courage; she had it, and steeled herself. The idea came to her to return to her native town, to Montreuil-sur-mer. There someone might perhaps know her and give her work. Yes; but it would be necessary to hide her fault. And she vaguely foresaw the possible necessity of a separation even more painful than the first. Her heart sank, but she made her resolution. Fantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had put all her silk, all her rags, all her ribbons and all her lace on her daughter, the only vanity left to her, and a holy one at that. She sold everything she had, which brought her two hundred francs; her small debts paid, she had only about eighty francs. At twenty-two years of age, on a beautiful spring morning, she left Paris, carrying her child on her back. Anyone who had seen them both pass by would have felt pity. This woman had only this child in the world, and this child had only this woman in the world. Fantine had nursed her daughter; this had tired her chest, and she coughed a little. We will have no further occasion to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès. Let us confine ourselves to saying that, twenty years later, under King Louis-Philippe, he was a large provincial lawyer, influential and rich, a wise elector and a very strict juror; always a man of pleasure. Towards midday, after having, to rest, walked from time to time, for three or four sous per league, in what was then called the Little Carriages of the Environs of Paris, Fantine found herself at Montfermeil, in the Boulanger alley. As she passed the Thénardier inn, the two little girls, enchanted by their monstrous swing, had been a sort of dazzling sight for her, and she had stopped before this vision of joy. There are charms. These two little girls were one for this mother. She gazed at them, quite moved. The presence of angels is a harbinger of paradise. She thought she saw above this inn the mysterious HERE of providence. These two little ones were so obviously happy! She looked at them, she admired them, so moved that at the moment when the mother caught her breath between two verses of her song, she could not help saying to her these words that we have just read: “You have two pretty children there, madame. The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by the caress of their little ones.” The mother raised her head and thanked her, and made the passerby sit on the bench by the door, while she herself was on the threshold. The two women chatted. “My name is Madame Thénardier,” said the mother of the two little ones. “We run this inn.” Then, still in her romantic mood, she continued between her teeth: ” It must be, I am a knight, and I am leaving for Palestine.” This Madame Thénardier was a red-haired woman, fleshy, angular; the soldier’s wife type in all her disgrace. And, strangely enough, with a stooping air that she owed to romantic reading. She was a simpering, manly figure. Old novels that have been scuffed up by the imaginations of tavern owners have effects like that. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this woman, who was crouching, had stood straight, perhaps her tall stature and her build, like a walking colossus typical of fairs, would have frightened the traveler from the start , disturbed her confidence, and made what we have to tell vanish . A person who sits instead of standing, destinies depend on that. The traveler told her story, slightly modified: That she was a worker; that her husband had died; that she lacked work in Paris, and that she was going to look for it elsewhere, in her own country; that she had left Paris that very morning, on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, feeling tired, and having met Villemomble’s carriage, she had gotten into it; that from Villemomble she had come to Montfermeil on foot, that the little girl had walked a little, but not much, she is so young, and that she had had to be picked up, and that the jewel had fallen asleep. And with this word she gave her daughter a passionate kiss that woke her. The child opened her eyes, large blue eyes like her mother’s, and looked at, what? nothing, everything, with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence before our twilights of virtue. It’s as if they feel like angels and know we’re men. Then the child began to laugh, and, although the mother held her back, slid to the ground with the indomitable energy of a little being who wants to run. Suddenly she saw the other two on their swing, stopped short, and stuck out her tongue, a sign of admiration. Mother Thénardier untied her daughters, made them get off the swing, and said: “Have fun, all three of you.” Those ages tame each other quickly, and after a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the newcomer, digging holes in the ground, a great pleasure. This newcomer was very cheerful; the mother’s kindness is written in the brat’s gaiety; she had taken a stick which served as a shovel, and she was energetically digging a grave good enough for a fly. What the gravedigger does becomes funny, done by the child. The two women continued to chat. “What is your kid’s name?” “Cosette. Cosette, read Euphrasie.” The little girl’s name was Euphrasie. But from Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette, by that sweet and graceful instinct of mothers and of the people which changes Josefa into Pepita and Françoise into Sillette. This is a kind of derivative which disturbs and disconcerts all the science of etymologists. We knew a grandmother who had succeeded in making from Théodore, Gnon. –How old is she? –She is almost three. –It is like my eldest. Meanwhile the three little girls were grouped in a posture of profound anxiety and beatitude; an event had taken place; a large worm had just come out of the earth; and they were afraid, and they were in ecstasy. Their radiant foreheads touched; one would have said three heads in a halo. –Children, cried Mother Thénardier, how one knows them at once ! Here they are, one would swear they are three sisters! This word was the spark which the other mother was probably waiting for. She seized the Thénardier’s hand, looked at her fixedly, and said: “Will you keep my child for me?” The Thénardier made one of those surprised movements which are neither consent nor refusal. Cosette’s mother continued: “You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. The work doesn’t allow it. With a child, one can’t find a job. They are so ridiculous in that part of the country. It was the good Lord who made me pass by your inn. When I saw your little ones so pretty and so clean and so happy, it upset me. I said: “Here is a good mother.” That’s it; that will make three sisters. And besides, I won’t be long in returning. Will you keep my child for me? ” “We must see,” said the Thénardier. “I would give six francs a month.” Here a man’s voice shouted from the back of the tavern: “Not for less than seven francs.” And six months paid in advance. “Six times seven forty-two,” said Mrs. Thénardier. “I’ll give them,” said the mother. “And fifteen francs outside for the initial expenses,” added the man’s voice. “Total fifty-seven francs,” said Madame Thénardier. And through these figures, she hummed vaguely: “It must be done,” said a warrior. “I’ll give them,” said the mother, “I have eighty francs. I’ll have enough left to go to the country. By going on foot. I’ll earn money there, and as soon as I have a little, I’ll come back to look for love. ” The man’s voice continued: “Does the little one have a trousseau? ” “It’s my husband,” said Mrs. Thénardier. “No doubt she has a trousseau, the poor treasure. I saw clearly that it was your husband. And a beautiful trousseau at that! An insane trousseau. Everything by the dozen; and silk dresses like a lady’s.” It’s here in my sleeping bag. “We’ll have to give it away,” replied the man’s voice. “I think I’ll give it away!” said the mother. “That would be funny if I left my daughter completely naked!” The master’s face appeared. “All right,” he said. The deal was done. The mother spent the night at the inn, gave her money and left her child, tied up her sleeping bag, deflated by the trousseau and now light, and left the next morning, counting come back soon. These departures are arranged quietly, but they are desperate. A neighbor of the Thénardiers met this mother as she was leaving, and came back saying: “I just saw a woman crying in the street, it’s heartbreaking. ” When Cosette’s mother had left, the man said to the woman: “That will pay for my bill of one hundred and ten francs which is due tomorrow. I was fifty francs short. Do you know that I would have had the bailiff and a protest? You’ve made a good mousetrap there with your little ones. ” “Without suspecting it,” said the woman. Chapter 38. First sketch of two suspicious figures. The captured mouse was very puny; but the cat is happy even with a thin mouse. What were the Thénardiers? Let’s say a word about them now. We’ll complete the sketch later. These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse upstarts and intelligent fallen people, which is between the so-called middle class and the so-called lower class, and which combines some of the defects of the latter with almost all the vices of the former, without having the generous enthusiasm of the worker or the honest order of the bourgeois. They were of those dwarf natures which, if some dark fire heats them by chance, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman the depths of a brute and in the man the stuff of a beggar. Both were in the highest degree susceptible to the kind of hideous progress which is made in the direction of evil. There are crayfish souls continually retreating towards darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing in it, using experience to increase their deformity, constantly getting worse, and becoming more and more imbued with a growing blackness. This man and this woman were of such souls. Thénardier in particular was troublesome for the physiognomist. One has only to look at certain men to be wary of them; one senses them to be dark at both ends. They are anxious behind them and threatening before them. There is something unknown in them. One can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow in their eyes denounces them. Just by hearing them say a word or seeing them make a gesture, one glimpses dark secrets in their past and dark mysteries in their future. This Thénardier, if one were to believe him, had been a soldier; a sergeant, he said; he had probably fought in the 1815 campaign, and had even behaved quite bravely, it seems. We shall see later what was the case. The sign of his cabaret was an allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, for he knew how to do a little of everything; badly. It was the time when the ancient classic novel, which, after having been Clélie, was now only Lodoïska, always noble, but more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scudéri to Madame Barthélemy-Hadot, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Bournon-Malarme, was setting fire to the loving souls of the doorwomen of Paris and even ravaging the suburbs a little. Madame Thénardier was just intelligent enough to read these kinds of books. She nourished herself on them. She drowned in them what brains she had; This had given her, while she was very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her husband, a rogue of a certain depth, a ruffian well-read down to grammar, coarse and subtle at the same time, but, in matters of sentimentality, a reader of Pigault-Lebrun, and for everything that touches on sex, as he said in his jargon, a correct and unadulterated oaf. His wife was some twelve or fifteen years younger than him. Later, when the romantically weeping hair began to turn gray, when the Shrew freed herself from Pamela, Thénardier was nothing more than a big, nasty woman who had savored stupid novels. Now, one does not does not read nonsense with impunity. As a result, his eldest daughter was named Eponine. As for the youngest, the poor little girl was almost called Gulnare; she owed it to some lucky diversion made by a novel by Ducray-Duminil, to being called only Azelma. Besides, to say it in passing, not everything is ridiculous and superficial in this curious era to which we are alluding here, and which one could call the anarchy of baptismal names. Alongside the romantic element, which we have just indicated, there is the social symptom. It is not rare today for the cowherd’s boy to be called Arthur, Alfred or Alphonse, and for the viscount—if there are still viscounts—to be called Thomas, Pierre or Jacques. This shift, which places the elegant name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing other than a swirl of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new breath is there as in everything. Beneath this apparent discordance, there is something great and profound: the French Revolution. Chapter 39. The Lark. It is not enough to be wicked to prosper. The tavern was in trouble. Thanks to the traveler’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid a protest and honor his signature. The following month they needed money again; the woman took Cosette’s trousseau to Paris and pawned it for the sum of sixty francs. As soon as this sum was spent, the Thénardiers became accustomed to seeing the little girl no more than a child they had at home out of charity, and treated her accordingly. As she no longer had a trousseau, they dressed her in the little Thénardiers’ old skirts and shirts , that is to say, in rags. They fed her with everyone’s leftovers, a little better than the dog and a little worse than the cat. The cat and the dog were, moreover, her usual companions; Cosette ate with them under the table in a wooden bowl like theirs. The mother, who had settled, as we shall see later, at Montreuil-sur-mer, wrote, or, to put it better, had others write, every month to get news of her child. The Thénardiers invariably replied: Cosette is wonderful. The first six months having been completed, the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued her sendings fairly accurately from month to month. The year was not over when the Thénardier said: “A fine favor she is doing us there!” What does she want us to do with her seven francs? And he wrote to demand twelve francs. The mother, whom they persuaded that her child was happy “and doing well,” submitted and sent the twelve francs. Some natures cannot love on one side without hating on the other. Mother Thénardier passionately loved her two daughters, which made her hate the stranger. It is sad to think that a mother’s love can have ugly aspects. However little space Cosette had in her home, it seemed to her that it was being taken from her own, and that this little girl was diminishing the air her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women of her sort, had a sum of caresses and a sum of blows and insults to spend every day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received everything; but the stranger did them the service of diverting the blows onto her. Her daughters received only caresses. Cosette did not make a movement that did not rain down on her head a hail of violent and undeserved punishments. Sweet weak being who must understand nothing of this world or of God, constantly punished, scolded, bullied, beaten and seeing beside her two little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn! The Thénardier being mean to Cosette, Éponine and Azelma were mean. Children, at that age, are only examples of the Mother. The size is smaller, that’s all. A year passed, then another. People said in the village: “These Thénardiers are good people. They are not rich, and they are raising a poor child who was abandoned to them at home!” They thought Cosette had been forgotten by her mother. However, the Thénardier, having learned by some obscure means that the child was probably a bastard and that the mother could not admit it, demanded fifteen francs a month, saying that the creature was growing and eating, and threatening to send her away. “What a bother!” he cried, “I’m bombarding her kid right in the middle of her secretiveness. I need a raise.” The mother paid the fifteen francs. From year to year, the child grew, and so did her poverty. As long as Cosette was very young, she was the butt of the other two children; As soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say, even before she was five years old, she became the servant of the house. Five years, some will say, is unbelievable. Alas, it is true. Social suffering begins at any age. Have we not recently seen the trial of a man named Dumolard, an orphan who became a bandit, who, from the age of five, say the official documents, being alone in the world, worked for a living, and stole. Cosette was made to run errands, sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, wash the dishes, even carry loads. The Thénardiers believed themselves all the more authorized to act in this way since the mother, who was still at Montreuil-sur-Mer, began to pay poorly. A few months remained in suffering. If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three years, she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and so fresh when she arrived in this house, was now thin and pale. She had an uneasy look about her. Sly! said the Thénardiers. Injustice had made her spiteful and poverty had made her ugly. All that remained was her beautiful eyes, which were painful because , large as they were, it seemed that one saw a greater quantity of sadness in them. It was a heartbreaking thing to see, in winter, this poor child, who was not yet six years old, shivering under old, holey rags of canvas, sweeping the street before daybreak with an enormous broom in her little red hands and a tear in her large eyes. In the country they called her the Lark. The people, who love figures, had taken pleasure in calling by this name this little creature no bigger than a bird, trembling, frightened and shivering, awake first each morning in the house and in the village, always in the street or in the fields before dawn. Only the poor Lark never sang. Book Five–The Descent Chapter 40. History of a Progress in Black Glassware. This mother, however, who, according to the people of Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child, what became of her? Where was she? What was she doing? After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she had continued on her way and arrived at Montreuil-sur-mer. This was, we remember, in 1818. Fantine had left her province about ten years earlier. Montreuil-sur-mer had changed in appearance. While Fantine was slowly descending from poverty to poverty, her native town had prospered. For about two years, one of those industrial developments that are the great events of small countries had been taking place there. This detail is important, and we believe it is useful to develop it; we would almost say, to emphasize it. From time immemorial, Montreuil-sur-mer had as its special industry the imitation of English jet and black glass beads from Germany. This industry had always stagnated, because of the high cost of raw materials which had an effect on the labor force. By the time Fantine returned to Montreuil-sur-mer, an unprecedented transformation had taken place. in this production of black goods. Towards the end of 1815, a man, an unknown man, had come to settle in the city and had the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, shellac for resin and, for bracelets in particular, slides made of simply joined sheet metal for slides made of welded sheet metal. This tiny change had been a revolution. This tiny change had indeed prodigiously reduced the price of the raw material, which had made it possible, firstly, to raise the price of labor, a benefit for the country; secondly, to improve manufacturing, an advantage for the consumer; thirdly, to sell more cheaply while tripling the profit, a profit for the manufacturer. Thus for one idea three results. In less than three years, the author of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made everyone around him rich, which is better. He was a stranger to the department. Of his origin, nothing was known; of his beginnings, little. It was said that he had come to the town with very little money, a few hundred francs at most. It was from this small capital, put to the service of an ingenious idea, fertilized by order and by thought, that he had drawn his fortune and the fortune of the whole country. On his arrival in Montreuil-sur-mer, he had only the clothes, the appearance and the speech of a worker. It seems that, on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the small town of Montreuil-sur-mer, at the fall of a December evening, with his bag on his back and a thorn stick in his hand, a big fire had just broken out in the town hall. This man had thrown himself into the fire, and had saved, at the risk of his life, two children who happened to be those of the captain of the gendarmerie; so no one had thought to ask him for his passport. Since then, his name had been known. He was called Father Madeleine. Chapter 41. Mr. Madeleine. He was a man of about fifty, who looked preoccupied and was kind. That was all that could be said about him. Thanks to the rapid progress of this industry that he had so admirably reorganized, Montreuil-sur-mer had become a considerable business center. Spain, which consumes a lot of black jet, ordered immense purchases there every year. Montreuil-sur-mer, in this trade, almost rivaled London and Berlin. Father Madeleine’s profits were such that, in the second year, he had been able to build a large factory in which there were two vast workshops, one for men, the other for women. Anyone who was hungry could go there and was sure to find employment and bread. Father Madeleine asked men for good will, women for pure morals, and everyone for probity. He had divided the workshops in order to separate the sexes and so that the girls and women could remain well-behaved. On this point, he was inflexible. It was the only one where he was in any way intolerant. He was all the more justified in this severity because, Montreuil-sur-Mer being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded. Besides, his arrival had been a blessing, and his presence was a providence. Before Father Madeleine’s arrival , everything languished in the country; now everything lived the healthy life of work. A heavy traffic heated everything and penetrated everywhere. Unemployment and poverty were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure where there was not a little money, no home so poor where there was not a little joy. Father Madeleine employed everyone. He demanded only one thing: be an honest man! be an honest girl! As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune, but, something quite singular in a simple businessman, he did not appear so much so that this was his main concern. It seemed that he thought a lot about others and little about himself. In 1820, he was known to have had a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand francs placed in his name at Laffitte’s; but before setting aside these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent more than a million on the town and the poor. The hospital was poorly endowed; he had established ten beds there. Montreuil-sur-Mer is divided into an upper town and a lower town. The lower town, where he lived, had only one school, a poor hovel that was falling into ruin; he had built two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allocated from his own money to the two teachers an allowance double their meager official salary, and one day, to someone who was surprised by this, he said: The two highest officials in the state are the wet nurse and the schoolmaster. He had created at his own expense an asylum, something then almost unknown in France, and a relief fund for old and infirm workers. His factory being a center, a new neighborhood where there were a good number of destitute families had quickly sprung up around him; he had established a free pharmacy there. In the early days, when they saw him start out, the good souls said: He’s a fellow who wants to get rich. When they saw him enrich the country before enriching himself, the same good souls said: He’s ambitious. This seemed all the more likely since this man was religious, and even practiced to a certain extent, something very well regarded at that time. He regularly went to hear a low mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who smelled competition everywhere , was soon worried about this religion. This deputy, who had been a member of the legislative body of the empire, shared the religious ideas of a father of the oratory known as Fouché, Duke of Otranto, whose creature and friend he had been. Behind closed doors he laughed gently at God . But when he saw the rich manufacturer Madeleine going to the seven o’clock low mass, he glimpsed a possible candidate, and resolved to surpass him; he took a Jesuit confessor and went to high mass and vespers. Ambition in those days was, in the direct sense of the word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited from this terror as did the good Lord, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital; which made twelve. However, in 1819, one morning, the rumor spread through the town that, on the presentation of the Prefect, and in consideration of the services rendered to the country, Father Madeleine was going to be appointed mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer by the king. Those who had declared this newcomer ambitious, seized with excitement this opportunity that all men wish for to exclaim: There! What did we say? All of Montreuil-sur-mer was in a commotion. The rumor was well-founded. A few days later, the nomination appeared in the Moniteur. The next day, Father Madeleine refused. In that same year, 1819, the products of the new process invented by Madeleine appeared at the industrial exhibition; on the jury’s report, the king named the inventor a knight of the Legion of Honor. New rumor in the small town. Well! it was the cross he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross. This man was definitely an enigma. The good souls got out of the situation by saying: After all, he is a kind of adventurer. As we have seen, the country owed him a lot, the poor owed him everything; he was so useful that people had to end up honoring him, and he was so gentle that people had to end up loving him; his workers in particular adored him, and he bore this adoration with a sort of melancholic gravity. When he was found rich, the people of society greeted him, and he was called Monsieur Madeleine in the town; his workers and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was the thing that made him smile the most. As he climbed, invitations rained down on him. Society was calling for him. The stuffy little salons of Montreuil-sur-mer, which, of course, would have been closed to the artisan at first , opened wide to the millionaire. A thousand advances were made to him. He refused. This time again, the good souls were not prevented. “He is an ignorant man of low education. We don’t know where that comes from. He wouldn’t know how to behave in society. It has not been proven at all that he knows how to read. When we saw him earn money, we said: he is a merchant. When we saw him sow his money, we said: he is ambitious. When we saw him reject honors, we said: he is an adventurer.” When he was seen to reject the world, people said: he was a brute. In 1820, five years after his arrival in Montreuil-sur-mer, the services he had rendered to the country were so brilliant, the wishes of the region were so unanimous, that the king appointed him mayor of the city again. He refused again, but the prefect resisted his refusal, all the notables came to pray to him, the people in the middle of the street implored him, the insistence was so strong that he finally accepted. It was noted that what seemed to determine him most was the almost irritated apostrophe of an old woman of the people who shouted to him from her doorstep in an angry mood: A good mayor is useful. Do we shrink from the good we can do? This was the third phase of his rise. Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine, Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur Mayor. Chapter 42. Sums Deposited at Laffitte’s. Besides, he had remained as simple as the first day. He had gray hair, a serious eye, the tanned complexion of a workman, and the thoughtful face of a philosopher. He usually wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long frock coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He fulfilled his duties as mayor, but outside of that he lived alone. He spoke to few people. He avoided politeness, bowed sideways, slipped away quickly, smiled to avoid talking, gave to avoid smiling. The women said of him: What a good bear! His pleasure was to walk in the fields. He always took his meals alone, with a book open before him from which he read. He had a small, well-stocked library. He loved books; books are cold and sure friends. As leisure came to him with fortune, it seemed that he took advantage of it to cultivate his mind. Since he had been in Montreuil-sur-mer, it was noticed that year by year his speech became more polite, more refined, and more gentle. He readily took a rifle with him on his walks, but he rarely used it. When he did, by chance, he had an infallible shot that frightened people. He never killed a harmless animal. He never shot a small bird. Although he was no longer young, it was said that he was prodigiously strong. He offered a helping hand to anyone who needed it, pulled a horse to its feet, pushed a stuck wheel, and stopped an escaped bull by the horns. His pockets were always full of money when he went out and empty when he came in. When he passed through a village, the ragged children ran joyfully after him and surrounded him like a cloud of gnats. It was thought that he must have once lived in the fields, for he had all sorts of useful secrets that he taught to the peasants. He taught them to destroy the wheat moth by sprinkling the attic and flooding the cracks in the floor with a solution of common salt, and to chase away weevils by hanging flowering orviot everywhere, on the walls and roofs, in the lodgings and in the houses. He had “recipes” for eradicating from a field the luzette, the cockle, the vetch, gaverolle, foxtail, all the parasitic weeds that eat wheat. He defended a rabbitry against rats with nothing more than the smell of a small Barbary pig that he put there. One day he saw some locals busy pulling up nettles. He looked at this pile of uprooted and already dried plants, and said: “It’s dead. It would be good if one knew how to use it. When the nettle is young, the leaf is an excellent vegetable; when it ages, it has filaments and fibers like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as hemp cloth. Chopped, the nettle is good for poultry; crushed, it is good for horned animals. Nettle seed mixed with fodder gives shine to the animals’ coats; the root mixed with salt produces a beautiful yellow color. It is , moreover, an excellent hay that can be mown twice. And what does the nettle need? Little soil, no care, no cultivation. Only the seed falls as it ripens, and is difficult to harvest. That is all. With whatever trouble one took, the nettle would be useful; if one neglects it, it becomes harmful. Then one kills it. How many men are like the nettle! He added after a silence: “My friends, remember this, there are neither weeds nor bad men. There are only bad farmers.” The children still loved him because he knew how to make charming little things with straw and coconuts. When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he went in; he sought a burial as others seek a baptism. Widowhood and the misfortune of others attracted him because of his great gentleness; He mingled with mourning friends, families dressed in black, priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to willingly give as text to his thoughts these funeral psalmodies full of the vision of another world. With his eye to heaven, he listened, with a sort of aspiration towards all the mysteries of infinity, to these sad voices which sing on the edge of the dark abyss of death. He performed a multitude of good deeds while hiding as one hides for bad deeds. He entered houses stealthily in the evening ; he furtively climbed stairs. A poor devil, returning to his garret, found that his door had been opened, sometimes even forced, in his absence. The poor man cried out: some evildoer has come! He entered, and the first thing he saw was a gold coin forgotten on a piece of furniture. The “criminal” who had come was Father Madeleine. He was affable and sad. The people said: “Here is a rich man who doesn’t look proud. Here is a happy man who doesn’t look content.” Some claimed that he was a mysterious personage, and affirmed that no one ever entered his room, which was a real anchorite’s cell furnished with winged hourglasses and embellished with crossbones and death’s heads. This was widely said, so much so that some elegant and shrewd young women from Montreuil-sur-mer came to his house one day and asked him: “Mr. Mayor, show us your room. They say it’s a cave.” He smiled and immediately showed them into this cave. They were well punished for their curiosity. It was a room furnished quite simply with mahogany furniture, rather ugly like all furniture of this kind, and wallpapered with twelve-cent paper. They could notice nothing there except two old-fashioned candlesticks on the mantelpiece, which looked like they were made of silver, because they were checked. An observation full of the wit of small towns. They continued nonetheless to say that no one entered this room and that it was a hermit’s cave, a dream-place, a hole, a tomb. It was also whispered that he had immense sums of money deposited at Laffitte, with the particularity that they were always at his immediate disposal, so, it was added, that M. Madeleine could arrive one morning at Laffitte’s, sign a receipt and take away his two or three million in ten minutes. In reality these two or three million were reduced, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or forty thousand francs. Chapter 43. M. Madeleine in mourning. At the beginning of 1821, the newspapers announced the death of M. Myriel, Bishop of Digne, nicknamed Monseigneur Bienvenu, and who passed away in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two. The Bishop of Digne, to add here a detail that the newspapers omitted, had been blind for several years when he died, and was happy to be blind, his sister being near him. Let us say it in passing, to be blind and to be loved is indeed, on this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at one’s side a wife, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you, to know that one is indispensable to someone who is necessary to us, to be able incessantly to measure one’s affection by the quantity of presence that she gives us, and to say to oneself: since she devotes all her time to me, it is because I have all her heart; to see thought in the absence of a figure, to observe the fidelity of a being in the eclipse of the world, to perceive the rustling of a dress like the sound of wings, to hear it come and go, go out, come in, speak, sing, and to think that one is the center of these steps, of this word, of this song, to manifest at every minute one’s own attraction, to feel oneself all the more powerful the more infirm one is, to become in the darkness, and by the darkness, the star around which gravitates this angel, few felicities equal that one. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself, or rather, loved in spite of oneself; this conviction, the blind man has it. In this distress, to be served is to be caressed. Is he lacking something? No. It is not losing the light to have love. And what love! a love entirely made of virtue. There is no blindness where there is certainty. The soul gropes for the soul, and finds it. And this soul found and proven is a woman. A hand supports you, it is hers; a mouth brushes your forehead, it is hers; you hear breathing very close to you, it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have this sweet weakness that helps you, to lean on this unshakeable reed, to touch providence with her hands and to be able to take it in her arms, palpable God, what rapture! The heart, this celestial obscure flower, enters into a mysterious blossoming. One would not give this shadow for all the clarity. The angel soul is there, constantly there; if it moves away, it is to return; it fades like a dream and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, there it is. We overflow with serenity, gaiety and ecstasy; we are a radiance in the night. And a thousand little cares. Nothings that are enormous in this void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice used to rock you, and making up for the vanished universe. We are caressed with soul. We see nothing, but we feel adored. It is a paradise of darkness. It is from this paradise that Monseigneur Bienvenu had passed to the other. The announcement of his death was reproduced by the local newspaper of Montreuil-sur-mer. M. Madeleine appeared the next day all in black with a crepe on his hat. This mourning was noticed in the town, and people wentssiped. This seemed to be a glimmer of light on the origin of M. Madeleine. It was concluded that he had some alliance with the venerable bishop. He drapes for the bishop of Digne, said the salons; this greatly enhanced M. Madeleine, and suddenly and immediately gave him a certain consideration in the noble world of Montreuil-sur-mer. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place thought of putting an end to the quarantine of M. Madeleine, probably a relative of a bishop. M. Madeleine noticed the advancement he was obtaining with more curtseys from old women and more smiles from young people. One evening, a doyenne of this little great world, curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him: “Monsieur le maire is doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of Digne?” He said: “No, madame. ” “But,” continued the dowager, “you are in mourning for him?” He replied: “It is because in my youth I was a lackey in his family.” Another remark that was also made was that, whenever a young Savoyard passing through the town, roaming the countryside and looking for chimneys to sweep, the mayor would call him, ask his name, and give him money. The young Savoyards said it to each other, and many of them passed through. Chapter 44. Vague flashes on the horizon. Little by little, and with time, all opposition had fallen away. There had been at first against M. Madeleine, a sort of law that those who rise up always have to endure, blackness and slander, then there was nothing but nastiness, then there was nothing but malice, then it vanished altogether; Respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and there came a time, around 1821, when the word “Mr. Mayor” was pronounced in Montreuil-sur-Mer with almost the same accent as the word ” Monseigneur Bishop” was pronounced in Digne in 1815. People came from ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He settled disputes, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Everyone took him as the judge of their own rights. It seemed that he had the book of natural law as his soul. It was like a contagion of veneration which, in six or seven years and little by little, spread throughout the country. Only one man, in the town and in the district, absolutely eluded this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained rebellious to it, as if a sort of instinct, incorruptible and imperturbable, aroused and disturbed him. It would seem, in fact, that there exists in certain men a true bestial instinct, pure and whole like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which is not troubled, is not silent and never denies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, refractory to all the advice of intelligence and to all the solvents of reason, and which, in whatever way destinies are made, secretly warns the dog-man of the presence of the cat-man, and the fox-man of the presence of the lion-man. Often, when M. Madeleine passed along a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, it happened that a tall man , dressed in an iron-grey frock coat, armed with a large cane and wearing a turned-down hat, would turn abruptly behind him and follow him with his eyes until he had disappeared, crossing his arms, slowly shaking his head, and raising his upper lip with his lower lip up to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which could be translated as: But who is this man? – I have certainly seen him somewhere. – In any case, I am still not his dupe. This personage, grave with an almost threatening gravity, was one of those who, even briefly glimpsed, preoccupy the observer. His name was Javert, and he was a member of the police. He fulfilled the difficult, but useful, duties of inspector in Montreuil-sur-mer. He had not seen the beginnings of Madeleine. Javert owed the position he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary to the Minister of State, Count Anglès, then Prefect of Police in Paris. When Javert arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer, the fortune of the great manufacturer was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Some police officers have a distinctive physiognomy, complicated by an air of baseness mixed with an air of authority. Javert had this physiognomy, minus the baseness. In our conviction, if souls were visible to the eyes, one would distinctly see this strange thing that each individual of the human species corresponds to one of the species of animal creation; and one could easily recognize this truth barely glimpsed by the thinker, that, from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals are in man and that each of them is in a man. Sometimes even several of them at the same time. Animals are nothing other than the figures of our virtues and vices, wandering before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us to make us reflect. Only, as animals are only shadows, God did not make them educable in the full sense of the word; what good is that? On the contrary, our souls being realities and having an end of their own, God gave them intelligence, that is to say, possible education. Well-executed social education can always draw from a soul, whatever it may be, the usefulness it contains. This is said, of course, from the restricted point of view of apparent earthly life , and without prejudging the profound question of the anterior and ulterior personality of beings who are not man. The visible self in no way authorizes the thinker to deny the latent self. This reservation made, let us move on. Now, if we admit for a moment that in every man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say what the peace officer Javert was. The Asturian peasants are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is a dog, which is killed by the mother, otherwise, when it grows up, it will devour the other young. Give a human face to this dog, son of a wolf, and it will be Javert. Javert was born in a prison to a fortune teller whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought he was outside society and despaired of ever returning. He noticed that society irrevocably keeps two classes of men outside itself, those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice but between these two classes; At the same time he felt I know not what depth of rigidity, regularity and probity, complicated by an inexpressible hatred for this race of Bohemians of which he was a member. He entered the police. He succeeded there. At forty he was an inspector. In his youth he had been employed in the galleys of the south. Before going further, let us agree on this word human face which we applied just now to Javert. Javert’s human face consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils towards which enormous whiskers rose on his two cheeks. One felt uneasy the first time one saw these two forests and these two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rare and terrible, his thin lips parted, and revealed not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose a flattened and wild fold formed as on the muzzle of a wild beast. The serious Javert was a mastiff; when he laughed, he was a tiger. Besides , little skull, a lot of jaw, the hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the two eyes a permanent central frown like a star of anger, the dark look, the pinched and formidable mouth , the air of ferocious command. This man was composed of two very simple feelings, and relatively very good, but that he made them almost bad by dint of exaggerating them: respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes theft, murder, all crimes, were only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a sort of blind and profound faith everything that has a function in the State, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with contempt, aversion and disgust everything that had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand he said: “The civil servant cannot be mistaken; the magistrate is never wrong.” On the other hand he said: “These are irremediably lost. Nothing good can come of them.” He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds who attribute to human law I know not what power to make or, if you will, to ascertain the damned, and who place a Styx at the bottom of society. He was stoic, serious, austere; a sad dreamer; humble and haughty like fanatics. His gaze was a drill. It was cold and it pierced. His whole life was contained in these two words: to watch and to supervise. He had introduced the straight line into the most tortuous things in the world; he was aware of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as one is a priest. Woe to anyone who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his father escaping from the penal colony and denounced his mother as a violator. And he would have done it with that sort of inner satisfaction that virtue gives. With that came a life of deprivation, isolation, self-denial, chastity, never a distraction. It was implacable duty, the police understood as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless watch, a fierce honesty, a marmoreal informer, Brutus in Vidocq. Javert’s whole person expressed the man who spies and who eludes. