LES MISERABLES

VOLUME V


By Victor Hugo


JEAN VALJEAN


BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS

CHAPTER I

THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF THE
FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE

The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social
maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action
of this work is laid.  These two barricades, both of them symbols,
under two different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from
the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June, 1848,
the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.

It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary
to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote,
even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths
of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions,
of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances,
of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble,
protests against, and that the populace wages battle against,
the people.

Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos.

These are melancholy days; for there is always a certain
amount of night even in this madness, there is suicide in
this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults--
beggars, canaille, ochlocracy, populace--exhibit, alas! rather
the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer;
rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited.

For our own part, we never pronounce those words without pain
and without respect, for when philosophy fathoms the facts to which
they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. 
Athens was an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland;
the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed
Jesus Christ.

There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences
of the lower classes.

It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt,
and of all these poor people and all these vagabonds and all
these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs,
when he uttered this mysterious saying:  "Fex urbis, lex orbis,"--
the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.

The exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds,
its violences contrary to all sense, directed against the principles
which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right, are its
popular coups d'etat and should be repressed.  The man of probity
sacrifices himself, and out of his very love for this crowd,
he combats it.  But how excusable he feels it even while holding
out against it!  How he venerates it even while resisting it! 
This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it
is one's duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one,
and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists,
it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the
accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart.

June, 1848, let us hasten to say, was an exceptional fact, and almost
impossible of classification, in the philosophy of history. 
All the words which we have just uttered, must be discarded, when it
becomes a question of this extraordinary revolt, in which one feels
the holy anxiety of toil claiming its rights.  It was necessary
to combat it, and this was a duty, for it attacked the republic. 
But what was June, 1848, at bottom?  A revolt of the people
against itself.

Where the subject is not lost sight of, there is no digression;
may we, then, be permitted to arrest the reader's attention for a
moment on the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have
just spoken and which characterized this insurrection.

One blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint Antoine; the other
defended the approach to the Faubourg du Temple; those before whom
these two fearful masterpieces of civil war reared themselves
beneath the brilliant blue sky of June, will never forget them.

The Saint-Antoine barricade was tremendous; it was three stories high,
and seven hundred feet wide.  It barred the vast opening of
the faubourg, that is to say, three streets, from angle to angle;
ravined, jagged, cut up, divided, crenelated, with an immense rent,
buttressed with piles that were bastions in themselves throwing out
capes here and there, powerfully backed up by two great promontories
of houses of the faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike
at the end of the formidable place which had seen the 14th of July. 
Nineteen barricades were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths
of the streets behind this principal barricade.  At the very sight
of it, one felt the agonizing suffering in the immense faubourg,
which had reached that point of extremity when a distress may
become a catastrophe.  Of what was that barricade made?  Of the
ruins of three six-story houses demolished expressly, said some. 
Of the prodigy of all wraths, said others.  It wore the lamentable
aspect of all constructions of hatred, ruin.  It might be asked: 
Who built this?  It might also be said:  Who destroyed this? 
It was the improvisation of the ebullition.  Hold! take this
door! this grating! this penthouse! this chimney-piece! this
broken brazier! this cracked pot!  Give all! cast away all! 
Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything! 
It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of stone,
the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane,
the unseated chair, the cabbage-stalk, the tatter, the rag,
and the malediction.  It was grand and it was petty.  It was the abyss
parodied on the public place by hubbub.  The mass beside the atom;
the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,--threatening fraternization
of every sort of rubbish.  Sisyphus had thrown his rock there
and Job his potsherd.  Terrible, in short.  It was the acropolis
of the barefooted.  Overturned carts broke the uniformity of
the slope; an immense dray was spread out there crossways, its axle
pointing heavenward, and seemed a scar on that tumultuous facade;
an omnibus hoisted gayly, by main force, to the very summit
of the heap, as though the architects of this bit of savagery had
wished to add a touch of the street urchin humor to their terror,
presented its horseless, unharnessed pole to no one knows what
horses of the air.  This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the revolt,
figured to the mind an Ossa on Pelion of all revolutions; '93 on '89,
the 9th of Thermidor on the 10th of August, the 18th of Brumaire
on the 11th of January, Vendemiaire on Prairial, 1848 on 1830. 
The situation deserved the trouble and this barricade was worthy
to figure on the very spot whence the Bastille had disappeared. 
If the ocean made dikes, it is thus that it would build. 
The fury of the flood was stamped upon this shapeless mass. 
What flood?  The crowd.  One thought one beheld hubbub petrified. 
One thought one heard humming above this barricade as though there
had been over their hive, enormous, dark bees of violent progress. 
Was it a thicket?  Was it a bacchanalia?  Was it a fortress? 
Vertigo seemed to have constructed it with blows of its wings. 
There was something of the cess-pool in that redoubt and something
Olympian in that confusion.  One there beheld in a pell-mell
full of despair, the rafters of roofs, bits of garret windows
with their figured paper, window sashes with their glass planted
there in the ruins awaiting the cannon, wrecks of chimneys,
cupboards, tables, benches, howling topsyturveydom, and those
thousand poverty-stricken things, the very refuse of the mendicant,
which contain at the same time fury and nothingness.  One would have
said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron,
of bronze, of stone, and that the Faubourg Saint Antoine had thrust
it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the broom making
of its misery its barricade.  Blocks resembling headsman's blocks,
dislocated chains, pieces of woodwork with brackets having the
form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish,
amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy the sombre figure of the
old tortures endured by the people.  The barricade Saint Antoine
converted everything into a weapon; everything that civil war could
throw at the head of society proceeded thence; it was not combat,
it was a paroxysm; the carbines which defended this redoubt,
among which there were some blunderbusses, sent bits of earthenware
bones, coat-buttons, even the casters from night-stands, dangerous
projectiles on account of the brass.  This barricade was furious;
it hurled to the clouds an inexpressible clamor; at certain moments,
when provoking the army, it was covered with throngs and tempest;
a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it; a swarm filled it;
it had a thorny crest of guns, of sabres, of cudgels, of axes,
of pikes and of bayonets; a vast red flag flapped in the wind;
shouts of command, songs of attack, the roll of drums, the sobs
of women and bursts of gloomy laughter from the starving were to
be heard there.  It was huge and living, and, like the back of an
electric beast, there proceeded from it little flashes of lightning. 
The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where
rumbled that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God;
a strange majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. 
It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai.

As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of
the revolution--what?  The revolution.  It--that barricade,
chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown--
had facing it the Constituent Assembly, the sovereignty
of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic;
and it was the Carmagnole bidding defiance to the Marseillaise.

Immense but heroic defiance, for the old faubourg is a hero.

The faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance.  The faubourg
shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt took its stand under cover
of the faubourg.  The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against
which the strategy of the African generals dashed itself.  Its caverns,
its excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced, so to speak,
and grinned beneath the smoke.  The mitraille vanished in shapelessness;
the bombs plunged into it; bullets only succeeded in making holes
in it; what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments,
accustomed to the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes
on that species of redoubt, a wild beast in its boar-like bristling
and a mountain by its enormous size.

A quarter of a league away, from the corner of the Rue du Temple
which debouches on the boulevard near the Chateaud'Eau, if one
thrust one's head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the
Dallemagne shop, one perceived in the distance, beyond the canal,
in the street which mounts the slopes of Belleville at the culminating
point of the rise, a strange wall reaching to the second story of
the house fronts, a sort of hyphen between the houses on the right
and the houses on the left, as though the street had folded back
on itself its loftiest wall in order to close itself abruptly. 
This wall was built of paving-stones. It was straight, correct, cold,
perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid out by rule and line. 
Cement was lacking, of course, but, as in the case of certain
Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture. 
The entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. 
From distance to distance, one could distinguish on the gray surface,
almost invisible loopholes which resembled black threads. 
These loopholes were separated from each other by equal spaces. 
The street was deserted as far as the eye could reach.  All windows
and doors were closed.  In the background rose this barrier, which made
a blind thoroughfare of the street, a motionless and tranquil wall;
no one was visible, nothing was audible; not a cry, not a sound,
not a breath.  A sepulchre.

The dazzling sun of June inundated this terrible thing with light.

It was the barricade of the Faubourg of the Temple.

As soon as one arrived on the spot, and caught sight of it,
it was impossible, even for the boldest, not to become thoughtful
before this mysterious apparition.  It was adjusted, jointed,
imbricated, rectilinear, symmetrical and funereal.  Science and
gloom met there.  One felt that the chief of this barricade
was a geometrician or a spectre.  One looked at it and spoke low.

From time to time, if some soldier, an officer or representative
of the people, chanced to traverse the deserted highway, a faint,
sharp whistle was heard, and the passer-by fell dead or wounded, or,
if he escaped the bullet, sometimes a biscaien was seen to ensconce
itself in some closed shutter, in the interstice between two blocks
of stone, or in the plaster of a wall.  For the men in the barricade
had made themselves two small cannons out of two cast-iron lengths
of gas-pipe, plugged up at one end with tow and fire-clay.
There was no waste of useless powder.  Nearly every shot told. 
There were corpses here and there, and pools of blood on the pavement. 
I remember a white butterfly which went and came in the street. 
Summer does not abdicate.

In the neighborhood, the spaces beneath the portes cocheres were
encumbered with wounded.

One felt oneself aimed at by some person whom one did not see,
and one understood that guns were levelled at the whole length
of the street.

Massed behind the sort of sloping ridge which the vaulted canal
forms at the entrance to the Faubourg du Temple, the soldiers
of the attacking column, gravely and thoughtfully, watched this
dismal redoubt, this immobility, this passivity, whence sprang death. 
Some crawled flat on their faces as far as the crest of the curve
of the bridge, taking care that their shakos did not project beyond it.

The valiant Colonel Monteynard admired this barricade with a
shudder.--"How that is built!" he said to a Representative. 
"Not one paving-stone projects beyond its neighbor.  It is made
of porcelain."--At that moment, a bullet broke the cross on his breast,
and he fell.

"The cowards!" people said.  "Let them show themselves.  Let us
see them!  They dare not!  They are hiding!"

The barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty men,
attacked by ten thousand, held out for three days.  On the fourth,
they did as at Zaatcha, as at Constantine, they pierced the houses,
they came over the roofs, the barricade was taken.  Not one
of the eighty cowards thought of flight, all were killed there
with the exception of the leader, Barthelemy, of whom we shall
speak presently.

The Saint-Antoine barricade was the tumult of thunders; the barricade
of the Temple was silence.  The difference between these two redoubts
was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. 
One seemed a maw; the other a mask.

Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was
composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one divined in the first
barricade the dragon, and behind the second the sphinx.

These two fortresses had been erected by two men named,
the one, Cournet, the other, Barthelemy.  Cournet made the
Saint-Antoine barricade; Barthelemy the barricade of the Temple. 
Each was the image of the man who had built it.

Cournet was a man of lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face,
a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. 
Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men,
the most formidable of combatants.  War, strife, conflict, were the
very air he breathed and put him in a good humor.  He had been an
officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined
that he sprang from the ocean, and that he came from the tempest;
he carried the hurricane on into battle.  With the exception
of the genius, there was in Cournet something of Danton, as, with
the exception of the divinity, there was in Danton something of Hercules.

Barthelemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic
street urchin, who, having had his ears boxed by a policeman,
lay in wait for him, and killed him, and at seventeen was sent
to the galleys.  He came out and made this barricade.

Later on, fatal circumstance, in London, proscribed by all,
Barthelemy slew Cournet.  It was a funereal duel.  Some time afterwards,
caught in the gearing of one of those mysterious adventures in
which passion plays a part, a catastrophe in which French justice
sees extenuating circumstances, and in which English justice sees
only death, Barthelemy was hanged.  The sombre social construction
is so made that, thanks to material destitution, thanks to
moral obscurity, that unhappy being who possessed an intelligence,
certainly firm, possibly great, began in France with the galleys,
and ended in England with the gallows.  Barthelemy, on occasion,
flew but one flag, the black flag.



CHAPTER II

WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE


Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection,
and June, 1848, knew a great deal more about it than June, 1832. 
So the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only an outline,
and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades which we have
just sketched; but it was formidable for that epoch.

The insurgents under the eye of Enjolras, for Marius no longer looked
after anything, had made good use of the night.  The barricade had
been not only repaired, but augmented.  They had raised it two feet. 
Bars of iron planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. 
All sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated
the external confusion.  The redoubt had been cleverly made over,
into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside.

The staircase of paving-stones which permitted one to mount it
like the wall of a citadel had been reconstructed.

The barricade had been put in order, the tap-room disencumbered,
the kitchen appropriated for the ambulance, the dressing of the
wounded completed, the powder scattered on the ground and on the
tables had been gathered up, bullets run, cartridges manufactured,
lint scraped, the fallen weapons re-distributed, the interior
of the redoubt cleaned, the rubbish swept up, corpses removed.

They laid the dead in a heap in the Mondetour lane, of which they were
still the masters.  The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. 
Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. 
Enjolras had their uniforms laid aside.

Enjolras had advised two hours of sleep.  Advice from Enjolras
was a command.  Still, only three or four took advantage of it.

Feuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription
on the wall which faced the tavern:--

                     LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES!

These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail,
could be still read on the wall in 1848.

The three women had profited by the respite of the night to
vanish definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely.

They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house.

The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. 
On a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen,
which had been converted into an ambulance, there were five men
gravely wounded, two of whom were municipal guardsmen.  The municipal
guardsmen were attended to first.

In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth
and Javert bound to his post.

"This is the hall of the dead," said Enjolras.

In the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end,
the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar,
a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf
lying prone.

The pole of the omnibus, although snapped off by the fusillade,
was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag
to it.

Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a leader, of always doing
what he said, attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and bloody
coat of the old man's.