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that time seasoned with high cosmogony what were called ultra newspapers, would not have failed to say that Javert was a symbol. One did not see his forehead disappearing under his hat, one did not see his eyes getting lost under his eyebrows, one did not see his chin plunging into his cravat, one did not see his hands tucking into his sleeves, one did not see his cane which he carried under his frock coat. But when the opportunity arose, one suddenly saw emerging from all this shadow, as if from an ambush, an angular and narrow forehead, a baleful look, a menacing chin, enormous hands; and a monstrous club. In his moments of leisure, which were infrequent, while hating books, he read; which means that he was not completely illiterate. This was evident from a certain emphasis in his speech. He had no vices, as we have said. When he was pleased with himself, he allowed himself a pinch of snuff. He held to humanity in that way. It will be readily understood that Javert was the terror of the entire class that the annual statistics of the Ministry of Justice designate under the heading: People without confession. The utterance of the name Javert put them to flight; the appearance of Javert’s face petrified them. Such was this formidable man. Javert was like an eye always fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally noticed this, but it seemed to be insignificant to him. He did not even ask Javert a question, he neither sought him out nor avoided him, and he wore, without appearing to pay attention to it, that awkward and almost heavy look. He treated Javert like everyone else, with ease and kindness. From a few words that escaped Javert, one guessed that he had secretly searched, with that curiosity which is part of the race and in which he enters as much instinct as will, for all the previous traces that Father Madeleine could have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and he sometimes said in veiled terms, that someone had taken certain information in a certain country about a certain missing family. Once he happened to say, speaking to himself: “I think I’ve got him!” Then he remained pensive for three days without uttering a word. It seems that the thread he thought he was holding had broken. Moreover, and this is the necessary corrective to what the meaning of certain words might present as too absolute, there can be nothing truly infallible in a human creature, and the characteristic of instinct is precisely that it can be disturbed, tracked down, and baffled. Without which it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would find itself in a better light than man. Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the complete naturalness and tranquility of M. Madeleine. One day, however, his strange manner seemed to make an impression on M. Madeleine. Here is the occasion. Chapter 45. Father Fauchelevent. M. Madeleine was passing one morning in an unpaved alleyway of Montreuil-sur-mer. He heard a noise and saw a group some distance away. He went there. An old man, named Father Fauchelevent, had just fallen under his cart whose horse had fallen. This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies that M. Madeleine still had at that time. When Madeleine had arrived in the area, Fauchelevent, a former notary and almost literate peasant, had a business that was beginning to go wrong. Fauchelevent had seen this simple worker who was getting rich, while he, the master, was ruining himself. This had filled him with jealousy, and he had done what he could on every occasion to harm Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come, and, old, having nothing left to himself but a cart and a horse, without family and without children , to live on, he had become a carter. The horse had both thighs broken and could not get up. The old man was caught between the wheels. The fall had been so unfortunate that the whole carriage weighed on his chest. The cart was quite heavily loaded. Father Fauchelevent was uttering piteous groans. They had tried to pull him out, but in vain. A disorderly effort , a clumsy helping hand, a jerk with a scythe could have finished him off. It was impossible to free him other than by lifting the carriage from underneath. Javert, who had arrived at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack. M. Madeleine arrived. They moved aside respectfully. “Help!” cried old Fauchelevent. “Who is so good-natured as to save the old man?” M. Madeleine turned to those present: “Have they got a jack? ” “They went to get one,” replied a peasant. “How long will it take for them to get it?” “They went as close as possible, to Place Flachot, where there is a blacksmith; but it doesn’t matter, it will take a good quarter of an hour. “A quarter of an hour!” cried Madeleine. It had rained the day before, the ground was soaked, the cart was sinking into the earth every moment and was compressing the old carter’s chest more and more . It was obvious that before five minutes his ribs would be broken. “It’s impossible to wait a quarter of an hour,” said Madeleine to the peasants who were watching. “We must! ” “But it won’t be time! Can’t you see that the cart is sinking? ” “Lady!” “Listen,” continued Madeleine, “there’s still enough room under the carriage for a man to slide in and lift it with his back. Just half a minute, and they’ll pull the poor man out. Is there anyone here with the backs and the heart? Five gold louis to be won!” No one in the group moved. “Ten louis,” said Madeleine. The bystanders lowered their eyes. One of them murmured: “You’d have to be devilishly strong. And then, you risk getting crushed! ” “Come on!” Madeleine began again, “twenty louis!” Same silence. “It’s not goodwill they lack,” said a voice. M. Madeleine turned around and recognized Javert. He hadn’t noticed him when he arrived. Javert continued: “It’s strength. You’d have to be a terrible man to do the thing of lifting a cart like that onto your back. ” Then, looking fixedly at M. Madeleine, he continued, emphasizing each of the words he spoke: “Mr. Madeleine, I’ve only ever known one man capable of doing what you’re asking.” Madeleine shuddered. Javert added with an air of indifference, but without taking his eyes off Madeleine: “He was a convict. ” “Ah!” said Madeleine. “From the Toulon penal colony. ” Madeleine turned pale. Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent groaned and yelled: “I’m suffocating! It’s breaking my ribs! A jack! Something! Ah!” Madeleine looked around: “So there’s no one who wants to earn twenty louis and save this poor old man’s life ?” None of the bystanders moved. Javert continued: “I’ve only ever known one man who could replace a jack. It was that convict. ” “Ah! Now it’s crushing me!” cried the old man. Madeleine raised his head, met Javert’s hawk-eye still fixed on him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell to his knees, and before the crowd had even time to cry out, he was under the carriage. There was a dreadful moment of waiting and silence. Madeleine was seen, almost flat on his stomach under this frightening weight, trying twice in vain to bring his elbows close to his knees. They shouted to him: “Father Madeleine! Get out of there!” Old Fauchelevent himself said to him: “Monsieur Madeleine!” Go away! I must die, you see! Leave me! You’ll get crushed too! Madeleine didn’t reply. The bystanders gasped. The wheels had continued to sink, and it had already become almost impossible for Madeleine to get out from under the carriage. Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to move, the cart was slowly rising, the wheels were half emerging from the rut. A muffled voice was heard crying: “Hurry up! Help!” It was Madeleine who had just made a last effort. They rushed forward. The devotion of one had given strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent was saved. Madeleine got up. He was pale, though dripping with sweat. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. Everyone was crying. The
old man kissed his knees and called him God. He had on his face some expression of happy and heavenly suffering, and he fixed his calm eye on Javert who was still looking at him. Chapter 46. Fauchelevent becomes a gardener in Paris. Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneecap in his fall. Father Madeleine had him taken to an infirmary that he had established for his workers in the very building of his factory and which was served by two sisters of charity. The next morning, the old man found a thousand-franc note on his bedside table, with this note in Father Madeleine’s handwriting : I’ll buy your cart and your horse. The cart was broken and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent recovered, but his knee remained stiff. Mr. Madeleine, on the advice of the sisters and his priest, had the old man placed as a gardener in a women’s convent in the Saint-Antoine district of Paris. Some time later, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time Javert saw M. Madeleine wearing the sash that gave him complete authority over the city, he felt the kind of shudder a mastiff would feel when he smelled a wolf under his master’s clothes . From that moment on, he avoided him as much as he could. When the The needs of the service imperatively demanded it and he could not do otherwise than to be with the mayor, he spoke to him with deep respect. This prosperity created in Montreuil-sur-mer by Father Madeleine had, in addition to the visible signs that we have indicated, another symptom which, although not visible, was no less significant. This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when trade is zero, the taxpayer resists the tax by shortage, exhausts and exceeds the deadlines, and the state spends a lot of money on enforcement and collection costs. When work abounds, when the country is happy and rich, the tax is easily paid and costs the state little. It can be said that public misery and wealth have an infallible thermometer, the costs of tax collection. In seven years, tax collection costs had been reduced by three-quarters in the district of Montreuil-sur-mer, which frequently caused this district to be cited above all others by M. de Villèle, then Minister of Finance. Such was the situation in the country when Fantine returned there. No one remembered her anymore. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine’s factory was like a friendly face. She presented herself there and was admitted to the women’s workshop. The trade was completely new to Fantine; she couldn’t be very skilled at it, so she earned little from her day’s work, but in the end, it was enough; the problem was solved, she earned her living. Chapter 47. Madame Victurnien Spends Thirty-five Francs on Morals. When Fantine saw that she was living, she had a moment of joy. To live honestly from her work, what a grace from heaven! The taste for work truly returned to her. She bought a mirror, rejoiced in looking at her youth, her beautiful hair and her beautiful teeth, forgot many things, thought only of her Cosette and the possible future, and was almost happy. She rented a small room and furnished it on credit from her future work; a remnant of her disorderly habits. Unable to say that she was married, she had been careful, as we have already glimpsed, to speak of her little girl. In these early days, as we have seen, she paid the Thénardiers exactly. As she did not know how to sign, she was obliged to write to them by a public writer. She wrote often. This was noticed. It began to be whispered in the women’s studio that Fantine wrote letters and that she had manners. There is nothing like spying on people’s actions as those they do not look at. Why does this gentleman only ever come at dusk ? Why does Mr. So-and-so never hang his key on the nail on Thursdays? Why does he always take the back streets? Why does Madam always get out of her cab before arriving home? Why does she send to buy a notebook of writing paper, when her stationery is full of it? etc., etc. — There are people who, to know the answer to these riddles, which are otherwise perfectly indifferent to them, spend more money, lavish more time, take more trouble than would be necessary for ten good deeds; and all this, for free, for pleasure, without being paid for their curiosity other than by curiosity. They will follow this one or that one for days on end, keep watch for hours at street corners , under alleyways, at night, in the cold and in the rain, will corrupt messengers, intoxicate cab drivers and footmen , will buy a chambermaid, acquire a porter. Why? for nothing. Pure determination to see, to know and to penetrate. Pure itch to say. And often these known secrets, these published mysteries, these enigmas brought to light, lead to catastrophes, duels, bankruptcies, ruined families, broken lives, to the great joy of those who discovered everything without interest and by pure instinct. Sad thing. Some people are wicked only out of a need to talk. Their conversation, chat in the living room, gossip in the antechamber, is like those fireplaces that quickly use up the wood; they need a lot of fuel; and the fuel is the next one. So Fantine was observed. With that, more than one was jealous of her blond hair and her white teeth. It was noted that in the studio, among the others, she often turned away to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she thought of her child; perhaps also of the man she had loved. It is a painful labor to break the dark ties of the past. It was noted that she wrote, at least twice a month, always to the same address, and that she franked the letter. They managed to get the address: Monsieur, Monsieur Thénardier, innkeeper, in Montfermeil. They got the public writer, an old fellow who couldn’t fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, to gossip at the tavern. In short, they learned that Fantine had a child. It must have been some kind of daughter. There was a gossip who made the trip to Montfermeil, spoke to the Thénardiers, and said on her return: For my thirty-five francs, I got it all out. I saw the child! The gossip who did this was a gorgon called Madame Victurnien, guardian and gatekeeper of everyone’s virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six years old, and doubled the mask of ugliness with the mask of old age. A quavering voice, a capricious mind. This old woman had once been young, astonishingly. In her youth, in the middle of 93, she had married a monk who had escaped from the cloister in a red cap and gone from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, surly, sharp, thorny, almost poisonous; all the while remembering her monk, whom she was widowed from, and who had greatly tamed and bent her. She was a nettle in which one could see the rustling of the frock. At the Restoration, she had become a bigot, and so energetically that the priests had forgiven her monk. She had a small estate which she noisily bequeathed to a religious community. She was very well regarded at the bishopric of Arras. This Madame Victurnien therefore went to Montfermeil, and returned saying: I have seen the child. All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for over a year when one morning the workshop supervisor gave her fifty francs on behalf of the mayor, telling her that she was no longer part of the workshop and urging her, on behalf of the mayor, to leave the country. It was precisely in that same month that the Thénardiers, after having asked for twelve francs instead of six, had just demanded fifteen francs instead of twelve. Fantine was devastated. She could not leave the country; she owed her rent and her furniture. Fifty francs were not enough to pay this debt. She stammered out a few supplicating words. The supervisor told her that she had to leave the workshop immediately . Fantine was, after all, only a mediocre worker. Overwhelmed with shame even more than despair, she left the workshop and returned to her room. Her fault was now known to all! She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor gave her fifty francs, because he was good, and chased her away, because he was just. She bowed to this decision. Chapter 48. Success of Madame Victurnien. The monk’s widow was therefore good for something. Besides, M. Madeleine had known nothing of all this. These are the combinations of events with which life is full. M. Madeleine had the habit of almost never entering the women’s workshop. He had put in charge of this workshop an old maid, whom the priest had given, and he had complete confidence in this supervisor, a truly respectable person, firm, fair, honest, filled with the charity that consists in giving, but not having to the same degree the charity that consists in understanding and forgiving. Mr. Madeleine put everything on her. The best men are often forced to delegate their authority. It was in this full power and with the conviction that she was doing well, that the supervisor had instructed the trial, judged, condemned and executed Fantine. As for the fifty francs, she had given them from a sum that Mr. Madeleine entrusted to her for alms and assistance to the workers and for which she did not account. Fantine offered herself as a servant in the country; she went from one house to another. No one wanted her. She had not been able to leave the city. The second-hand clothes dealer to whom she owed her furniture, what furniture! had said to her: If you leave, I will have you arrested as a thief. The landlord to whom she owed her rent had said to her: You are young and pretty, you can pay. She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the second-hand dealer, returned three-quarters of her furniture to the dealer, kept only what was necessary, and found herself without work, without status, having nothing left but her bed, and still owing about one hundred francs. She began to sew heavy shirts for the soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this moment that she began to pay the Thénardiers badly. However, an old woman who lit her candle when she came home in the evening taught her the art of living in poverty. Behind living on little, there is living on nothing. They are two rooms; the first is dark, the second is black. Fantine learned how to do without fire altogether in winter, how to give up a bird that eats a farthing of millet every two days, how to make your petticoat your blanket and your blanket your petticoat, how to save your candle by taking your meal by the light of the window opposite. We don’t know all that certain weak beings, who have grown old in destitution and honesty, can get out of a penny. It ended up being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent and regained a little courage. At that time, she said to a neighbor: “Well! I say to myself: by sleeping only five hours and working all the rest at my sewing, I will always manage to earn more or less enough bread. And then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well! Sufferings , worries, a little bread on one side, sorrows on the other, all that will nourish me. In this distress, having her little girl would have been a strange happiness.” She thought of having her come. But what! Make her share her destitution! And then, she owed the Thénardiers! How could she pay? And the journey! How could she pay for it? The old woman who had given her what one might call lessons in the indigent life was a saintly girl named Marguerite, a devotee of good devotion, poor, and charitable to the poor and even to the rich, knowing just enough to write to sign herself Margueritte, and believing in God, which is science. There are many of these virtues down there; one day they will be up there. This life has a tomorrow. At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out. When she was in the street, she sensed that people turned around behind her and pointed at her; everyone looked at her and no one greeted her; the bitter, cold contempt of the passers-by penetrated her flesh and soul like a north wind. In small towns, it seems that an unfortunate woman is naked under the sarcasm and curiosity of everyone. In Paris, at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have liked to come to Paris! Impossible. She had to get used to the disrepute, as she had accustomed to poverty. Little by little she came to terms with it. After two or three months she shook off her shame and started going out again as if nothing had happened. “It’s all the same to me,” she said. She walked back and forth, head held high, with a bitter smile, and felt that she was becoming impudent. Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her pass by from her window, noticed the distress of this creature, thanks to her “put in her place,” and congratulated herself. Wicked people have a dark happiness. The excess of work tired Fantine, and the little dry cough she had worsened. She sometimes said to her neighbor Marguerite: ” Just feel how warm my hands are.” However, in the morning, when she combed her beautiful hair, which streamed like floppy silk, with an old broken comb, she had a moment of happy coquetry. Chapter 49. Continuation of Success. She had been dismissed towards the end of winter; The summer passed, but winter returned. Short days, less work. In winter, no heat, no light, no noon, evening turns to morning, fog, twilight, the window is gray, one cannot see clearly. The sky is a basement window. The whole day is a cellar. The sun looks like a pauper. The dreadful season! Winter turns the water in the sky and the heart of man to stone. Her creditors harassed her. Fantine earned too little. Her debts had grown. The Thénardiers, poorly paid, wrote her letters at every moment, the contents of which distressed her and the postage ruined her. One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was completely naked from the cold, that she needed a woolen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for it. She received the letter and crumpled it in her hands all day. That evening she went into a barber’s who lived on the corner of the street and undid her comb. Her beautiful blond hair fell to her waist. “Beautiful hair!” cried the barber. “How much would you give me for it?” she said. “Ten francs. ” “Cut it off. ” She bought a knitted skirt and sent it to the Thénardiers. This skirt made the Thénardiers furious. It was money they wanted. They gave the skirt to Eponine. Poor Alouette continued to shiver. Fantine thought: “My child is no longer cold. I have dressed her in my hair.” She wore little round caps that hid her shaved head and in which she was still pretty. A dark work was taking place in Fantine’s heart. When she saw that she could no longer comb her hair, she began to hate everything around her. She had long shared everyone’s veneration for Father Madeleine; however, by dint of repeating to herself that it was he who had driven her out, and that he was the cause of her misfortune, she came to hate him too, him especially. When she passed by the factory at the hours when the workmen were at the door, she affected to laugh and sing. An old workwoman who once saw her singing and laughing in this way said: “There’s a girl who will end badly.” She took a lover, the first man she came across, a man she didn’t love, out of bravado, with rage in his heart. He was a wretch, a sort of beggarly musician, an idle beggar, who beat her, and who left her as she had taken him, with disgust. She adored her child. The lower she went, the darker everything became around her, the more this sweet little angel shone in the depths of her soul. She said: “When I am rich, I will have my Cosette with me;” and she laughed. The cough never left her, and she had sweats down her back. One day she received a letter from the Thénardiers, worded as follows: Cosette is sick with a disease that is in the country. A miliary fever, they call it. We need expensive drugs. It is ruining us and we can no longer pay. If you do not send us forty francs before eight days, the little girl is dead. She began to laugh out loud, and she said to her old neighbor: “Ah! They are good! Forty francs! That’s two Napoleons! Where do they want me to get them? How stupid these peasants are!” However, she went up the stairs near a skylight and reread the letter. Then she went down the stairs and went out running and jumping, still laughing. Someone who met her said to her: “What are you doing so cheerful?” She replied: “It’s a good piece of nonsense that some people from the country have just written to me. They’re asking me for forty francs. Peasants, go!” As she passed through the square, she saw a lot of people surrounding a strangely shaped carriage on the top of which a man dressed in red was standing and speaking. It was a dental juggler on tour, who offered the public complete racks of opiates, powders, and elixirs. Fantine mingled with the group and began to laugh like the others at this harangue, which contained slang for the rabble and jargon for decent people. The tooth-puller saw this beautiful girl laughing and suddenly cried out: “You have pretty teeth, the girl who is laughing there. If you will sell me your two palettes, I will give you a gold napoleon for each. ” “What are these, my palettes?” asked Fantine. “Palettes,” continued the dental professor, “are the front teeth, the two on top. ” “How horrible!” cried Fantine. “Two napoleons!” grumbled a toothless old woman who was there. “What a happy woman!” Fantine ran away, and covered her ears so as not to hear the hoarse voice of the man who was shouting at her: Think again, my beauty! Two napoleons might be useful. If you feel like it, come this evening to the inn of the Tillac d’Argent, you will find me there. Fantine came back, she was furious and told the thing to her good neighbor Marguerite: “Do you understand that? Isn’t he an abominable man? How do they let people like that go about the country! Pull out my two front teeth! But I would be horrible! My hair grows back, but my teeth! Ah! the monster of a man! I would rather throw myself headfirst onto the pavement with a fifth!” He told me he would be at the Tillac d’Argent this evening. “And what was he offering?” asked Marguerite. “Two napoleons. ” “That makes forty francs.” “Yes,” said Fantine, “that makes forty francs.” She remained thoughtful and set to her work. After a quarter of an hour, she left her sewing and went to reread the Thénardiers’ letter on the stairs. When she came back, she said to Marguerite, who was working near her: “What is this, a miliary fever? Do you know? ” “Yes,” replied the old maid, “it’s an illness. ” “Does it need a lot of drugs? ” “Oh! terrible drugs. ” “Where does it come from? ” “It’s an illness that people get like that. ” “Does it attack children? ” “Especially children. ” “Do people die of it? ” “Very well,” said Marguerite. Fantine went out and went once more to reread the letter on the stairs. In the evening she went downstairs, and was seen heading towards the Rue de Paris where the inns are. The next morning, as Marguerite entered Fantine’s room before daybreak, for they always worked together and in this way lit only one candle for the two of them, she found Fantine sitting on her bed, pale and frozen. She had not gone to bed. Her bonnet had fallen onto her knees. The candle had burned all night and was almost entirely consumed. Marguerite stopped on the threshold, petrified by this enormous disorder, and cried out: “Lord! The candle is all burned out! Something has happened!” events! Then she looked at Fantine, who turned her hairless head towards her. Fantine had aged ten years since the day before. “Jesus!” said Marguerite, “what’s the matter with you, Fantine? ” “I’m fine,” replied Fantine. “On the contrary. My child won’t die of this dreadful disease for lack of help. I’m happy.” As she spoke, she showed the old maid two napoleons that were shining on the table. “Ah, Jesus God!” said Marguerite. “But they’re a fortune! Where did you get those gold louis? ” “I got them,” replied Fantine. At the same time she smiled. The candle lit up her face. It was a bloody smile. Reddish saliva stained the corners of her lips, and she had a black hole in her mouth. Both teeth were out. She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil. Besides, it was a trick of the Thénardiers to get money. Cosette wasn’t ill. Fantine threw her mirror out the window. She had long ago left her cell on the second floor for a garret closed with a latch under the roof; one of those attics whose ceiling is at an angle to the floor and hits your head every moment. The poor thing can only reach the depths of his room, as if he were the depths of his destiny, by bending more and more. She no longer had a bed; she had a rag left that she called her blanket, a mattress on the floor, and a ragged chair. A little rosebush she had had withered in a corner, forgotten. In the other corner, there was a butter pot for holding water, which froze in winter, and where the different levels of the water remained for a long time marked by circles of ice. She had lost her shame, she lost her coquettishness. The last sign. She went out wearing dirty bonnets. Either for lack of time or indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As her heels wore out, she pulled her stockings into her shoes. This was evident in certain perpendicular folds. She patched her corset, old and worn, with pieces of calico that tore at the slightest movement. The people to whom she owed made scenes and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her stairs. She spent nights crying and dreaming. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a fixed pain in her shoulder, towards the top of her left shoulder blade. She coughed a lot. She hated Father Madeleine deeply, and did not complain. She sewed seventeen hours a day; but a prison labor contractor, who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly lowered the prices, which reduced the day for free workers to nine sous. Seventeen hours of work, and nine sous a day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer, who had repossessed almost all the furniture, kept saying to her: When will you pay me, you hussy? What did they want from her, good God! She felt hunted and something of the wild beast was developing in her. Around the same time, Thénardier wrote to her that he had definitely waited with much too much kindness, and that she needed a hundred francs, immediately; otherwise he would throw out little Cosette, still convalescing from her serious illness, by the cold, by the roads, and that she would become what she could, and that she would die, if she wanted. A hundred francs, thought Fantine! But where is there any career in earning a hundred sous a day? “Come on!” she said, “let’s sell the rest.” The unfortunate woman became a prostitute. Chapter 50. Christus nos liberavit. What is this story about Fantine? It’s society buying a slave. From whom? From poverty. From hunger, cold, isolation, abandonment, destitution. A painful bargain. A soul for a piece of bread. Poverty offers, society accepts. The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet penetrate it. It is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists, but it now weighs only on women, and it is called prostitution. It weighs on women, that is to say, on grace, on weakness, on beauty, on motherhood. This is not one of the least shames of man. At the point of this painful drama where we have arrived, nothing remains of Fantine of what she once was. She has become marble by becoming mud. Whoever touches her is cold. She passes, she undergoes you and ignores you; she is the dishonored and severe figure. Life and the social order have said their last word to her. Everything that will ever happen to her has happened to her. She has felt everything, endured everything, experienced everything , suffered everything, lost everything, cried everything. She is resigned to that resignation which resembles indifference as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids anything. She no longer fears anything. The whole cloud falls upon her and the whole ocean passes over her! What does it matter to her! She is a soaked sponge. At least she thinks so, but it is a mistake to imagine that one exhausts fate and reaches the bottom of anything. Alas! what are all these destinies thus thrown together pell-mell? Where are they going? Why are they like this? He who knows this sees all the shadow. He is alone. His name is God. Chapter 51. The Idleness of Mr. Bamatabois. There is in all the small towns, and there was in Montreuil-sur-mer in particular, a class of young people who nibble away fifteen hundred livres of income in the provinces in the same way as their peers devour two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. They are beings of the great neutral species; geldings, parasites, worthless people, who have a little earth, a little stupidity and a little wit, who would be boors in a salon and believe themselves to be gentlemen in a cabaret, who say: my meadows, my woods, my peasants, whistle at the actresses of the theater to prove that they are people of taste, quarrel with the officers of the garrison to show that they are men of war, hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play billiards, watch travelers get off the stagecoach, live in the cafe, dine at the inn, have a dog that eats bones under the table and a mistress who puts the dishes on it, hold on to a penny, exaggerate fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris and Paris through Pont-à-Mousson, grow old in a stupor, do not work , are of no use and do not harm much. Mr. Félix Tholomyès, who remained in his province and had never seen Paris, would be one of these men. If they were richer, one would say: they are elegant; if they were poorer, one would say: they are lazy. They are simply idlers. Among these idlers, there are bores, the bored, the dreamers, and a few eccentrics. In those days, an elegant man consisted of a large collar, a large cravat, a watch with fobs, three vests of different colors, blue and red on the inside, a short-waisted olive-colored coat with a cod-tail, a double row of silver buttons pressed against each other and reaching up to the shoulder, and lighter olive-colored trousers, decorated on both seams with an indeterminate number of ribs, but always odd, varying from one to eleven, a limit that was never crossed. Add to that boots with small irons on the heel, a tall, narrow-brimmed hat, tufted hair, an enormous cane, and a conversation enhanced by Potier’s puns. On top of that, spurs and mustaches. In those days, mustaches meant bourgeois and spurs meant pedestrian. The provincial dandy wore longer spurs and wilder mustaches. It was the time of the struggle of the South American republics against the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. The narrow-brimmed hats were royalist and were called morillos; the liberals wore broad-brimmed hats called bolivars. Eight or ten months after what has been recounted in the preceding pages, towards the first days of January 1823, one evening when it had snowed, one of these dandies, one of these idlers, a “right-thinking” fellow , for he had a morillo, moreover warmly wrapped in one of those large coats which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather , amused himself by harassing a creature who was prowling around in a ball gown and a low-cut top with flowers on her head in front of the window of the officers’ café. This dandy smoked, for it was decidedly the fashion. Every time this woman passed in front of him, he threw at her, with a puff of smoke from his cigar, some apostrophe that he believed to be witty and cheerful, such as: – How ugly you are! – Do you want to hide! – You have no teeth! etc., etc. – This gentleman was called Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a sad, adorned spectre who walked to and fro on the snow, did not answer him, did not even look at him, and nevertheless carried out in silence and with a somber regularity her walk which brought her back every five minutes under sarcasm, like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. This lack of effect doubtless stung the idler who, taking advantage of a moment when she turned around, advanced behind her on tiptoe and, stifling his laughter, stooped, took a handful of snow from the pavement and suddenly plunged it into his back between his two bare shoulders. The girl gave a roar, turned, sprang like a panther, and rushed at the man, digging her nails into his face, with the most frightful words that could fall from the guardhouse into the gutter. These insults, vomited in a voice hoarse with brandy, issued hideously from a mouth which was in fact missing both front teeth. It was Fantine. At the noise this made, the officers poured out of the café in a crowd, the passers-by gathered, and a large laughing, booing, and applauding circle formed around this whirlwind composed of two beings in whom it was difficult to recognize a man and a woman, the man struggling, his hat on the ground, the woman stamping her feet and fists, disheveled, screaming, toothless and hairless, livid with anger, horrible. Suddenly a tall man emerged quickly from the crowd, seized the woman by her muddy satin bodice, and said to her: Follow me! The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. Her eyes were glassy, from livid she had become pale, and she was trembling with a tremor of terror. She had recognized Javert. The elegant man had taken advantage of the incident to slip away. Chapter 52. Solution of some questions of municipal police. Javert pushed aside the bystanders, broke the circle, and began to walk with great strides toward the police station at the far end of the square, dragging the wretch behind him. She let him do it mechanically. Neither he nor she said a word. The swarm of spectators, at the height of joy, followed with jeers. Supreme misery, an occasion for obscenities. Arriving at the police station, which was a low room heated by a stove and guarded by a post, with a glass and grilled door onto the street, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and closed the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious onlookers who stood on tiptoe and stretched their necks in front of the cloudy window of the guardhouse, trying to see. Curiosity is a gluttony. To see is to devour. As she entered, Fantine fell into a corner, motionless and mute, crouching like a frightened dog. The sergeant from the station brought a lit candle to a table. Javert sat down, took a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began to write. These classes of women are entirely subject by our laws to the discretion of the police. They do with them what they want, punish them as they see fit, and confiscate at will those two sad things they call their industry and their liberty. Javert was impassive; his serious face betrayed no emotion. Yet he was gravely and deeply concerned. It was one of those moments when he exercised, without control, but with all the scruples of a stern conscience, his formidable discretionary power. At that moment, he felt, his police officer’s stool was a tribunal. He judged. He judged, and he condemned. He called up all the ideas he could have in his mind around the great thing he was doing. The more he examined this girl’s actions, the more revolted he felt. It was obvious that he had just witnessed a crime being committed. He had just seen, there in the street, society, represented by a landowner-elector, insulted and attacked by a creature beyond all reason. A prostitute had attempted an attack on a bourgeois. He, Javert, had seen that. He wrote in silence. When he had finished, he signed, folded the paper, and said to the sergeant at the station, handing it to him: “Take three men and take this girl to the block.” Then, turning to Fantine, “You’ll be in for six months.” The unfortunate woman shuddered. “Six months! Six months in prison! Six months earning seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter! My daughter! But I still owe the Thénardiers more than a hundred francs, Inspector, do you know that?” She dragged herself along the slab, wet by the muddy boots of all these men, without getting up, clasping her hands, taking long steps with her knees. “Monsieur Javert,” she said, “I beg your pardon. I assure you that I was not wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have seen! I swear to you by God that I was not wrong. It was that gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I don’t know, who put snow on my back. Do they have the right to put snow on our backs when we pass by like that peacefully without hurting anyone? It seized me. I’m a little sick, you see! And then for some time he had been giving me reasons. You’re ugly! You have no teeth! I know very well that I no longer have my teeth. I wasn’t doing anything; I was saying: he’s a gentleman who’s having fun. I was honest with him, I didn’t speak to him. That’s when he threw snow at me. Monsieur Javert, my good Inspector! Is n’t there anyone there who saw it to tell you that it’s quite true? Perhaps I was wrong to get angry. You know, at first, you ‘re not in control. You have your tempers. And then, something so cold that it creeps up on you at the moment you least expect it! I was wrong to damage that gentleman’s hat. Why did he go away? I would ask his forgiveness. Oh! my God, I wouldn’t mind asking his forgiveness. Spare me for today this time, Monsieur Javert. Look, you don’t know this, in prisons you only earn seven sous, it’s not the government’s fault, but you earn seven sous, and just imagine I have a hundred francs to pay, or else they’ll send my little one back to me. Oh my God! I can’t have her with me. What I’m doing is so vile! Oh my Cosette, oh my little angel of the good Holy Virgin, what will become of her, poor wolf! I ‘ll tell you, it’s the Thénardiers, innkeepers, peasants, it ‘s no reason. They need money. Don’t put me in prison! You see, she’s a little one who would be put on the same level as the big one road, go as you may, in the middle of winter, you must have pity on this thing, my good Mr. Javert. If it were bigger, it would earn its living, but it can’t, at those ages. I’m not a bad woman at heart. It wasn’t cowardice and gluttony that made me this. I drank brandy, it was out of poverty. I don’t like it, but it makes you dizzy. When I was happier, one would only have had to look in my cupboards, one would have seen that I wasn’t a coquettish woman with a mess. I had laundry, a lot of laundry. Have pity on me, Mr. Javert! She spoke thus, broken in two, shaken by sobs, blinded by tears, her throat bare, wringing her hands, coughing a dry, short cough, stammering softly with the voice of agony. Great pain is a divine and terrible ray that transfigures the wretched. At that moment, Fantine had become beautiful again. At certain moments, she stopped and tenderly kissed the hem of the spy’s frock coat. She would have softened a heart of granite, but one cannot soften a heart of wood. “Come!” said Javert, “I listened to you. Have you said everything? Now go on! You have your six months; the Eternal Father himself could do nothing more.” At this solemn word, the Eternal Father himself could do nothing more , she understood that the sentence was pronounced. She collapsed on herself, murmuring: “Mercy!” Javert turned his back. The soldiers seized her by the arms. For some minutes, a man had entered without anyone noticing him. He had closed the door, leaned against it, and heard Fantine’s desperate prayers. At the moment when the soldiers laid hands on the unfortunate woman, who would not get up, he took a step, came out of the shadows, and said: “One moment, please!” Javert raised his eyes and recognized Monsieur Madeleine. He took off his hat, and bowing with a sort of angry awkwardness: “Pardon, Monsieur Mayor… ” This word, Monsieur Mayor, had a strange effect on Fantine. She stood up all of a piece like a ghost emerging from the earth, pushed the soldiers away with both arms, walked straight to Monsieur Madeleine before anyone could restrain her, and looking at him fixedly, with a bewildered air, she cried: “Ah! So you are the mayor! Then she burst out laughing and spat in his face. M.