No repast had been possible.  There was neither bread nor meat. 
The fifty men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty
provisions of the wine-shop during the sixteen hours which they had
passed there.  At a given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes
the raft of la Meduse.  They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. 
They had then reached the first hours of that Spartan day of the 6th
of June when, in the barricade Saint-Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by the
insurgents who demanded bread, replied to all combatants crying: 
"Something to eat!" with:  "Why?  It is three o'clock; at four we
shall be dead."

As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. 
He interdicted wine, and portioned out the brandy.

They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. 
Enjolras and Combeferre examined them.  Combeferre when he
came up again said:--"It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup,
who began business as a grocer."--"It must be real wine,"
observed Bossuet.  "It's lucky that Grantaire is asleep.  If he
were on foot, there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving
those bottles."--Enjolras, in spite of all murmurs, placed his veto
on the fifteen bottles, and, in order that no one might touch them,
he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabeuf was lying.

About two o'clock in the morning, they reckoned up their strength. 
There were still thirty-seven of them.

The day began to dawn.  The torch, which had been replaced in its
cavity in the pavement, had just been extinguished.  The interior
of the barricade, that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from
the street, was bathed in shadows, and resembled, athwart the vague,
twilight horror, the deck of a disabled ship.  The combatants,
as they went and came, moved about there like black forms. 
Above that terrible nesting-place of gloom the stories of the mute
houses were lividly outlined; at the very top, the chimneys
stood palely out.  The sky was of that charming, undecided hue,
which may be white and may be blue.  Birds flew about in it with cries
of joy.  The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade,
being turned to the East, had upon its roof a rosy reflection. 
The morning breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the dead man
at the third-story window.

"I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished," said Courfeyrac
to Feuilly.  "That torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. 
It had the appearance of being afraid.  The light of torches resembles
the wisdom of cowards; it gives a bad light because it trembles."

Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to talk.

Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy
from it.

"What is the cat?" he exclaimed.  "It is a corrective.  The good God,
having made the mouse, said:  `Hullo! I have committed a blunder.' 
And so he made the cat.  The cat is the erratum of the mouse. 
The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised
and corrected."

Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking
of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabeuf, and even
of Cabuc, and of Enjolras' sad severity.  He said:--

"Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell,
Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their moment of agony when it
was too late.  Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a
mystery that, even in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder
for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having
struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race."

And, such are the windings of the exchange of speech, that, a moment
later, by a transition brought about through Jean Prouvaire's verses,
Combeferre was comparing the translators of the Georgics,
Raux with Cournand, Cournand with Delille, pointing out the passages
translated by Malfilatre, particularly the prodigies of Caesar's death;
and at that word, Caesar, the conversation reverted to Brutus.

"Caesar," said Combeferre, "fell justly.  Cicero was severe towards
Caesar, and he was right.  That severity is not diatribe.  When Zoilus
insults Homer, when Maevius insults Virgil, when Vise insults Moliere,
when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire,
it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out;
genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. 
But Zoilus and Cicero are two different persons.  Cicero is an arbiter
in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword.  For my own part,
I blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. 
Caesar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as though they
came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people,
not rising at the entrance of the senate, committed the acts
of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. 
He was a great man; so much the worse, or so much the better;
the lesson is but the more exalted.  His twenty-three wounds
touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. 
Caesar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. 

One feels the God through the greater outrage."

Bossuet, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit
of a heap of paving-stones, exclaimed, rifle in hand:--

"Oh Cydathenaeum, Oh Myrrhinus, Oh Probalinthus, Oh graces of
the AEantides!  Oh!  Who will grant me to pronounce the verses
of Homer like a Greek of Laurium or of Edapteon?"



CHAPTER III

LIGHT AND SHADOW


Enjolras had been to make a reconnaissance.  He had made his way
out through Mondetour lane, gliding along close to the houses.

The insurgents, we will remark, were full of hope.  The manner in which
they had repulsed the attack of the preceding night had caused them
to almost disdain in advance the attack at dawn.  They waited for it
with a smile.  They had no more doubt as to their success than as to
their cause.  Moreover, succor was, evidently, on the way to them. 
They reckoned on it.  With that facility of triumphant prophecy
which is one of the sources of strength in the French combatant,
they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases. 
At six o'clock in the morning a regiment "which had been
labored with," would turn; at noon, the insurrection of all Paris;
at sunset, revolution.

They heard the alarm bell of Saint-Merry, which had not been silent
for an instant since the night before; a proof that the other barricade,
the great one, Jeanne's, still held out.

All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a
sort of gay and formidable whisper which resembled the warlike
hum of a hive of bees.

Enjolras reappeared.  He returned from his sombre eagle flight
into outer darkness.  He listened for a moment to all this joy
with folded arms, and one hand on his mouth.  Then, fresh and rosy
in the growing whiteness of the dawn, he said:

"The whole army of Paris is to strike.  A third of the army is bearing
down upon the barricades in which you now are.  There is the National
Guard in addition.  I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line,
and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion.  In one hour you will
be attacked.  As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, to-day it
is not stirring.  There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. 
Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment.  You are abandoned."

These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them
the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. 
A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have
been heard flitting by.

This moment was brief.

A voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Enjolras:

"So be it.  Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet,
and let us all remain in it.  Citizens, let us offer the protests
of corpses.  Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans,
the republicans do not abandon the people."

These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of
individual anxieties.  It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation.

No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus; he was some
unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero,
that great anonymous, always mingled in human crises and in social
geneses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion
the decisive word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having
represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God.

This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air
of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very same hour,
on the barricade Saint-Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor
which has become a matter of history and which has been consigned
to the documents in the case:--"What matters it whether they come
to our assistance or not?  Let us get ourselves killed here,
to the very last man."

As the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially isolated,
were in communication with each other.



CHAPTER IV

MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE


After the man who decreed the "protest of corpses" had spoken,
and had given this formula of their common soul, there issued from
all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in sense
and triumphant in tone:

"Long live death!  Let us all remain here!"

"Why all?" said Enjolras.

"All!  All!"

Enjolras resumed:

"The position is good; the barricade is fine.  Thirty men are enough. 
Why sacrifice forty?"

They replied:

"Because not one will go away."

"Citizens," cried Enjolras, and there was an almost irritated
vibration in his voice, "this republic is not rich enough in men
to indulge in useless expenditure of them.  Vain-glory is waste. 
If the duty of some is to depart, that duty should be fulfilled
like any other."

Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that sort
of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute.  Still, great as
was this omnipotence, a murmur arose.  A leader to the very finger-tips,
Enjolras, seeing that they murmured, insisted.  He resumed haughtily:

"Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so."

The murmurs redoubled.

"Besides," observed a voice in one group, "it is easy enough to talk
about leaving.  The barricade is hemmed in."

"Not on the side of the Halles," said Enjolras.  "The Rue Mondetour
is free, and through the Rue des Precheurs one can reach the Marche
des Innocents."

"And there," went on another voice, "you would be captured. 
You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs;
they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap.  `Whence come you?' 
`Don't you belong to the barricade?'  And they will look at your hands. 
You smell of powder.  Shot."

Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre's shoulder,
and the two entered the tap-room.

They emerged thence a moment later.  Enjolras held in his
outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had laid aside. 
Combeferre followed, carrying the shoulder-belts and the shakos.

"With this uniform," said Enjolras, "you can mingle with the ranks
and escape; here is enough for four."  And he flung on the ground,
deprived of its pavement, the four uniforms.

No wavering took place in his stoical audience.  Combeferre took
the word.

"Come, said he, "you must have a little pity.  Do you know what the
question is here?  It is a question of women.  See here.  Are there
women or are there not?  Are there children or are there not? 
Are there mothers, yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot
and who have a lot of little ones around them?  Let that man of you
who has never beheld a nurse's breast raise his hand.  Ah! you
want to get yourselves killed, so do I--I, who am speaking to you;
but I do not want to feel the phantoms of women wreathing their
arms around me.  Die, if you will, but don't make others die. 
Suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here
are sublime; but suicide is narrow, and does not admit of extension;
and as soon as it touches your neighbors, suicide is murder. 
Think of the little blond heads; think of the white locks. 
Listen, Enjolras has just told me that he saw at the corner of
the Rue du Cygne a lighted casement, a candle in a poor window,
on the fifth floor, and on the pane the quivering shadow of the head
of an old woman, who had the air of having spent the night in watching. 
Perhaps she is the mother of some one of you.  Well, let that man go,
and make haste, to say to his mother:  `Here I am, mother!'  Let him
feel at ease, the task here will be performed all the same. 
When one supports one's relatives by one's toil, one has not the
right to sacrifice one's self.  That is deserting one's family. 
And those who have daughters! what are you thinking of?  You get
yourselves killed, you are dead, that is well.  And tomorrow?  Young girls
without bread--that is a terrible thing.  Man begs, woman sells. 
Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so sweet,
who have bonnets of flowers, who fill the house with purity, who sing
and prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence
of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth, that Jeanne,
that Lise, that Mimi, those adorable and honest creatures who are your
blessings and your pride, ah! good God, they will suffer hunger! 
What do you want me to say to you?  There is a market for human flesh;
and it is not with your shadowy hands, shuddering around them,
that you will prevent them from entering it!  Think of the street,
think of the pavement covered with passers-by, think of the shops past
which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the mire. 
These women, too, were pure once.  Think of your sisters, those of
you who have them.  Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare--
that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels
of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the
month of May, will come to.  Ah! you have got yourselves killed! 
You are no longer on hand!  That is well; you have wished to release
the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to
the police.  Friends, have a care, have mercy.  Women, unhappy women,
we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them. 
We trust to the women not having received a man's education,
we prevent their reading, we prevent their thinking, we prevent
their occupying themselves with politics; will you prevent them from
going to the dead-house this evening, and recognizing your bodies? 
Let us see, those who have families must be tractable, and shake hands
with us and take themselves off, and leave us here alone to attend
to this affair.  I know well that courage is required to leave,
that it is hard; but the harder it is, the more meritorious. 
You say:  `I have a gun, I am at the barricade; so much the worse,
I shall remain there.'  So much the worse is easily said.  My friends,
there is a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your families will;
and what sufferings!  See, here is a pretty, healthy child,
with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chatters, who laughs,
who smells sweet beneath your kiss,--and do you know what becomes
of him when he is abandoned?  I have seen one, a very small creature,
no taller than that.  His father was dead.  Poor people had taken
him in out of charity, but they had bread only for themselves. 
The child was always hungry.  It was winter.  He did not cry. 
You could see him approach the stove, in which there was never
any fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow clay. 
His breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flaccid,
his belly prominent.  He said nothing.  If you spoke to him,
he did not answer.  He is dead.  He was taken to the Necker Hospital,
where I saw him.  I was house-surgeon in that hospital.  Now, if there
are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to stroll
on Sundays holding their child's tiny hand in their robust hand,
let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own. 
That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay
nude on the dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his skin
like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery.  A sort of mud was
found in his stomach.  There were ashes in his teeth.  Come, let us
examine ourselves conscientiously and take counsel with our heart. 
Statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five
per cent.  I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers,
it concerns young girls, it concerns little children.  Who is talking
to you of yourselves?  We know well what you are; we know well that
you are all brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your
souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the great cause;
we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully
and magnificently, and that each one of you clings to his share
in the triumph.  Very well.  But you are not alone in this world. 
There are other beings of whom you must think.  You must not be
egoists."

All dropped their heads with a gloomy air.

Strange contradictions of the human heart at its most
sublime moments.  Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an orphan. 
He recalled the mothers of other men, and forgot his own. 
He was about to get himself killed.  He was "an egoist."

Marius, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession from all hope,
and having been stranded in grief, the most sombre of shipwrecks,
and saturated with violent emotions and conscious that the end
was near, had plunged deeper and deeper into that visionary stupor
which always precedes the fatal hour voluntarily accepted.

A physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms
of that febrile absorption known to, and classified by, science,
and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure. 
Despair, also, has its ecstasy.  Marius had reached this point. 
He looked on at everything as from without; as we have said,
things which passed before him seemed far away; he made out the whole,
but did not perceive the details.  He beheld men going and coming
as through a flame.  He heard voices speaking as at the bottom
of an abyss.

But this moved him.  There was in this scene a point which
pierced and roused even him.  He had but one idea now, to die;
and he did not wish to be turned aside from it, but he reflected,
in his gloomy somnambulism, that while destroying himself,
he was not prohibited from saving some one else.

He raised his voice.

"Enjolras and Combeferre are right," said he; "no unnecessary sacrifice. 
I join them, and you must make haste.  Combeferre has said convincing
things to you.  There are some among you who have families,
mothers, sisters, wives, children.  Let such leave the ranks."

No one stirred.

"Married men and the supporters of families, step out of the ranks!"
repeated Marius.

His authority was great.  Enjolras was certainly the head
of the barricade, but Marius was its savior.

"I order it," cried Enjolras.

"I entreat you," said Marius.

Then, touched by Combeferre's words, shaken by Enjolras' order,
touched by Marius' entreaty, these heroic men began to denounce
each other.--"It is true," said one young man to a full grown man,
"you are the father of a family.  Go."--"It is your duty rather,"
retorted the man, "you have two sisters whom you maintain."--
And an unprecedented controversy broke forth.  Each struggled to
determine which should not allow himself to be placed at the door
of the tomb.

"Make haste," said Courfeyrac, "in another quarter of an hour it
will be too late."

"Citizens," pursued Enjolras, "this is the Republic, and universal
suffrage reigns.  Do you yourselves designate those who are to go."

They obeyed.  After the expiration of a few minutes, five were
unanimously selected and stepped out of the ranks.

"There are five of them!" exclaimed Marius.

There were only four uniforms.

"Well," began the five, "one must stay behind."

And then a struggle arose as to who should remain, and who should
find reasons for the others not remaining.  The generous quarrel
began afresh.

"You have a wife who loves you."--"You have your aged mother."--"
You have neither father nor mother, and what is to become of your
three little brothers?"--"You are the father of five children."--"You
have a right to live, you are only seventeen, it is too early
for you to die."

These great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. 
The improbable was simple there.  These men did not astonish each other.

"Be quick," repeated Courfeyrac.