Madeleine wiped his face and said: “Inspector Javert, set this woman free. ” Javert felt himself on the verge of going mad. He was experiencing at that moment, one after the other, and almost mingled together, the most violent emotions he had ever felt in his life. To see a prostitute spit in the face of a mayor was such a monstrous thing that, in his most frightful suppositions, he would have considered it sacrilege to believe it possible. On the other hand, in the depths of his thoughts, he was making a confused, hideous connection between what this woman was and what this mayor might be, and then he glimpsed with horror something quite simple in this prodigious attack. But when he saw this mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say: “Set this woman free,” he felt a sort of dazzling stupor; thought and speech failed him equally; the sum of possible astonishment was exceeded for him. He remained silent. This word had struck Fantine no less strange a blow. She raised her bare arm and clung to the stove key like a person who is tottering. Meanwhile, she looked all around her and began to speak in a low voice, as if she were talking to herself. “Set this woman free! Let me go! Let me not go to prison for six months!” Who said that? It is not possible that anyone said that. I misheard. It cannot be that monster of a mayor! Is it That it was you, my good Mr. Javert, who said I should be set free? Oh! You see! I’ll tell you and you’ll let me go. That monster of a mayor, that old scoundrel of a mayor, he’s the one who’s responsible for everything. Just imagine, Mr. Javert, he threw me out! Because of a bunch of beggars who were talking in the workshop. If that isn’t a horror! To send away a poor girl who does her work honestly! Then I no longer earned enough, and all the misfortune came. First of all, there’s an improvement that these gentlemen of the police should make, which would be to prevent the prison contractors from harming poor people. I’ll explain that to you, you see. You earn twelve sous in shirts, it falls to nine sous, there’s no way to live. So you have to become what you can. I had my little Cosette, I was forced to become a bad woman. You understand now that it was that beggar of a mayor who did all the evil. After that, I trampled on the hat of that bourgeois gentleman in front of the officers’ café. But he had lost my whole dress with his snow. The rest of us only have a silk dress for the evening. You see, I never did any harm on purpose, truly, Monsieur Javert, and I see everywhere women much meaner than I who are much happier. Oh Monsieur Javert, it was you who said I should be thrown out, wasn’t it? Get some information, speak to my landlord, now I pay my rent, they will tell you that I am honest. Ah! my God, I beg your pardon, I touched the stove key without paying attention, and it made smoke. Monsieur Madeleine listened to him with profound attention. While she was speaking, he had rummaged in his waistcoat, taken out his purse, and opened it. It was empty. He put it back in his pocket. He
said to Fantine: “How much did you say you owed?” Fantine, who was looking only at Javert, turned around: “Am I talking to you?” Then, addressing the soldiers: “Say, you others, did you see how I spat in his face? Ah! You old scoundrel of a mayor, you come here to frighten me, but I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of Monsieur Javert. I’m afraid of my good Monsieur Javert! ” As she spoke, she turned to the inspector: “With that, you see, Monsieur Inspector, you must be fair. I understand that you are fair, Monsieur Inspector.” In fact, it’s quite simple, a man playing at putting a little snow on a woman’s back, it made them laugh, the officers, we have to have something to amuse ourselves with, we are here to have fun, you know! And then, you come, you are forced to put things in order, you take away the woman who is in the wrong, but on reflection, how good you are, you say that I should be set free, it’s for the little one, because six months in prison would prevent me from feeding my child. Only don’t come back to it again, you naughty girl! Oh! I won’t come back to it again, Mr. Javert! They will do anything they want to me now, I won’t move. Only, today, you see, I cried because it hurt me, I didn’t expect this snow from this gentleman at all, and then, I told you, I’m not very well, I’m coughing, I have a lump in my stomach that’s burning, and the doctor said to me: take care of yourself. Here, feel, give me your hand, don’t be afraid, it’s here. She was no longer crying, her voice was caressing, she pressed Javert’s big, rough hand to her white, delicate throat, and she looked at him, smiling. Suddenly she quickly adjusted the disorder of her clothes, smoothed down the folds of her dress, which in dragging itself had risen almost to knee height, and walked towards the door, saying in a low voice to the soldiers with a friendly nod: “Children, Mr. Inspector said I’m being let go, I’m leaving.” She put her hand on the latch. One step further, she was in the street. Javert until that moment had remained standing, motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground, placed askew in the middle of this scene like a disturbed statue waiting to be put somewhere. The noise of the latch woke him. He raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority, an expression always all the more frightening the lower the power is placed, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the worthless man. “Sergeant,” he shouted, “can’t you see that this rogue is leaving! Who told you to let her go? ” “Me,” said Madeleine. Fantine with Javert’s voice had trembled and let go of the latch like a thief caught letting go of the stolen object. At Madeleine’s voice, she turned around, and from that moment on, without uttering a word, without even daring to breathe freely, her gaze went alternately from Madeleine to Javert and from Javert to Madeleine, according as it was one or the other who spoke. It was evident that Javert must have been, as they say, thrown off his hinges to have allowed himself to address the sergeant as he had done, after the mayor’s invitation to set Fantine free. Had he come to forget the presence of the mayor? Had he finally declared to himself that it was impossible for an authority to have given such an order, and that most certainly the mayor must have said one thing without meaning to mean another? Or , in the face of the enormities he had witnessed for two hours, was he saying to himself that it was necessary to return to the supreme resolutions, that it was necessary for the little man to become great, for the informer to transform himself into a magistrate, for the policeman to become a man of justice, and that in this prodigious extremity order, law, morality, government, all of society, were personified in him, Javert? Be that as it may, when M. Madeleine had said this thing that we have just heard, we saw the police inspector Javert turn towards the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, a desperate look, his whole body agitated by an imperceptible trembling, and, unheard of, say to him, with lowered eyes but a firm voice: “Mr. Mayor, this cannot be. ” “How?” said M. Madeleine. “This unfortunate woman insulted a bourgeois.” “Inspector Javert,” replied M. Madeleine with a calm and conciliatory tone, “listen. You are an honest man, and I have no difficulty in explaining myself to you. Here is the truth. I was passing through the square as you were leading this woman away; there were still groups of people there; I made inquiries, I knew everything; it was the bourgeois who was in the wrong and who, in good police practice, should have been arrested. ” Javert continued: “This wretch has just insulted the mayor.” “That is my business,” said M. Madeleine. “Perhaps my insult is mine. I can do what I like with it. ” “I ask pardon of the mayor. His insult is not his; it is the justice system.” “Inspector Javert,” replied M. Madeleine, “the first justice is conscience. I heard this woman. I know what I am doing. ” “And I, M. Mayor, do not know what I see.” “Then just obey.” “I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman serve six months in prison.” M. Madeleine replied gently: “Listen to this. She won’t serve a day.” At this decisive word, Javert dared to look at the mayor fixedly and said to him, but with a tone of voice that was still deeply respectful: “I am desperate to resist Monsieur le maire, it is the first time in my life, but he will deign to allow me to point out to him that I am within the limits of my powers. I remain, since the mayor wants it, in the act of the bourgeois. I was there. It is this girl who threw herself on Mr. Bamatabois, who is an elector and owner of this beautiful house with a balcony which makes the corner of the esplanade, three stories high and all in cut stone. After all, there are things in this world! Whatever the case, Mr. Mayor, this is a matter of street policing which concerns me, and I am holding the woman Fantine. Then Mr. Madeleine crossed his arms and said in a stern voice that no one in the town had yet heard: “The act you are talking about is a matter of municipal police. Under the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen and sixty-six of the code of criminal procedure, I am the judge. I order that this woman be released . ” Javert wanted to make one last effort. –But, Mr. Mayor…. –I remind you of article eighty-one of the law of December 13, 1799, on arbitrary detention. –Mr. Mayor, allow me…. –Not another word. –Yet…. –Get out,’ said M. Madeleine. Javert received the blow, standing, full in the chest, like a Russian soldier. He saluted Mr. Mayor, and went out. Fantine stood by the door and watched him pass in amazement . However, she too was in the grip of a strange upheaval. She had just seen herself, as it were, contested by two opposing powers. She had seen two men struggling before her eyes, holding in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child; one of these men was pulling her toward the shadows, the other was bringing her back toward the light. In this struggle, glimpsed through the magnifications of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; one spoke like her demon, the other spoke like her good angel. The angel had vanquished the demon, and, something that made her shudder from head to toe, this angel, this liberator, was precisely the man she abhorred, this mayor whom she had so long considered the author of all her ills, this Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had just insulted him in a hideous manner, he saved her! Had she been mistaken? Should she have changed her whole soul?… She did not know, she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she watched in terror, and at each word that M. Madeleine spoke , she felt the dreadful darkness of hatred melt and crumble within her and something warming and ineffable arise in her heart, which was joy, confidence, and love. When Javert had left, M. Madeleine turned to her and said in a slow voice, having difficulty speaking like a serious man who does not want to cry: “I heard you. I knew nothing of what you said. I believe it to be true, and I feel that it is true. I did not even know that you had left my workshops. Why did you not address yourself to me? But here it is: I will pay your debts, I will bring your child, or you will go and join her. You will live here, in Paris, wherever you wish. I will take care of your child and of you. You will no longer work, if you wish. I will give you all the money you need. You will become honest again by becoming happy again. And even, listen, I declare to you from now on, if everything is as you say, and I have no doubt of it, you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy before God. Oh! poor woman! It was more than poor Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To escape from this infamous life! To live free, rich, happy, honest, with Cosette! To see suddenly blossom in the midst of her misery all these realities of paradise! She looked as if stupefied at this man who was speaking to her, and could only utter two or three sobs: oh! oh! oh! Her knees bent, she fell on her knees before M. Madeleine, and, before he could stop her, he felt her take his hand and her lips rest on it. Then she fainted. Book Six–Javert Chapter 53. Beginning of Rest. M. Madeleine had Fantine taken to the infirmary he had in his own house. He entrusted her to the sisters who put her to bed. A burning fever had set in. She spent part of the night raving and talking loudly. However, she finally fell asleep. The next day around noon, Fantine woke up; she heard breathing very close to her bed. She drew back her curtain and saw M. Madeleine standing there looking at something above her head. This look was full of pity and anguish and was supplicating. She followed its direction and saw that it was addressed to a crucifix nailed to the wall. M. Madeleine was now transfigured in Fantine’s eyes. He seemed to her enveloped in light. He was absorbed in a sort of prayer. She gazed at him for a long time without daring to interrupt him. Finally she said timidly: “What are you doing here?” M. Madeleine had been in that place for an hour. He was waiting for Fantine to wake up. He took her hand, felt her pulse, and replied: “How are you? ” “Well, I slept,” she said, “I think I’m better. It won’t be anything. ” He continued, answering the question she had first asked him, as if he were only just hearing it: “I was praying to the martyr who is up there. ” And he added in his thoughts: “For the martyr who is down here.” M. Madeleine had spent the night and the morning making inquiries. He knew everything now. He knew Fantine’s story in all its poignant details . He continued: “You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh! Don’t complain, you now have the dowry of the elect. That’s how men make angels. It’s not their fault; they don’t know how to do it any other way. You see, this hell you’ve just come out of is the first form of heaven. You should have started there. He sighed deeply. She, however, smiled at him with that sublime smile that was missing two teeth. Javert had written a letter that same night. He delivered this letter himself the next morning to the post office at Montreuil-sur-mer. It was for Paris, and the address read: To Monsieur Chabouillet, secretary to the Prefect of Police. As the affair of the guardhouse had become public knowledge, the director of the post office and a few other people who saw the letter before it left and who recognized Javert’s handwriting on the address, thought that it was his resignation that he was sending. Monsieur Madeleine hastened to write to the Thénardiers. Fantine owed them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, telling them to pay themselves from this sum and to bring the child immediately to Montreuil-sur-mer, where her sick mother was demanding her. This dazzled Thénardier. “The devil!” he said to his wife, “let’s not abandon the child. Now this wimp is going to become a cash cow. I can guess. Some joker will have fallen in love with the mother.” He countered with a very well -written memorandum for five hundred and something francs. In this memorandum were two incontestable notes worth more than three hundred francs , one from a doctor, the other from an apothecary, who had treated and medicated Éponine and Azelma during two long illnesses. Cosette, as we have said, had not been ill. It was a matter of a very small substitution of names. Thénardier wrote at the bottom of the memorandum: “receipt on account three hundred francs.” M. Madeleine immediately sent another three hundred francs and wrote: “Hurry up and bring Cosette. ” “Christi!” said Thénardier, “let’s not let go of the child.” Meanwhile, Fantine was not recovering. She was still in the infirmary. The sisters had not first received and cared for this girl with repugnance. Anyone who has seen the bas-reliefs of Reims remembers the swelling of the lower lip of the wise virgins looking at the foolish virgins. This ancient contempt of the vestals for the ambulaies is one of the deepest instincts of feminine dignity; the sisters had experienced it, with the redoublement that religion adds. But, in a few days, Fantine had disarmed them. She had all sorts of humble and gentle words, and the mother who was in her was touching. One day the sisters heard her say through the fever: “I have been a sinner, but when I have my child near me, that will mean that God has forgiven me. While I was in evil, I would not have wanted to have my Cosette with me, I could not have borne her astonished and sad eyes. Yet it was for her that I did evil, and that is what makes God forgive me.” I will feel the blessing of God when Cosette is here. I will look at her; it will do me good to see this innocent girl. She knows nothing at all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters. At that age, the wings have not yet fallen off. M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and each time she asked him: “Will I see my Cosette soon?” He answered her: “Perhaps tomorrow morning. Any moment now she will arrive; I am expecting her.” And the mother’s pale face beamed. “Oh!” she said, “how happy I am going to be! We have just said that she was not recovering. On the contrary, her condition seemed to worsen from week to week. This handful of snow applied to the bare skin between the two shoulder blades had caused a sudden suppression of perspiration, as a result of which the illness she had been incubating for several years finally declared itself violently. They then began to follow Laennec’s fine instructions for the study and treatment of chest diseases. The doctor examined Fantine and nodded. M. Madeleine said to the doctor: “Well? ” “Doesn’t she have a child she wants to see?” said the doctor. “Yes. ” “Well, hurry up and bring him in.” M. Madeleine gave a start. Fantine asked him: “What did the doctor say?” M. Madeleine forced herself to smile. “He said to bring your child in quickly. That it will restore your health. ” “Oh!” she continued, “he’s right! But what’s the matter with those Thénardiers keeping my Cosette for me! Oh! she’s coming. Here at last I see happiness so close to me!” The Thénardier, however, wouldn’t let go of the child and gave a hundred bad reasons. Cosette was a little unwell to set out in winter. And then there were a few small, glaring debts in the country, the bills of which he was collecting, etc., etc. “I’ll send someone to fetch Cosette,” said Father Madeleine. “If necessary, I’ll go myself.” He wrote this letter from Fantine, which he had her sign: Monsieur Thénardier, You will deliver Cosette to the person. You will be paid for all the little things. I have the honor of greeting you with consideration. Fantine. In the meantime, a serious incident occurred. No matter how hard we try to carve the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny always reappears there. Chapter 54. How Jean can become Champ. One morning, M. Madeleine was in his study, busy settling some urgent matters at the town hall in advance in case he decided to make this trip to Montfermeil, when he was told that Police Inspector Javert had asked to speak to him. On hearing this name mentioned, M. Madeleine could not help feeling an unpleasant sensation. Since the incident at the police station, Javert had avoided him more than ever, and M. Madeleine had not seen him again. “Show me in,” he said. Javert entered. M. Madeleine remained seated by the fireplace, a pen in his hand, his eye fixed on a file he was leafing through and annotating, and which contained reports of traffic violations. He did not bother to talk to Javert. He could not help thinking of poor Fantine, and it suited him to be icy. Javert respectfully bowed to the mayor, who had his back to him. The
mayor did not look at him and continued to annotate his file. Javert took two or three steps into the study and stopped without breaking the silence. A physiognomist who had been familiar with Javert’s nature, who had long studied this savage in the service of civilization, this bizarre composite of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk, and the corporal, this spy incapable of lying, this virgin informer, a physiognomist who had known his secret and ancient aversion to M. Madeleine, his conflict with the mayor over Fantine, and who had considered Javert at this moment, would have said to himself: what has happened? It was obvious, to anyone who had known this upright, clear, sincere, honest, austere, and ferocious conscience, that Javert was emerging from some great inner event. Javert had nothing in his soul that he did not also have on his face. He was, like violent people, subject to sudden changes of heart. Never had his physiognomy been stranger and more unexpected. On entering, he had bowed before M. Madeleine with a look in which there was neither rancor, nor anger, nor distrust, he had stopped a few steps behind the mayor’s chair; and now he stood there, erect, in an almost disciplinary attitude, with the naive and cold rudeness of a man who has never been gentle and who has always been patient; he waited, without saying a word, without making a movement, in true humility and in quiet resignation, until it would please the mayor to turn around, calm, serious, hat in hand, eyes lowered, with an expression that was halfway between the soldier before his officer and the guilty man before his judge. All the feelings, like all the memories that one might have supposed him to have, had disappeared. There was nothing left on that impenetrable face, simple as granite, but a gloomy sadness. His whole person breathed humility and firmness, and I know not what courageous depression. Finally, the mayor put down his pen and half turned. “Well! What is it? What is it, Javert?” Javert remained silent for a moment, as if in contemplation, then raised his voice with a sort of sad solemnity that did not, however, exclude simplicity: “It is true, Mr. Mayor, that a culpable act has been committed. ” “What act? ” “A lower-ranking official has shown a most serious lack of respect to a magistrate. I have come, as is my duty, to bring the fact to your attention. ” “Who is this official?” asked Mr. Madeleine. “Me,” said Javert. “You? ” “Me. ” “And which magistrate would have cause to complain of the official? ” “You, Mr. Mayor.” Mr. Madeleine rose in his chair. Javert continued, his expression stern and his eyes still lowered: “Mr. Mayor, I have come to ask you to be so kind as to bring about my dismissal with the authorities.” M. Madeleine, astonished, opened his mouth. Javert interrupted him. “You will say, I could have resigned, but that is not enough. To resign is honorable. I failed, I must be punished. I must be expelled.” And after a pause, he added: “Mr. Mayor, you were unjustly severe with me the other day. Be so today. ” “Oh, why?” cried M. Madeleine. “What is this nonsense? What does it mean? Where is there a culpable act committed against me by you? What have you done to me? What wrongs have you done?” towards me? You accuse yourself, you want to be replaced…. “Driven out,” said Javert. “Driven out, fine. That’s very good. I don’t understand. ” “You’ll understand, Mr. Mayor.” Javert sighed from the depths of his chest and continued, still coldly and sadly: “Mr. Mayor, six weeks ago, following that scene over that girl, I was furious, I denounced you. ” “Denounced! ” “To the Paris police headquarters.” M. Madeleine, who didn’t laugh much more often than Javert, began to laugh. “As a mayor who had encroached on the police?” “As a former convict.” The mayor grew livid. Javert, who hadn’t looked up, continued: “I believed it. I’ve had ideas for a long time.” A resemblance, some information you had gathered at Faverolles, your strong back, the adventure of old Fauchelevent, your marksmanship, your slightly lagging leg, do I know ? Nonsense! But still, I took you for a man named Jean Valjean. “A man named?… How do you say that name? ” “Jean Valjean. He’s a convict I saw twenty years ago when I was a sergeant-guardian at Toulon. On leaving the penal colony, this Jean Valjean had, it seems, stolen from a bishop, then committed another armed robbery on a public road on a small Savoyard. Eight years ago he had been slipping away, no one knows how, and they were looking for him. I had imagined… Well, I did it! Anger made up my mind, I denounced you to the prefecture. M. Madeleine, who had taken up the file a few moments earlier, resumed with an accent of perfect indifference: “And what did they tell you?” “That I was mad. ” “Well? ” “Well, they were right. ” “It’s fortunate that you recognize it! ” “It must be, since the real Jean Valjean has been found.” The sheet of paper M. Madeleine was holding slipped from his hands; he raised his head, looked fixedly at Javert, and said with an inexpressible accent: “Ah!” Javert continued: “That’s what it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in the country, near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher, a sort of fellow who was called Father Champmathieu. He was very miserable. No one paid him any attention. These people, you don’t know what they live on.” Recently, this fall, Father Champmathieu was arrested for stealing cider apples, committed at…–well, whatever! There was a theft, a wall climbed, tree branches broken. They arrested my Champmathieu. He still had the apple branch in his hand. They’re locking up the rascal. So far, it’s not much more than a correctional case. But here’s a stroke of providence. The jail being in poor condition, the examining magistrate thought it appropriate to have Champmathieu transferred to Arras, where the departmental prison is located. In this Arras prison , there’s a former convict named Brevet who is being held for I don’t know what and who has been made a barracks clerk because he’s behaving well. Mr. Mayor, Champmathieu has no sooner arrived than Brevet cries out: “Oh, but! I know that man. He’s a nobody. Look at me, old fellow!” You are Jean Valjean!–Jean Valjean! Who is Jean Valjean? Champmathieu plays the surprised one.–Don’t pretend to be a fool, said Brevet. You are Jean Valjean! You were in the penal colony of Toulon. Twenty years ago. We were there together.–Champmathieu denies it. By Jove! You understand. We are going deeper. We are searching for this adventure. Here is what we find: this Champmathieu, about thirty years ago, was a tree-trimmer in several countries, notably in Faverolles. There we lose track of him. Long after, we see him again in Auvergne, then in Paris, where he says he was a wheelwright and had a daughter who was a laundress, but that is not proven; finally, in this country. Now, before going to the penal colony for robbery, what was Jean Valjean? Pruner. Where? In Faverolles. Another fact. This Valjean was called by his baptismal name Jean and his mother’s family name was Mathieu. What could be more natural than to think that upon leaving the penal colony he would have taken his mother’s name to hide and called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to Auvergne. From Jean the local pronunciation makes Chan, he is called Chan Mathieu. Our man lets himself be done and there he is transformed into Champmathieu. You follow me, don’t you? They make inquiries in Faverolles. Jean Valjean’s family is no longer there. They no longer know where they are. You know, in those classes, there are often these disappearances of a family. They search, they find nothing. These people, when it is not mud, it is dust. And then, as the beginning of these stories dates back thirty years, there is no longer anyone in Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean. They inquire in Toulon. With Brevet, there are only two convicts who have seen Jean Valjean. They are the lifers Cochepaille and Chenildieu. They are taken from the penal colony and brought in. They are confronted with the supposed Champmathieu. They do not hesitate. For them as for Brevet, it is Jean Valjean. Same age, he is fifty-four, same height, same air, same man in short, it is him. It was at that very moment that I sent my denunciation to the Paris prefecture. They replied that I was losing my mind and that Jean Valjean was in Arras in the hands of justice. You can imagine how surprised I am, I who believed I had this same Jean Valjean here! I am writing to the examining magistrate . He’s sending for me, they’re bringing me Champmathieu…. “Well?” interrupted M. Madeleine. Javert replied with his incorruptible and sad face: “Monsieur le maire, the truth is the truth. I’m sorry, but that man is Jean Valjean. I recognized him too.” M. Madeleine continued in a very low voice: “Are you sure?” Javert began to laugh with that painful laughter which escapes a deep conviction: “Oh, sure!” He remained pensive for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of wood powder from the ink-drying bowl which was on the table, and he added: “And even now that I see the real Jean Valjean, I don’t understand how I could have believed anything else. I beg your pardon, M. le maire. ” In addressing these grave and supplicating words to the man who, six weeks before, had humiliated him in the middle of the guardroom and had said to him: ” Get out!” Javert, that haughty man, was unwittingly full of simplicity and dignity. M. Madeleine only answered his prayer with this abrupt question: “And what does this man say? ” “Ah, lady! Mr. Mayor, the matter is bad. If it is Jean Valjean, it is a repeat offense. Climbing over a wall, breaking a branch, stealing apples, for a child, that is naughty; for a man, it is a misdemeanor; for a convict, it is a crime. Climbing and theft, it’s all there. It is no longer the correctional police, it is the Assize Court. It is no longer a few days in prison, it is the galleys for life. And then, there is the matter of the little Savoyard whom I very much hope will return. Devil! There’s something to argue about, isn’t there? Yes, for someone other than Jean Valjean. But Jean Valjean is a sly one. That’s where I recognize him again. Another person would feel that things are heating up; he would struggle, he would shout, the kettle sings in front of the fire, he wouldn’t want to be Jean Valjean, and so on. He doesn’t seem to understand, he says: I’m Champmathieu, I’m not coming out of here! He looks astonished, he’s acting like a brute, that’s much better. Oh! the rascal is clever. But it doesn’t matter, the proof is there. He’s recognized by four people, the old rascal will be condemned. It’s taken to the Assizes, to Arras. I’m going there to testify. I’m summoned. M. Madeleine had gone back to his desk, had re-grasped his file, and He leafed through it calmly, reading and writing alternately like a busy man. He turned to Javert: “Enough, Javert. In fact, all these details interest me very little. We are wasting our time, and we have urgent business. Javert, you will go immediately to the good woman Buseaupied who sells herbs over there at the corner of Rue Saint-Saulve. You will tell her to file a complaint against the carter Pierre Chesnelong. This man is a brute who nearly ran over this woman and her child. He must be punished. You will then go to M. Charcellay’s, Rue Montre-de-Champigny. He complains that a gutter from the neighboring house is pouring rainwater into his house and is undermining the foundations of his house.” Afterwards, you will note down the police tickets that have been reported to me on Rue Guibourg at Widow Doris’s, and on Rue du Garraud-Blanc at Madame Renée Le Bossé’s, and you will draw up a report. But I’m giving you a lot of work here. Aren’t you going to be away? Didn’t you tell me that you were going to Arras for this matter in eight or ten days?… “Earlier than that, Mr. Mayor. ” “What day then? ” “But I thought I told Mr. Mayor that it would be judged tomorrow and that I was leaving by stagecoach tonight.” Mr. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement. “And how long will the matter last? ” “One day at most. The sentence will be pronounced tomorrow night at the latest . But I won’t wait for the sentence, which is bound to happen. As soon as I have given my statement, I will return here. ” “All right,” said Mr. Madeleine. And he dismissed Javert with a wave of his hand. Javert did not leave. “Pardon me, Mr. Mayor,” he said. “What is it now?” asked M. Madeleine. “Mr. Mayor, I have one more thing to remind you of. ” “What is it? ” “It is that I must be dismissed.” M. Madeleine rose. “Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you. You are exaggerating your fault. This, moreover, is another offense that concerns me. Javert, you are worthy of ascending and not descending. I intend that you keep your place. ” Javert looked at M. Madeleine with his candid eye, in the depths of which it seemed that one saw that unenlightened, but rigid and chaste conscience, and he said in a calm voice: “Mr. Mayor, I cannot grant you that. ” “I repeat,” replied M. Madeleine, “that the matter concerns me.” But Javert, attentive to his own thought, continued: “As for exaggerating, I am not exaggerating. This is how I reason. I suspected you unjustly. That is nothing. It is our right to suspect, although it is an abuse to suspect above oneself. But, without proof, in a fit of anger, with the aim of revenge, I denounced you as a convict, you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! This is serious. Very serious. I