Men shouted to Marius from the groups:

"Do you designate who is to remain."

"Yes," said the five, "choose.  We will obey you."

Marius did not believe that he was capable of another emotion. 
Still, at this idea, that of choosing a man for death, his blood
rushed back to his heart.  He would have turned pale, had it been
possible for him to become any paler.

He advanced towards the five, who smiled upon him, and each,
with his eyes full of that grand flame which one beholds in the
depths of history hovering over Thermopylae, cried to him:

"Me! me! me!"

And Marius stupidly counted them; there were still five of them! 
Then his glance dropped to the four uniforms.

At that moment, a fifth uniform fell, as if from heaven, upon the
other four.

The fifth man was saved.

Marius raised his eyes and recognized M. Fauchelevent.

Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade.

He had arrived by way of Mondetour lane, whither by dint of
inquiries made, or by instinct, or chance.  Thanks to his dress
of a National Guardsman, he had made his way without difficulty.

The sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the Rue Mondetour
had no occasion to give the alarm for a single National Guardsman,
and he had allowed the latter to entangle himself in the street,
saying to himself:  "Probably it is a reinforcement, in any case it
is a prisoner."  The moment was too grave to admit of the sentinel
abandoning his duty and his post of observation.

At the moment when Jean Valjean entered the redoubt, no one had
noticed him, all eyes being fixed on the five chosen men and the
four uniforms.  Jean Valjean also had seen and heard, and he
had silently removed his coat and flung it on the pile with the rest.

The emotion aroused was indescribable.

"Who is this man?" demanded Bossuet.

"He is a man who saves others," replied Combeferre.

Marius added in a grave voice:

"I know him."

This guarantee satisfied every one.

Enjolras turned to Jean Valjean.

"Welcome, citizen."

And he added:

"You know that we are about to die."

Jean Valjean, without replying, helped the insurgent whom he was
saving to don his uniform.



CHAPTER V

THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A BARRICADE


The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place,
had as result and culminating point Enjolras' supreme melancholy.

Enjolras bore within him the plenitude of the revolution;
he was incomplete, however, so far as the absolute can be so;
he had too much of Saint-Just about him, and not enough of
Anacharsis Cloots; still, his mind, in the society of the Friends
of the A B C, had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from
Combeferre's ideas; for some time past, he had been gradually emerging
from the narrow form of dogma, and had allowed himself to incline
to the broadening influence of progress, and he had come to accept,
as a definitive and magnificent evolution, the transformation
of the great French Republic, into the immense human republic. 
As far as the immediate means were concerned, a violent situation
being given, he wished to be violent; on that point, he never varied;
and he remained of that epic and redoubtable school which is
summed up in the words:  "Eighty-three." Enjolras was standing
erect on the staircase of paving-stones, one elbow resting on
the stock of his gun.  He was engaged in thought; he quivered,
as at the passage of prophetic breaths; places where death is
have these effects of tripods.  A sort of stifled fire darted
from his eyes, which were filled with an inward look.  All at once
he threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of
an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like
the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo, and Enjolras cried:

"Citizens, do you picture the future to yourselves?  The streets
of cities inundated with light, green branches on the thresholds,
nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children, the past
loving the present, thinkers entirely at liberty, believers on
terms of full equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest,
human conscience become an altar, no more hatreds, the fraternity
of the workshop and the school, for sole penalty and recompense fame,
work for all, right for all, peace over all, no more bloodshed,
no more wars, happy mothers!  To conquer matter is the first step;
to realize the ideal is the second.  Reflect on what progress has
already accomplished.  Formerly, the first human races beheld
with terror the hydra pass before their eyes, breathing on
the waters, the dragon which vomited flame, the griffin who was
the monster of the air, and who flew with the wings of an eagle
and the talons of a tiger; fearful beasts which were above man. 
Man, nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated by intelligence,
and finally conquered these monsters.  We have vanquished the hydra,
and it is called the locomotive; we are on the point of vanquishing
the griffin, we already grasp it, and it is called the balloon. 
On the day when this Promethean task shall be accomplished,
and when man shall have definitely harnessed to his will the triple
Chimaera of antiquity, the hydra, the dragon and the griffin,
he will be the master of water, fire, and of air, and he will be
for the rest of animated creation that which the ancient gods
formerly were to him.  Courage, and onward!  Citizens, whither are
we going?  To science made government, to the force of things
become the sole public force, to the natural law, having in itself
its sanction and its penalty and promulgating itself by evidence,
to a dawn of truth corresponding to a dawn of day.  We are advancing
to the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of man. 
No more fictions; no more parasites.  The real governed by the true,
that is the goal.  Civilization will hold its assizes at the
summit of Europe, and, later on, at the centre of continents,
in a grand parliament of the intelligence.  Something similar
has already been seen.  The amphictyons had two sittings a year,
one at Delphos the seat of the gods, the other at Thermopylae,
the place of heroes.  Europe will have her amphictyons; the globe
will have its amphictyons.  France bears this sublime future
in her breast.  This is the gestation of the nineteenth century. 
That which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France. 
Listen to me, you, Feuilly, valiant artisan, man of the people. 
I revere you.  Yes, you clearly behold the future, yes, you are right. 
You had neither father nor mother, Feuilly; you adopted humanity
for your mother and right for your father.  You are about to die,
that is to say to triumph, here.  Citizens, whatever happens
to-day, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is
a revolution that we are about to create.  As conflagrations light
up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. 
And what is the revolution that we shall cause?  I have just told you,
the Revolution of the True.  From a political point of view,
there is but a single principle; the sovereignty of man over himself. 
This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty.  Where two
or three of these sovereignties are combined, the state begins. 
But in that association there is no abdication.  Each sovereignty
concedes a certain quantity of itself, for the purpose of forming
the common right.  This quantity is the same for all of us. 
This identity of concession which each makes to all, is called Equality. 
Common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming
on the right of each.  This protection of all over each is
called Fraternity.  The point of intersection of all these assembled
sovereignties is called society.  This intersection being a junction,
this point is a knot.  Hence what is called the social bond. 
Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the word
contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a bond. 
Let us come to an understanding about equality; for, if liberty is
the summit, equality is the base.  Equality, citizens, is not wholly
a surface vegetation, a society of great blades of grass and tiny oaks;
a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void;
legally speaking, it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity;
politically, it is all votes possessed of the same weight;
religiously, it is all consciences possessed of the same right. 
Equality has an organ:  gratuitous and obligatory instruction. 
The right to the alphabet, that is where the beginning must
be made.  The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school
offered to all, that is the law.  From an identical school,
an identical society will spring.  Yes, instruction! light! light!
everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. 
Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century
will be happy.  Then, there will be nothing more like the history
of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest,
an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand,
an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings,
on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by
a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty,
a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks
in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have
to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress,
misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword,
and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. 
One might almost say:  There will be no more events.  We shall
be happy.  The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial
globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between
the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth,
as the planet around the light.  Friends, the present hour in which I
am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases
of the future.  A revolution is a toll.  Oh! the human race will
be delivered, raised up, consoled!  We affirm it on this barrier. 
Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights
of sacrifice?  Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction,
of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is
not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron;
it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. 
Here misery meets the ideal.  The day embraces the night,
and says to it:  `I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again
with me.'  From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. 
Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. 
This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute
our death.  Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance
of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the
dawn."

Enjolras paused rather than became silent; his lips continued to
move silently, as though he were talking to himself, which caused
them all to gaze attentively at him, in the endeavor to hear more. 
There was no applause; but they whispered together for a long time. 
Speech being a breath, the rustling of intelligences resembles the
rustling of leaves.



CHAPTER VI

MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC


Let us narrate what was passing in Marius' thoughts.

Let the reader recall the state of his soul.  We have just recalled it,
everything was a vision to him now.  His judgment was disturbed. 
Marius, let us insist on this point, was under the shadow of the great,
dark wings which are spread over those in the death agony. 
He felt that he had entered the tomb, it seemed to him that he
was already on the other side of the wall, and he no longer beheld
the faces of the living except with the eyes of one dead.

How did M. Fauchelevent come there?  Why was he there?  What had
he come there to do?  Marius did not address all these questions
to himself.  Besides, since our despair has this peculiarity,
that it envelops others as well as ourselves, it seemed logical
to him that all the world should come thither to die.

Only, he thought of Cosette with a pang at his heart.

However, M. Fauchelevent did not speak to him, did not look at him,
and had not even the air of hearing him, when Marius raised his voice
to say:  "I know him."

As far as Marius was concerned, this attitude of M. Fauchelevent
was comforting, and, if such a word can be used for such impressions,
we should say that it pleased him.  He had always felt the absolute
impossibility of addressing that enigmatical man, who was,
in his eyes, both equivocal and imposing.  Moreover, it had been
a long time since he had seen him; and this still further augmented
the impossibility for Marius' timid and reserved nature.

The five chosen men left the barricade by way of Mondetour lane;
they bore a perfect resemblance to members of the National Guard. 
One of them wept as he took his leave.  Before setting out,
they embraced those who remained.

When the five men sent back to life had taken their departure,
Enjolras thought of the man who had been condemned to death.

He entered the tap-room. Javert, still bound to the post, was engaged
in meditation.

"Do you want anything?"  Enjolras asked him.

"Javert replied:  "When are you going to kill me?"

"Wait.  We need all our cartridges just at present."

"Then give me a drink," said Javert.

Enjolras himself offered him a glass of water, and, as Javert
was pinioned, he helped him to drink.

"Is that all?" inquired Enjolras.

"I am uncomfortable against this post," replied Javert. 
"You are not tender to have left me to pass the night here. 
Bind me as you please, but you surely might lay me out on a table
like that other man."

And with a motion of the head, he indicated the body of M. Mabeuf.

There was, as the reader will remember, a long, broad table
at the end of the room, on which they had been running bullets
and making cartridges.  All the cartridges having been made,
and all the powder used, this table was free.

At Enjolras' command, four insurgents unbound Javert from the post. 
While they were loosing him, a fifth held a bayonet against his breast.

Leaving his arms tied behind his back, they placed about his feet a
slender but stout whip-cord, as is done to men on the point of mounting
the scaffold, which allowed him to take steps about fifteen inches
in length, and made him walk to the table at the end of the room,
where they laid him down, closely bound about the middle of the body.

By way of further security, and by means of a rope fastened to his neck,
they added to the system of ligatures which rendered every attempt
at escape impossible, that sort of bond which is called in prisons
a martingale, which, starting at the neck, forks on the stomach,
and meets the hands, after passing between the legs.

While they were binding Javert, a man standing on the threshold
was surveying him with singular attention.  The shadow cast by this
man made Javert turn his head.  He raised his eyes, and recognized
Jean Valjean.  He did not even start, but dropped his lids proudly
and confined himself to the remark:  "It is perfectly simple."



CHAPTER VII

THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED


The daylight was increasing rapidly.  Not a window was opened,
not a door stood ajar; it was the dawn but not the awaking. 
The end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade, had been
evacuated by the troops, as we have stated it seemed to be free,
and presented itself to passers-by with a sinister tranquillity. 
The Rue Saint-Denis was as dumb as the avenue of Sphinxes at Thebes. 
Not a living being in the cross-roads, which gleamed white in the light
of the sun.  Nothing is so mournful as this light in deserted streets. 
Nothing was to be seen, but there was something to be heard. 
A mysterious movement was going on at a certain distance. 
It was evident that the critical moment was approaching.  As on
the previous evening, the sentinels had come in; but this time all
had come.

The barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack. 
Since the departure of the five, they had increased its height
still further.

On the advice of the sentinel who had examined the region of
the Halles, Enjolras, for fear of a surprise in the rear, came to
a serious decision.  He had the small gut of the Mondetour lane,
which had been left open up to that time, barricaded.  For this purpose,
they tore up the pavement for the length of several houses more. 
In this manner, the barricade, walled on three streets, in front
on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, to the left on the Rues du Cygne and de
la Petite Truanderie, to the right on the Rue Mondetour, was really
almost impregnable; it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there. 
It had three fronts, but no exit.--"A fortress but a rat hole too,"
said Courfeyrac with a laugh.

Enjolras had about thirty paving-stones "torn up in excess,"
said Bossuet, piled up near the door of the wine-shop.

The silence was now so profound in the quarter whence the attack must
needs come, that Enjolras had each man resume his post of battle.

An allowance of brandy was doled out to each.

Nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault. 
Each man selects his place as though at the theatre.  They jostle,
and elbow and crowd each other.  There are some who make stalls
of paving-stones. Here is a corner of the wall which is in the way,
it is removed; here is a redan which may afford protection,
they take shelter behind it.  Left-handed men are precious;
they take the places that are inconvenient to the rest.  Many arrange
to fight in a sitting posture.  They wish to be at ease to kill,
and to die comfortably.  In the sad war of June, 1848, an insurgent
who was a formidable marksman, and who was firing from the top of a
terrace upon a roof, had a reclining-chair brought there for his use;
a charge of grape-shot found him out there.

As soon as the leader has given the order to clear the decks for action,
all disorderly movements cease; there is no more pulling from
one another; there are no more coteries; no more asides, there is
no more holding aloof; everything in their spirits converges in,
and changes into, a waiting for the assailants.  A barricade before
the arrival of danger is chaos; in danger, it is discipline itself. 
Peril produces order.

As soon as Enjolras had seized his double-barrelled rifle,
and had placed himself in a sort of embrasure which he had reserved
for himself, all the rest held their peace.  A series of faint,
sharp noises resounded confusedly along the wall of paving-stones.
It was the men cocking their guns.

Moreover, their attitudes were prouder, more confident than ever;
the excess of sacrifice strengthens; they no longer cherished any hope,
but they had despair, despair,--the last weapon, which sometimes
gives victory; Virgil has said so.  Supreme resources spring from
extreme resolutions.  To embark in death is sometimes the means
of escaping a shipwreck; and the lid of the coffin becomes a plank
of safety.

As on the preceding evening, the attention of all was directed,
we might almost say leaned upon, the end of the street, now lighted
up and visible.