have offended authority in your person, I, an agent of authority! If one of my subordinates had done what I did, I would have declared him unworthy of service and expelled him. Well? Here, Mr. Mayor, one more word. I have often been severe in my life. To others. It was just. I did well. Now, if I were not severe with myself, everything just that I have done would become unjust.” Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! I would only have been good at punishing others, and not myself! But I would be a wretch! But those who say: that beggar Javert! would be right! Mr. Mayor, I do not wish you to treat me with kindness, your kindness has made me do enough bad blood when it was for others. I do not want it for myself. The kindness which consists in giving the public girl reason against the bourgeois, the police officer against the mayor, the one who is below against the one who is above, That’s what I call bad kindness. It’s with this kindness that society disorganizes itself. My God! It’s very easy to be good, the difficult thing is to be just. Come on! If you had been what I thought you were, I wouldn’t have been good to you! You would have seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would treat anyone else. When I repressed criminals, when I cracked down on scoundrels, I often said to myself: you, if you flinch, if ever I catch you at fault, be calm! – I flinched, I catch myself at fault, too bad! Come on, dismissed, broken, chased away! That’s fine. I have arms, I ‘ll work the land, it’s all the same to me. Mr. Mayor, the good of the service requires an example. I simply ask for the dismissal of Inspector Javert. All this was spoken in a humble, proud, desperate, and convinced tone that gave an indescribable grandeur to this strange , honest man. “We shall see,” said M. Madeleine. And he held out his hand. Javert drew back and said fiercely: “Pardon, Mr. Mayor, but this must not be. A mayor does not give his hand to an informer.” He added between his teeth: “An informer, yes; from the moment I stupefied the police, I am nothing more than an informer.” Then he bowed low and went to the door. There he turned around and, his eyes still lowered: “Mr. Mayor,” he said, “I will continue the service until I am replaced.” He left. M. Madeleine remained pensive, listening to that firm and assured step which receded on the pavement of the corridor. Book Seven–The Champmathieu Affair Chapter 55. Sister Simplice. The incidents that we are about to read about were not all known in Montreuil-sur-mer, but the few that did come to light left such a memory in this town that it would be a serious omission in this book if we did not recount them in their smallest details. In these details, the reader will encounter two or three improbable circumstances that we maintain out of respect for the truth. In the afternoon following Javert’s visit, M. Madeleine went to see Fantine as usual. Before entering Fantine’s house, he asked for Sister Simplice. The two nuns who served in the infirmary, Lazarist ladies like all the Sisters of Charity, were called Sister Perpétue and Sister Simplice. Sister Perpétue was the first villager to arrive, roughly a Sister of Charity, who entered God’s house as one enters a place. She was a nun as one is a cook. This type is not very rare. Monastic orders
readily accept this heavy peasant pottery, easily fashioned into Capuchin or Ursuline. These rusticities are used for the heavy tasks of devotion. The transition from a cowherd to a Carmelite is not abrupt; one becomes the other without much work; the common ground of ignorance of the village and the cloister is a ready-made preparation, and immediately puts the countryman on the same level as the monk. A little fullness in the smock, and there you have it. Sister Perpétue was a strong nun, from Marines, near Pontoise, speaking patois, chanting, grumbling, sweetening the herbal tea according to the bigotry or hypocrisy of the bedridden, rushing the sick, gruff with the dying, almost throwing God in their faces, stoning the agony with angry prayers, bold, honest and ruddy. Sister Simplice was white as wax. Next to Sister Perpetua, it was the candle beside the candle. Vincent de Paul divinely captured the figure of the sister of charity in these admirable words where he mixes so much freedom with so much servitude: They will have no monastery but the house of the sick, no cell but a rented room, no chapel but the church of their parish, no cloister but the streets of the city or the wards of hospitals, no enclosure but obedience, the fear of God as a barrier, modesty as a veil. This ideal was alive in Sister Simplice. No one could have said Sister Simplice’s age; she had never been young and seemed as if she would never be old. She was a person—we dare not say a woman—calm, austere, good company, cold, and who had never lied. She was so gentle that she seemed fragile; more solid, moreover, than granite. She touched the unfortunate with charming, fine, pure fingers. There was, so to speak, silence in her speech; she spoke only what was necessary, and she had a sound of voice that would have at once edified a confessional and enchanted a drawing room. This delicacy suited the sackcloth robe , finding in this rough contact a continual reminder of heaven and God. Let us emphasize one detail. Never having lied, never having said, for any interest whatsoever, even indifferently, anything that was not the truth, the holy truth, was the distinctive trait of Sister Simplice; it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost famous in the congregation for this imperturbable truthfulness. Abbé Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However sincere, however loyal and however pure we may be, we all have in our candor at least the crack of the little innocent lie. Not for her. Little lie, innocent lie, does that exist? To lie is the absolute evil. To lie a little is not possible; he who lies, lies the whole lie; to lie is the very face of the devil; Satan has two names, he is called Satan and he is called Lie. That is what she thought. And as she thought, she practiced. The result was that whiteness we have spoken of, a whiteness that covered even her lips and eyes with its radiance. Her smile was white, her gaze was white. There was not a cobweb, not a speck of dust on the windowpane of that consciousness. On entering the obedience of Saint Vincent de Paul, she had taken the name Simplice by special choice. Simplice of Sicily, as we know, is the saint who preferred to have both her breasts torn off than to reply, having been born in Syracuse, that she had been born in Segesta, a lie that saved her. This patroness suited this soul. Sister Simplice, on entering the order, had two faults that she gradually corrected; she had had a taste for sweets and she had loved to receive letters. She never read anything but a prayer book in large print and in Latin. She did not understand Latin, but she understood the book. The pious girl had taken a liking to Fantine, probably sensing latent virtue in her, and had devoted herself to caring for her almost exclusively. M. Madeleine took Sister Simplice aside and recommended Fantine to her in a singular accent which the sister later remembered. On leaving the sister, he approached Fantine. Fantine awaited M. Madeleine’s appearance every day as one awaits a ray of warmth and joy. She said to the sisters: “I only live when the mayor is here.” She had a high fever that day. As soon as she saw M. Madeleine, she asked him: “And Cosette?” He replied with a smile: “Soon.” M. Madeleine was with Fantine as usual. Only he stayed for an hour instead of half an hour, to Fantine’s great satisfaction. He made a thousand entreaties to everyone that the sick woman should lack nothing. It was noticed that there was a moment when his face became very dark. But this was explained when it was learned that the doctor had leaned over to his ear and said: “It’s dropping a lot.” Then he returned to the town hall, and the office boy saw him carefully examining a road map of France that was hanging in his office. He wrote some figures in pencil on a piece of paper. Chapter 56. Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire. From the town hall he went to the end of town to the home of a Fleming, Master Scaufflaër, known as Scaufflaire, who rented horses and cabriolets at will. To get to this Scaufflaire’s house, the shortest way was to take a little-used street where the presbytery of the parish where M. Madeleine lived was located. The priest was, it was said, a worthy and respectable man, and a man of good advice. At the moment when M. Madeleine arrived in front of the presbytery, there was only one passer-by in the street, and this passer-by noticed this: The mayor, after having passed the presbytery house, stopped, remained motionless, then retraced his steps and retraced his steps to the door of the presbytery, which was a half-timbered door with an iron knocker. He quickly put his hand to the knocker and lifted it; Then he stopped again, and remained short, and as if thoughtful, and, after a few seconds, instead of letting the hammer fall noisily, he put it down gently and resumed his journey with a sort of haste he had not before. M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home, busy patching up a harness. “Master Scaufflaire,” he asked, “do you have a good horse?” “Mr. Mayor,” said the Fleming, “all my horses are good. What do you mean by a good horse? ” “I mean a horse that can do twenty leagues in a day. ” “The devil!” said the Fleming, “twenty leagues! ” “Yes.” “Harnessed to a cabriolet? ” “Yes. ” “And how long will he rest after the race? ” “He must be able to set off again the next day if necessary. ” “To make the same journey again? ” “Yes.” “The devil! The devil! And it’s twenty leagues?” Mr. Madeleine took the paper on which he had scribbled some numbers from his pocket. He showed them to the Fleming. They were the numbers 5, 6, 8-1/2. “You see,” he said. “Total, nineteen and a half, that’s to say twenty leagues. ” ” Mr. Mayor,” the Fleming continued, “I have your business. My little white horse. You must have seen him go by sometimes. He’s a little beast from the lower Boulonnais. He’s full of fire. They first wanted to make him a saddle horse. Bah! He kicked, he knocked everyone to the ground. They thought he was vicious, they didn’t know what to do with him. I bought him. I put him in the cabriolet. Sir, that’s what he wanted; he’s as gentle as a girl, he rides the wind. Ah! for example, you shouldn’t ride on his back. It wasn’t his idea to be a saddle horse. Everyone has their ambition. Pull, yes, carry, no; you must believe he said that to himself. –And he will run the race? –Your twenty leagues. Always at a fast trot, and in less than eight hours. But here are the conditions. –Say. –First, you will give him an hour’s rest halfway; he will eat, and we will be there while he eats to prevent the inn boy from stealing his oats; for I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable boys than eaten by the horses. –We will be there. –Secondly…. Is the cabriolet for the mayor? –Yes. –The mayor knows how to drive? –Yes. –Well, the mayor will travel alone and without luggage so as not to burden the horse. –Agreed. –But the mayor, having no one with him, will be obliged to take the trouble to watch over the oats himself. –It is agreed. “I’ll need thirty francs a day. Paid rest days. Not a penny less, and the animal’s food is the mayor’s responsibility .” M. Madeleine took three napoleons from his purse and put them on the table. “That’s two days’ advance. ” “Fourthly, for such a trip, a cabriolet would be too heavy and would tire the horse. The mayor would have to agree to travel in a little tilbury that I have. ” “I agree.” “It’s light, but it’s uncovered. ” “It doesn’t matter to me. ” “Has the mayor considered that it’s winter? ”
Mr. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming continued: “That it’s very cold?” Mr. Madeleine remained silent. Master Scaufflaire continued: “That it might rain?” Mr. Madeleine raised his head and said: “The tilbury and the horse will be at my door tomorrow at four- thirty in the morning. ” “That’s understood, Mr. Mayor,” replied Scaufflaire, then, scratching with his thumbnail a stain on the wood of the table, he resumed with that carefree air that the Flemings know so well how to blend with their finesse: “But now I’m thinking about it! Mr. Mayor won’t tell me where he’s going. Where is Mr. Mayor going?” He had not been thinking of anything else since the beginning of the conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared to ask this question. “Does your horse have good forelegs?” said M. Madeleine. “Yes, Mr. Mayor. You will support him a little on the descents. Are there many descents from here to where you are going? ” “Don’t forget to be at my door at four thirty in the morning, very precisely,” replied M. Madeleine; and he went out. The Fleming remained quite stupid, as he himself said some time after. M. Mayor had been out for two or three minutes when the door opened again; it was M. Mayor. He still had the same impassive and preoccupied air. “Mr. Scaufflaire,” he said, “at what sum do you estimate the horse and the tilbury that you will rent me, one carrying the other?” “One dragging the other, Mr. Mayor,” said the Fleming with a loud laugh. “Very well. Well then! ” “Does the Mayor want to buy them from me? ” “No, but in any case, I want to guarantee them to you. On my return, you will pay me back the sum. How much do you value the cabriolet and horse ?” ” Five hundred francs, Mr. Mayor. ” “Here they are . ” Mr. Madeleine placed a banknote on the table, then went out and this time did not come back. Master Scaufflaire regretted terribly that he had not said a thousand francs. Besides, the horse and the tilbury, together, were worth a hundred crowns. The Fleming called his wife and told her the story. Where the devil can the Mayor be going? They held a council. “He’s going to Paris,” said the wife. “I don’t think so,” said the husband. Mr. Madeleine had forgotten the paper on which he had drawn the figures on the mantelpiece . The Fleming took it and studied it. “Five, six, eight and a half? That must mark post houses.” He turned to his wife. “I found it. ” “How? ” “It’s five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He’s going to Arras.” Meanwhile, M. Madeleine had gone home. To return from Master Scaufflaire’s, he had taken the longer route, as if the presbytery door had been a temptation for him and he wanted to avoid it. He had gone up to his room and locked himself in, which was quite simple, for he liked to go to bed early. However, the concierge of the factory, who was also M. Madeleine’s only servant, noticed that his light went out at eight-thirty, and she told the cashier who was coming in, adding: “Is the mayor ill?” I found his appearance a little strange. This cashier lived in a room located precisely below M. Madeleine’s room. He paid no attention to the porter’s words, lay down and fell asleep. Around midnight, he woke up suddenly; he had heard through his sleep a noise above his head. He listened. It was a footstep coming and going, as if someone were walking in the room above. He listened more attentively, and recognized the footsteps of M. Madeleine. This seemed strange to him; usually no noise was made in Mr. Madeleine’s room before he was due to get up. A moment later the cashier heard something that sounded like a wardrobe being opened and closed. Then a piece of furniture was moved, there was a silence, and the footsteps began again. The cashier sat up, woke up completely, looked, and through the glass of his casement saw on the opposite wall the reddish reflection of a lighted window. Judging by the direction of the rays, it could only be the window of Mr. Madeleine’s room. The reflection trembled as if it came from a lighted fire rather than a light. The shadows of the glass frames were not visible, which indicated that the window was wide open. In the cold weather , this open window was surprising. The cashier went back to sleep. An hour or two later, he awoke again. The same slow, steady footsteps still went back and forth above his head. The reverberation was still outlined on the wall, but now it was pale and peaceful like the reflection of a lamp or a candle. The window was still open. This is what was happening in M. Madeleine’s room. Chapter 57. A Storm Beneath a Skull. The reader has doubtless guessed that M. Madeleine is none other than Jean Valjean.
We have already looked into the depths of this consciousness; the moment has come to look there again. We do not do so without emotion and trembling. There is nothing more terrifying than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the mind can nowhere find more dazzling or more darkness than in man; it can fix itself on no thing that is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle greater than the sea, it is the sky; There is a spectacle greater than the sky, it is the interior of the soul. To make the poem of human consciousness, even if only about a single man, even if only about the most insignificant of men, would be to melt all epics into a superior and definitive epic. Consciousness is the chaos of chimeras, of desires and attempts, the furnace of dreams, the lair of ideas of which one is ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, it is the battlefield of passions. At certain hours, penetrate through the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look behind, look into this soul, look into this darkness. There are there, beneath the external silence, combats of giants as in Homer, melees of dragons and hydras and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, visionary spirals as in Dante. What a dark thing this infinity that every man carries within himself and by which he measures with despair the wills of his brain and the actions of his life! Alighieri one day encountered a sinister door before which he hesitated. Here is one also before us, at the threshold of which we hesitate. Let us enter nevertheless. We have little to add to what the reader already knows of what had happened to Jean Valjean since the adventure of Petit-Gervais. From that moment, as we have seen, he was another man. What the bishop had wanted to do with him, he carried out. It was more than a transformation, it was a transfiguration. He managed to disappear, sold the bishop’s silverware, keeping only the torches as a souvenir, slipped from town to town, crossed France, came to Montreuil-sur-mer, had the idea we have described, accomplished what we have recounted, managed to make himself elusive and inaccessible, and henceforth, established in Montreuil-sur-mer, happy to feel his conscience saddened by his past and the first half of his existence denied by the last, he lived peacefully, reassured and hopeful, having only two thoughts: to hide his name, and to sanctify his life; to escape from men, and to return to God. These two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that they formed only one; they were both equally absorbing and imperious, and dominated his slightest actions. Ordinarily they were in agreement in regulating the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the shadow; they made him benevolent and simple; they advised him the same things. Sometimes, however, there was conflict between them. In this case, we remember, the man whom the whole region of Montreuil-sur-mer called M. Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second, his safety to his virtue. Thus, despite all reserve and prudence, he had kept the bishop’s candlesticks, worn his mourning, called and questioned all the little Savoyards who passed by, obtained information about the families of Faverolles, and saved the life of old Fauchelevent, despite Javert’s disturbing insinuations. It seemed, as we have already noted, that he thought, like all those who have been wise, holy, and just, that his first duty was not to him. However, it must be said, nothing of the sort had ever arisen before. Never had the two ideas that governed the unfortunate man whose sufferings we are recounting engaged in such a serious struggle. He understood this, confusedly but profoundly, from the first words Javert uttered upon entering his study. At the moment when this name, which he had buried under so many layers, was so strangely articulated, he was seized with stupor and as if intoxicated by the sinister oddity of his destiny, and, through this stupor, he had that shudder which precedes great shocks; he bent like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt shadows full of thunder and lightning coming over his head. While listening to Javert speak, he had a first thought of going, of running, of denouncing himself, of dragging this Champmathieu out of prison and putting himself there; it was painful and poignant like an incision in living flesh, then it passed, and he said to himself: Come! come! He repressed this first generous impulse and recoiled from heroism. No doubt it would be beautiful if, after the bishop’s holy words, after so many years of repentance and self-denial, in the midst of a penance so admirably begun, this man, even in the presence of such a terrible situation, had not flinched for a moment and had continued to walk with the same step towards this open precipice at the bottom of which was heaven; that would be beautiful, but it was not so. We must account for the things that were taking place in this soul, and we can only say what was there. What prevailed at first was the instinct of self-preservation; he hastily rallied his ideas, stifled his emotions, considered the presence of Javert, this great peril, postponed all resolution with the firmness of terror, became stunned by what there was to do, and regained his calm like a wrestler picking up his shield. The rest of the day he was in this state, a whirlwind within, a profound tranquility without; he took only what one might call conservative measures. Everything was still confused and clashing in his brain; the disturbance was such that he could not distinctly see the form of any idea; and he himself could not have said anything about himself, except that he had just received a great blow. He went as usual to Fantine’s bed of pain and prolonged his visit, out of an instinct of kindness, telling himself that he must act in this way and recommend her to the sisters in case he should happen to have to be absent. He vaguely felt that he might have to go to Arras, and, without being in the least determined on this journey, he told himself that, sheltered from all suspicion as he was, there was no inconvenience in being a witness to what would happen, and he held back Scaufflaire’s tilbury, in order to be prepared for any event. He dined with a good appetite. Returning to his room, he collected himself. He examined the situation and found it unheard of; so unheard of that in the midst of his reverie, by some impulse of almost inexplicable anxiety, he got up from his chair and locked the door. He feared that something might still come in. He barricaded himself against the possible. A moment later, he blew out his light. It bothered him. It seemed to him that he could be seen. Who, who? Alas! what he wanted to put out had entered; what he wanted to blind, was watching him. His conscience. His conscience, that is to say, God. Yet, in the first moment, he deluded himself; he had a feeling of security and solitude; With the bolt drawn, he believed himself impregnable; with the candle extinguished, he felt invisible. Then he took possession of himself; he rested his elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hand, and began to think in the darkness. –Where am I?–Am I not dreaming? What have I been told?–Is it really true that I saw this Javert and that he spoke to me like this?–Who can this Champmathieu be?–Does he resemble me then?–Is it possible?–When I think that yesterday I was so calm and so far from suspecting anything !–What was I doing yesterday at this hour?–What is there in this incident?–How will it be resolved?–What is to be done? That is the torment in which he was. His brain had lost the strength to retain his ideas; they passed like waves, and he took his forehead in both hands to stop them. From this tumult which upset his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw some evidence and a resolution, nothing emerged but anguish. His head was burning. He went to the window and opened it wide. There were no stars in the sky. He came back and sat down near the table. The first hour passed in this way. Little by little, however, vague outlines began to form and to fix themselves in his meditation, and he was able to glimpse with the precision of reality, not the whole situation, but a few details. He began by recognizing that, however extraordinary and critical this situation was, he was completely in control of it. His stupor only increased. Regardless of the severe and religious goal that his actions had in mind, everything he had done up to that day was nothing other than a hole he dug to bury his name in. What he had always feared most, in his hours of withdrawal into himself, in his sleepless nights, was to ever hear that name pronounced; he told himself that that would be the end of everything for him; that the day that name reappeared, it would cause his new life to vanish around him, and who knows perhaps even his new soul within him. He shuddered at the mere thought that it was possible. Certainly, if someone had told him at those moments that an hour would come when this name would ring in his ears, when this hideous word, Jean Valjean, would suddenly emerge from the night and stand before him, when this formidable light, created to dissipate the mystery in which he enveloped himself, would suddenly shine forth upon his head; and that this name would not threaten him, that this light would only produce a thicker darkness, that this rent veil would increase the mystery; that this earthquake would consolidate his edifice, that this prodigious incident would have no other result, if it seemed good to him, than to render his existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, from his confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and worthy bourgeois Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honored, more peaceful, and more respected than ever,—if someone had said this to him, he would have nodded his head and regarded these words as insane. Well! All this had just happened, all this heaping up of the impossible was a fact, and God had allowed these crazy things to become real things! His reverie continued to clear up. He became more and more aware of his position. It seemed to him that he had just awakened from some sleep or other, and that he found himself sliding down a slope in the middle of the night, standing, shivering, backing away in vain, on the very edge of an abyss. He distinctly glimpsed in the shadows a stranger, a foreigner, whom destiny took for him and pushed into the abyss in his place. For the abyss to close, someone had to fall into it, him or the other. He had only to let it happen. The clarity became complete, and he admitted this to himself:–That his place was empty in the galleys, that no matter what he did, it was still waiting for him there, that Petit-Gervais’s flight was bringing him back there, that this empty place would wait for him and attract him until he was there, that this was inevitable and fatal.–And then he said to himself:–That at this moment he had a replacement, that it appeared that a man named Champmathieu had this bad luck, and that, as for him, present henceforth in the galleys in the person of this Champmathieu, present in society under the name of M. Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear, provided that he did not prevent the men from sealing on the head of this Champmathieu this stone of infamy which, like the stone of the sepulchre, falls once and never rises again. All this was so violent and so strange that suddenly there came over him that sort of indescribable movement which no man experiences more than two or three times in his life, a sort of convulsion of conscience which stirs up all that is doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, joy, and despair, and which one might call a burst of interior laughter. He abruptly relighted his candle. “Well, what!” he said to himself, “what am I afraid of? What am I thinking about like that? Now I am saved. All is over. I had only one door left half-open through which my past could burst into my life; that door, now it is walled up! Forever! This Javert who has troubled me for so long, this formidable instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me, by Jove! and who followed me everywhere, that dreadful hunting dog always on the lookout for me, now he’s confused, busy elsewhere, completely tracked down! He’s satisfied now, he ‘ll leave me alone, he’s got his Jean Valjean! Who even knows, it’s likely he’ll want to leave the city! And all this was done without me! And I had nothing to do with it! Oh, but! What’s so unfortunate about this? People who saw me, on my honor! would think that a catastrophe had happened to me! After all, if anyone suffers harm, it’s not my fault at all. It’s Providence that did everything. Apparently, it wants it! Have I the right to disturb what it arranges? What am I asking for now? What am I going to get involved in? It’s none of my business. What! I’m not happy! But what do I need? The goal I have aspired to for so many years, the dream of my nights, the object of my prayers to heaven, security, I have attained it! It is God who wills it. I have nothing to do against the will of God. And why does God will it? So that I may continue what I have begun, so that I may do good, so that one day I may be a great and encouraging example, so that it may be said that there has finally been a little happiness attached to this penance that I have undergone and to this virtue to which I have returned! Truly I do not understand why I was afraid just now to enter the home of this good priest and tell him everything as if I were a confessor, and to ask his advice, that is obviously what he would have said to me. It’s decided, let’s let things go! Let God do what he wants! He spoke to himself thus in the depths of his conscience, leaning over what one might call his own abyss. He rose from his chair and began to walk around the room. “Come,” he said, “let’s not think about it anymore. There’s a resolution made!” But he felt no joy. On the contrary. One can no more prevent thought from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For the sailor, it’s called the tide; for the guilty, it’s called remorse. God lifts the soul like the ocean. After a few moments, no matter what he did, he resumed this sombre dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he who listened, saying what he would have liked to keep silent, listening to what he would not have wanted to hear, yielding to this mysterious power which said to him: think! as she said two thousand years ago to another condemned man, walk! Before going further and to be fully understood, let us insist on a necessary observation. It is certain that we speak to ourselves, there is not a thinking being who has not experienced it. We can even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when it goes, within a man, from thought to consciousness and returns from consciousness to thought. It is in this sense only that we must understand the words often used in this chapter, he said, he cried. We say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we cry out within ourselves, without the external silence being broken. There is a great tumult; everything speaks within us, except the mouth. The realities of the soul, while not being visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. He therefore asked himself where he was. He questioned this resolution taken. He confessed to himself that everything he had just arranged in his mind was monstrous, that letting things go, letting God do what he wanted, was simply horrible. To let this mistake of destiny and of mankind be accomplished, not to prevent it, to lend oneself to it by one’s silence, in short to do nothing, was to do everything! It was the last degree of hypocritical indignity! It was a base, cowardly, underhand, abject, hideous crime! For the first time in eight years, the unfortunate man had just tasted the bitter taste of a bad thought and a bad action. He spat it out with disgust. He continued to question himself. He asked himself sternly what he had meant by this: “My goal is achieved!” He declared to himself that his life had a purpose indeed. But what purpose? To hide his name? To deceive the police? Was it for such a small thing that he had done all that he had done? Did he not have another aim, which was the great one, which was the true one? To save, not his person, but his soul. To become honest and good again.
To be a just man! Wasn’t that above all, that alone, what he had always wanted, what the bishop had ordered him to do? To close the door on his past? But he didn’t close it, good God! He opened it again by committing an infamous action! But he became a thief again, and the most odious of thieves! He robbed another of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sun! He became a murderer! He killed, he morally killed a miserable man, he inflicted on him that dreadful living death, that death in the open air, which is called penal servitude! On the contrary, to give himself up, to save this man struck by such a lugubrious error, to take back his name, to become again by duty the convict Jean Valjean, that was truly to complete his resurrection, and to close forever the hell from which he had emerged! To fall back into it in appearance was to escape from it in reality! It was necessary to do that! He had done nothing if he did not do that! His whole life was useless, all his penance was lost, and there was nothing left to do but say: what was the use? He felt that the bishop was there, that The bishop was all the more present because he was dead, because the bishop was looking at him fixedly, because henceforth Mayor Madeleine with all his virtues would be abominable to him, and the galley slave Jean Valjean would be admirable and pure before him. That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience. It was therefore necessary to go to Arras, to deliver the false Jean Valjean, to denounce the real one! Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the last step to be taken; but it was necessary. A painful destiny! He would only enter into sanctity in the eyes of God if he returned to infamy in the eyes of men! “Well,” he said, “let us take this course! let us do our duty! let us save this man!” He pronounced these words aloud, without realizing that he was speaking aloud. He took his books, checked them, and put them in order. He threw into the fire a bundle of debts he had against small, embarrassed merchants. He wrote a letter, sealed it, and the envelope of which , if anyone had been in his room at that moment, one might have read: To Monsieur Laffitte, banker, rue d’Artois, Paris. He took from a desk a wallet containing some banknotes and the passport he had used that same year to go to the elections. Anyone who had seen him while he was performing these various acts, which were mingled with such serious meditation, would not have suspected what was passing within him. Only at times his lips moved; at other times he raised his head and fixed his gaze on some point of the wall, as if there were precisely something there that he wanted to clarify or question. Having finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it in his pocket, along with his wallet, and began to walk again. His reverie had not deviated. He continued to see clearly his duty written in luminous letters which blazed before his eyes and moved with his gaze: “Go! Name yourself! Denounce yourself!” He saw in the same way, and as if they had moved before him with sensible forms, the two ideas which had been until then the double rule of his life: to hide his name, to sanctify his soul. For the first time, they appeared to him absolutely distinct, and he saw the difference which separated them. He recognized that one of these ideas was necessarily good, while the other could become bad; that the former was devotion and the latter was personality; that one said: “the neighbor,” and the other said: “me”; that one came from the light and the other from the night. They fought each other, he saw them fighting each other. As he thought, they had grown before his mind’s eye; they now had colossal stature; and it seemed to him that he saw struggling within himself, in that infinity of which we spoke just now, in the midst of darkness and light, a goddess and a giantess. He was full of terror, but it seemed to him that the good thought was winning. He felt that he was touching the other decisive moment of his conscience and his destiny; that the bishop had marked the first phase of his new life, and that this Champmathieu marked the second. After the great crisis, the great trial. However, the fever, appeased for a moment, gradually returned to him. A thousand thoughts crossed his mind, but they continued to strengthen his resolution. For a moment he said to himself:–that perhaps he was taking the matter too seriously, that after all this Champmathieu was not interesting, that in short he had stolen. He answered himself:–If this man has indeed stolen a few apples, it is a month in prison. It is a long way from there to the galleys. And who even knows? Has he stolen? Is it proven? The name of Jean Valjean overwhelms him and seems to dispense with proof. Do not the king’s prosecutors usually act like this? He is believed to be a thief, because he is known to be a convict. At another moment, the idea came to him that, when he had denounced himself, perhaps the heroism of his action, and his honest life for seven years, and what he had done for the country, would be considered and he would be pardoned. But this supposition quickly vanished, and he smiled bitterly at the thought that the theft of the forty sous from Petit-Gervais made him a repeat offender, that this affair would certainly reappear and, according to the precise terms of the law, would make him liable to hard labor for life. He turned away from all illusion, detached himself more and more from the earth and sought consolation and strength elsewhere. He told himself that he must do his duty; that perhaps he would not even be more unhappy after having done his duty than after having eluded it; that if he let it happen, if he remained at Montreuil-sur-mer, his consideration, his good name, his good works, deference, veneration, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his virtue, would be seasoned with a crime; and what a taste all these holy things would have linked to this hideous thing! whereas, if he accomplished his sacrifice, in the galleys, at the stake, in the pillory, in the green cap, in tireless work, in shame without pity, he would mix with himself a celestial idea! Finally he said to himself that there was a necessity, that his destiny was thus made, that he was not master of disturbing the arrangements from above, that in all cases it was necessary to choose: either virtue without and abomination within, or holiness within and infamy without. By tossing around so many gloomy ideas, his courage did not fail, but his brain grew tired. He began to think in spite of himself of other things, of indifferent things. His arteries beat violently in his temples. He was always going back and forth. Midnight struck first at the parish, then at the town hall. He counted the twelve strokes on the two clocks, and compared the sound of the two bells. He remembered on this occasion that a few days before he had seen at a scrap metal dealer’s an old bell for sale on which was written this name: Antoine Albin de Romainville. He was cold. He lit a little fire. He did not think of closing the window. However, he had fallen back into his stupor. He had to make a rather great effort to remember what he was thinking about before midnight struck. He finally succeeded. “Ah! yes,” he said to himself, “I had made up my mind to denounce myself.” And then suddenly he thought of Fantine. “Look!” he said, “and that poor woman! Here a new crisis broke out. Fantine, appearing suddenly in his reverie, was like a ray of unexpected light. It seemed to him that everything around him changed its appearance; he cried out: “Ah, but! Until now I have only considered myself! I have only considered my convenience! It suits me to keep silent or to denounce myself, to hide my person or save my soul, to be a contemptible and respected magistrate or an infamous and venerable galley slave, that’s me, that’s always me, that’s only me! But, my God, all this is selfishness ! They are various forms of selfishness, but it is selfishness! If I thought a little of others?” The first holiness is to think of others. Let us see, let us examine. With me excepted, with me erased, with me forgotten, what will become of all this? If I denounce myself? I am caught. They let go of this Champmathieu, they put me back in the galleys, that’s good. And then? What’s happening here? Ah! Here, there is a country, a city, factories, an industry, workers, men, women, old grandfathers, children, poor people! I created all this, I make all this live; everywhere there is a smoking chimney, it is I who put the ember in the fire and meat in the pot; I made ease, circulation, credit; before me there was nothing; I raised up, vivified, animated, fertilized, stimulated, enriched the whole country; the less I am, the less the soul. I am gone, everything dies.–And this woman who has suffered so much, who has so much merit in her fall, whose unhappiness I unwittingly caused! And this child whom I wanted to go and get, whom I promised to the mother! Do I not also owe something to this woman, in reparation for the harm I have done her? If I disappear, what happens? The mother dies. The child becomes what it can. This is what happens if I denounce myself.–If I do not denounce myself? Let us see, if I do not denounce myself? After asking himself this question, he stopped; He had a moment of hesitation and trembling; but this moment lasted a short time, and he answered himself calmly: “Well, this man is going to the galleys, it’s true, but, what the devil! He stole! I keep telling myself that he didn’t steal, he stole! I stay here, I continue. In ten years I will have earned ten million, I spread them around the country, I have nothing of my own, what does that matter to me? What I’m doing is not for me! The prosperity of all is growing, industries are awakening and becoming excited, manufactures and factories are multiplying, families, a hundred families, a thousand families! are happy; the country is becoming populated; villages are born where there are only farms, farms are born where there is nothing; poverty disappears, and with poverty disappear debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder, all vices, all crimes! And this poor mother raises her child! And there’s a whole rich and honest country! Oh, I was crazy, I was absurd, what was I talking about denouncing myself? We must be careful, really, and not rush into anything. What! Because it will have pleased me to act the great and the generous,–it’s melodrama, after all!–because I will have thought only of myself, of myself alone, what! To save from a punishment perhaps a little exaggerated, but right in the end, no one knows who, a thief, a rascal obviously, a whole country will have to perish! A poor woman will have to die in the hospital! A poor little girl will have to die on the pavement! Like dogs! Ah! but it’s abominable! Without the mother even having seen her child again! Without the child having almost known his mother! And all this for that old rascal of an apple thief who, surely, deserved the galleys for something else, if not for this! Fine scruples who save a guilty man and sacrifice innocent people, who save an old vagabond, who has only a few years left to live in the end and will be hardly more unhappy in the galleys than in his hovel, and who sacrifice an entire population, mothers, wives, children! That poor little Cosette who has only me in the world and who is doubtless at this moment blue with cold in the hovel of those Thénardiers! There are more scoundrels, those! And I would fail in my duties towards all these poor beings! And I would go and denounce myself! And I would commit this inept stupidity! Let’s put everything at its worst. Let us suppose that there is a bad action for me in this and that my conscience reproaches me for it one day, to accept, for the good of others, these reproaches which only burden me, this bad action which only compromises my soul, that is where devotion is, that is where virtue is.
He got up, he started walking again. This time it seemed to him that he was happy. Diamonds are only found in the darkness of the earth; truths are only found in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after having descended into these depths, after having groped for a long time in the blackest of these darknesses, he had finally found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and he was dazzled looking at it. “Yes,” he thought, “that’s it. I’m right. I have the solution. We must finally stick to something. My mind is made up. Let it be! Let us not waver any longer, let us not retreat any further. This is in the interest of all, not in mine. I am Madeleine, I remain Madeleine. Woe to him who is Jean Valjean! He is no longer me. I don’t know this man, I no longer know what he is; if someone happens to be Jean Valjean at this hour, let him make up his mind! It ‘s none of my business. It’s a name of fatality that floats in the night; if it stops and falls on a head, so much the worse for it!” He looked at himself in the little mirror on his mantelpiece and said: “Why! It has relieved me to make a resolution! I am quite different now.” He walked a few more steps, then he stopped short: “Come!” he said, “we must not hesitate before any of the consequences of the resolution taken. There are still threads that bind me to this Jean Valjean. We must break them! There are here, in this very room, objects that would accuse me, mute things that would be witnesses, it is said, all that must disappear.” He searched in his pocket, took out his purse, opened it, and took out a small key. He inserted this key into a lock whose hole was barely visible , lost as it was in the darkest shades of the design that covered the paper pasted on the wall. A hiding place opened, a sort of false wardrobe arranged between the angle of the wall and the mantelpiece . There were nothing in this hiding-place but a few rags, a blue linen smock, a pair of old trousers, an old knapsack, and a large thorn stick tipped at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean at the time when he was passing through Digne, in October 1815, would easily have recognized all the pieces of this miserable accoutrement. He had preserved them as he had preserved the silver candlesticks, to always remember his point of departure. Only he hid this which came from the galleys, and he left visible the torches which came from the bishop. He cast a furtive glance towards the door, as if he feared it might open in spite of the bolt which closed it; then with a quick and sudden movement and a single armful, without even glancing at the things he had so religiously and so perilously guarded for so many years, he took everything, rags, stick, haversack, and threw everything into the fire. He closed the false wardrobe, and, redoubling his precautions, now useless since it was empty, hid the door behind a large piece of furniture which he pushed into it. After a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall were lit up with a great red and trembling reverberation. Everything was burning. The thorn stick crackled and threw sparks right to the middle of the room. The haversack, in burning with the horrible rags it contained, had exposed something that shone in the ashes. Bending over , one would easily have recognized a silver coin. No doubt the forty-sou piece stolen from the little Savoyard. He did not look at the fire and walked, always going and coming at the same pace.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the two silver torches which the reverberation made glow vaguely on the mantelpiece. “Look!” he thought, “all of Jean Valjean is still in there. That too must be destroyed.” He took the two torches. There was enough fire to enable them to be quickly deformed and made into a sort of unrecognizable ingot. He leaned over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt truly comfortable. “Good warmth!” he said. He stirred the brazier with one of the two candlesticks. A minute more, and they were in the fire. At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice crying within him: “Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!” His hair stood on end, he became like a man listening to something terrible. “Yes, that’s it, finish it!” said the voice. “Complete what you’re doing! Destroy these torches! Obliterate this memory! Forget the bishop! Forget everything! Lose this Champmathieu! Go, that’s good. Applaud yourself! So, it’s agreed, it’s resolved, it’s said, here’s a man, here’s an old man who doesn’t know what’s wanted of him, who has perhaps done nothing, an innocent man, whose name is the source of all the misfortune, on whom your name weighs like a crime, who will be taken for you, who will be condemned, who will end his days in abjection and horror! That’s good. Be an honest man, you.” Stay, Mr. Mayor, stay honorable and honored, enrich the city, feed the poor, raise orphans, live happily, virtuously, and admired, and during that time, while you are here in joy and in the light, there will be someone who will wear your red coat, who will bear your name in ignominy, and who will drag your chain to the galleys! Yes, it is well arranged thus! Ah! wretch! The sweat trickled from his brow. He fixed a haggard eye on the torches. Meanwhile, what was speaking within him had not finished. The voice continued: “Jean Valjean! There will be around you many voices which will make a great noise, which will speak loudly, and which will bless you, and only one which no one will hear and which will curse you in the darkness. Well then! listen, infamous one!” All these blessings will fall back before reaching heaven, and only the curse will rise to God! This voice, at first very weak and which had risen from the darkest part of his conscience, had become by degrees resounding and formidable, and he now heard it in his ear. It seemed to him that it had come out of himself and that it was now speaking outside of him. He thought he heard the last words so distinctly that he looked into the room with a sort of terror. “Is there anyone here?” he asked aloud, completely bewildered. Then he resumed with a laugh that resembled the laugh of an idiot: “How stupid of me! There can be no one. There was someone; but the one who was there was not one whom the human eye can see.” He placed the torches on the mantelpiece. Then he resumed that monotonous and lugubrious march which disturbed his dreams and woke with a start the sleeping man below him. This march relieved him and intoxicated him at the same time. It seems that sometimes on the most important occasions one stirs oneself to seek advice from everything one might encounter while moving. After a few moments he no longer knew where he stood. He now recoiled with equal terror from the two resolutions he had taken in turn. The two ideas which advised him seemed to him as fatal as each other. –What
fatality! what an encounter this Champmathieu had taken for him! To be precipitated precisely by the means which providence seemed at first to have employed to strengthen him! There was a moment when he considered the future. To denounce himself, great God! To give himself up! He considered with immense despair all that he would have to leave, all that he would have to take up again. He would have to say goodbye to this existence so good, so pure, so radiant, to this respect for all, to honor, to freedom! He would no longer go for walks in the fields, he would no longer hear the birds sing in the month of May, he would no longer give alms to little children! He would no longer feel the sweetness of the grateful and loving glances fixed on him! He would leave this house that he had built, this room, this little room! Everything seemed charming to him at this hour. He would no longer read in these books, he would no longer write on this little white wooden table! His old porteress, the only servant he had, would no longer bring him his coffee in the morning.
Great God! Instead of that, the galley slaves, the pillory, the red jacket, the chain on the foot, the fatigue, the dungeon, the camp bed, all these known horrors! At his age, after having been what he was! If only he were young! But, old, to be addressed informally by the first comer, to be searched by the prison guard, to receive the blow of the guard’s stick! To have bare feet in iron-shod shoes! To offer one’s leg morning and evening to the hammer of the patrolman who inspects the manila! To undergo the curiosity of strangers to whom one would say: That one is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer! In the evening, dripping with sweat, overcome with weariness, the green cap over the eyes, to climb two by two, under the sergeant’s whip, the staircase-ladder of the floating penal colony! Oh! what misery! Can destiny be as wicked as an intelligent being and become monstrous like the human heart? And whatever he did, he always fell back on that poignant dilemma which was at the bottom of his reverie: remain in paradise, and there become a demon! return to hell, and there become an angel! What to do, great God! what to do? The torment from which he had emerged with such difficulty was unleashed within him again. His ideas began to mingle. They took on that indescribable stupefaction and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair. The name Romainville constantly came back to his mind, along with two lines from a song he had heard once. He reflected that Romainville is a little wood near Paris where young people in love go to pick lilacs in April. He was tottering outside as well as inside. He walked like a little child left to wander alone. At certain moments, struggling against his weariness, he made an effort to regain his intelligence. He tried to pose to himself one last time, and definitively, the problem on which he had, as it were, fallen from exhaustion. Should he denounce himself? Should he keep silent? He could not see anything clearly. The vague aspects of all the reasonings sketched out by his reverie trembled and dissipated one after the other in smoke. Only he felt that, whatever course he decided on, necessarily, and without any possibility of escape, something in him would die; that he was entering a sepulchre on the right as on the left; that he was accomplishing an agony, the agony of his happiness or the agony of his virtue. Alas! all his irresolution had seized him again. He was no further ahead than at the beginning. Thus struggled this unhappy soul beneath anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity are summed up, had also, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce wind of infinity, long held aside from his hand the frightening chalice which appeared to him streaming with shadow and overflowing with darkness in depths full of stars. Chapter 58. Forms that suffering takes during sleep. Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking like this for five hours, almost without interruption, when he let himself fall into his chair. He fell asleep there and had a dream. This dream, like most dreams, related to the situation only by something fatal and poignant, but it made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so much that later he wrote it down. It is one of the papers written in his own hand that he left behind. We believe we should transcribe this thing here verbatim. Whatever this dream was, the story of this night would be incomplete if we omitted it. It is the dark adventure of a sick soul. Here it is. On the envelope we find this line written: The dream I had that night. I was in a countryside. A large, sad countryside where there was no grass. It didn’t seem to me that it was day or night. I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childhood, this brother of whom I must say I never think and whom I hardly remember anymore. We were chatting, and we met passersby. We spoke of a neighbor we had once, and who, since she lived on the street, always worked with the window open. While talking, we were cold because of this open window. There were no trees in the countryside. We saw a man who passed near us. He was a completely naked man, the color of ash, mounted on an earth-colored horse. The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the veins on his head. He held in his hand a stick which was supple as a vine shoot and heavy as iron. This rider passed and said nothing to us. My brother said to me: Let us take the sunken road. There was a sunken path where not a brushwood or a blade of moss was visible. Everything was the color of earth, even the sky. After a few steps, no one answered me when I spoke. I realized that my brother was no longer with me. I entered a village that I saw. I thought that this must be Romainville (why Romainville?). The first street I entered was deserted. I entered a second street. Behind the angle of the two streets, there was a man standing against the wall. I said to this man: “What is this country? Where am I?” The man did not answer. I saw the door of a house open, and I entered it. The first room was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the door of this room, there was a man standing against the wall. I asked this man: “Whose house is this? Where am I?” The man did not answer. The house had a garden. I left the house and entered the garden. The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree, I found a man standing . I said to this man: “What is this garden? Where am I?” The man did not answer. I wandered through the village, and I saw that it was a city. All the streets were deserted, all the doors were open. No living being passed through the streets, walked in the rooms, or strolled in the gardens. But there was behind every corner of the wall, behind every door, behind every tree, a man standing silent. You only ever saw one at a time. These men watched me go by. I left the city and began to walk in the fields. After a while, I turned around and saw a large crowd coming behind me. I recognized all the men I had seen in the city. They had strange faces. They didn’t seem to be hurrying, and yet they walked faster than me. They made no noise as they walked. In an instant, this crowd caught up with me and surrounded me. The faces of these men were the color of earth. Then the first one I had seen and questioned upon entering the town said to me: “Where are you going? Don’t you know that you have been dead for a long time?” I opened my mouth to reply, and I noticed that there was no one around me. He woke up. He was frozen. A wind that was as cold as the morning wind was turning the frames of the open window on their hinges. The fire had gone out. The candle was nearing its end. It was still pitch black. He got up and went to the window. There were still no stars in the sky. From his window, he could see the courtyard of the house and the street. A sharp, harsh noise that suddenly resonated on the ground made him lower his eyes. He saw below him two red stars whose rays lengthened and shortened strangely in the shadows. As his thoughts were still half submerged in the mist of dreams—well! he thought, there aren’t any in the sky. They are on the earth now. However, this disturbance dissipated, a second noise similar to the first finally woke him up; he looked, and he recognized that these two stars were the lanterns of a carriage. By the light they threw, he could distinguish the shape of this carriage. It was a tilbury drawn by a small white horse. The noise he had heard was the horse kicking on the pavement. “What is this carriage?” he said to himself. “Who is it that comes so early?” At that moment there was a little knock at the door of his room. He shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice: “Who is there?” Someone answered: “I am, Mr. Mayor.” He recognized the voice of the old woman, his doorkeeper. “Well,” he continued, “what is it?” “Mr. Mayor, it is just now five o’clock in the morning.” “What does it matter to me?” “Monsieur le maire, it’s the cabriolet. ” “What cabriolet? ” “The tilbury. ” “What tilbury? ” “Didn’t monsieur le maire send for a tilbury? ” “No,” he said. “The coachman says he’s come for monsieur le maire. ” “What coachman? ” “Mr. Scaufflaire’s coachman. ” “Mr. Scaufflaire? ” The name made him start as if a flash of lightning had flashed in front of his face.