They had not long to wait.  A stir began distinctly in the Saint-Leu
quarter, but it did not resemble the movement of the first attack. 
A clashing of chains, the uneasy jolting of a mass, the click
of brass skipping along the pavement, a sort of solemn uproar,
announced that some sinister construction of iron was approaching. 
There arose a tremor in the bosoms of these peaceful old streets,
pierced and built for the fertile circulation of interests and ideas,
and which are not made for the horrible rumble of the wheels
of war.

The fixity of eye in all the combatants upon the extremity
of the street became ferocious.

A cannon made its appearance.

Artillery-men were pushing the piece; it was in firing trim;
the fore-carriage had been detached; two upheld the gun-carriage,
four were at the wheels; others followed with the caisson. 
They could see the smoke of the burning lint-stock.

"Fire!" shouted Enjolras.

The whole barricade fired, the report was terrible; an avalanche
of smoke covered and effaced both cannon and men; after a few seconds,
the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men re-appeared; the gun-crew
had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste,
into position facing the barricade.  Not one of them had been struck. 
Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order
to raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity
of an astronomer levelling a telescope.

"Bravo for the cannoneers!" cried Bossuet.

And the whole barricade clapped their hands.

A moment later, squarely planted in the very middle of the street,
astride of the gutter, the piece was ready for action.  A formidable
pair of jaws yawned on the barricade.

"Come, merrily now!" ejaculated Courfeyrac.  "That's the brutal
part of it.  After the fillip on the nose, the blow from the fist. 
The army is reaching out its big paw to us.  The barricade is going
to be severely shaken up.  The fusillade tries, the cannon takes."

"It is a piece of eight, new model, brass," added Combeferre. 
"Those pieces are liable to burst as soon as the proportion of ten
parts of tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded.  The excess
of tin renders them too tender.  Then it comes to pass that they
have caves and chambers when looked at from the vent hole.  In order
to obviate this danger, and to render it possible to force the charge,
it may become necessary to return to the process of the fourteenth
century, hooping, and to encircle the piece on the outside with a
series of unwelded steel bands, from the breech to the trunnions. 
In the meantime, they remedy this defect as best they may;
they manage to discover where the holes are located in the vent
of a cannon, by means of a searcher.  But there is a better method,
with Gribeauval's movable star."

"In the sixteenth century," remarked Bossuet, "they used to rifle cannon."

"Yes," replied Combeferre, "that augments the projectile force,
but diminishes the accuracy of the firing.  In firing at short range,
the trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired, the parabola
is exaggerated, the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently
rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is,
nevertheless, a necessity of battle, the importance of which increases
with the proximity of the enemy and the precipitation of the discharge. 
This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the
rifled cannon of the sixteenth century arose from the smallness
of the charge; small charges for that sort of engine are imposed
by the ballistic necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation
of the gun-carriage. In short, that despot, the cannon, cannot do
all that it desires; force is a great weakness.  A cannon-ball only
travels six hundred leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand
leagues a second.  Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon."

"Reload your guns," said Enjolras.

How was the casing of the barricade going to behave under the
cannon-balls? Would they effect a breach?  That was the question. 
While the insurgents were reloading their guns, the artillery-men
were loading the cannon.

The anxiety in the redoubt was profound.

The shot sped the report burst forth.

"Present!" shouted a joyous voice.

And Gavroche flung himself into the barricade just as the ball
dashed against it.

He came from the direction of the Rue du Cygne, and he had nimbly
climbed over the auxiliary barricade which fronted on the labyrinth
of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.

Gavroche produced a greater sensation in the barricade than
the cannon-ball.

The ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish.  At the most there
was an omnibus wheel broken, and the old Anceau cart was demolished. 
On seeing this, the barricade burst into a laugh.

"Go on!" shouted Bossuet to the artillerists.



CHAPTER VIII

THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY


Thet flocked round Gavroche.  But he had no time to tell anything. 
Marius drew him aside with a shudder.

"What are you doing here?"

"Hullo!" said the child, "what are you doing here yourself?"

And he stared at Marius intently with his epic effrontery. 
His eyes grew larger with the proud light within them.

It was with an accent of severity that Marius continued:

"Who told you to come back?  Did you deliver my letter at the address?"

Gavroche was not without some compunctions in the matter of
that letter.  In his haste to return to the barricade, he had got
rid of it rather than delivered it.  He was forced to acknowledge
to himself that he had confided it rather lightly to that stranger
whose face he had not been able to make out.  It is true that
the man was bareheaded, but that was not sufficient.  In short,
he had been administering to himself little inward remonstrances
and he feared Marius' reproaches.  In order to extricate himself
from the predicament, he took the simplest course; he lied abominably.

"Citizen, I delivered the letter to the porter.  The lady was asleep. 
She will have the letter when she wakes up.

Marius had had two objects in sending that letter:  to bid farewell
to Cosette and to save Gavroche.  He was obliged to content himself
with the half of his desire.

The despatch of his letter and the presence of M. Fauchelevent
in the barricade, was a coincidence which occurred to him. 
He pointed out M. Fauchelevent to Gavroche.

"Do you know that man?"

"No," said Gavroche.

Gavroche had, in fact, as we have just mentioned, seen Jean Valjean
only at night.

The troubled and unhealthy conjectures which had outlined themselves
in Marius' mind were dissipated.  Did he know M. Fauchelevent's opinions? 
Perhaps M. Fauchelevent was a republican.  Hence his very natural
presence in this combat.

In the meanwhile, Gavroche was shouting, at the other end
of the barricade:  "My gun!"

Courfeyrac had it returned to him.

Gavroche warned "his comrades" as he called them, that the barricade
was blocked.  He had had great difficulty in reaching it. 
A battalion of the line whose arms were piled in the Rue de la Petite
Truanderie was on the watch on the side of the Rue du Cygne; on the
opposite side, the municipal guard occupied the Rue des Precheurs. 
The bulk of the army was facing them in front.

This information given, Gavroche added:

"I authorize you to hit 'em a tremendous whack."

Meanwhile, Enjolras was straining his ears and watching at his embrasure.

The assailants, dissatisfied, no doubt, with their shot, had not
repeated it.

A company of infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end
of the street behind the piece of ordnance.  The soldiers were
tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small,
low wall, a sort of side-work not more than eighteen inches high,
and facing the barricade.  In the angle at the left of this epaulement,
there was visible the head of the column of a battalion from the
suburbs massed in the Rue Saint-Denis.

Enjolras, on the watch, thought he distinguished the peculiar
sound which is produced when the shells of grape-shot are drawn
from the caissons, and he saw the commander of the piece change the
elevation and incline the mouth of the cannon slightly to the left. 
Then the cannoneers began to load the piece.  The chief seized
the lint-stock himself and lowered it to the vent.

"Down with your heads, hug the wall!" shouted Enjolras, "and all
on your knees along the barricade!"

The insurgents who were straggling in front of the wine-shop,
and who had quitted their posts of combat on Gavroche's arrival,
rushed pell-mell towards the barricade; but before Enjolras'
order could be executed, the discharge took place with the terrifying
rattle of a round of grape-shot. This is what it was, in fact.

The charge had been aimed at the cut in the redoubt, and had there
rebounded from the wall; and this terrible rebound had produced
two dead and three wounded.

If this were continued, the barricade was no longer tenable. 
The grape-shot made its way in.

A murmur of consternation arose.

"Let us prevent the second discharge," said Enjolras.

And, lowering his rifle, he took aim at the captain of the gun,
who, at that moment, was bearing down on the breach of his gun
and rectifying and definitely fixing its pointing.

The captain of the piece was a handsome sergeant of artillery,
very young, blond, with a very gentle face, and the intelligent
air peculiar to that predestined and redoubtable weapon which,
by dint of perfecting itself in horror, must end in killing war.

Combeferre, who was standing beside Enjolras, scrutinized this
young man.

"What a pity!" said Combeferre.  "What hideous things these
butcheries are!  Come, when there are no more kings, there will
be no more war.  Enjolras, you are taking aim at that sergeant,
you are not looking at him.  Fancy, he is a charming young man;
he is intrepid; it is evident that he is thoughtful; those young
artillery-men are very well educated; he has a father, a mother,
a family; he is probably in love; he is not more than five and twenty
at the most; he might be your brother."

"He is," said Enjolras.

"Yes," replied Combeferre, "he is mine too.  Well, let us not
kill him."

"Let me alone.  It must be done."

And a tear trickled slowly down Enjolras' marble cheek.

At the same moment, he pressed the trigger of his rifle.  The flame
leaped forth.  The artillery-man turned round twice, his arms
extended in front of him, his head uplifted, as though for breath,
then he fell with his side on the gun, and lay there motionless. 
They could see his back, from the centre of which there flowed
directly a stream of blood.  The ball had traversed his breast
from side to side.  He was dead.

He had to be carried away and replaced by another.  Several minutes
were thus gained, in fact.



CHAPTER IX

EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT INFALLIBLE
MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONDEMNATION OF 1796


Opinions were exchanged in the barricade.  The firing from the gun
was about to begin again.  Against that grape-shot, they could not
hold out a quarter of an hour longer.  It was absolutely necessary
to deaden the blows.

Enjolras issued this command:

"We must place a mattress there."

"We have none," said Combeferre, "the wounded are lying on them."

Jean Valjean, who was seated apart on a stone post, at the corner
of the tavern, with his gun between his knees, had, up to that moment,
taken no part in anything that was going on.  He did not appear
to hear the combatants saying around him:  "Here is a gun that is
doing nothing."

At the order issued by Enjolras, he rose.

It will be remembered that, on the arrival of the rabble in the Rue
de la Chanvrerie, an old woman, foreseeing the bullets, had placed
her mattress in front of her window.  This window, an attic window,
was on the roof of a six-story house situated a little beyond
the barricade.  The mattress, placed cross-wise, supported at
the bottom on two poles for drying linen, was upheld at the top
by two ropes, which, at that distance, looked like two threads,
and which were attached to two nails planted in the window frames. 
These ropes were distinctly visible, like hairs, against the sky.

"Can some one lend me a double-barrelled rifle?" said Jean Valjean.

Enjolras, who had just re-loaded his, handed it to him.

Jean Valjean took aim at the attic window and fired.

One of the mattress ropes was cut.

The mattress now hung by one thread only.

Jean Valjean fired the second charge.  The second rope lashed
the panes of the attic window.  The mattress slipped between
the two poles and fell into the street.

The barricade applauded.

All voices cried:

"Here is a mattress!"

"Yes," said Combeferre, "but who will go and fetch it?"

The mattress had, in fact, fallen outside the barricade,
between besiegers and besieged.  Now, the death of the sergeant
of artillery having exasperated the troop, the soldiers had,
for several minutes, been lying flat on their stomachs behind
the line of paving-stones which they had erected, and, in order
to supply the forced silence of the piece, which was quiet while
its service was in course of reorganization, they had opened fire
on the barricade.  The insurgents did not reply to this musketry,
in order to spare their ammunition The fusillade broke against
the barricade; but the street, which it filled, was terrible.

Jean Valjean stepped out of the cut, entered the street,
traversed the storm of bullets, walked up to the mattress,
hoisted it upon his back, and returned to the barricade.

He placed the mattress in the cut with his own hands.  He fixed
it there against the wall in such a manner that the artillery-men
should not see it.

That done, they awaited the next discharge of grape-shot.

It was not long in coming.

The cannon vomited forth its package of buck-shot with a roar. 
But there was no rebound.  The effect which they had foreseen had
been attained.  The barricade was saved.

"Citizen," said Enjolras to Jean Valjean, "the Republic thanks you."

Bossuet admired and laughed.  He exclaimed:

"It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. 
Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. 
But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!"



CHAPTER X

DAWN


At that moment, Cosette awoke.

Her chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window,
facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.

Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris.  She had not
been there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired
to her chamber when Toussaint had said:

"It appears that there is a row."

Cosette had slept only a few hours, but soundly.  She had had
sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little
bed was very white.  Some one, who was Marius, had appeared to her
in the light.  She awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first,
produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream. 
Her first thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one. 
Cosette felt herself thoroughly reassured.  Like Jean Valjean,
she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction
of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness. 
She began to cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why. 
Then she felt a pang at her heart.  It was three days since she
had seen Marius.  But she said to herself that he must have received
her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever
that he would find means of reaching her.--And that certainly
to-day, and perhaps that very morning.--It was broad daylight,
but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it
was very early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to
receive Marius.

She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that,
consequently, that was sufficient and that Marius would come. 
No objection was valid.  All this was certain.  It was monstrous enough
already to have suffered for three days.  Marius absent three days,
this was horrible on the part of the good God.  Now, this cruel
teasing from on high had been gone through with.  Marius was about
to arrive, and he would bring good news.  Youth is made thus;
it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not
accept it.  Youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an
unknown quantity, which is itself.  It is natural to it to be happy. 
It seems as though its respiration were made of hope.

Moreover, Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her
on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day,
and what explanation of it he had given her.  Every one has noticed
with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls
away and hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable. 
There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away
in a corner of our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost;
it is impossible to lay the memory on them.  Cosette was somewhat vexed
at the useless little effort made by her memory.  She told herself,
that it was very naughty and very wicked of her, to have forgotten
the words uttered by Marius.

She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul
and body, her prayers and her toilet.

One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into
a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber.  Verse would
hardly venture it, prose must not.

It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is
whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily,
which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not
gazed upon it.  Woman in the bud is sacred.  That innocent bud
which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself,
that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat
which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye,
that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder
for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied,
those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers
of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement,
that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm,
the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,--
it is not fitting that all this should be narrated, and it is too much
to have even called attention to it.

The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising
of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star. 
The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect. 
The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of
the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse
compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste. 
The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue. 
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal. 
The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra. 
Here, contemplation is profanation.

We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter
of Cosette's rising.

An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God,
but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she
was ashamed and turned crimson.  We are of the number who fall
speechless in the presence of young girls and flowers, since we
think them worthy of veneration.

Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair,
which was a very simple matter in those days, when women did not
swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did
not put crinoline in their locks.  Then she opened the window
and cast her eyes around her in every direction, hoping to descry
some bit of the street, an angle of the house, an edge of pavement,
so that she might be able to watch for Marius there.  But no view
of the outside was to be had.  The back court was surrounded by
tolerably high walls, and the outlook was only on several gardens. 
Cosette pronounced these gardens hideous:  for the first time
in her life, she found flowers ugly.  The smallest scrap of the
gutter of the street would have met her wishes better.  She decided
to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might come
from that quarter.

All at once, she burst into tears.  Not that this was fickleness
of soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection--that was her case. 
She had a confused consciousness of something horrible.  Thoughts were
rife in the air, in fact.  She told herself that she was not sure
of anything, that to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost;
and the idea that Marius could return to her from heaven appeared
to her no longer charming but mournful.

Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her,
and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated trust
in God.

Every one in the house was still asleep.  A country-like silence reigned. 
Not a shutter had been opened.  The porter's lodge was closed. 
Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her
father was asleep.  She must have suffered much, and she must have
still been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her
father had been unkind; but she counted on Marius.  The eclipse
of such a light was decidedly impossible.  Now and then, she heard
sharp shocks in the distance, and she said:  "It is odd that people
should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early." 
They were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade.

A few feet below Cosette's window, in the ancient and perfectly
black cornice of the wall, there was a martin's nest; the curve
of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice,
so that from above it was possible to look into this little paradise. 
The mother was there, spreading her wings like a fan over her brood;
the father fluttered about, flew away, then came back, bearing in
his beak food and kisses.  The dawning day gilded this happy thing,
the great law, "Multiply," lay there smiling and august, and that sweet
mystery unfolded in the glory of the morning.  Cosette, with her hair
in the sunlight, her soul absorbed in chimeras, illuminated by love
within and by the dawn without, bent over mechanically, and almost
without daring to avow to herself that she was thinking at the same
time of Marius, began to gaze at these birds, at this family,
at that male and female, that mother and her little ones,
with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a virgin.



CHAPTER XI

THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE


The assailants' fire continued.  Musketry and grape-shot alternated,
but without committing great ravages, to tell the truth.  The top
alone of the Corinthe facade suffered; the window on the first floor,
and the attic window in the roof, riddled with buck-shot and biscaiens,
were slowly losing their shape.  The combatants who had been posted
there had been obliged to withdraw.  However, this is according
to the tactics of barricades; to fire for a long while, in order
to exhaust the insurgents' ammunition, if they commit the mistake
of replying.  When it is perceived, from the slackening of their fire,
that they have no more powder and ball, the assault is made. 
Enjolras had not fallen into this trap; the barricade did not reply.

At every discharge by platoons, Gavroche puffed out his cheek
with his tongue, a sign of supreme disdain.

"Good for you," said he, "rip up the cloth.  We want some lint."

Courfeyrac called the grape-shot to order for the little effect
which it produced, and said to the cannon:

"You are growing diffuse, my good fellow."

One gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball.  It is probable that this
silence on the part of the redoubt began to render the besiegers uneasy,
and to make them fear some unexpected incident, and that they felt
the necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving-stones,
and of knowing what was going on behind that impassable wall
which received blows without retorting.  The insurgents suddenly
perceived a helmet glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof. 
A fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney, and seemed to
be acting as sentinel.  His glance fell directly down into the barricade.

"There's an embarrassing watcher," said Enjolras.

Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras' rifle, but he had his own gun.

Without saying a word, he took aim at the fireman, and, a second later,
the helmet, smashed by a bullet, rattled noisily into the street. 
The terrified soldier made haste to disappear.  A second observer
took his place.  This one was an officer.  Jean Valjean, who had
re-loaded his gun, took aim at the newcomer and sent the officer's
casque to join the soldier's. The officer did not persist,
and retired speedily.  This time the warning was understood. 
No one made his appearance thereafter on that roof; and the idea
of spying on the barricade was abandoned.

"Why did you not kill the man?"  Bossuet asked Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean made no reply.



CHAPTER XII

DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER


Bossuet muttered in Combeferre's ear:

"He did not answer my question."

"He is a man who does good by gun-shots," said Combeferre.

Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant
epoch know that the National Guard from the suburbs was valiant
against insurrections.  It was particularly zealous and intrepid
in the days of June, 1832.  A certain good dram-shop keeper of
Pantin des Vertus or la Cunette, whose "establishment" had been
closed by the riots, became leonine at the sight of his deserted
dance-hall, and got himself killed to preserve the order represented
by a tea-garden. In that bourgeois and heroic time, in the presence
of ideas which had their knights, interests had their paladins. 
The prosiness of the originators detracted nothing from the
bravery of the movement.  The diminution of a pile of crowns made
bankers sing the Marseillaise.  They shed their blood lyrically
for the counting-house; and they defended the shop, that immense
diminutive of the fatherland, with Lacedaemonian enthusiasm.

At bottom, we will observe, there was nothing in all this that was
not extremely serious.  It was social elements entering into strife,
while awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium.

Another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism
[the barbarous name of the correct party]. People were for order
in combination with lack of discipline.

The drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such
a Colonel of the National Guard; such and such a captain went into
action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought,
"for an idea," and on their own account.  At critical moments, on "days"
they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts. 
There existed in the army of order, veritable guerilleros, some of
the sword, like Fannicot, others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrede.

Civilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather
by an aggregation of interests than by a group of principles,
was or thought itself, in peril; it set up the cry of alarm;
each, constituting himself a centre, defended it, succored it,
and protected it with his own head; and the first comer took
it upon himself to save society.

Zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination.  A platoon of the National
Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council
of war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. 
It was an improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvaire. 
Fierce Lynch law, with which no one party had any right to reproach
the rest, for it has been applied by the Republic in America,
as well as by the monarchy in Europe.  This Lynch law was complicated
with mistakes.  On one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul
Aime Garnier, was pursued in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at
his loins, and only escaped by taking refuge under the porte-cochere
of No. 6.  They shouted:--"There's another of those Saint-Simonians!"
and they wanted to kill him.  Now, he had under his arm a volume
of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A National Guard had read
the words Saint-Simon on the book, and had shouted:  "Death!"

On the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from
the suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned,
had itself decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice
and its own good pleasure.  This fact, singular though it may seem,
was proved at the judicial investigation opened in consequence
of the insurrection of 1832.  Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient
bourgeois, a sort of condottiere of the order of those whom we have
just characterized, a fanatical and intractable governmentalist,
could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition
of capturing the barricade alone and unaided, that is to say,
with his company.  Exasperated by the successive apparition of
the red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag,
he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the corps, who were
holding council and did not think that the moment for the decisive
assault had arrived, and who were allowing "the insurrection to fry
in its own fat," to use the celebrated expression of one of them. 
For his part, he thought the barricade ripe, and as that which is
ripe ought to fall, he made the attempt.

He commanded men as resolute as himself, "raging fellows," as a witness
said.  His company, the same which had shot Jean Prouvaire the poet,
was the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street. 
At the moment when they were least expecting it, the captain launched
his men against the barricade.  This movement, executed with
more good will than strategy, cost the Fannicot company dear. 
Before it had traversed two thirds of the street it was received
by a general discharge from the barricade.  Four, the most audacious,
who were running on in front, were mown down point-blank at the very
foot of the redoubt, and this courageous throng of National Guards,
very brave men but lacking in military tenacity, were forced to fall back,
after some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. 
This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to re-load
their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck
the company before it could regain the corner of the street,
its shelter.  A moment more, and it was caught between two fires,
and it received the volley from the battery piece which,
not having received the order, had not discontinued its firing.

The intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one of the dead from this
grape-shot. He was killed by the cannon, that is to say, by order.

This attack, which was more furious than serious,
irritated Enjolras.--"The fools!" said he.  "They are getting
their own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for nothing."

Enjolras spoke like the real general of insurrection which he was. 
Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons. 
Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number
of shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend. 
An empty cartridge-box, a man killed, cannot be replaced.  As repression
has the army, it does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes,
it does not count its shots.  Repression has as many regiments
as the barricade has men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has
cartridge-boxes. Thus they are struggles of one against a hundred,
which always end in crushing the barricade; unless the revolution,
uprising suddenly, flings into the balance its flaming archangel's sword. 
This does happen sometimes.  Then everything rises, the pavements
begin to seethe, popular redoubts abound.  Paris quivers supremely,
the quid divinum is given forth, a 10th of August is in the air,
a 29th of July is in the air, a wonderful light appears, the yawning
maw of force draws back, and the army, that lion, sees before it,
erect and tranquil, that prophet, France.



CHAPTER XIII

PASSING GLEAMS


In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade,
there is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth,
honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler,
and, above all, intermittences of hope.

One of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope
suddenly traversed the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie
at the moment when it was least expected.

"Listen," suddenly cried Enjolras, who was still on the watch,
"it seems to me that Paris is waking up."

It is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection
broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. 
The obstinacy of the alarm peal of Saint-Merry reanimated
some fancies.  Barricades were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue
des Gravilliers.  In front of the Porte Saint-Martin, a young man,
armed with a rifle, attacked alone a squadron of cavalry. 
In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he placed one knee on the ground,
shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the commander of the squadron,
and turned away, saying:  "There's another who will do us no more harm."

He was put to the sword.  In the Rue Saint-Denis, a woman fired
on the National Guard from behind a lowered blind.  The slats
of the blind could be seen to tremble at every shot.  A child
fourteen years of age was arrested in the Rue de la Cossonerie,
with his pockets full of cartridges.  Many posts were attacked. 
At the entrance to the Rue Bertin-Poiree, a very lively and
utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed a regiment of cuirrassiers,
at whose head marched Marshal General Cavaignac de Barague. 
In the Rue Planche-Mibray, they threw old pieces of pottery and
household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a bad sign;
and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon's old
lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet's saying at Saragossa: 
"We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre on
our heads."

These general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment
when it was thought that the uprising had been rendered local,
this fever of wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above
those deep masses of combustibles which are called the faubourgs
of Paris,--all this, taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. 
They made haste to stamp out these beginnings of conflagration.

They delayed the attack on the barricades Maubuee, de la Chanvrerie
and Saint-Merry until these sparks had been extinguished, in order
that they might have to deal with the barricades only and be able
to finish them at one blow.  Columns were thrown into the streets
where there was fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding the small,
right and left, now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. 
The troops broke in the doors of houses whence shots had been fired;
at the same time, manoeuvres by the cavalry dispersed the groups
on the boulevards.  This repression was not effected without
some commotion, and without that tumultuous uproar peculiar to
collisions between the army and the people.  This was what Enjolras
had caught in the intervals of the cannonade and the musketry. 
Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing the end of the street
in litters, and he said to Courfeyrac:--"Those wounded do not come
from us."

Their hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. 
In less than half an hour, what was in the air vanished, it was
a flash of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents
felt that sort of leaden cope, which the indifference of the people
casts over obstinate and deserted men, fall over them once more.

The general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline,
had miscarried; and the attention of the minister of war and the
strategy of the generals could now be concentrated on the three
or four barricades which still remained standing.

The sun was mounting above the horizon.

An insurgent hailed Enjolras.

"We are hungry here.  Are we really going to die like this,
without anything to eat?"

Enjolras, who was still leaning on his elbows at his embrasure,
made an affirmative sign with his head, but without taking his eyes
from the end of the street.



CHAPTER XIV

WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS' MISTRESS


Courfeyrac, seated on a paving-stone beside Enjolras,
continued to insult the cannon, and each time that that gloomy
cloud of projectiles which is called grape-shot passed overhead
with its terrible sound he assailed it with a burst of irony.

"You are wearing out your lungs, poor, brutal, old fellow, you pain me,
you are wasting your row.  That's not thunder, it's a cough."

And the bystanders laughed.

Courfeyrac and Bossuet, whose brave good humor increased with
the peril, like Madame Scarron, replaced nourishment with pleasantry,
and, as wine was lacking, they poured out gayety to all.

"I admire Enjolras," said Bossuet.  "His impassive temerity
astounds me.  He lives alone, which renders him a little sad, perhaps;
Enjolras complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. 
The rest of us have mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy,
that is to say, brave.  When a man is as much in love as a tiger,
the least that he can do is to fight like a lion.  That is one way
of taking our revenge for the capers that mesdames our grisettes play
on us.  Roland gets himself killed for Angelique; all our heroism
comes from our women.  A man without a woman is a pistol without
a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off.  Well, Enjolras has
no woman.  He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. 
It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as
bold as fire."

Enjolras did not appear to be listening, but had any one been near him,
that person would have heard him mutter in a low voice:  "Patria."

Bossuet was still laughing when Courfeyrac exclaimed:

"News!"

And assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement, he added:

"My name is Eight-Pounder."

In fact, a new personage had entered on the scene.  This was
a second piece of ordnance.

The artillery-men rapidly performed their manoeuvres in force
and placed this second piece in line with the first.

This outlined the catastrophe.

A few minutes later, the two pieces, rapidly served, were firing
point-blank at the redoubt; the platoon firing of the line
and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery.

Another cannonade was audible at some distance.  At the same time
that the two guns were furiously attacking the redoubt from the Rue
de la Chanvrerie, two other cannons, trained one from the Rue
Saint-Denis, the other from the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, were riddling
the Saint-Merry barricade.  The four cannons echoed each other mournfully.

The barking of these sombre dogs of war replied to each other.

One of the two pieces which was now battering the barricade on
the Rue de la Chanvrerie was firing grape-shot, the other balls.

The piece which was firing balls was pointed a little high,
and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme
edge of the upper crest of the barricade, and crumbled the stone
down upon the insurgents, mingled with bursts of grape-shot.

The object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents
from the summit of the redoubt, and to compel them to gather close
in the interior, that is to say, this announced the assault.

The combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade by balls,
and from the windows of the cabaret by grape-shot, the attacking columns
could venture into the street without being picked off, perhaps, even,
without being seen, could briskly and suddenly scale the redoubt,
as on the preceding evening, and, who knows? take it by surprise.

"It is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of those guns
should be diminished," said Enjolras, and he shouted:  "Fire on
the artillery-men!"

All were ready.  The barricade, which had long been silent,
poured forth a desperate fire; seven or eight discharges followed,
with a sort of rage and joy; the street was filled with blinding smoke,
and, at the end of a few minutes, athwart this mist all streaked
with flame, two thirds of the gunners could be distinguished
lying beneath the wheels of the cannons.  Those who were left
standing continued to serve the pieces with severe tranquillity,
but the fire had slackened.

"Things are going well now," said Bossuet to Enjolras.  "Success."

Enjolras shook his head and replied:

"Another quarter of an hour of this success, and there will not
be any cartridges left in the barricade."

It appears that Gavroche overheard this remark.



CHAPTER XV

GAVROCHE OUTSIDE


Courfeyrac suddenly caught sight of some one at the base
of the barricade, outside in the street, amid the bullets.

Gavroche had taken a bottle basket from the wine-shop, had made
his way out through the cut, and was quietly engaged in emptying
the full cartridge-boxes of the National Guardsmen who had been
killed on the slope of the redoubt, into his basket.

"What are you doing there?" asked Courfeyrac.

Gavroche raised his face:--

"I'm filling my basket, citizen."

"Don't you see the grape-shot?"

Gavroche replied:

"Well, it is raining.  What then?"

Courfeyrac shouted:--"Come in!"

"Instanter," said Gavroche.

And with a single bound he plunged into the street.

It will be remembered that Fannicot's company had left behind
it a trail of bodies.  Twenty corpses lay scattered here and
there on the pavement, through the whole length of the street. 
Twenty cartouches for Gavroche meant a provision of cartridges
for the barricade.

The smoke in the street was like a fog.  Whoever has beheld a cloud
which has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments
can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows
of lofty houses.  It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed;
hence a twilight which made even the broad daylight turn pale. 
The combatants could hardly see each other from one end of the street
to the other, short as it was.

This obscurity, which had probably been desired and calculated on
by the commanders who were to direct the assault on the barricade,
was useful to Gavroche.

Beneath the folds of this veil of smoke, and thanks to his small size,
he could advance tolerably far into the street without being seen. 
He rifled the first seven or eight cartridge-boxes without
much danger.

He crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket
in his teeth, twisted, glided, undulated, wound from one dead body
to another, and emptied the cartridge-box or cartouche as a monkey
opens a nut.

They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade,
which was quite near, for fear of attracting attention to him.

On one body, that of a corporal, he found a powder-flask.

"For thirst," said he, putting it in his pocket.

By dint of advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the
fusillade became transparent.  So that the sharpshooters of the
line ranged on the outlook behind their paving-stone dike and the
sharpshooters of the banlieue massed at the corner of the street
suddenly pointed out to each other something moving through the smoke.

At the moment when Gavroche was relieving a sergeant, who was lying
near a stone door-post, of his cartridges, a bullet struck the body.

"Fichtre!" ejaculated Gavroche.  "They are killing my dead men
for me."

A second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him.--
A third overturned his basket.

Gavroche looked and saw that this came from the men of the banlieue.

He sprang to his feet, stood erect, with his hair flying in the wind,
his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the National Guardsmen
who were firing, and sang:

      "On est laid a Nanterre,       "Men are ugly at Nanterre,
       C'est la faute a Voltaire;     'Tis the  fault of Voltaire;
       Et bete a Palaiseau,           And dull at Palaiseau,
       C'est la faute a Rousseau."    'Tis the fault of Rousseau."


Then he picked up his basket, replaced the cartridges which had
fallen from it, without missing a single one, and, advancing towards
the fusillade, set about plundering another cartridge-box. There
a fourth bullet missed him, again.  Gavroche sang:

       "Je ne suis pas notaire,      "I am not a notary,
        C'est la faute a Voltaire;    'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
        Je suis un petit oiseau,      I'm a little bird,
        C'est la faute a Rousseau."   'Tis the fault of Rousseau."

   A fifth bullet only succeeded in drawing from him a third couplet.

       "Joie est mon caractere,      "Joy is my character,
        C'est la faute a Voltaire;    'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
        Misere est mon trousseau,     Misery is my trousseau,
        C'est la faute a Rousseau."   'Tis the fault of Rousseau."


Thus it went on for some time.

It was a charming and terrible sight.  Gavroche, though shot at,
was teasing the fusillade.  He had the air of being greatly diverted. 
It was the sparrow pecking at the sportsmen.  To each discharge
he retorted with a couplet.  They aimed at him constantly,
and always missed him.  The National Guardsmen and the soldiers
laughed as they took aim at him.  He lay down, sprang to his feet,
hid in the corner of a doorway, then made a bound, disappeared,
re-appeared, scampered away, returned, replied to the grape-shot
with his thumb at his nose, and, all the while, went on pillaging
the cartouches, emptying the cartridge-boxes, and filling his basket. 
The insurgents, panting with anxiety, followed him with their eyes. 
The barricade trembled; he sang.  He was not a child, he was not a man;
he was a strange gamin-fairy. He might have been called the invulnerable
dwarf of the fray.  The bullets flew after him, he was more nimble
than they.  He played a fearful game of hide and seek with death;
every time that the flat-nosed face of the spectre approached,
the urchin administered to it a fillip.

One bullet, however, better aimed or more treacherous than the rest,
finally struck the will-o'-the-wisp of a child.  Gavroche was seen
to stagger, then he sank to the earth.  The whole barricade gave
vent to a cry; but there was something of Antaeus in that pygmy;
for the gamin to touch the pavement is the same as for the giant
to touch the earth; Gavroche had fallen only to rise again;
he remained in a sitting posture, a long thread of blood streaked
his face, he raised both arms in the air, glanced in the direction
whence the shot had come, and began to sing:


      "Je suis tombe par terre,     "I have fallen to the earth,
       C'est la faute a Voltaire;    'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
       Le nez dans le ruisseau,      With my nose in the gutter,
       C'est la faute a... "      'Tis the fault of... "


He did not finish.  A second bullet from the same marksman stopped
him short.  This time he fell face downward on the pavement,
and moved no more.  This grand little soul had taken its flight.



CHAPTER XVI

HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER


At that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg,--for the gaze
of the drama must be everywhere present,--two children were holding
each other by the hand.  One might have been seven years old,
the other five.  The rain having soaked them, they were walking along
the paths on the sunny side; the elder was leading the younger;
they were pale and ragged; they had the air of wild birds. 
The smaller of them said:  "I am very hungry."

The elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was leading his
brother with his left hand and in his right he carried a small stick.

They were alone in the garden.  The garden was deserted, the gates had
been closed by order of the police, on account of the insurrection. 
The troops who had been bivouacking there had departed for the
exigencies of combat.

How did those children come there?  Perhaps they had escaped from
some guard-house which stood ajar; perhaps there was in the vicinity,
at the Barriere d'Enfer; or on the Esplanade de l'Observatoire,
or in the neighboring carrefour, dominated by the pediment
on which could be read:  Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum,
some mountebank's booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had,
on the preceding evening, escaped the eye of the inspectors
of the garden at the hour of closing, and had passed the night
in some one of those sentry-boxes where people read the papers? 
The fact is, they were stray lambs and they seemed free.  To be astray
and to seem free is to be lost.  These poor little creatures were,
in fact, lost.

These two children were the same over whom Gavroche had been put to
some trouble, as the reader will recollect.  Children of the Thenardiers,
leased out to Magnon, attributed to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves
fallen from all these rootless branches, and swept over the ground
by the wind.  Their clothing, which had been clean in Magnon's day,
and which had served her as a prospectus with M. Gillenormand,
had been converted into rags.

Henceforth these beings belonged to the statistics
as "Abandoned children," whom the police
take note of, collect, mislay and find again on the pavements of Paris.

It required the disturbance of a day like that to account for these
miserable little creatures being in that garden.  If the superintendents
had caught sight of them, they would have driven such rags forth. 
Poor little things do not enter public gardens; still, people should
reflect that, as children, they have a right to flowers.

These children were there, thanks to the locked gates.  They were
there contrary to the regulations.  They had slipped into the garden
and there they remained.  Closed gates do not dismiss the inspectors,
oversight is supposed to continue, but it grows slack and reposes;
and the inspectors, moved by the public anxiety and more occupied
with the outside than the inside, no longer glanced into the garden,
and had not seen the two delinquents.

It had rained the night before, and even a little in the morning. 
But in June, showers do not count for much.  An hour after a storm,
it can hardly be seen that the beautiful blonde day has wept. 
The earth, in summer, is as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. 
At that period of the solstice, the light of full noonday is,
so to speak, poignant.  It takes everything.  It applies itself to
the earth, and superposes itself with a sort of suction.  One would
say that the sun was thirsty.  A shower is but a glass of water;
a rainstorm is instantly drunk up.  In the morning everything
was dripping, in the afternoon everything is powdered over.

Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain
and wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is warm freshness.  The gardens
and meadows, having water at their roots, and sun in their flowers,
become perfuming-pans of incense, and smoke with all their odors
at once.  Everything smiles, sings and offers itself.  One feels
gently intoxicated.  The springtime is a provisional paradise,
the sun helps man to have patience.

There are beings who demand nothing further; mortals, who, having
the azure of heaven, say:  "It is enough!" dreamers absorbed in
the wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of nature, indifferent to
good and evil, contemplators of cosmos and radiantly forgetful
of man, who do not understand how people can occupy themselves
with the hunger of these, and the thirst of those, with the nudity
of the poor in winter, with the lymphatic curvature of the little
spinal column, with the pallet, the attic, the dungeon, and the rags
of shivering young girls, when they can dream beneath the trees;
peaceful and terrible spirits they, and pitilessly satisfied. 
Strange to say, the infinite suffices them.  That great need of man,
the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore.  The finite
which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. 
The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination
of the infinite and the finite, escapes them.  Provided that they are
face to face with immensity, they smile.  Joy never, ecstasy forever. 
Their life lies in surrendering their personality in contemplation. 
The history of humanity is for them only a detailed plan.  All is
not there; the true All remains without; what is the use of busying
oneself over that detail, man?  Man suffers, that is quite possible;
but look at Aldebaran rising!  The mother has no more milk,
the new-born babe is dying.  I know nothing about that, but just
look at this wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of the
pine presents under the microscope!  Compare the most beautiful
Mechlin lace to that if you can!  These thinkers forget to love. 
The zodiac thrives with them to such a point that it prevents
their seeing the weeping child.  God eclipses their souls. 
This is a family of minds which are, at once, great and petty. 
Horace was one of them; so was Goethe.  La Fontaine perhaps;
magnificent egoists of the infinite, tranquil spectators of sorrow,
who do not behold Nero if the weather be fair, for whom the sun
conceals the funeral pile, who would look on at an execution by the
guillotine in the search for an effect of light, who hear neither
the cry nor the sob, nor the death rattle, nor the alarm peal,
for whom everything is well, since there is a month of May, who,
so long as there are clouds of purple and gold above their heads,
declare themselves content, and who are determined to be happy
until the radiance of the stars and the songs of the birds
are exhausted.

These are dark radiances.  They have no suspicion that they
are to be pitied.  Certainly they are so.  He who does not weep
does not see.  They are to be admired and pitied, as one would
both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes
beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.

The indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some,
a superior philosophy.  That may be; but in this superiority
there is some infirmity.  One may be immortal and yet limp: 
witness Vulcan.  One may be more than man and less than man. 
There is incomplete immensity in nature.  Who knows whether the sun
is not a blind man?

But then, what?  In whom can we trust?  Solem quis dicere falsum audeat? 
Who shall dare to say that the sun is false?  Thus certain geniuses,
themselves, certain Very-Lofty mortals, man-stars, may be mistaken? 
That which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith,
that which sends down so much light on the earth, sees but little,
sees badly, sees not at all?  Is not this a desperate state of things? 
No. But what is there, then, above the sun?  The god.

On the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o'clock in the morning,
the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming. 
The quincunxes and flower-beds shed forth balm and dazzling beauty
into the sunlight.  The branches, wild with the brilliant glow
of midday, seemed endeavoring to embrace.  In the sycamores there
was an uproar of linnets, sparrows triumphed, woodpeckers climbed
along the chestnut trees, administering little pecks on the bark. 
The flower-beds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies;
the most august of perfumes is that which emanates from whiteness. 
The peppery odor of the carnations was perceptible.  The old crows
of Marie de Medici were amorous in the tall trees.  The sun gilded,
empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips, which are nothing
but all the varieties of flame made into flowers.  All around the
banks of tulips the bees, the sparks of these flame-flowers, hummed. 
All was grace and gayety, even the impending rain; this relapse,
by which the lilies of the valley and the honeysuckles were destined
to profit, had nothing disturbing about it; the swallows indulged
in the charming threat of flying low.  He who was there aspired
to happiness; life smelled good; all nature exhaled candor,
help, assistance, paternity, caress, dawn.  The thoughts which fell
from heaven were as sweet as the tiny hand of a baby when one
kisses it.

The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow
pierced with light; these goddesses were all tattered with sunlight;
rays hung from them on all sides.  Around the great fountain,
the earth was already dried up to the point of being burnt. 
There was sufficient breeze to raise little insurrections of dust
here and there.  A few yellow leaves, left over from the autumn,
chased each other merrily, and seemed to be playing tricks on
each other.

This abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring
about it.  Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed; one was conscious,
beneath creation, of the enormous size of the source; in all these
breaths permeated with love, in this interchange of reverberations
and reflections, in this marvellous expenditure of rays, in this
infinite outpouring of liquid gold, one felt the prodigality of
the inexhaustible; and, behind this splendor as behind a curtain
of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that millionaire of stars.

Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks to the rain,
there was not a grain of ashes.  The clumps of blossoms had just
been bathed; every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish,
which springs from the earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. 
This magnificence was cleanly.  The grand silence of happy nature
filled the garden.  A celestial silence that is compatible with a
thousand sorts of music, the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms,
the flutterings of the breeze.  All the harmony of the season was
complete in one gracious whole; the entrances and exits of spring
took place in proper order; the lilacs ended; the jasmines began;
some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time;
the van-guard of the red June butterflies fraternized with the
rear-guard of the white butterflies of May.  The plantain trees
were getting their new skins.  The breeze hollowed out undulations
in the magnificent enormity of the chestnut-trees. It was splendid. 
A veteran from the neighboring barracks, who was gazing through
the fence, said:  "Here is the Spring presenting arms and in
full uniform."

All nature was breakfasting; creation was at table; this was its hour;
the great blue cloth was spread in the sky, and the great green cloth
on earth; the sun lighted it all up brilliantly.  God was serving
the universal repast.  Each creature had his pasture or his mess. 
The ring-dove found his hemp-seed, the chaffinch found his millet,
the goldfinch found chickweed, the red-breast found worms, the green
finch found flies, the fly found infusoriae, the bee found flowers. 
They ate each other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil
mixed with good; but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach.

The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity
of the grand fountain, and, rather bewildered by all this light,
they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor and the weak
in the presence of even impersonal magnificence; and they kept
behind the swans' hutch.

Here and there, at intervals, when the wind blew, shouts, clamor, a sort
of tumultuous death rattle, which was the firing, and dull blows,
which were discharges of cannon, struck the ear confusedly. 
Smoke hung over the roofs in the direction of the Halles.  A bell,
which had the air of an appeal, was ringing in the distance.

These children did not appear to notice these noises.  The little
one repeated from time to time:  "I am hungry."

Almost at the same instant with the children, another couple approached
the great basin.  They consisted of a goodman, about fifty years
of age, who was leading by the hand a little fellow of six.  No doubt,
a father and his son.  The little man of six had a big brioche.

At that epoch, certain houses abutting on the river, in the
Rues Madame and d'Enfer, had keys to the Luxembourg garden,
of which the lodgers enjoyed the use when the gates were shut,
a privilege which was suppressed later on.  This father and son
came from one of these houses, no doubt.

The two poor little creatures watched "that gentleman" approaching,
and hid themselves a little more thoroughly.

He was a bourgeois.  The same person, perhaps, whom Marius had
one day heard, through his love fever, near the same grand basin,
counselling his son "to avoid excesses."  He had an affable and haughty
air, and a mouth which was always smiling, since it did not shut. 
This mechanical smile, produced by too much jaw and too little skin,
shows the teeth rather than the soul.  The child, with his brioche,
which he had bitten into but had not finished eating, seemed satiated. 
The child was dressed as a National Guardsman, owing to the insurrection,
and the father had remained clad as a bourgeois out of prudence.

Father and son halted near the fountain where two swans were sporting. 
This bourgeois appeared to cherish a special admiration for the swans. 
He resembled them in this sense, that he walked like them.

For the moment, the swans were swimming, which is their
principal talent, and they were superb.

If the two poor little beings had listened and if they had been
of an age to understand, they might have gathered the words of this
grave man.  The father was saying to his son:

"The sage lives content with little.  Look at me, my son.  I do
not love pomp.  I am never seen in clothes decked with gold lace
and stones; I leave that false splendor to badly organized souls."

Here the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction of the
Halles burst out with fresh force of bell and uproar.

"What is that?" inquired the child.

The father replied:

"It is the Saturnalia."

All at once, he caught sight of the two little ragged boys behind
the green swan-hutch.

"There is the beginning," said he.

And, after a pause, he added:

"Anarchy is entering this garden."

In the meanwhile, his son took a bite of his brioche, spit it out,
and, suddenly burst out crying.

"What are you crying about?" demanded his father.

"I am not hungry any more," said the child.

The father's smile became more accentuated.

"One does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake."

"My cake tires me.  It is stale."

"Don't you want any more of it?"

"No."

The father pointed to the swans.

"Throw it to those palmipeds."

The child hesitated.  A person may not want any more of his cake;
but that is no reason for giving it away.

The father went on:

"Be humane.  You must have compassion on animals."

And, taking the cake from his son, he flung it into the basin.

The cake fell very near the edge.

The swans were far away, in the centre of the basin, and busy
with some prey.  They had seen neither the bourgeois nor the brioche.

The bourgeois, feeling that the cake was in danger of being wasted,
and moved by this useless shipwreck, entered upon a telegraphic
agitation, which finally attracted the attention of the swans.

They perceived something floating, steered for the edge like ships,
as they are, and slowly directed their course toward the brioche,
with the stupid majesty which befits white creatures.

"The swans [cygnes] understand signs [signes]," said the bourgeois,
delighted to make a jest.

At that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent another
sudden increase.  This time it was sinister.  There are some gusts
of wind which speak more distinctly than others.  The one which was
blowing at that moment brought clearly defined drum-beats, clamors,
platoon firing, and the dismal replies of the tocsin and the cannon. 
This coincided with a black cloud which suddenly veiled the sun.

The swans had not yet reached the brioche.

"Let us return home," said the father, "they are attacking
the Tuileries."

He grasped his son's hand again.  Then he continued:

"From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the distance
which separates Royalty from the peerage; that is not far. 
Shots will soon rain down."

He glanced at the cloud.

"Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky
is joining in; the younger branch is condemned.  Let us return
home quickly."

"I should like to see the swans eat the brioche," said the child.

The father replied:

"That would be imprudent."

And he led his little bourgeois away.

The son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward the basin
until a corner of the quincunxes concealed it from him.

In the meanwhile, the two little waifs had approached the brioche
at the same time as the swans.  It was floating on the water. 
The smaller of them stared at the cake, the elder gazed after the
retreating bourgeois.

Father and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand
flight of steps near the clump of trees on the side of the Rue Madame.

As soon as they had disappeared from view, the elder child hastily
flung himself flat on his stomach on the rounding curb of the basin,
and clinging to it with his left hand, and leaning over the water,
on the verge of falling in, he stretched out his right hand with his
stick towards the cake.  The swans, perceiving the enemy, made haste,
and in so doing, they produced an effect of their breasts which was of
service to the little fisher; the water flowed back before the swans,
and one of these gentle concentric undulations softly floated
the brioche towards the child's wand.  Just as the swans came up,
the stick touched the cake.  The child gave it a brisk rap, drew in
the brioche, frightened away the swans, seized the cake, and sprang
to his feet.  The cake was wet; but they were hungry and thirsty. 
The elder broke the cake into two portions, a large one and a small one,
took the small one for himself, gave the large one to his brother,
and said to him:

"Ram that into your muzzle."



CHAPTER XVII

MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT


Marius dashed out of the barricade, Combeferre followed him. 
But he was too late.  Gavroche was dead.  Combeferre brought back
the basket of cartridges; Marius bore the child.

"Alas!" he thought, "that which the father had done for his father,
he was requiting to the son; only, Thenardier had brought back his
father alive; he was bringing back the child dead."

When Marius re-entered the redoubt with Gavroche in his arms,
his face, like the child, was inundated with blood.

At the moment when he had stooped to lift Gavroche, a bullet had
grazed his head; he had not noticed it.

Courfeyrac untied his cravat and with it bandaged Marius' brow.

They laid Gavroche on the same table with Mabeuf, and spread over
the two corpses the black shawl.  There was enough of it for both
the old man and the child.

Combeferre distributed the cartridges from the basket which he
had brought in.

This gave each man fifteen rounds to fire.

Jean Valjean was still in the same place, motionless on his
stone post.  When Combeferre offered him his fifteen cartridges,
he shook his head.

"Here's a rare eccentric," said Combeferre in a low voice to Enjolras. 
"He finds a way of not fighting in this barricade."

"Which does not prevent him from defending it," responded Enjolras.

"Heroism has its originals," resumed Combeferre.

And Courfeyrac, who had overheard, added:

"He is another sort from Father Mabeuf."

One thing which must be noted is, that the fire which was battering
the barricade hardly disturbed the interior.  Those who have never
traversed the whirlwind of this sort of war can form no idea of the
singular moments of tranquillity mingled with these convulsions. 
Men go and come, they talk, they jest, they lounge.  Some one whom
we know heard a combatant say to him in the midst of the grape-shot:
"We are here as at a bachelor breakfast."  The redoubt of the Rue de
la Chanvrerie, we repeat, seemed very calm within.  All mutations
and all phases had been, or were about to be, exhausted.  The position,
from critical, had become menacing, and, from menacing, was probably
about to become desperate.  In proportion as the situation grew gloomy,
the glow of heroism empurpled the barricade more and more. 
Enjolras, who was grave, dominated it, in the attitude of a young
Spartan sacrificing his naked sword to the sombre genius, Epidotas.

Combeferre, wearing an apron, was dressing the wounds: 
Bossuet and Feuilly were making cartridges with the powder-flask
picked up by Gavroche on the dead corporal, and Bossuet said
to Feuilly:  "We are soon to take the diligence for another planet";
Courfeyrac was disposing and arranging on some paving-stones which
he had reserved for himself near Enjolras, a complete arsenal,
his sword-cane, his gun, two holster pistols, and a cudgel,
with the care of a young girl setting a small dunkerque in order. 
Jean Valjean stared silently at the wall opposite him.  An artisan
was fastening Mother Hucheloup's big straw hat on his head with
a string, "for fear of sun-stroke," as he said.  The young men
from the Cougourde d'Aix were chatting merrily among themselves,
as though eager to speak patois for the last time.  Joly, who had
taken Widow Hucheloup's mirror from the wall, was examining his
tongue in it.  Some combatants, having discovered a few crusts
of rather mouldy bread, in a drawer, were eagerly devouring them. 
Marius was disturbed with regard to what his father was about to say
to him.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE VULTURE BECOME PREY


We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. 
Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets
should be omitted.

Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we
have just mentioned, the barricade, for those who are inside it,
remains, none the less, a vision.

There is something of the apocalypse in civil war,
all the mists of the unknown are commingled with
fierce flashes, revolutions are sphinxes, and any
one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed a dream.

The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed
out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the consequences;
they are both more and less than life.  On emerging from a barricade,
one no longer knows what one has seen there.  One has been terrible,
but one knows it not.  One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas
which had human faces; one's head has been in the light of the future. 
There were corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. 
The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity.  One has lived
in death.  Shadows have passed by.  What were they?

One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a
deafening horror; there was also a frightful silence; there were open
mouths which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace;
one was in the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps.  One fancied
that one had touched the sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares
at something red on one's finger nails.  One no longer remembers anything.

Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock
striking the hour became audible.

"It is midday," said Combeferre.

The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras sprang
to his feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this
thundering shout:

"Carry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the
roofs with them.  Half the men to their guns, the other half
to the paving-stones. There is not a minute to be lost."

A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made
their appearance in battle array at the end of the street.

This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? 
The attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged with the demolition
of the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.

They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which
M. Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called "the tug of war."

Enjolras' order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar
to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape
is impossible.  In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones
which Enjolras had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been
carried up to the first floor and the attic, and before a second
minute had elapsed, these stones, artistically set one upon the other,
walled up the sash-window on the first floor and the windows
in the roof to half their height.  A few loop-holes carefully
planned by Feuilly, the principal architect, allowed of the passage
of the gun-barrels. This armament of the windows could be effected
all the more easily since the firing of grape-shot had ceased. 
The two cannons were now discharging ball against the centre
of the barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if possible,
a breach for the assault.

When the stones destined to the final defence were in place,
Enjolras had the bottles which he had set under the table where
Mabeuf lay, carried to the first floor.

"Who is to drink that?"  Bossuet asked him.

"They," replied Enjolras.

Then they barricaded the window below, and held in readiness the iron
cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night.

The fortress was complete.  The barricade was the rampart,
the wine-shop was the dungeon.  With the stones which remained
they stopped up the outlet.

As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing
of their ammunition, and as the assailants know this, the assailants
combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure,
expose themselves to fire prematurely, though in appearance more
than in reality, and take their ease.  The preparations for attack
are always made with a certain methodical deliberation; after which,
the lightning strikes.

This deliberation permitted Enjolras to take a review of everything
and to perfect everything.  He felt that, since such men were to die,
their death ought to be a masterpiece.

He said to Marius:  "We are the two leaders.  I will give the last
orders inside.  Do you remain outside and observe."

Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade.

Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance,
as the reader will remember, nailed up.

"No splashing of the wounded," he said.

He issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but profoundly
tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied in the name of all.

"On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase. 
Have you them?"

"Yes," said Feuilly.

"How many?"

"Two axes and a pole-axe."

"That is good.  There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. 
How many guns are there?"

"Thirty-four."

"Eight too many.  Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at hand. 
Swords and pistols in your belts.  Twenty men to the barricade. 
Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first
floor to fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the stones. 
Let not a single worker remain inactive here.  Presently, when the drum
beats the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. 
The first to arrive will have the best places."

These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:

"I am not forgetting you."

And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:

"The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy."

"Here?" inquired a voice.

"No, let us not mix their corpses with our own.  The little barricade
of the Mondetour lane can be scaled.  It is only four feet high. 
The man is well pinioned.  He shall be taken thither and put
to death."

There was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Enjolras,
it was Javert.  Here Jean Valjean made his appearance.

He had been lost among the group of insurgents.  He stepped forth
and said to Enjolras:

"You are the commander?"

"Yes."

"You thanked me a while ago."

"In the name of the Republic.  The barricade has two saviors,
Marius Pontmercy and yourself."

"Do you think that I deserve a recompense?"

"Certainly."

"Well, I request one."

"What is it?"

"That I may blow that man's brains out."

Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost
imperceptible movement, and said:

"That is just."

As for Enjolras, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut his eyes
about him:

"No objections."

And he turned to Jean Valjean:

"Take the spy."

Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by seating
himself on the end of the table.  He seized the pistol, and a faint
click announced that he had cocked it.