“Ah! yes!” he continued, “Mr. Scaufflaire.” If the old woman could have seen him at that moment, she would have been terrified. There was a rather long silence. He examined the flame of the candle with a stupid air and took some burning wax from around the wick, rolling it in his fingers. The old woman waited. She ventured to raise her voice again, however: “Mr. Mayor, what should I say?” “Say it’s fine, and that I’ll get out.” Chapter 59. Obstacles in the Wheels. The postal service from Arras to Montreuil-sur-Mer was still carried out at that time by small trunks from the time of the Empire. These trunks were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered in fawn leather on the inside, suspended on pump springs, and having only two seats, one for the mail, the other for the traveler. The wheels were equipped with those long, aggressive hubs that keep other carriages at a distance and that can still be seen on the roads of Germany. The dispatch chest, an immense oblong box, was placed behind the cabriolet and formed part of it. This chest was painted black and the cabriolet yellow. These carriages, which nothing resembles today, had something deformed and humped about them, and when one saw them pass from a distance and crawl along some road on the horizon, they resembled those insects which, I believe, are called termites, and which, with a small bodice, drag a large hindquarters. They went, moreover, very quickly. The trunk which left Arras every night at one o’clock, after the Paris mail had passed, arrived at Montreuil-sur-mer a little before five in the morning. That night, the trunk which was going down to Montreuil-sur-mer by the Hesdin road caught, at the turn of a street, just as it was entering the town, a small tilbury drawn by a white horse, which was coming in the opposite direction and in which there was only one person, a man wrapped in a cloak. The wheel of the tilbury received a rather rough shock. The courier shouted to the man to stop, but the traveler did not listen, and continued on his way at a trot. “That’s a man in a devilish hurry!” said the courier. The man who was hurrying like that was the one we have just seen struggling in convulsions that are certainly worthy of pity. Where was he going? He could not have said. Why was he hurrying? He did not know. He was going at random in front of him. Where? To Arras, no doubt; but perhaps he was going elsewhere too. At times he felt it, and he shuddered. He was sinking into this night as into an abyss. Something was pushing, something was attracting him. What was happening inside him, no one could say, all will understand. What man has not entered, at least once in his life, into this dark cavern of the unknown? Besides, he had resolved nothing, decided nothing, settled nothing, done nothing. None of the acts of his conscience had been definitive. He was more than ever as at the first moment. Why was he going to Arras? He repeated to himself what he had already said to himself when he held Scaufflaire’s cabriolet,–that, whatever the result, there was no harm in seeing with his own eyes, in judging things for himself;–that even that was prudent, that one had to know what would happen; that one could decide nothing without having observed and scrutinized;–that from afar one made mountains out of everything; that in the end, when he saw this Champmathieu, some wretch, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to let him go to the galleys in his place;—that in truth there would be Javert there, and this Brevet, this Chenildieu, this Cochepaille, former convicts who had known him; but that they would certainly not recognize him;—bah! what an idea!—that Javert was a hundred leagues away from him;—that all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed on this Champmathieu, and that nothing is as stubborn as suppositions and conjectures;—that there was therefore no danger. That no doubt it was a dark moment, but that he would come out of it;—that after all he held his destiny, however bad it might be, in his hand;—that he was its master. He clung to this thought. In truth, to tell the truth, he would have preferred not to go to Arras. Nevertheless, he went. While thinking, he whipped the horse, which trotted at that good, steady, sure trot that does two and a half leagues an hour. As the cabriolet moved forward, he felt something within him recoil. At daybreak, he was in the open country; the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer was quite far behind him. He watched the horizon whiten; he watched, without seeing them, all the cold figures of a winter dawn pass before his eyes. Morning has its spectres as does evening. He did not see them, but, without his knowledge, and by a sort of almost physical penetration, these black silhouettes of trees and hills added to the violent state of his soul something gloomy and sinister. Every time he passed one of those isolated houses that sometimes border the roads, he said to himself: there are people sleeping in there! The horse’s trot, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the pavement, made a soft and monotonous noise. These things are charming when one is happy and gloomy when one is sad. It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He stopped in front of an inn to let the horse breathe and give him some oats. This horse was, as Scaufflaire had said, of that little Boulonnais breed that has too much head, too much belly and not enough neck, but which has an open chest, a broad rump, a lean and thin leg and a solid foot; an ugly breed, but robust and healthy. The excellent beast had covered five leagues in two hours and did not have a drop of sweat on its rump. He had not come down from the tilbury. The stable boy who was bringing in the oats suddenly bent down and examined the left-hand wheel. “Are you going far like that?” said the man. He replied, almost without emerging from his reverie: “Why?” “Have you come from far away?” continued the boy. “Five leagues from here. ” “Ah! ” “Why do you say ‘ah?'” The boy bent down again, remained silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on the wheel, then straightened up, saying: “That’s a wheel that has just traveled five leagues, it’s possible, but which certainly won’t travel a quarter of a league now.” He jumped down from the tilbury. “What are you saying, my friend? ” “I say it’s a miracle that you and your horse traveled five leagues without rolling into some ditch on the highway. Look at it. The wheel was indeed seriously damaged. The impact of the mail coach had split two spokes and tore through the hub, the nut of which was no longer in place. ” “My friend,” he said to the stable boy, “is there a wheelwright here? ” “No doubt, sir.” “Do me the favor of fetching him. ” “He’s here, just a stone’s throw away.” “Hey! Master Bourgaillard! ” Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was on his doorstep. He came to examine the wheel and made the grimace of a surgeon considering a broken leg. “Can you mend this wheel at once? ” “Yes, sir.” “When can I set out again?” “Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow! ” “There’s a long day’s work ahead.” Is the gentleman in a hurry? “Very much in a hurry. I must leave in an hour at the latest. ” “Impossible, sir. ” “I’ll pay whatever they want. ” “Impossible. ” “Well! In two hours. ” “Impossible for today. Two spokes and a hub must be remade. The gentleman will not be able to leave before tomorrow. ” “The matter I have cannot wait until tomorrow. What if, instead of mending this wheel, we replaced it? ” “What do you mean? ” “Are you a wheelwright? ” “No doubt, sir. ” “Do you have a wheel to sell me? I could leave right away. ” “A spare wheel? ” “Yes. ” “I don’t have a ready-made wheel for your cabriolet. Two wheels make a pair. Two wheels don’t go together at random. ” “In that case, sell me a pair of wheels. ” “Sir, not all wheels fit all axles. ” “Keep trying.” “It’s useless, sir. I only have cart wheels to sell. We’re a small country here. ” “Would you have a cabriolet to rent me?” The master wheelwright, at a glance, recognized that the tilbury was a hired carriage. He shrugged his shoulders. “You fix them up nicely, the cabriolets they rent you! If I had one , I wouldn’t rent it to you. ” “Well, to sell me? ” “I don’t have one. ” “What! Not a cart? I’m not difficult, as you see. ” “We’re a small country. I have here under the shed,” added the wheelwright, “an old carriage which belongs to a bourgeois of the town who gave it to me for safekeeping and who uses it every thirty-sixth of the month. I ‘d rent it to you, what would that do me? But I mustn’t let the bourgeois see it go by; and then, it’s a carriage, it would take two horses. –I’ll take post horses. –Where is monsieur going? –To Arras. –And monsieur wants to arrive today? –Yes. –By taking post horses? –Why not? –Does it matter to monsieur to arrive tonight at four o’clock in the morning? –No, certainly not. –It’s just that, you see, there’s one thing to be said, by taking post horses…. –Does monsieur have his passport? –Yes. –Well, by taking post horses, monsieur won’t arrive in Arras before tomorrow. We’re on a side road. The relay stations are poorly served, the horses are in the fields. It’s the season for the big plows beginning, we need strong teams, and horses are taken everywhere, at the post office as elsewhere. Monsieur will wait at least three or four hours at each relay station. And then we go at a walking pace. There are many hills to climb. –Come on, I’ll go on horseback. Unhitch the cabriolet. They’ll sell me a saddle in the country. –No doubt. But can this horse stand the saddle? –That’s true, you make me think. He can’t stand it. –Then…. –But I’ll surely find a horse to rent in the village? –A horse to go to Arras in one go! –Yes. –We would need a horse like we don’t have in our parts. We would have to buy it first, because we don’t know you. But neither for sale nor for rent, nor for five hundred francs, nor for a thousand, you wouldn’t find it! –What can we do? –The best thing, as an honest man, is for me to mend the wheel and for you to postpone your trip until tomorrow. –Tomorrow will be too late. –Lady! –Isn’t there a mail coach that goes to Arras? When does it run? –Next night. Both coaches operate at night, the one going up and the one going down. –What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel? –A day, and a good one! –By employing two workers? –By employing ten! –Suppose we tied the spokes with ropes? –The spokes, yes; the hub, no. And then the rim is in bad condition too . “Is there a carriage-renter in the town? ” “No. ” “Is there another wheelwright?” The stable-boy and the master wheelwright answered at the same time, nodding their heads. “No.” He felt an immense joy. It was evident that Providence was involved. It was Providence that had broken the wheel of the tilbury and was stopping him on the way. He had not complied with this kind of first summons; he had just made every possible effort to continue his journey; he had loyally and scrupulously exhausted every means; he had not shrunk before the season, nor before fatigue, nor before the expense; he had nothing to reproach himself with. If he went no further, that was no longer his business. It was no longer his fault; it was, not the work of his conscience, but the work of Providence. He breathed. He breathed freely and fully for the first time since Javert’s visit. It seemed to him that the iron wrist that had been gripping his heart for twenty hours had just let go. It seemed to him that now God was for him, and was declaring Himself. He told himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had only to retrace his steps, quietly. If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a room of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard it, things would have remained there, and it is probable that we would not have had to relate any of the events that we are about to read; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Every conversation in the street inevitably produces a circle. There are always people who only ask to be spectators. While he was questioning the wheelwright, a few people coming and going had stopped around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young boy, to whom no one had paid any attention, had detached himself from the group and run. At the moment when the traveler, after the internal deliberation we have just described, was making the decision to turn back, this child was returning. He was accompanied by an old woman. “Sir,” said the woman, “my boy tells me that you want to hire a cabriolet.” This simple word, spoken by an old woman driven by a child, made the sweat trickle down his loins. He thought he saw the hand that had let go reappear in the shadows behind him, ready to take him back. He replied: “Yes, good woman, I am looking for a cabriolet to hire.” And he hastened to add: “But there isn’t one in the country.” “Yes, indeed,” said the old woman. “Where?” continued the wheelwright. “At my house,” replied the old woman. He shuddered. The fatal hand had seized him. The old woman had, in fact, a kind of wicker cart under a shed. The wheelwright and the innkeeper, sorry that the traveler had escaped them, intervened. –It was a horrible jalopy,–it was lying bare on the axle,–it is true that the benches were suspended inside with leather straps,–it was raining inside,–the wheels were rusty and eaten away by moisture,–it would not go much further than the tilbury,–a real patache!–This gentleman would be very wrong to embark on it,–etc., etc. All this was true, but this jalopy, this patache, this thing, whatever it was, rolled on its two wheels and could go to Arras. He paid what was wanted, left the tilbury to be repaired at the wheelwright’s to find it there on his return, had the white horse harnessed to the cart, got in, and resumed the road he had been following since morning. At the moment the cart started to move, he admitted to himself that a moment before he had felt a certain joy in thinking that he would not go where he was going. He examined this joy with a sort of anger and found it absurd. Why joy in going back? After all, he was making this journey freely. No one was forcing him. And, certainly, nothing would happen except what he wanted. As he was leaving Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: Stop! Stop! He stopped the cart with a quick movement in which there was still something feverish and convulsive that resembled hope. It was the old woman’s little boy. “Sir,” he said, “it was I who got you the cart. ” “Well! ” “You haven’t given me anything.” He, who gave to everyone so easily, found this pretension exorbitant and almost odious. “Ah! Is it you, you rascal?” he said, “you’ll get nothing!” He whipped the horse and set off again at a brisk trot. He had lost a lot of time at Hesdin, he would have liked to catch up with him. The little horse was brave and pulled like two; but it was February , it had rained, the roads were bad. And then, it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was hard and very heavy. With that, there were many climbs. It took him nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol. Four hours for five leagues. At Saint-Pol he unharnessed at the first inn he came across, and had the horse taken to the stable. As he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood by the rack while the horse ate. He was thinking of sad and confused things. The innkeeper’s wife entered the stable. “Doesn’t monsieur want to have lunch?” “Well, that’s true,” he said, “I even have a good appetite.” He followed this woman, who had a fresh and cheerful face. She led him into a low room where there were tables with oilcloth tablecloths . “Hurry up,” he continued, “I must be going. I’m in a hurry.” A fat Flemish maid set her place in all haste. He looked at this girl with a feeling of well-being. “That’s what I had,” he thought. “I hadn’t had lunch.” He was served. He pounced on the bread, took a bite, then slowly put it back on the table and didn’t touch it again. A trucker was eating at another table. He said to this man: “Why is their bread so bitter?” The trucker was German and didn’t hear. He went back into the stable near the horse. An hour later, he had left Saint-Pol and was heading towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras. What was he doing during this journey? What was he thinking about? As in the morning, he watched the passing trees, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the vanishing landscape that breaks up at every bend in the road. This is a contemplation that is sometimes enough for the soul and almost dispenses with the need to think. To see a thousand objects for the first and last time, what could be more melancholy and more profound! To travel is to be born and to die at every moment. Perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he was making connections between these changing horizons and human existence. All the things of the Life is perpetually in flight before us. Darkness and brightness intermingle: after a dazzling flash, an eclipse; we look, we hurry, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road; and suddenly we are old. We feel a jolt, everything is black, we distinguish a dark door, this dark horse of life which was dragging us stops, and we see someone veiled and unknown who unharnesses it in the darkness. Dusk was falling at the moment when children leaving school watched this traveler enter Tinques. It is true that it was still the short days of the year. He did not stop at Tinques. As he emerged from the village, a road mender who was paving the road raised his head and said: “There is a very tired horse.” The poor beast was indeed only going at a walk. “Are you going to Arras?” added the roadmender. “Yes.” “If you go at this pace, you won’t get there early.” He stopped the horse and asked the roadmender: “How far is it from here to Arras?” “Nearly seven leagues.” “What do you mean? The post book only shows five and a quarter leagues. ” “Ah!” continued the roadmender, “don’t you know that the road is being repaired? You’ll find it cut off a quarter of an hour from here. No way to go any further. ” “Really.” “You’ll take the road to the left that goes to Carency, you’ll cross the river; and when you’re at Camblin, you’ll turn right; that’s the road from Mont-Saint-Éloy that goes to Arras. ” “But now it’s night, I’ll get lost. ” “You’re not from the area? ” “No.” “With that, it’s all back roads.” Here, sir, continued the road mender, would you like me to give you some advice? Your horse is tired, go back to Tinques. There is a good inn. Stay there. You will go to Arras tomorrow. “I must be there tonight. ” “That’s different. Then go to that inn anyway and take a spare horse. The horseman will guide you across the crossing.” He followed the road mender’s advice, retraced his steps, and half an hour later he was passing the same place again, but at a fast trot, with a good spare horse. A stable boy who called himself a postilion was sitting on the shaft of the cart. However, he felt he was losing time. It was completely dark. They started across the crossing. The road became terrible. The cart was falling from one rut to another. He said to the postilion: “Still trotting, and double the tip.” In a jolt the tiller broke. “Sir,” said the postilion, “the tiller is broken. I don’t know how to harness my horse anymore. This road is very bad at night. If you would come back and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early tomorrow morning. ” He replied: “Have you a piece of rope and a knife? ” “Yes, sir.” He cut a tree branch and made a tiller. It was another loss of twenty minutes; but they set off again at a gallop. The plain was dark. Low, short, black mists crept over the hills and tore themselves away like smoke. There were whitish gleams in the clouds. A strong wind coming off the sea made the noise of someone moving furniture in every corner of the horizon . Everything that could be glimpsed had attitudes of terror. How many things shiver under these vast blasts of night! The cold penetrated him. He hadn’t eaten since the day before. He vaguely remembered his other night’s wanderings across the great plains near Digne. It was eight years ago; and it seemed like yesterday. An o’clock struck from some distant bell tower. He asked the boy: “What is this time?” “Seven o’clock, sir. We’ll be in Arras at eight. We no longer have only three leagues. At that moment he made this reflection for the first time—finding it strange that it had not occurred to him sooner —that it was perhaps useless, all the trouble he was taking; that he did not even know the time of the trial; that he should at least have found out; that it was extravagant to go ahead like this without knowing if it would be of any use. Then he sketched out some calculations in his mind: that ordinarily the sessions of the assize courts began at nine o’clock in the morning; that this affair should not be long ; that the theft of apples would be very short; that there would then only be a question of identity; four or five depositions, not much to say for the lawyers; that he would arrive when everything was over! The postilion whipped the horses. They had crossed the river and left Mont-Saint-Éloy behind them. The night was getting deeper and deeper. Chapter 60. Sister Simplice Put to the Test. However, at that very moment, Fantine was joyful. She had spent a very bad night. A terrible cough, a redoubled fever; she had been having dreams. In the morning, at the doctor’s visit, she was delirious. He had seemed alarmed and had recommended that he be notified as soon as Monsieur Madeleine came. All morning she was gloomy, spoke little, and creased her sheets while murmuring in a low voice calculations that seemed to be distances. Her eyes were hollow and fixed. They seemed almost extinguished, and then, at times, they would rekindle and shine like stars. It seems that as a certain dark hour approaches, the light of the sky fills those who have left the light of the earth. Whenever Sister Simplice asked her how she was, she invariably replied: “Good.” I would like to see Monsieur Madeleine. A few months earlier, at the moment when Fantine had just lost her last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was a shadow of herself; now she was its spectre. Physical illness had completed the work of moral illness. This twenty-five-year-old creature had a wrinkled forehead, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils, loose teeth, a leaden complexion, a bony neck, prominent collarbones, puny limbs, earthy skin, and her blond hair grew tangled with gray. Alas! how illness improvises old age! At noon, the doctor returned, wrote a few prescriptions, inquired if the mayor had appeared at the infirmary, and shook his head. Monsieur Madeleine usually came at three o’clock to see the patient. As punctuality was kindness, he was punctual. Around two-thirty, Fantine began to become agitated. In the space of twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times: “My sister, what time is it?” Three o’clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up , she who ordinarily could hardly move in her bed; she clasped her two emaciated, yellow hands in a sort of convulsive embrace , and the nun heard one of those deep sighs that seem to lift a feeling of despondency escape from her breast. Then Fantine turned and looked at the door. No one came in; the door did not open. She remained like that for a quarter of an hour, her eyes fixed on the door, motionless and as if holding her breath. The nun did not dare speak to her. The church struck a quarter past three. Fantine sank back onto her pillow. She said nothing and went back to folding her sheet. The half-hour passed, then the hour. No one came. Every time the clock struck, Fantine stood up and looked toward the door, then fell back down. Her thoughts were clearly visible, but she didn’t utter any names, she didn’t complain, she didn’t accuse. Only she coughed with a gloomy way. It was as if something dark was descending upon her. She was livid and had blue lips. She smiled at times. Five o’clock struck. Then the sister heard her saying very low and softly: “But since I’m leaving tomorrow, he’s wrong not to come today!” Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine’s delay. Meanwhile, Fantine was looking at the sky from her bed. She seemed to be trying to remember something. Suddenly she began to sing in a voice as weak as a breath. The nun listened. Here is what Fantine was singing: We will buy very beautiful things As we walk along the suburbs. Cornflowers are blue, roses are pink, Cornflowers are blue, I love my loves. The Virgin Mary came to my stove yesterday in an embroidered cloak, and said to me: – Here, hidden under my veil, is the little one you asked for one day. Run to the city, get some canvas, buy some thread, buy a thimble. We will buy beautiful things as we walk along the suburbs. Good holy Virgin, by my stove I have placed a cradle adorned with ribbons. God would give me his most beautiful star, I prefer the child you gave me. – Madam, what to do with this canvas? – Make a trousseau for my newborn. Cornflowers are blue, roses are pink, Cornflowers are blue, I love my loves. – Wash this canvas. – Where? – In the river. Make of it, without spoiling or dirtying anything, a beautiful skirt with its waistband that I want to embroider and fill with flowers. – The child is no longer here, madame, what to do with it? — Make a sheet to bury me in. We will buy some very beautiful things as we walk along the suburbs. Cornflowers are blue, roses are pink, Cornflowers are blue, I love my loves. This song was an old lullaby with which she once lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had not come to her mind for the five years since she no longer had her child. She sang it in such a sad voice and to such a sweet tune that it was enough to make even a nun cry. The sister, accustomed to austere things, felt a tear come to her eye. The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear. She seemed no longer to be paying attention to anything around her. Sister Simplice sent a servant girl to inquire near the door of the factory if the mayor had returned and if he would not soon go up to the infirmary. The girl returned after a few minutes. Fantine was still motionless and seemed attentive to some ideas she had. The servant told Sister Simplice in a low voice that the mayor had left that very morning before six o’clock in a small tilbury drawn by a white horse, because of the cold weather, that he had left alone, not even a coachman, that no one knew the route he had taken, that some people said they had seen him turn by the Arras road, that others assured them they had met him on the Paris road. That as he left he had been, as usual, very gentle, and that he had only told the doorkeeper not to be expected that night. While the two women, their backs turned to Fantine’s bed, were whispering, the sister questioning, the servant conjecturing, Fantine, with that feverish vivacity of certain organic illnesses which mixes the free movements of health with the frightening thinness of death, had knelt on her bed, her two clenched fists resting on the pillow, and, her head through the gap in the curtains, she listened. Suddenly she cried out: “You’re talking about Monsieur Madeleine! Why are you talking so quietly?” What is he doing? Why isn’t he coming? Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard a man’s voice; they turned around in terror. “Answer me!” cried Fantine. The servant stammered: “The doorkeeper told me he couldn’t come today. ” “My child,” said the sister, “be still, go back to bed.” Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice and with an accent at once imperious and heart-rending: “He won’t be able to come? Why is that? You know the reason. You were whispering it to each other. I want to know it.” The servant hastened to whisper in the nun’s ear: “Answer that he is busy at the municipal council. ” Sister Simplice blushed slightly; it was a lie that the servant was telling her. On the other hand, it seemed to her that telling the truth to the sick woman would undoubtedly be a terrible blow to her, and that it was serious in Fantine’s condition. This blush did not last long. The sister raised her calm, sad eyes to Fantine and said: “The mayor has gone.” Fantine straightened up and sat on her heels. Her eyes sparkled. An incredible joy shone on that sorrowful countenance. “Gone!” she cried. “He has gone to fetch Cosette!” Then she stretched out her two hands to heaven, and her whole face became ineffable. Her lips moved; she prayed in a low voice. When her prayer was finished: “My sister,” she said, “I am willing to go back to bed, I will do whatever is desired; Just now I was naughty, I beg your pardon for speaking so loudly, it is very wrong to speak loudly, I know it well, my good sister, but you see, I am very happy. The good Lord is good, Monsieur Madeleine is good, just imagine that he went to fetch my little Cosette from Montfermeil. She lay down again, helped the nun to arrange the pillow and kissed a little silver cross that she had around her neck and that Sister Simplice had given her. “My child,” said the sister, “try to rest now, and don’t speak any more. ” Fantine took in her sweaty hands the hand of the sister, who suffered from the smell of this sweat. “He left this morning to go to Paris. In fact, he doesn’t even need to go through Paris. Montfermeil is a little to the left on the way there. Do you remember what he said to me yesterday when I spoke to him about Cosette: soon, soon?” It’s a surprise he wants to give me. You know? He had me sign a letter to take her back from the Thénardiers. They won’t have anything to say, will they? They’ll give Cosette back. Since they’re paid. The authorities wouldn’t allow someone to keep a child when they’re paid. My sister, don’t give me any signs that I mustn’t talk. I’m extremely happy, I’m very well, I ‘m not in any pain at all, I’m going to see Cosette again, I’m even very hungry. It’s nearly five years since I saw her. You can’t imagine how much it holds you, children! And then she’ll be so nice, you’ll see! If you only knew, she has such pretty little pink fingers! For one thing, she’ll have very beautiful hands. At one year old, she had ridiculous hands . So! She must be big now. That makes you seven . She’s a young lady. I call her Cosette, but her name is Euphrasie. Look, this morning I was looking at some dust on the mantelpiece and I had a good idea that I would soon see Cosette again. My God! How wrong it is to go years without seeing one’s children! One should really reflect that life is not eternal! Oh! How good it is to be gone, Mr. Mayor! Is it true, how cold it is? Did he at least have his coat on? He will be here tomorrow, won’t he? Tomorrow will be a party. Tomorrow morning, my sister, you will remind me to put on my little bonnet with the lace on it. Montfermeil is a country. I walked that road back in the day. It was very far for me. But the coaches go very quickly! He will be here tomorrow with Cosette. How far is it from here to Montfermeil? The sister, who had no idea of the distances, replied: “Oh! I believe he can be here tomorrow. ” “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” said Fantine, “I will see Cosette tomorrow! You see, good sister of God, I am no longer sick. I am crazy. I would dance, if anyone wanted. Someone who had seen her a quarter of an hour before would not have understood a thing. She was now all pink, she spoke in a lively and natural voice , her whole face was one smile. At times she laughed and spoke to herself in a low voice. A mother’s joy is almost a child’s joy. ” “Well,” continued the nun, “you are happy now, obey me, don’t speak any more.” Fantine laid her head on the pillow and said in a low voice: “Yes, go back to bed, be good since you’re going to have your child.” She’s right, Sister Simplice. Everyone here is right. And then, without moving, without moving her head, she began to look everywhere with her eyes wide open and a joyful expression, and she said nothing more. The sister closed her curtains, hoping that she would doze off. Between seven and eight o’clock the doctor came. Hearing no noise, he thought that Fantine was asleep, entered quietly, and approached the bed on tiptoe. He opened the curtains a little, and by the light of the nightlight he saw Fantine’s large, calm eyes looking at him. She said to him: “Sir, won’t they let me put her down next to me in a little bed? ” The doctor thought she was delirious. She added: “Look, there’s just enough room.” The doctor took Sister Simplice aside, who explained the matter to him: that M. Madeleine was away for a day or two, and that, in the doubt, they had not thought it necessary to disabuse the sick woman who believed the mayor had left for Montfermeil; that it was possible, in short, that she had guessed correctly. The doctor approved. He moved closer to Fantine’s bed, who continued: “You see, in the morning, when she wakes up, I will say good morning to that poor cat, and at night, I who do not sleep, I will hear her sleeping. Her little breathing, so sweet, it will do me good. ” “Give me your hand,” said the doctor. She stretched out her arm, and cried out, laughing. “Ah! Look! By the way, it’s true, you don’t know, I’m cured. Cosette is coming tomorrow. ” The doctor was surprised. She was better. The oppression was less. The pulse had regained strength. A sort of life suddenly came to revive this poor, exhausted creature. “Doctor,” she continued, “did the sister tell you that the mayor had gone to get the rag? ” The doctor recommended silence and that all painful emotion be avoided. He prescribed an infusion of pure quinine, and, in case the fever returned during the night, a calming potion. As he left, he said to the sister: “It’s better. If luck would have it that the mayor were to arrive tomorrow with the child, who knows? There are such astonishing crises, we have seen great joys stop illnesses short; I know very well that this one is an organic disease, and well advanced, but it’s all such a mystery! We might perhaps save her.” Chapter 61. The traveler arrives and takes precautions to leave. The traveler arrives and takes precautions to leave. It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the cart we had left behind entered the carriage entrance of the Hôtel de la Poste in Arras. The man we had been following up to that moment got out, responded with a distracted air to the eagerness of the people at the inn, sent back the spare horse, and himself led the little white horse to the stable; then he pushed open the door of a billiard room which was on the ground floor, sat down there, and leaned his elbows on a table. It had taken him fourteen hours for this journey, which he had intended to make in six. He acknowledged to himself that it was not his fault; but deep down he was not sorry. The landlady of the hotel entered. “Is monsieur sleeping? Is monsieur having supper?” He nodded negatively. “The stable boy says that monsieur’s horse is very tired!” Here he broke the silence. “Can’t the horse leave tomorrow morning? ” “Oh! monsieur! He needs at least two days’ rest.” He asked: “Isn’t this the post office? ” “Yes, monsieur.” The landlady led him to this office; he showed his passport and inquired if there was a way to return to Montreuil-sur-mer that very night by trunk; the place next to the mail was just vacant; He held it and paid for it. “Sir,” said the tobacconist, “be sure to be here to leave at a precise hour in the morning.” Having done this, he left the hotel and began to walk through the town. He did not know Arras; the streets were dark, and he was wandering at random. However, he seemed to persist in not asking passers-by for directions. He crossed the little river Crinchon and found himself in a maze of narrow alleys where he got lost. A bourgeois was walking with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to address this bourgeois, not without first looking in front of and behind him, as if he were afraid that someone might hear the question he was about to ask.
“Sir,” he said, “the courthouse, if you please? ” “You are not from the town, sir?” replied the bourgeois, who was quite an old man. “Well, follow me.” I’m going precisely to the side of the courthouse, that is to say, to the side of the prefecture. For the palace is being repaired at the moment, and temporarily the courts have their hearings at the prefecture. “Is that where,” he asked, “the assizes are held?” “No doubt, sir. You see, what is the prefecture today was the bishopric before the revolution. Monsieur de Conzié, who was bishop in 1882, had a large hall built there. It is in this large hall that judgments are held. ” On the way, the bourgeois said to him: “If it’s a trial that monsieur wants to see, it’s a little late. Usually the sessions end at six o’clock. ” However, as they arrived in the main square, the bourgeois pointed out four long, lighted windows on the facade of a vast , dark building. “My goodness, sir, you’ve arrived in time, you’re lucky. Do you see these four windows?” This is the Assize Court. There is light . So it is not over. The case will have dragged on and on and we are holding an evening hearing. Are you interested in this case? Is it a criminal trial? Are you a witness? He replied: “I have not come for any business, I only have to speak to a lawyer. ” “That is different,” said the bourgeois. “Here, sir, here is the door. Where is the sentry? You will only have to go up the main staircase.” He complied with the bourgeois’s instructions, and a few minutes later, he was in a room where there were many people and where mixed groups of lawyers in robes were whispering here and there. It is always a heart-wrenching thing to see these crowds of men dressed in black murmuring among themselves in low voices on the threshold of the chambers of justice. It is rare that charity and pity emerge from all these words. What most often emerges are condemnations made in advance. All these groups seem to the observer who passes and dreams like so many dark hives where species of buzzing spirits build together all sorts of dark edifices. This room, spacious and lit by a single lamp, was an old antechamber of the bishopric and served as a waiting room. A double door, closed at that moment, separated it from the large chamber where the assize court was sitting. The darkness was such that he did not hesitate to address the first lawyer he met. “Sir,” he said, “where are we? ” “It’s over,” said the lawyer. “Over! ” This word was repeated with such emphasis that the lawyer turned around. “Pardon, sir, perhaps you are a relative? ” “No. I don’t know anyone here. And has there been a conviction? ” “No doubt. It was hardly possible otherwise. ” “Hard labor?” “For life.” He continued in a voice so weak that he could hardly be heard: “So the identity has been established? ” “What identity?” replied the lawyer. There was no identity to establish. The case was simple. This woman had killed her child, infanticide was proven, the jury ruled out premeditation, she was sentenced to life. “So it’s a woman?” he said. “Certainly. The Limosin girl. What are you talking about? ” “You’re welcome. But since it’s over, how is it that the courtroom is still lit? ” “It’s for the other case that began about two hours ago. ” “What other case? ” “Oh! That one’s clear too. He’s some kind of beggar, a repeat offender, a galley slave, who stole. I can’t quite remember his name. There ‘s one who looks like a bandit. Just for looking like that , I’d send him to the galleys. ” “Sir,” he asked, “is there any way of getting into the courtroom? ” “I really don’t think so. There’s a big crowd. However, the hearing is suspended.” There are people who have left, and when the hearing resumes, you can try. “Where do we get in? ” “Through that big door.” The lawyer left him. In a few moments, he had experienced, almost simultaneously, almost mixed, every possible emotion. The words of this indifferent man had alternately pierced his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire. When he saw that nothing was finished, he breathed; but he could not have said whether what he felt was contentment or pain. He approached several groups and listened to what was being said. The court’s list being very full, the president had indicated two simple and short cases for that same day. They had begun with the infanticide, and now they were dealing with the convict, the recidivist, the “returning horse.” This man had stolen apples, but that did not seem well proven; What was proven was that he had already been in the galleys at Toulon. That was what made his case bad. Besides , the interrogation of the man was finished and the depositions of the witnesses; but there were still the pleas of the lawyer and the indictment of the public prosecutor; this was hardly to end before midnight. The man would probably be condemned; the attorney general was very good–and did not miss his accused–he was a witty fellow who wrote verses. A bailiff was standing near the door which communicated with the courtroom. He asked this bailiff: “Sir, will the door open soon? ” “It will not open,” said the bailiff. “What! Will it not be opened when the hearing resumes? Is n’t the hearing suspended? ” “The hearing has just resumed,” replied the bailiff, “but the door will not reopen.” “Why? ” “Because the room is full. ” “What? There isn’t a single seat left?” “Not a single one left. The door is closed. No one can enter. ” The usher added after a silence: “There are still two or three seats behind Mr. President, but Mr. President only admits officials.” public. Having said this, the usher turned his back on him. He withdrew with his head bowed, crossed the antechamber and descended the stairs slowly, as if hesitating at each step. It is likely that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent struggle that had been going on within him since the day before was not over; and, at every moment, he was experiencing some new twist. Arriving at the landing of the staircase, he leaned against the banister and crossed his arms. Suddenly he opened his frock coat, took out his wallet, took out a pencil, tore out a sheet, and quickly wrote on it by the light of the street lamp this line: — M. Madeleine, Mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer . Then he strode back up the stairs, pushed through the crowd, walked straight to the usher, handed him the paper, and said to him authoritatively: — Take this to Mr. President. The bailiff took the paper, glanced at it, and obeyed. Chapter 62. Favorable Entry. Without him suspecting it, the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer had a sort of celebrity. For seven years, his reputation for virtue had filled all of lower Boulogne, and it had finally crossed the borders of a small area and spread to the two or three neighboring departments. In addition to the considerable service he had rendered to the county town by restoring the black glass bead industry, there was not one of the one hundred and forty-one communes in the district of Montreuil-sur-mer that did not owe him some kindness. He had even known, when necessary, how to help and fertilize the industries of other districts. Thus, he had, on occasion, supported with his credit and funds the tulle factory in Boulogne, the mechanical linen spinning mill in Frévent, and the hydraulic canvas factory in Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine was spoken with veneration. Arras and Douai envied their mayor the happy little town of Montreuil-sur-mer. The councilor at the royal court of Douai, who presided over this session of the assizes in Arras, knew like everyone else this name so deeply and so universally honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door which communicated from the council chamber to the audience, leaned behind the president’s chair and handed him the paper on which was written the line just read, adding: This gentleman wishes to attend the audience, the president made a quick gesture of deference, seized a pen, wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper, and returned it to the usher, saying: Show him in. The unfortunate man whose story we are telling had remained near the door of the room in the same place and in the same attitude in which the usher had left him. He heard, through his reverie, someone saying to him: Would Monsieur be so kind as to do me the honor of following me? It was the same bailiff who had turned his back on him a moment before and who now bowed to him to the ground. The bailiff at the same time handed him the paper. He unfolded it, and, as he found himself near the lamp, he was able to read: The President of the Assize Court presents his respects to Monsieur Madeleine. He crumpled the paper in his hands, as if these few words had a strange and bitter aftertaste for him. He followed the bailiff. A few minutes later, he found himself alone in a sort of paneled study, of a severe appearance, lit by two candles placed on a table with a green cloth. He still had in his ear the last words of the bailiff who had just left him: “Sir, you are now in the council chamber; You have only to turn the brass knob of this door, and you will find yourself in the audience behind the president’s chair. These words mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had just traversed. The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought to collect himself without being able to do so. It is especially at the times when one would most need to connect them to the poignant realities of life that all the threads of thought break in the brain. He was in the very place where judges deliberate and condemn. He looked with stupid tranquility at this peaceful and formidable room where so many lives had been shattered, where his name would soon resound, and which his destiny was crossing at this moment. He looked at the wall, then he looked at himself, astonished that it was this room and that it was him. He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours, he was broken by the jolts of the cart, but he did not feel it; it seemed to him that he felt nothing. He approached a black frame that hung on the wall and which contained under glass an old handwritten letter from Jean-Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, dated, no doubt by mistake, June 9, Year II, and in which Pache sent to the commune the list of ministers and deputies held under arrest in their homes. A witness who had been able to see him and who had observed him at that moment would no doubt have imagined Fantine and Cosette. While dreaming, he turned around, and his eyes encountered the brass knob of the door that separated him from the courtroom. He had almost forgotten this door. His gaze, calm at first, stopped there, remained fixed on this brass knob, then became frightened and fixed, and gradually became imbued with terror. Drops of sweat came out from between his hair and trickled down his temples. At a certain moment, with a sort of authority mixed with rebellion, he made that indescribable gesture which means and says so well: Pardieu! Who is forcing me? Then he turned quickly, saw before him the door by which he had entered, went to it, opened it, and left. He was no longer in that room, he was outside, in a corridor, a long, narrow corridor, cut by steps and wickets, making all sorts of angles, lit here and there by street lamps like sick people’s nightlights , the corridor by which he had come. He breathed, he listened; there was no sound behind him, no sound in front of him; he began to flee as if he were being pursued. When he had rounded several of the bends of this corridor, he listened again. It was still the same silence and the same shadow around him. He was out of breath, he was staggering, he leaned against the wall. The stone was cold, his sweat was icy on his forehead, he sat up, shivering. Then, there, alone, standing in that darkness, trembling with cold and perhaps with something else, he thought. He had thought all night, he had thought all day; he heard nothing within him but a voice saying: alas! A quarter of an hour passed like this. Finally, he bowed his head, sighed with anguish, let his arms hang loose, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly and as if overwhelmed. It seemed as if someone had caught him in his flight and brought him back. He went back into the council chamber. The first thing he saw was the door latch. This latch, round and made of polished copper, shone for him like a terrible star. He looked at it as a sheep would look at the eye of a tiger. His eyes could not tear themselves away from it. From time to time he took a step and approached the door. If he had listened, he would have heard, like a sort of confused murmur, the noise from the next room; but he did not listen, and he did not hear .
Suddenly, without knowing how, he found himself near the door. He convulsively grasped the knob; the door opened. He was in the audience chamber. Chapter 63. A Place Where Convictions Are Being Formed. He took a step, mechanically closed the door behind him, and remained standing, considering what he saw. It was a rather large, barely lit enclosure, sometimes full of noise, sometimes full of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal trial was developed with its petty and lugubrious gravity in the midst of the crowd. At one end of the room, the one where he was, distracted-looking judges in worn robes, biting their nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end, a crowd in rags; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with honest, hard faces; old stained woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge more yellow than green, doors blackened by hands; nails driven into the wainscoting, tavern lamps giving off more smoke than light; on the tables, candles in copper candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this emerged an austere and august impression, for one felt in it that great human thing which is called the law and that great divine thing which is called justice. No one in this crowd paid attention to him. All eyes converged on a single point, a wooden bench against a small door, along the wall, to the left of the president. On this bench, which was lit by several candles, there was a man between two gendarmes. This man was the man. He did not look for him, he saw him. His eyes went there naturally, as if they had known in advance where this figure was. He thought he saw himself, aged, not perhaps absolutely similar in face, but quite the same in attitude and appearance, with that bristling hair, with that tawny and restless eye, with that blouse, just as he had been on the day he entered Digne, full of hatred and hiding in his soul that hideous treasure of dreadful thoughts which he had spent nineteen years gathering on the pavement of the penal colony. He said to himself with a shudder: “My God! shall I become like that again?” This being looked at least sixty years old. There was something rude, stupid, and frightened about him. At the sound of the door, people had drawn up to make way for him, the president had turned his head, and realizing that the person who had just entered was the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, he had greeted him. The attorney general, who had seen M. Madeleine at Montreuil-sur-mer , where operations of his ministry had called him more than once, recognized him and bowed as well. He hardly noticed. He was in the grip of a sort of hallucination; he was looking. Judges, a clerk, gendarmes, a crowd of cruelly curious faces, he had already seen this once, long ago, twenty-seven years ago. He found these fatal things again; they were there, they were moving, they existed. It was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage of his mind, these were real gendarmes and real judges, a real crowd and real men of flesh and blood. It was over, he saw reappearing and reviving around him, with all that is formidable in reality, the monstrous aspects of his past. All this was gaping before him. He was horrified by it, he closed his eyes, and cried out in the depths of his soul: never! And by a tragic play of destiny which made all his ideas tremble and drove him almost mad, it was another himself who was there! This man who was being judged, everyone called him Jean Valjean! He had before his eyes, an unheard-of vision, a sort of representation of the most horrible moment of his life, played by his ghost. Everything was there, it was the same apparatus, the same hour of night, almost the same faces of judges, soldiers and spectators. Only, above the head of the president, there was a crucifix, something which was lacking in the tribunals at the time of his condemnation. When he was judged , God was absent. A chair was behind him; he let himself fall into it, terrified by the idea that he might be seen. When he was seated, he took advantage of a pile of cardboard boxes that were on the judges’ desk to hide his face from the entire courtroom. He could now see without being seen. Little by little he recovered . He fully returned to the feeling of reality; he arrived at that phase of calm where one can listen. M. Bamatabois was among the jurors. He looked for Javert, but he did not see him. The witness box was hidden from him by the clerk’s table. And then, as we have just said, the courtroom was barely lit. At the moment he entered, the accused’s lawyer was finishing his plea. Everyone’s attention was highly aroused; the case had lasted for three hours. For three hours, this crowd had watched a man, a stranger, a sort of miserable being, profoundly stupid or profoundly clever, gradually bend under the weight of a terrible plausibility . This man, as we already know, was a vagabond who had been found in a field, carrying a branch laden with ripe apples, broken off from an apple tree in a neighboring enclosure, called the Clos Pierron. Who was this man? An investigation had taken place; witnesses had just been heard, they had been unanimous, and insights had emerged from the entire debate. The prosecution said: “We do not only have a fruit thief, a marauder; we have here, in our hands, a bandit, a relapsed offender, a former convict, a most dangerous scoundrel, a criminal named Jean Valjean whom justice has long been seeking, and who, eight years ago , on leaving the penal colony of Toulon, committed an armed highway robbery on the person of a Savoyard child named Petit-Gervais, a crime provided for by Article 383 of the Penal Code, for which we reserve the right to prosecute him later, when his identity has been judicially established.” He has just committed a new theft. It is a case of recidivism. Convict him for the new act; he will be judged later for the old one. Faced with this accusation, before the unanimous witnesses, the accused seemed above all astonished. He made gestures and signs that meant no, or he looked at the ceiling. He spoke with difficulty, answered with embarrassment, but from head to toe his whole person was in denial. He was like an idiot in the presence of all these intelligences arrayed in battle array around him, and like a stranger in the midst of this society that seized him. However, the most threatening future was at stake for him, the likelihood increased with each minute, and this whole crowd watched with more anxiety than himself this sentence full of calamities that was hanging over him more and more. One possibility even suggested, in addition to the galleys, the possible death penalty, if the identity were recognized and if the Petit-Gervais affair ended later in a conviction. What was this man? What was the nature of his apathy? Was it imbecility or cunning? Did he understand too much, or did he not understand at all? Questions that divided the crowd and seemed to divide the jury. There was in this trial that which frightens and that which intrigues; the drama was not only dark, it was obscure. The defender had pleaded quite well, in that provincial language which had long constituted the eloquence of the bar and which was formerly used by all lawyers, as much in Paris as in Romorantin or Montbrison, and which today, having become classical, is hardly spoken except by the official orators of the prosecution, to whom it suits by its grave sonority and its majestic bearing; language where a husband is called a spouse, a woman, a wife, Paris, the center of arts and civilization, the king, the monarch, my lord the bishop, a holy pontiff, the attorney general, the eloquent interpreter of vindictiveness, the pleading, the accents that we have just heard, the century of Louis XIV, the great century, a theater, the temple of Melpomene, the reigning family, the august blood of our kings, a concert, a musical solemnity, sir general commanding the department, the illustrious warrior who, etc., the students of the seminary, these tender Levites, the errors attributed to the newspapers, the imposture which distils its venom in the columns of these organs, etc., etc.–The lawyer had therefore begun by explaining himself on the theft of the apples,–a difficult thing to do in a beautiful style; but Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a hen in the middle of a funeral oration, and he got away with it with pomp. The lawyer had established that the theft of apples was not materially proven.–His client, whom in his capacity as defender, he persisted in calling Champmathieu, had not been seen by anyone climbing the wall or breaking the branch. He had been arrested with this branch (which the lawyer more readily called a twig); but he said he had found it on the ground and picked it up. Where was the proof to the contrary?–No doubt this branch had been broken and stolen after climbing, then thrown there by the alarmed marauder; no doubt there was a thief. But what proved that this thief was Champmathieu? One thing only. His status as a former convict. The lawyer did not deny that this status unfortunately did not appear to be well established; the accused had resided at Faverolles; the accused had been a pruner there; the name Champmathieu could well have originated from Jean Mathieu; all this was true; finally, four witnesses recognized Champmathieu without hesitation and positively as being the galley slave Jean Valjean; to these indications, to these testimonies, the lawyer could only oppose the denial of his client, an interested denial; but supposing that he was the convict Jean Valjean, did that prove that he was the thief of the apples? It was a presumption, at most; not proof. The accused, it was true, and the defender in his good faith had to agree, had adopted a bad system of defense–He persisted in denying everything, the theft and his status as a convict. A confession on this last point would have been better, certainly, and would have won him the indulgence of his judges; the lawyer had advised him to do so; but the accused had stubbornly refused, no doubt believing he would save everything by admitting nothing. This was a wrong; but should not one consider the brevity of this intelligence? This man was visibly stupid. A long misfortune in the penal colony, a long misery outside the penal colony, had stupefied him, etc., etc. He defended himself badly, was that a reason to condemn him? As for the Petit-Gervais affair, the lawyer had no business discussing it, it was not in the case. The lawyer concluded by begging the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean seemed obvious to them, to apply to him the police penalties that apply to the convicted person who has broken his rules, and not the terrible punishment that befalls the recidivist convict. The attorney general replied to the defense lawyer. He was violent and flowery, as attorneys general usually are. He congratulated the defense lawyer on his loyalty, and skillfully took advantage of this loyalty. He reached the accused with all the concessions the lawyer had made. The lawyer seemed to grant that the accused was Jean Valjean. He took note of it. This man was therefore Jean Valjean. This was accepted by the prosecution and could no longer be contested. Here, by a clever antonomasia, going back to the sources and causes of criminality, the attorney general thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then in its dawn under the name of satanic school that the critics of the Oriflamme and the Quotidienne had bestowed upon it, he attributed, not without probability, to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, or rather, of Jean Valjean. These considerations exhausted, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself. What was Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean. A vomited monster, etc. The model for these kinds of descriptions is in the story of Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but renders great services every day to judicial eloquence. The audience and the The jurors shuddered. The description completed, the attorney general resumed, in an oratorical movement calculated to excite to the highest degree the next morning the enthusiasm of the Journal de la Préfecture: And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., vagabond, beggar, without means of subsistence, etc., etc. , – accustomed by his past life to culpable actions and little corrected by his stay in the penal colony, as the crime committed against Petit-Gervais proves , etc., etc., – it is such a man who, found on the public highway in the act of theft, a few steps from a wall he had climbed, still holding the stolen object in his hand, denies the act of theft, the theft, the climbing, denies everything, denies even his name, denies even his identity! Besides a hundred other pieces of evidence, which we will not return to , four witnesses recognize him, Javert, the honest police inspector Javert, and three of his former companions in ignominy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu and Cochepaille. What does he oppose to this thunderous unanimity? He denies it. What hardness! You will do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc. While the attorney general spoke, the accused listened, his mouth open, with a sort of astonishment into which there was indeed some admiration. He was obviously surprised that a man could speak like that. From time to time, at the most energetic moments of the indictment, in those moments when eloquence, which cannot contain itself, overflows in a flood of withering epithets and envelops the accused like a storm, he slowly moved his head from right to left and from left to right, a sort of sad and mute protest with which he had been content since the beginning of the proceedings. Two or three times the spectators placed closest to him heard him say in a low voice: “That’s what it is, not to have asked M. Baloup!” The attorney general pointed out to the jury this dazed attitude, obviously calculated, which denoted, not imbecility, but skill, cunning, the habit of deceiving justice, and which brought to light in all its depths the profound perversity of this man. He concluded by expressing his reservations for the Petit-Gervais affair, and by demanding a severe sentence. It was, for the moment, as we remember, forced labor for life. The defense attorney rose, began by complimenting the attorney general on his admirable speech, then replied as best he could, but he was weakening; the ground was evidently giving way beneath him. Chapter 64. The System of Denials. The moment to close the debates had come. The president made the accused stand and asked him the usual question: “Do you have anything to add to your defense?” The man, standing, rolling in his hands a hideous cap he had, seemed not to hear. The president repeated the question. This time the man heard. He seemed to understand, he made the movement of someone waking up, looked around him, looked at the public, the gendarmes, his lawyer, the jurors, the court, placed his monstrous fist on the edge of the woodwork placed in front of his bench, looked again, and suddenly, fixing his gaze on the attorney general, he began to speak. It was like an eruption. It seemed, from the way the words escaped from his mouth, incoherent, impetuous, jolted, pell-mell, that they were all rushing in at once to come out at once . He said: “I have to say this. That I was a wheelwright in Paris, even that it was at Monsieur Baloup’s. It’s a hard job. In the wheelwright’s business, one always works in the open air, in courtyards, under sheds at good masters’, never in closed workshops, because you need space, you see.” In winter, we’re so cold that we beat our arms to keep warm; but the masters don’t want to, they say it’s a waste of time. Handling iron when there’s ice between the paving stones is tough. It wears a man out quickly. You’re old when you’re young in that state. At forty, a man is finished. I was fifty-three, I had a hard time. And then the workers are so mean! When a man is no longer young, they call him an old fool, an old beast! I was only earning thirty sous a day, they paid me the least they could, the masters took advantage of my age. With that, I had my daughter who was a laundress at the river. She earned a little on her own. Between the two of us, it was okay. She had trouble too. All day in a tub up to her waist, in the rain, in the snow, with the wind cutting your face; when it’s freezing, it’s still hard, you have to wash; there are people who don’t have much laundry and who wait afterward; if we didn’t wash , we’d lose practice. The boards are badly joined and drops of water fall everywhere. Her skirts are all wet, above and below. It soaks in. She also worked at the Enfants-Rouges washhouse, where the water comes in through taps. You’re not in the tub. You wash in front of you at the tap and rinse behind you in the basin. Since it’s closed, your body is less cold. But there’s a hot water mist that’s terrible and blinds your eyes. She came back at seven o’clock in the evening and went to bed very quickly; she was so tired. Her husband beat her. She died. We weren’t very happy. She was a good girl who didn’t go to the ball, who was very quiet. I remember one Shrove Tuesday when she went to bed at eight o’clock. There. I’m telling the truth. You only have to ask. Oh, yes, ask! How stupid of me! Paris is an abyss. Who knows Father Champmathieu? Yet I tell you Monsieur Baloup. See Monsieur Baloup’s house. After that, I don’t know what they want with me. The man fell silent and remained standing. He had said these things in a high, rapid, hoarse, harsh, and husky voice, with a sort of irritated and wild naiveté. Once he had stopped to greet someone in the crowd. The kinds of affirmations that he seemed to throw out at random came to him like hiccups, and he added to each of them the gesture of a woodcutter splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst out laughing. He looked at the public, and seeing that they were laughing, and not understanding, he began to laugh himself. It was sinister. The president, an attentive and benevolent man, raised his voice. He reminded the gentlemen of the jury that Mr. Baloup, the former master wheelwright for whom the accused said he had worked, had been unnecessarily summoned. He was bankrupt and could not be found. Then, turning to the accused, he urged him to listen to what he was going to say and added: “You are in a situation where you must reflect. The most serious presumptions weigh on you and may lead to fatal consequences. Accused, in your interest, I call upon you one last time, explain yourself clearly on these two facts: First, did you, yes or no, cross the wall of the Clos Pierron, break the branch and steal the apples, that is to say, commit the crime of theft by climbing? Second, yes or no, are you the freed convict Jean Valjean?” The accused shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has understood and knows what he is going to answer. He opened his mouth, turned to the president and said: “First of all…” Then he looked at his cap, he looked at the ceiling, and fell silent. “Accused,” the attorney general continued in a stern voice, “pay attention.” You don’t answer anything you’re asked. Your confusion condemns you. It’s obvious that your name isn’t Champmathieu, that you’re the convict Jean Valjean, who first hid under the name of Jean Mathieu, which was his mother’s name, that you went to Auvergne, that you were born in Faverolles where you were a tree pruner. It’s obvious that You stole ripe apples from the Clos Pierron with a scaling. Gentlemen of the jury will judge. The accused had finally sat down again; he stood up abruptly when the attorney general had finished, and cried: “You are very wicked, you! That is what I meant. I did not find at first. I did not steal anything. I am a man who does not eat every day. I came from Ailly, I was walking in the country after a downpour which had made the countryside all yellow, even the ponds were overflowing and only small blades of grass were emerging from the sand at the edge of the road, I found a broken branch on the ground where there were apples, I picked up the branch without knowing that it would bring me punishment. I have been in prison for three months and I am being dragged around. After that, I cannot say, they speak against me, they say to me: answer! The policeman, who is good-natured, nudges my elbow and says in a low voice: “Answer me.” I don’t know how to explain, I haven’t studied, I’m a poor man. That’s what people are wrong not to see. I didn’t steal, I picked up things from the ground that were there . You say Jean Valjean, Jean Mathieu! I don’t know these people. They’re villagers. I worked for Monsieur Baloup, on Boulevard de l’Hôpital. My name is Champmathieu. You’re very clever to tell me where I was born. I don’t know. Not everyone has houses to come into the world in. It would be too convenient. I think my father and mother were people who walked the roads. I don’t know, anyway. When I was a child, they called me Petit, now they call me Vieux. Those are my baptismal names. Take that as you will. I’ve been to Auvergne, I’ve been to Faverolles, of course! Well? Can’t one have been to Auvergne and been to Faverolles without having been in the galleys? I tell you that I didn’t steal, and that I am Father Champmathieu. I’ve been to Monsieur Baloup’s, I’ve been domiciled. You’re boring me with your nonsense! Why is everyone after me like madmen! The attorney general remained standing; He addressed the president: “Mr. President, in the face of the confused but very clever denials of the accused, who would like to pass himself off as an idiot, but who will not succeed—we warn him of this—we request that it please you and the court to call again into this chamber the condemned Brevet, Cochepaille and Chenildieu and the police inspector Javert, and to question them one last time on the identity of the accused with the convict Jean Valjean. ” “I point out to the attorney general,” said the president, “that the police inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the chief town of a neighboring district, left the hearing and even the town as soon as his statement was made. We granted him permission to do so, with the agreement of the attorney general and the defendant’s defense counsel. ” “That is true, Mr. President,” continued the attorney general. In the absence of Mr. Javert, I believe I should remind the gentlemen of the jury of what he said here a few hours ago. Javert is an esteemed man who honors menial, but important, functions with his rigorous and strict probity . Here are the terms in which he testified: “I do not even need the moral presumptions and material evidence that contradict the accused’s denials. I recognize him perfectly. This man is not called Champmathieu; he is a former convict, very wicked and much feared, named Jean Valjean. He was only released at the end of his sentence with extreme regret. He underwent nineteen years of hard labor for robbery. He had attempted to escape five or six times. Besides the Petit-Gervais robbery and the Pierron robbery, I still suspect him of a robbery committed at the home of His Grace, the late Bishop of Worthy. I saw him often, when I was an adjutant prison guard at the Toulon penal colony. I repeat that I recognize him perfectly. This very precise statement seemed to make a strong impression on the public and the jury. The attorney general concluded by insisting that, in the absence of Javert, the three witnesses Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille be heard again and solemnly questioned. The president gave an order to a bailiff, and a moment later the door of the witness room opened. The bailiff, accompanied by a gendarme ready to lend him assistance, brought in the condemned Brevet. The audience was in suspense, and all breasts palpitated as if they had only one soul. The former convict Brevet wore the black and gray jacket of the prisons . Brevet was a man of about sixty who had the appearance of a businessman and the air of a rogue. These things sometimes go together. In the prison where new misdeeds had brought him back, he had become something of a turnkey. He was a man of whom his superiors said: “He is trying to make himself useful.” The chaplains bore good testimony to his religious habits. It must not be forgotten that this was during the Restoration. “Brevet,” said the president, “you have suffered an infamous sentence and you cannot take an oath…” Brevet lowered his eyes. “However,” continued the president, “even in a man whom the law has degraded, there can remain, when divine pity permits, a feeling of honor and fairness. It is to this feeling that I appeal at this decisive hour. ” If it still exists in you, and I hope it does, reflect before you answer me, consider on the one hand this man whom a word from you can ruin, on the other hand the justice which a word from you can enlighten. The moment is solemn, and there is always time to retract, if you believe you have been mistaken.–Accused, stand up. – Brevet, look carefully at the accused, collect your memories, and tell us, in your soul and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as your old comrade in the galleys, Jean Valjean. Brevet looked at the accused, then turned towards the court. – Yes, Mr. President. It was I who recognized him first and I persist. This man is Jean Valjean. Entered Toulon in 1796 and left in 1815. I left the following year. He looks like a brute now, so it would be that age has stupefied him; in the penal colony he was sly. I positively recognize it. “Go sit down,” said the president. “Accused, remain standing. ” Chenildieu was brought in, a lifelong convict, as indicated by his red jacket and green cap. He was serving his sentence in the penal colony of Toulon, from where he had been taken for this affair. He was a small man of about fifty, lively, wrinkled, puny, yellow, impudent, feverish, who had in all his limbs and in his whole person a sort of morbid weakness and in his gaze an immense strength. His companions in the penal colony had nicknamed him Je-nie-Dieu. The president addressed to him almost the same words as to Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him that his infamy deprived him of the right to take the oath, Chenildieu raised his head and looked the crowd in the face. The president invited him to collect himself and asked him, as he had Brevet, if he still recognized the accused. Chenildieu burst out laughing. “Pardine! Yes, I recognize him! We were tied to the same chain for five years. Are you sulking, old fellow? ” “Go sit down,” said the president. The bailiff brought Cochepaille. This other lifer, who had come from the penal colony and dressed in red like Chenildieu, was a peasant from Lourdes and half-bear from the Pyrenees. He had looked after flocks in the mountains, and from shepherd he had slipped into brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage and seemed even more stupid than the accused. He was a of those unfortunate men whom nature has sketched out as wild beasts and whom society finishes as galley slaves. The president tried to stir him with a few pathetic and serious words and asked him, as he did the other two, if he persisted, without hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man standing before him. “It’s Jean Valjean,” said Cochepaille. “They even called him Jean-le-Cric, he was so strong.” Each of the affirmations of these three men, evidently sincere and in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of unfortunate omen for the accused, a murmur which grew and lasted longer each time a new declaration was added to the previous one. The accused, himself, had listened to them with that astonished face which, according to the prosecution, was his principal means of defense. At the first, the gendarmes, his neighbors, had heard him mutter under his breath: “Ah well! there’s one!” After the second, he said a little louder, with an almost satisfied air: Good! At the third, he cried: Famous! The president called out to him. “Accused, you heard. What do you have to say?” He replied: “I say—Famous! ” A commotion broke out in the audience and almost reached the jury. It was evident that the man was lost. “Bailiffs,” said the president, “silence. I am going to close the proceedings.” At that moment, a movement occurred right next to the president. A voice was heard crying: “Brevet, Chenildieu, Cochepaille! Look this way.” All who heard this voice felt frozen, so pitiful and terrible was it. Their eyes turned towards the point from which it came. A man, placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind the court, had just risen, had pushed open the door at sill height which separated the tribunal from the praetorium , and was standing in the middle of the room. The president, the attorney general, Mr. Bamatabois, twenty people, recognized him, and cried out at once: “Monsieur Madeleine! ” Chapter 65. Champmathieu more and more astonished. It was indeed him. The clerk’s lamp lit up his face. He held his hat in his hand, there was no disorder in his clothes, his frock coat was buttoned carefully. He was very pale and he was trembling slightly. His hair, still gray at the time of his arrival in Arras, was now completely white. It had whitened in the hour he had been there. All heads raised. The sensation was indescribable. There was a moment of hesitation in the audience. The voice had been so poignant, the man who was there seemed so calm, that at first no one understood. They wondered who had shouted. They could not believe that it was this calm man who had uttered this frightening cry. This indecision lasted only a few seconds. Even before the president and the attorney general could say a word, before the gendarmes and the bailiffs could make a gesture, the man whom everyone was still calling Monsieur Madeleine at that moment had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet and Chenildieu. “You don’t recognize me?” he said. All three remained speechless and indicated by a nod that they did not know him. Cochepaille, intimidated, gave the military salute. Monsieur Madeleine turned towards the jurors and the court and said in a gentle voice: “Gentlemen of the jury, release the accused. Mr. President, have me arrested.” The man you are looking for is not him, it is me. I am Jean Valjean. Not a mouth was breathing. The first shock of astonishment had been succeeded by a sepulchral silence. One felt in the hall that kind of religious terror which seizes the crowd when something great is accomplished. Meanwhile the face of the president was imprinted with sympathy and sadness; he had exchanged a quick sign with the lawyer and a few words in a low voice with the assessors. He addressed the audience, and asked in an accent that was understood by all: “Is there a doctor here?” The attorney general spoke: “Gentlemen of the jury, the strange and unexpected incident that is disturbing the hearing inspires in us, as well as in you, only a feeling that we have no need to express. You all know, at least by reputation, the honorable Mr. Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer. If there is a doctor in the audience, we join the president in asking him to be kind enough to assist Mr. Madeleine and escort him home. ” Mr. Madeleine did not let the attorney general finish. He interrupted him in an accent full of gentleness and authority. These are the words he spoke: Here they are literally, as they were written immediately after the hearing by one of the witnesses to this scene; as they are still in the ears of those who heard them, nearly forty years ago today. –I thank you, Mr. Attorney General, but I am not mad. You will see. You were on the point of making a great error, let this man go, I am fulfilling a duty, I am this unfortunate condemned man. I am the only one who sees clearly here, and I tell you the truth. What I am doing at this moment, God, who is up there, is watching, and that is enough. You can take me, since here I am. Yet I did my best. I hid under a name; I became rich, I became mayor; I wanted to return among honest people. It seems that this cannot be done. Finally, there are many things that I cannot say, I am not going to tell you my life, one day people will know. I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, that is true; I stole Petit-Gervais, that is true. They were right to tell you that Jean Valjean was a very wicked wretch. Perhaps the whole fault is not his. Listen, gentlemen of the court, a man as degraded as I am has no remonstrance to make to Providence nor advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy from which I tried to escape is a harmful thing. The galleys make the galley slave. Take that in, if you will. Before the galleys, I was a poor peasant with very little intelligence, a kind of idiot; the galleys changed me. I was stupid, I became wicked; I was a log, I became a firebrand. Later, indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had lost me. But, pardon me, you cannot understand what I am saying there. You will find at my house, in the ashes of the fireplace, the forty-sou piece that I stole seven years ago from Petit-Gervais. I have nothing more to add. Take me. My God! The attorney general shakes his head, you say: Monsieur Madeleine has gone mad, you don’t believe me! That is distressing. Don’t go condemning this man at least! What! These people don’t recognize me! I wish Javert were here. He would recognize me! Nothing could convey the benevolent and somber melancholy in the tone that accompanied these words. He turned to the three convicts: “Well, I recognize you! Patent! Do you remember?” He stopped, hesitated for a moment, and said: “Do you remember those checkered knitted suspenders you had in the penal colony?” Brevet felt a jolt of surprise and looked at him from head to toe with a frightened air. He continued: “Chenildieu, who called yourself Je-nie-Dieu, your whole right shoulder is deeply burned, because one day you lay your shoulder on a stove full of embers, to erase the three letters TFP, which are still visible there, however. Answer, is it true? ” “It is true,” said Chenildieu. He addressed Cochepaille: “Cochepaille, near the bleeding wound in your left arm you have a date engraved in blue letters with burnt powder. This date is that of the Emperor’s landing at Cannes, March 1, 1815. Roll up your sleeve. ” Cochepaille rolled up his sleeve, and all eyes turned around him to his bare arm. A gendarme held out a lamp; the date was there. The unfortunate man turned toward the audience and the judges with a smile that still pains those who saw it when they think of it. It was the smile of triumph, it was also the smile of despair. “You see,” he said, “that I am Jean Valjean. ” There were no longer any judges, accusers, or gendarmes in this chamber ; there were only fixed eyes and moved hearts. No one remembered the role that each might have to play; The attorney general forgot that he was there to make a request, the president that he was there to preside, the defense attorney that he was there to defend. Strikingly, no question was asked, no authority intervened. The nature of sublime spectacles is to capture all souls and make spectators of all the witnesses. Perhaps none realized what they were experiencing; doubtless none said to themselves that they saw a great light shining there; all felt inwardly dazzled. It was evident that they had before their eyes Jean Valjean. It radiated. The appearance of this man had been enough to fill with clarity this adventure, so obscure the moment before. Without the need for any explanation henceforth, the whole crowd, as if by a sort of electric revelation, understood at once and at a single glance this simple and magnificent story of a man who gave himself up so that another man would not be condemned in his place. The details, the hesitations, the small possible resistances were lost in this vast luminous fact. An impression that passed quickly, but which in the moment was irresistible. “I do not wish to disturb the audience further,” resumed Jean Valjean. ” I
am leaving, since I am not being arrested. I have several things to do. Monsieur the Attorney General knows who I am, he knows where I am going, he will have me arrested when he wishes.” He went toward the exit door. Not a voice was raised, not an arm was stretched out to prevent him. All moved aside. He had at that moment that divine something which makes multitudes recoil and fall in line before a man. He crossed the crowd with slow steps. It has never been known who opened the door, but it is certain that the door was open when he reached it. Arrived there, he turned and said: “Monsieur the Attorney General, I remain at your disposal.” Then he addressed the audience: “All of you, all those who are here, you find me worthy of pity, don’t you? My God! When I think of what I was about to do, I find myself worthy of envy. However, I would have preferred that all this had not happened. ” He left, and the door closed as it had been opened, for those who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being served by someone in the crowd. Less than an hour later, the jury’s verdict cleared the man named Champmathieu of all charges; and Champmathieu, immediately set free , went away stupefied, believing all men to be mad and understanding nothing of this vision. Book Eight–Counter-stroke Chapter 66. In which mirror M. Madeleine looks at his hair. Day was beginning to break. Fantine had had a night of fever and insomnia, full, moreover, of happy images; In the morning, she fell asleep. Sister Simplice, who had watched over her, took advantage of this sleep to go and prepare a new quinine potion. The worthy sister had been in the infirmary laboratory for some moments, bending over her drugs and her vials and looking very closely because of the mist that twilight spreads over objects. Suddenly she turned her head and gave a slight cry. M. Madeleine was in front of her. He had just entered silently. “It’s you, Mr. Mayor!” she cried. He replied in a low voice: “How is that poor woman? ” “Not bad at the moment. But we’ve been very worried, come on!” She explained to him what had happened, that Fantine had been very ill the day before and that now she was better, because she thought that Mr. Mayor had gone to fetch her child from Montfermeil. The sister did not dare question Mr. Mayor, but she saw clearly from his expression that that was not where he had come from. “All that is well,” he said, “you were right not to disabuse her.” “Yes,” the sister continued, “but now, Mr. Mayor, that she is going to see you and will not see her child, what shall we say to her?” He remained pensive for a moment. “God will inspire us,” he said. “But we cannot lie,” the sister murmured in a low voice. Full daylight had broken into the room. It shone directly on Monsieur Madeleine’s face. By chance, the sister looked up. “My God, Monsieur!” she cried, “what has happened to you? Your hair is all white! ” “White!” he said. Sister Simplice had no mirror; she rummaged in a case and took out a small mirror used by the doctor in the infirmary to determine whether a patient was dead and no longer breathing. Monsieur Madeleine took the mirror, examined his hair, and said: “Here!” He said this word with indifference and as if he were thinking of something else. The sister felt frozen by some unknown thing she glimpsed in all this. He asked: “Can I see her? ” “Won’t the mayor bring her child back?” said the sister, hardly daring to risk a question. “No doubt, but it will take at least two or three days. ” “If she didn’t see the mayor by then,” the sister continued timidly, “she wouldn’t know that the mayor was back, it would be easy to make her be patient, and when the child arrived she would naturally think that the mayor had arrived with the child. There would be no lying to do.” M. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments, then he said with his calm gravity: “No, sister, I must see her. Perhaps I’m in a hurry.” The nun did not seem to notice this word perhaps, which gave an obscure and singular meaning to the words of the mayor. She replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully: “In that case, she is resting, but the mayor may enter.” He made a few observations about a door that did not close properly, and whose noise could wake the sick woman, then he entered Fantine’s room, approached the bed and half-opened the curtains. She was asleep. Her breath came out of her chest with that tragic noise which is peculiar to these illnesses, and which distresses poor mothers when they watch at night beside their doomed and sleeping child. But this labored breathing barely disturbed a sort of ineffable serenity, spread over her face, which transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were ruddy. Her long blond eyelashes, the only beauty which had remained to her from her virginity and her youth, fluttered while remaining closed and lowered. Her whole person trembled with some kind of deployment of wings ready to open and carry her away, which one felt quivering, but which one could not see . Seeing her like that, one would never have believed that she was an almost hopeless invalid. She looked more like something about to fly away than to what is about to die. The branch, when a hand approaches to detach the flower, trembles, and seems at once to withdraw and offer itself. The human body has something of this shudder, when the moment arrives when the mysterious fingers of death are about to pluck the soul. M. Madeleine remained motionless for some time near this bed, looking alternately at the sick woman and the crucifix, as he had done two months before, the day when he had come for the first time to see her in this asylum. They were still both there in the same attitude, she sleeping, he praying; only now, after these two months had passed, she had gray hair and he white hair. The sister had not come in with him. He stood near this bed, erect, his finger on his mouth, as if there were someone in the room to be silenced. She opened her eyes, saw him, and said peacefully, with a smile: “And Cosette?” Chapter 67. Fantine Happy. She did not make a movement of surprise, nor a movement of joy; she was joy itself. This simple question: And Cosette? was asked with such profound faith, with such certainty, with such a complete absence of anxiety and doubt, that he could not find a word. She continued: “I knew you were there. I was asleep, but I saw you. I have seen you for a long time. I followed you with my eyes all night. You were in glory and around you were all sorts of celestial figures.” He raised his gaze to the crucifix. “But,” she continued, “tell me where Cosette is? Why did you not put her on my bed for the moment I awoke?” He mechanically replied something he was never able to remember later. Fortunately, the doctor, warned, had arrived. He came to M. Madeleine’s aid. “My child,” said the doctor, “calm yourself. Your child is here.” Fantine’s eyes lit up and filled her whole face with brightness. She clasped her hands with an expression that contained all that prayer can have, both most violent and most sweet. “Oh!” she cried, “bring her to me! Touching illusion of a mother! Cosette was always for her the little child who is brought. ” “Not yet,” the doctor continued, “not at this moment. You have a remnant of fever. The sight of your child would agitate you and do you harm. You must first be cured.” She interrupted him impetuously. “But I am cured! I tell you I am cured! What an ass he is, that doctor! Oh, I want to see my child! ” “You see,” said the doctor, “how you get carried away. As long as you are like this, I will oppose your having your child. It is not enough to see her, you must live for her.” When you are reasonable, I will bring her to you myself. The poor mother bowed her head. “Mr. Doctor, I beg your pardon, I truly beg your pardon. In the past, I would not have spoken as I have just done; so many misfortunes have happened to me that sometimes I no longer know what I am saying. I understand, you are afraid of emotion, I will wait as long as you wish, but I swear to you that it would not have hurt me to see my daughter. I see her, I have not taken my eyes off her since yesterday evening. Do you know? If they brought her to me now, I would begin to speak to her gently. That is all. Isn’t it quite natural that I should want to see my child, whom they came to fetch for me especially at Montfermeil? I am not angry. I know very well that I am going to be happy. All night long I saw white things and people smiling at me. When the doctor wants, he will bring me my Cosette. I no longer have a fever, since I am cured; I feel very well that I no longer have anything at all; but I will act as if I were sick and not move to please the ladies here. When they see that I am very calm, they will say: we must give her her child. M. Madeleine had sat down on a chair which was beside the bed. She turned towards him; she was visibly making an effort to appear calm and well-behaved, as she said in that weakening of illness which resembles childhood, so that, seeing her so peaceful, they would not make difficulty in bringing Cosette to her. However, while containing herself, she could not refrain from asking M. Madeleine a thousand questions. –Did you have a good journey, Mr. Mayor? Oh! how kind of you to have come to fetch her for me! Just tell me how she is. Did she bear the journey well? Alas! she will not recognize me! By now, she has forgotten me, poor darling! Children have no memory. They are like birds. Today it sees one thing and tomorrow another, and it thinks of nothing more. Did she have only white linen? Did those Thénardiers keep her clean? How was she fed? Oh! how I suffered, if you only knew! to be asked all those questions in the time of my misery! Now it is over. I am joyful. Oh! how I wish to see her! Mr. Mayor, did you find her pretty? Isn’t she beautiful, my daughter? You must have been very cold in that coach! Could n’t we bring her in for just a little while? We could take her back right away afterward. Tell me! You who are the master, if you wish! He took her hand: “Cosette is beautiful,” he said, “Cosette is well, you will see her soon, but calm down. You talk too quickly, and then you put your arms out of bed, and that makes you cough. ” Indeed, coughing fits interrupted Fantine at almost every word. Fantine did not murmur, she was afraid of having compromised by some overly impassioned complaints the confidence she wanted to inspire, and she began to speak indifferently. “Montfermeil is quite pretty, isn’t it? In the summer, people go there for pleasure. Do these Thénardiers do good business? Not many people pass through their region. That inn is a sort of dive . ” M. Madeleine still held her hand, he regarded it anxiously; it was evident that he had come to tell her things before which her thoughts were now hesitating. The doctor, having made his visit, had withdrawn. Sister Simplice alone remained with them. However, in the midst of this silence, Fantine cried out: “I hear it! My God! I hear it!” She stretched out her arm so that everyone around her would be quiet, held her breath, and began to listen with rapture. There was a child playing in the courtyard; the child of the gatekeeper or of some worker. This is one of those coincidences that one always encounters and which seem to be part of the mysterious staging of lugubrious events. The child, it was a little girl, was going and coming, running to keep warm, laughing and singing aloud. Alas! what do children’s games not mix with! It was this little girl that Fantine heard singing. “Oh!” she continued, “it’s my Cosette! I recognize her voice!” The child went away as he had come, the voice died away, Fantine listened for a while longer, then her face darkened, and M. Madeleine heard her saying in a low voice: “How wicked that doctor is not to let me see my daughter!” He has a bad face, that man! However, the laughing depths of her thoughts returned. She continued to talk to herself, her head on the pillow. –How happy we are going to be! We will have a little garden, first of all! M. Madeleine promised me. My daughter will play in the garden. She must know her letters now. I’ll make her spell. She’ll run in the grass after the butterflies. I’ll watch her. And then she’ll make her First Communion. Oh, come on! When will she make her First Communion? She began to count on her fingers. “One, two, three, four… she’s seven years old. In five years. She ‘ll have a white veil, openwork stockings, she’ll look like a little woman. Oh, my good sister, you don’t know how stupid I am, I’m thinking about my daughter’s First Communion!” And she began to laugh. He had left Fantine’s hand. He listened to these words as one listens to a blowing wind, his eyes on the ground, his mind lost in bottomless reflections. Suddenly she stopped talking; this made him mechanically raise his head. Fantine had become frightening. She no longer spoke, she no longer breathed; she had half raised herself to a sitting position, her thin shoulder was sticking out of her chemise, her face, radiant a moment before, was pale, and she seemed to be staring at something formidable in front of her, at the other end of the room, her eyes wide with terror. “My God!” he cried. “What is the matter, Fantine?” She did not reply, she did not take her eyes off the object she seemed to see, she touched his arm with one hand and with the other signaled to him to look behind him. He turned around and saw Javert. Chapter 68. Javert pleased. This is what had happened. Half past twelve had just struck when M. Madeleine left the courtroom at Arras. He had returned to his inn just in time to leave by the mail coach where, it will be remembered, he had reserved his place. A little before six o’clock in the morning, he had arrived at Montreuil-sur-mer, and his first care had been to post his letter to M. Laffitte, then to go into the infirmary and see Fantine. However, scarcely had he left the courtroom of the Assize Court, when the attorney general, recovered from the first seizure, had taken the floor to deplore the act of madness of the honorable mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, to declare that his convictions were in no way modified by this bizarre incident which would be clarified later, and to request, in the meantime, the condemnation of this Champmathieu, evidently the real Jean Valjean. The persistence of the attorney general was visibly in contradiction with the feeling of all, of the public, of the court and of the jury. The lawyer had had little difficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that, as a result of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, of the real Jean Valjean, the face of the case had been completely turned upside down, and that the jury had before its eyes only an innocent man. The lawyer had drawn from this a few epiphonemes, unfortunately not very new, on judicial errors, etc., etc., the president in his summary had joined the lawyer, and the jury in a few minutes had exonerated Champmathieu. However, the attorney general needed a Jean Valjean, and, no longer having Champmathieu, he took Madeleine. Immediately after Champmathieu’s release, the attorney general shut himself up with the president. They conferred on the necessity of seizing the person of the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer. This sentence, which contains a lot of “de”, is from the Attorney General, written entirely in his own hand on the original of his report to the Attorney General. The initial emotion having passed, the President made few objections. Justice had to take its course. And then, to tell the truth, although the President was a good and fairly intelligent man, he was at the same time very royalist and almost ardent, and he had been shocked that the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, when speaking of the landing at Cannes, had said “the emperor” and not “Buonaparte”. The arrest order was therefore issued. The Attorney General sent it to Montreuil-sur-Mer by an express, at full speed, and charged Police Inspector Javert with it. It is known that Javert had returned to Montreuil-sur-Mer immediately after making his statement. Javert was getting up at the moment when the express delivered the arrest order and the warrant. The express was himself a very knowledgeable policeman who, in a few words, informed Javert of what had happened at Arras. The arrest order , signed by the attorney general, was worded as follows:–Inspector Javert will apprehend in person Mr. Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, who, in today’s hearing, was recognized as the freed convict Jean Valjean. Someone who had not known Javert and who had seen him at the moment he entered the antechamber of the infirmary would have been unable to guess what was happening, and would have found him to have the most ordinary air in the world. He was cold, calm, grave, had his gray hair perfectly smoothed down at his temples, and had just ascended the stairs with his usual slowness. Someone who had known him thoroughly and had examined him attentively would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather collar, instead of being on the nape of his neck, was over his left ear. This revealed an incredible agitation. Javert was a complete character, allowing no bend in either his duty or his uniform; methodical with scoundrels, rigid with the buttons of his coat. For him to have put on his collar buckle incorrectly, there must have been within him one of those emotions which one might call internal earthquakes . He had simply come, had requested a corporal and four soldiers from the neighboring post, had left the soldiers in the courtyard, and had been directed to Fantine’s room by the unsuspecting doorkeeper, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men asking for Monsieur the Mayor. Arriving at Fantine’s room, Javert turned the key, pushed the door with the gentleness of a nurse or an informer, and entered. Strictly speaking, he did not enter. He stood in the half-open doorway, his hat on his head, his left hand in his frock coat, closed up to his chin. In the bend of his elbow one could see the leaden knob of his enormous cane, which disappeared behind him. He remained thus for nearly a minute without anyone noticing his presence. Suddenly Fantine looked up, saw him, and made Monsieur Madeleine turn around. The moment Madeleine’s gaze met Javert’s, Javert, without moving, without stirring, without approaching, became dreadful. No human feeling succeeds in being as dreadful as joy. It was the face of a demon who has just found his damned soul. The certainty of finally having Jean Valjean revealed on his face all that was in his soul. The stirred depths rose to the surface. The humiliation of having lost the trail a little and of having mistaken this Champmathieu for a few minutes was effaced by the pride of having guessed so well at first and of having had a correct instinct for so long. Javert’s contentment shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph blossomed on that narrow brow. It was all the display of horror that a satisfied face can give. Javert at that moment was in heaven. Without him clearly realizing it, but nevertheless with a confused intuition of its necessity and its success, he, Javert, personified justice, light and truth in their celestial function of crushing evil. He had behind him and around him, at an infinite depth, authority, reason, res judicata, legal conscience, public vindictiveness, all the stars; he protected order, he brought lightning out of the law, he avenged society, he lent a hand to the absolute; he stood up in glory; there was in his victory a remnant of defiance and combat; standing, haughty, dazzling, he displayed in full azure the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel; the formidable shadow of the action he accomplished made visible in his clenched fist the vague blaze of the social sword; happy and indignant, he held under his heel crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell, he radiated, he exterminated, he smiled and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael. Javert, frightful, had nothing ignoble. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things which, in being mistaken, can become hideous, but which, even hideous, remain great; their majesty, proper to human conscience , persists in horror. These are virtues which have a vice, error. The pitiless, honest joy of a fanatic in the midst of atrocity retains an indescribably venerable radiance. Without realizing it, Javert, in his formidable happiness, was to be pitied like any ignorant person who triumphs. Nothing was as poignant and terrible as this face, which showed what one might call all the bad in the good.
Chapter 69. Authority Reasserts Its Rights. Fantine had not seen Javert since the day the mayor had torn her from this man. Her sick brain realized nothing, only she had no doubt that he would come back for her. She could not bear this dreadful face; she felt herself dying, she hid her face with both hands and cried out in anguish: “Monsieur Madeleine, save me!” Jean Valjean—we will henceforth call him by no other name—had risen. He said to Fantine in his sweetest and calmest voice: “Be calm.” It is not for you that he comes. Then he addressed Javert and said: “I know what you want.” Javert replied: “Come, quickly!” There was in the inflection which accompanied these two words something wild and frantic. Javert did not say: “Come, quickly!” he said: “Allonouaite!” No spelling could render the accent with which this was pronounced; it was no longer a human word, it was a roar. He did not act as usual; he did not enter into the matter; he did not exhibit a warrant for his arrest. For him, Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious and elusive combatant, a dark wrestler whom he had embraced for five years without being able to overthrow him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He confined himself to saying: “Come, quickly!” In speaking thus, he did not take a step; He cast upon Jean Valjean that look which he cast like a crampon, and with which he was accustomed to violently pull the wretches to him. It was that look which Fantine had felt penetrate to the very marrow of her bones two months before. At Javert’s cry, Fantine had reopened her eyes. But Monsieur le maire was there. What could she fear? Javert advanced to the middle of the room and cried: “Oh, come on! will you come?” The unfortunate woman looked around her. There was no one there but the nun and Monsieur le maire. To whom could this abject tutoiement be addressed? Only her. She shuddered. Then she saw an unheard-of thing, so unheard-of that nothing like it had ever appeared to her in the blackest delirium of fever. She saw the spy Javert seize Monsieur le maire by the collar; she saw Monsieur le maire bow his head. It seemed to her that the world was vanishing. Javert, in fact, had taken Jean Valjean by the collar. “Mr. Mayor!” cried Fantine. Javert burst out laughing, that dreadful laugh that made all his teeth come loose. “There is no longer a Mr. Mayor here!” Jean Valjean did not attempt to disturb the hand that held the collar of his frock coat. He said: –Javert…. Javert interrupted him: –Call me Monsieur Inspector. –Sir,’ resumed Jean Valjean, ‘I would like to say a word to you in private. ‘ –Out loud! Speak out loud!’ replied Javert; ‘I am being spoken to out loud ! ‘ Jean Valjean continued, lowering his voice: –It is a request I have to make of you…. –I tell you to speak out loud. –But this must be heard only by you alone…. –What does that matter to me? I am not listening! Jean Valjean turned towards him and said quickly and very quietly: –Grant me three days! Three days to go and fetch this unfortunate woman’s child ! I will pay whatever is necessary. You may accompany me if you wish. ‘ –Are you joking! cried Javert. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were stupid! You ask me for three days to go away! You say it is to fetch this girl’s child! Ah! ah!’ That’s good! That’s good! Fantine trembled. “My child!” she cried, “go and get my child! She’s not here then! My sister, answer me, where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur Mayor! ” Javert stamped his foot. “Here’s the other one now! Will you be quiet, you rascal! You scoundrel from a country where galley slaves are magistrates and where prostitutes are looked after like countesses! Ah, but! All that will change; it was about time!” He looked fixedly at Fantine and added, taking Jean Valjean’s cravat, shirt, and collar in his fistfuls: “I tell you there is no Monsieur Madeleine and there is no Monsieur Mayor. There is a thief, there is a brigand, there is a convict called Jean Valjean! He’s the one I have! That’s what’s the matter!” Fantine jumped up, leaning on her stiff arms and both hands, she looked at Jean Valjean, she looked at Javert, she looked at the nun, she opened her mouth as if to speak, a rattle came from the depths of her throat, her teeth chattered, she stretched out her arms in anguish, convulsively opening her hands, and feeling around her like someone who is drowning, then she suddenly sank down on the pillow. Her head struck the head of the bed and fell back on her breast, her mouth gaping, her eyes open and dull. She was dead. Jean Valjean placed his hand on Javert’s hand which held him, and opened it as he would have opened a child’s hand, then he said to Javert: “You have killed this woman.” “Shall we finish it!” cried Javert furiously. “I am not here to hear reasons. Let us save all that. The guard is below.” Let us walk at once , or else we shall be cut off! In a corner of the room there was an old iron bedstead in rather poor condition, which served as a camp bed for the sisters when they were keeping watch. Jean Valjean went to this bed, dislocated in the twinkling of an eye the already very dilapidated headboard, a thing easy for muscles like his, seized the main rod in his hand, and looked at Javert. Javert stepped back toward the door. Jean Valjean, his iron bar in his hand, walked slowly toward Fantine’s bed . When he reached it, he turned and said to Javert in a voice that could hardly be heard: “I do not advise you to disturb me at this moment.” What is certain is that Javert was trembling. He had the idea of going to call the guard, but Jean Valjean could profit by this moment to escape. So he stayed, grasped his cane by the small end, and leaned against the doorframe without taking his eyes off Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean rested his elbow on the head of the bed and his forehead on his hand, and began to contemplate Fantine lying motionless. He remained thus, absorbed, mute, and evidently no longer thinking of anything in this life. There was nothing left on his face and in his attitude but an inexpressible pity. After a few moments of this reverie, he leaned towards Fantine and spoke to her in a low voice. What did he say to her? What could this man who was reprobate say to this woman who was dead? What were these words? No one on earth heard them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are touching illusions which are perhaps sublime realities. What is beyond doubt is that Sister Simplice, the sole witness of the thing which was happening, often recounted that at the moment when Jean Valjean spoke in Fantine’s ear, she distinctly saw an ineffable smile dawn on those pale lips and in those vague eyes, full of the astonishment of the tomb. Jean Valjean took Fantine’s head in his two hands and arranged it on the pillow as a mother would have done for her child, he retied the string of his shirt and tucked his hair under his cap. This done, he closed her eyes. Fantine’s face at this moment seemed strangely illuminated. Death is the entrance into the great light. Fantine’s hand hung from the bed. Jean Valjean knelt before this hand, gently lifted it, and kissed it. Then he straightened up, and, turning to Javert: “Now,” he said, “I am yours.” Chapter 70. A Suitable Tomb. Javert deposited Jean Valjean in the town prison. The arrest of M. Madeleine produced a sensation, or rather, an extraordinary commotion, at Montreuil-sur-mer . We are sad to be able to dissemble only on this single word: he was a galley slave, almost everyone abandoned him. In less than two hours all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was nothing more than a galley slave. It is fair to say that the details of the event at Arras were not yet known . All day long, conversations like this could be heard in every part of the town: “Don’t you know? He was a freed convict! Who was that?” “The mayor.” “Bah! Mr. Madeleine?” “Yes. Really?” “His name wasn’t Madeleine, he has a horrible name, Béjean, Bojean, Boujean.” “Oh, my God!” “He’s been arrested.” “Arrested!” “In prison in the town jail, waiting to be transferred.” “Let him be transferred! We’re going to transfer him! Where are we going to transfer him?” “He’s going to be tried in the assizes for a highway robbery he committed some time ago.” “Well, I suspected as much. This man was too good, too perfect, too candied. He refused the cross, he gave money to all the little rascals he met. I always thought there was some bad story behind it.” The salons especially abounded in this sense. An old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made this reflection, the depth of which is almost impossible to fathom: “I am not sorry about it. That will teach the Buonapartists a lesson!” Thus it was that this ghost who had called himself M. Madeleine disappeared from Montreuil-sur-Mer. Only three or four people in the whole town remained faithful to this memory. The old porteress who had served him was among them. On the evening of that same day, this worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still quite frightened and reflecting sadly. The factory had been closed all day, the carriage entrance was locked, the street was deserted. There were only two nuns in the house, Sister Perpétue and Sister Simplice, who were watching over Fantine’s body. Around the time when M. Madeleine usually came home, the good porter got up mechanically, took the key to M. Madeleine’s room from a drawer and the candlestick he used every evening to go up to his room, then she hung the key on the nail where he usually took it, and placed the candlestick beside it, as if she were waiting for him. Then she sat back down on her chair and went back to thinking. The poor old woman had done all this without realizing it. It was only after more than two hours that she came out of her reverie. and cried: “Look! My good God, Jesus! I who put his key in the nail!” At that moment the window of the lodge opened, a hand passed through the opening, seized the key and the candlestick, and lit the candle from the candle that was burning. The doorkeeper raised her eyes and remained open-mouthed, with a cry in her throat that she suppressed. She knew that hand, that arm, that frock-coat sleeve . It was M. Madeleine. She was a few seconds before she could speak, seized, as she herself said later when recounting her adventure. “My God, Monsieur Mayor,” she finally cried, “I believed you…” She stopped; the end of her sentence would have been disrespectful to the beginning. Jean Valjean was still Monsieur Mayor to her. He finished his thought. “In prison,” he said. “I was there.” I broke a window bar , I let myself fall from the top of a roof, and here I am. I am going up to my room, go and get Sister Simplice for me. She is doubtless near this poor woman. The old woman obeyed with all haste. He gave her no advice; he was quite sure that she would guard him better than he would guard himself. No one ever knew how he had managed to get into the courtyard without having the carriage door opened. He had, and always carried with him, a master key that opened a small side door; but he must have been searched and his master key taken. This point has not been clarified. He climbed the stairs that led to his room. When he reached the top, he left his candlestick on the last steps of the stairs, opened his door with little noise, and went to close his window and shutter by feeling , then he came back to get his candle and went back into his room. The precaution was useful; we remember that his window could be seen from the street. He glanced around him, at his table, at his chair, at his bed which had not been made up for three days. There was no trace of the disorder of the night before last. The porteress had cleaned the room. Only she had picked up from the ashes and placed neatly on the table the two ends of the iron-shod stick and the forty-sou piece blackened by the fire. He took a sheet of paper on which he wrote: Here are the two ends of my iron-shod stick and the forty-sou piece stolen from Petit-Gervais, whom I spoke about at the Assize Court, and he placed on this sheet the silver coin and the two pieces of iron, so that it would be the first thing seen on entering the room. He took an old shirt of his from a cupboard and tore it up. This made some pieces of cloth in which he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. Besides, he was in no hurry or agitation, and while packing up the bishop’s candlesticks, he bit into a piece of black bread. It is likely that it was the prison bread he had taken with him when he escaped. This was confirmed by the bread crumbs found on the floor of the room when the justice later made a search. There were two gentle knocks at the door. “Come in,” he said. It was Sister Simplice. She was pale, her eyes were red, the candle she held flickered in her hand. The violence of destiny has this peculiarity that, however perfected or however cold we may be, they pull human nature from the depths of our being and force it to reappear on the outside. In the emotions of that day, the nun had become a woman again. She had wept, and she trembled. Jean Valjean had just written a few lines on a piece of paper which he handed to the nun, saying: “My sister, you will give this to the priest.” The paper was unfolded. She glanced at it. “You may read,” he said. She read. “I ask the priest to watch over everything I leave it here. He will be good enough to pay the costs of my trial and the burial of the woman who died today. The rest will go to the poor. The sister wanted to speak, but she could barely stammer out a few inarticulate sounds. She managed, however, to say: “Doesn’t the mayor want to see this poor unfortunate woman one last time? ” “No,” he said, “they are after me, they would only have to arrest me in her room, that would disturb her.” He had barely finished when a loud noise was made on the stairs. They heard a tumult of footsteps coming up, and the old porteress saying in her highest and most piercing voice: “My good sir, I swear to you by God that no one has come in here all day or all evening, that I have not even left my door! ” A man replied: “However, there is a light in this room.” They recognized Javert’s voice. The room was arranged so that the door, when it opened, hid the corner of the wall on the right. Jean Valjean blew out the candle and placed himself in this corner. Sister Simplice fell to her knees near the table. The door opened. Javert entered. The whispering of several men and the protests of the porter could be heard in the corridor. The nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying. The candle was on the mantelpiece and gave only a dim light. Javert saw the nun and stopped, speechless. It will be remembered that the very foundation of Javert, his element, his breathable environment, was the veneration of all authority. He was all of a piece and admitted neither objection nor restriction. For him, of course, ecclesiastical authority was the first of all. He was religious, superficial, and correct on this point as on all others. In his eyes, a priest was a spirit that does not err, a nun was a creature that does not sin. They were souls walled up in this world with a single door that only ever opened to let the truth out. On seeing the sister, his first impulse was to withdraw. However, there was also another duty that held him, and imperiously drove him in the opposite direction. His second impulse was to remain, and to risk at least one question. It was this Sister Simplice who had never lied in her life. Javert knew this, and venerated her particularly because of it. “My sister,” he said, “are you alone in this room?” There was a dreadful moment during which the poor doorkeeper felt herself faint. The sister raised her eyes and replied: “Yes. ” “So,” continued Javert, “excuse me if I insist, it is my duty, you have not seen a person this evening, a man. He has escaped, we are looking for him, this man named Jean Valjean, have you not seen him?” The sister replied: “No.” She lied. She lied twice in a row, one after the other, without hesitation, quickly, as one devotes oneself. “Pardon,” said Javert, and he withdrew with a low bow. “O holy girl! You have not been of this world for many years; you have joined in the light your sisters the virgins and your brothers the angels; may this lie be counted for you in paradise!” The sister’s affirmation was so decisive for Javert that he did not even notice the singularity of the candle that had just been blown out and was smoking on the table. An hour later, a man, walking through the trees and the mists, was rapidly moving away from Montreuil-sur-mer in the direction of Paris. This man was Jean Valjean. It has been established, by the testimony of two or three carters who had met him, that he was carrying a bundle and was wearing a blouse. Where had he gotten this blouse? We never knew. However, an old worker had died a few days ago. previously in the factory infirmary, leaving only her blouse. Perhaps it was this one. A last word about Fantine. We all have a mother, the earth. Fantine was returned to this mother. The priest thought he was doing the right thing, and perhaps did the right thing, by reserving, from what Jean Valjean had left, as much money as possible for the poor. After
all, who was it? A convict and a prostitute. That is why he simplified Fantine’s burial, and reduced it to that bare minimum called the common grave. Fantine was therefore buried in that free corner of the cemetery which belongs to everyone and no one, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul. Fantine was laid to rest in the darkness among the first bones to be found; she suffered the promiscuity of the ashes. She was thrown into the public grave. Her grave resembled her bed. Thus ends the first volume of Les Misérables, centered on the tragic destiny of Fantine. Victor Hugo, with his narrative genius, gave us much more than a simple story: a poignant reflection on poverty, justice, and human dignity. Fantine’s trials and Jean Valjean’s path remind us that compassion and redemption are possible, even in the midst of adversity. This tale, both somber and full of hope, continues to resonate through the centuries. Thank you for sharing this literary journey, and may the humanity of these pages remain in your thoughts.
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彼らの存在を蘇らせるのは、心を温めるかけがえのない贈り物。まるで隣に座り、物語を共有する彼らがそこにいるかのように、沈黙を破る。