Almost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became audible.

"Take care!" shouted Marius from the top of the barricade.

Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar
to him, and gazing intently at the insurgents, he said to them:

"You are in no better case than I am."

"All out!" shouted Enjolras.

The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went,
received in the back,--may we be permitted the expression,--
this sally of Javert's:

"We shall meet again shortly!"



CHAPTER XIX

JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE


When Jean Valjean was left alone with Javert, he untied the rope
which fastened the prisoner across the middle of the body,
and the knot of which was under the table.  After this he made
him a sign to rise.

Javert obeyed with that indefinable smile in which the supremacy
of enchained authority is condensed.

Jean Valjean took Javert by the martingale, as one would take
a beast of burden by the breast-band, and, dragging the latter
after him, emerged from the wine-shop slowly, because Javert,
with his impeded limbs, could take only very short steps.

Jean Valjean had the pistol in his hand.

In this manner they crossed the inner trapezium of the barricade. 
The insurgents, all intent on the attack, which was imminent,
had their backs turned to these two.

Marius alone, stationed on one side, at the extreme left of
the barricade, saw them pass.  This group of victim and executioner
was illuminated by the sepulchral light which he bore in his own soul.

Jean Valjean with some difficulty, but without relaxing his hold
for a single instant, made Javert, pinioned as he was, scale the
little entrenchment in the Mondetour lane.

When they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone
in the lane.  No one saw them.  Among the heap they could
distinguish a livid face, streaming hair, a pierced hand and
the half nude breast of a woman.  It was Eponine.  The corner
of the houses hid them from the insurgents.  The corpses carried
away from the barricade formed a terrible pile a few paces distant.

Javert gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in
a low tone:

"It strikes me that I know that girl."

Then he turned to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean thrust the pistol under his arm and fixed on Javert
a look which it required no words to interpret:  "Javert, it is I."

Javert replied:

"Take your revenge."

Jean Valjean drew from his pocket a knife, and opened it.

"A clasp-knife!" exclaimed Javert, "you are right.  That suits
you better."

Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck,
then he cut the cords on his wrists, then, stooping down, he cut
the cord on his feet; and, straightening himself up, he said to him:

"You are free."

Javert was not easily astonished.  Still, master of himself though
he was, he could not repress a start.  He remained open-mouthed
and motionless.

Jean Valjean continued:

"I do not think that I shall escape from this place.  But if,
by chance, I do, I live, under the name of Fauchelevent, in the Rue
de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."

Javert snarled like a tiger, which made him half open one corner
of his mouth, and he muttered between his teeth:

"Have a care."

"Go," said Jean Valjean.

Javert began again:

"Thou saidst Fauchelevent, Rue de l'Homme Arme?"

"Number 7."

Javert repeated in a low voice:--"Number 7."

He buttoned up his coat once more, resumed the military stiffness
between his shoulders, made a half turn, folded his arms and,
supporting his chin on one of his hands, he set out in the direction
of the Halles.  Jean Valjean followed him with his eyes:

A few minutes later, Javert turned round and shouted to Jean Valjean:

"You annoy me.  Kill me, rather."

Javert himself did not notice that he no longer addressed Jean
Valjean as "thou."

"Be off with you," said Jean Valjean.

Javert retreated slowly.  A moment later he turned the corner
of the Rue des Precheurs.

When Javert had disappeared, Jean Valjean fired his pistol in the air.

Then he returned to the barricade and said:

"It is done."

In the meanwhile, this is what had taken place.

Marius, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not,
up to that time, taken a good look at the pinioned spy in the dark
background of the tap-room.

When he beheld him in broad daylight, striding over the
barricade in order to proceed to his death, he recognized him. 
Something suddenly recurred to his mind.  He recalled the inspector
of the Rue de Pontoise, and the two pistols which the latter had
handed to him and which he, Marius, had used in this very barricade,
and not only did he recall his face, but his name as well.

This recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas.

It was not an affirmation that he made, but a question which he
put to himself:

"Is not that the inspector of police who told me that his name
was Javert?"

Perhaps there was still time to intervene in behalf of that man. 
But, in the first place, he must know whether this was Javert.

Marius called to Enjolras, who had just stationed himself
at the other extremity of the barricade:

"Enjolras!"

"What?"

"What is the name of yonder man?"

"What man?"

"The police agent.  Do you know his name?"

"Of course.  He told us."

"What is it?"

"Javert."

Marius sprang to his feet.

At that moment, they heard the report of the pistol.

Jean Valjean re-appeared and cried:  "It is done."

A gloomy chill traversed Marius' heart.



CHAPTER XX

THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE WRONG


The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.

Everything contributed to its tragic majesty at that supreme moment;
a thousand mysterious crashes in the air, the breath of armed
masses set in movement in the streets which were not visible,
the intermittent gallop of cavalry, the heavy shock of artillery
on the march, the firing by squads, and the cannonades crossing
each other in the labyrinth of Paris, the smokes of battle mounting
all gilded above the roofs, indescribable and vaguely terrible cries,
lightnings of menace everywhere, the tocsin of Saint-Merry, which now
had the accents of a sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor
of the sky filled with sun and clouds, the beauty of the day,
and the alarming silence of the houses.

For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue
de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed,
windows closed, shutters closed.

In those days, so different from those in which we live, when the
hour was come, when the people wished to put an end to a situation,
which had lasted too long, with a charter granted or with a
legal country, when universal wrath was diffused in the atmosphere,
when the city consented to the tearing up of the pavements,
when insurrection made the bourgeoisie smile by whispering its
password in its ear, then the inhabitant, thoroughly penetrated
with the revolt, so to speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant,
and the house fraternized with the improvised fortress which rested
on it.  When the situation was not ripe, when the insurrection
was not decidedly admitted, when the masses disowned the movement,
all was over with the combatants, the city was changed into a desert
around the revolt, souls grew chilled, refuges were nailed up,
and the street turned into a defile to help the army to take
the barricade.

A people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk more quickly
than it chooses.  Woe to whomsoever tries to force its hand!  A people
does not let itself go at random.  Then it abandons the insurrection
to itself.  The insurgents become noxious, infected with the plague. 
A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. 
This wall hears, sees and will not.  It might open and save you. 
No. This wall is a judge.  It gazes at you and condemns you. 
What dismal things are closed houses.  They seem dead, they are living. 
Life which is, as it were, suspended there, persists there. 
No one has gone out of them for four and twenty hours, but no one
is missing from them.  In the interior of that rock, people go
and come, go to bed and rise again; they are a family party there;
there they eat and drink; they are afraid, a terrible thing! 
Fear excuses this fearful lack of hospitality; terror is mixed
with it, an extenuating circumstance.  Sometimes, even, and this
has been actually seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change
into fury, as prudence does into rage; hence this wise saying: 
"The enraged moderates."  There are outbursts of supreme terror,
whence springs wrath like a mournful smoke.--"What do these people want? 
What have they come there to do?  Let them get out of the scrape. 
So much the worse for them.  It is their fault.  They are only getting
what they deserve.  It does not concern us.  Here is our poor street
all riddled with balls.  They are a pack of rascals.  Above all things,
don't open the door."--And the house assumes the air of a tomb. 
The insurgent is in the death-throes in front of that house; he sees
the grape-shot and naked swords drawing near; if he cries, he knows
that they are listening to him, and that no one will come; there stand
walls which might protect him, there are men who might save him;
and these walls have ears of flesh, and these men have bowels of
stone.

Whom shall he reproach?

No one and every one.

The incomplete times in which we live.

It is always at its own risk and peril that Utopia is converted
into revolution, and from philosophical protest becomes
an armed protest, and from Minerva turns to Pallas.

The Utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt knows what awaits it;
it almost always comes too soon.  Then it becomes resigned, and stoically
accepts catastrophe in lieu of triumph.  It serves those who deny it
without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates them,
and its magnanimity consists in consenting to abandonment. 
It is indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards ingratitude.

Is this ingratitude, however?

Yes, from the point of view of the human race.

No, from the point of view of the individual.

Progress is man's mode of existence.  The general life of the human
race is called Progress, the collective stride of the human race
is called Progress.  Progress advances; it makes the great human
and terrestrial journey towards the celestial and the divine; it has
its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop, it has its
stations where it meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan
suddenly unveiled on its horizon, it has its nights when it sleeps;
and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees
the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness
without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.

"God is dead, perhaps," said Gerard de Nerval one day to the
writer of these lines, confounding progress with God, and taking
the interruption of movement for the death of Being.

He who despairs is in the wrong.  Progress infallibly awakes, and,
in short, we may say that it marches on, even when it is asleep,
for it has increased in size.  When we behold it erect once more,
we find it taller.  To be always peaceful does not depend on
progress any more than it does on the stream; erect no barriers,
cast in no boulders; obstacles make water froth and humanity boil. 
Hence arise troubles; but after these troubles, we recognize the fact
that ground has been gained.  Until order, which is nothing else than
universal peace, has been established, until harmony and unity reign,
progress will have revolutions as its halting-places.

What, then, is progress?  We have just enunciated it; the permanent
life of the peoples.

Now, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of individuals
offers resistance to the eternal life of the human race.

Let us admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct
interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest,
and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism;
momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself
constantly to the future.  The generation which is passing in its
turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake
of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have their turn
later on.--"I exist," murmurs that some one whose name is All. 
"I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the
father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business,
I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds,
I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire
to live, leave me in peace."--Hence, at certain hours, a profound
cold broods over the magnanimous vanguard of the human race.

Utopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere when
it makes war.  It, the truth of to-morrow, borrows its mode
of procedure, battle, from the lie of yesterday.  It, the future,
behaves like the past.  It, pure idea, becomes a deed of violence. 
It complicates its heroism with a violence for which it is just that
it should be held to answer; a violence of occasion and expedient,
contrary to principle, and for which it is fatally punished. 
The Utopia, insurrection, fights with the old military code in its fist;
it shoots spies, it executes traitors; it suppresses living beings
and flings them into unknown darkness.  It makes use of death,
a serious matter.  It seems as though Utopia had no longer any faith
in radiance, its irresistible and incorruptible force.  It strikes
with the sword.  Now, no sword is simple.  Every blade has two edges;
he who wounds with the one is wounded with the other.

Having made this reservation, and made it with all severity,
it is impossible for us not to admire, whether they succeed or not,
those the glorious combatants of the future, the confessors
of Utopia.  Even when they miscarry, they are worthy of veneration;
and it is, perhaps, in failure, that they possess the most majesty. 
Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause
of the people; but a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. 
The one is magnificent, the other sublime.  For our own part,
we prefer martyrdom to success.  John Brown is greater than Washington,
and Pisacane is greater than Garibaldi.

It certainly is necessary that some one should take the part
of the vanquished.

We are unjust towards these great men who attempt the future,
when they fail.

Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad.  Every barricade
seems a crime.  Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected,
their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. 
They are reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the
reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities,
of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks
of shadow in order therein to embattle themselves and to combat. 
People shout to them:  "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" 
They might reply:  "That is because our barricade is made of
good intentions."

The best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution.  In short,
let us agree that when we behold the pavement, we think of the bear,
and it is a good will which renders society uneasy.  But it depends
on society to save itself, it is to its own good will that we make
our appeal.  No violent remedy is necessary.  To study evil amiably,
to prove its existence, then to cure it.  It is to this that we
invite it.

However that may be, even when fallen, above all when fallen, these men,
who at every point of the universe, with their eyes fixed on France,
are striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal,
are august; they give their life a free offering to progress;
they accomplish the will of providence; they perform a religious act. 
At the appointed hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor
who answers to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage-manager,
they enter the tomb.  And this hopeless combat, this stoical
disappearance they accept in order to bring about the supreme
and universal consequences, the magnificent and irresistibly human
movement begun on the 14th of July, 1789; these soldiers are priests. 
The French revolution is an act of God.

Moreover, there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to
the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter,--there are
accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions;
there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.

An insurrection which breaks out, is an idea which is passing its
examination before the people.  If the people lets fall a black ball,
the idea is dried fruit; the insurrection is a mere skirmish.

Waging war at every summons and every time that Utopia desires it,
is not the thing for the peoples.  Nations have not always and at
every hour the temperament of heroes and martyrs.

They are positive.  A priori, insurrection is repugnant to them,
in the first place, because it often results in a catastrophe,
in the second place, because it always has an abstraction as its point
of departure.

Because, and this is a noble thing, it is always for the ideal,
and for the ideal alone, that those who sacrifice themselves do thus
sacrifice themselves.  An insurrection is an enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm may
wax wroth; hence the appeal to arms.  But every insurrection,
which aims at a government or a regime, aims higher.  Thus, for instance,
and we insist upon it, what the chiefs of the insurrection
of 1832, and, in particular, the young enthusiasts of the Rue de
la Chanvrerie were combating, was not precisely Louis Philippe. 
The majority of them, when talking freely, did justice to this king
who stood midway between monarchy and revolution; no one hated him. 
But they attacked the younger branch of the divine right in Louis
Philippe as they had attacked its elder branch in Charles X.;
and that which they wished to overturn in overturning royalty
in France, was, as we have explained, the usurpation of man
over man, and of privilege over right in the entire universe. 
Paris without a king has as result the world without despots. 
This is the manner in which they reasoned.  Their aim was distant
no doubt, vague perhaps, and it retreated in the face of their efforts;
but it was great.

Thus it is.  And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions,
which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions
with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. 
We throw ourselves into these tragic affairs and become intoxicated
with that which we are about to do.  Who knows?  We may succeed. 
We are few in number, we have a whole army arrayed against us;
but we are defending right, the natural law, the sovereignty
of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible,
justice and truth, and in case of need, we die like the three
hundred Spartans.  We do not think of Don Quixote but of Leonidas. 
And we march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw back,
and we rush onwards with head held low, cherishing as our hope an
unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again,
the aggrandizement of the human race, universal deliverance;
and in the event of the worst, Thermopylae.

These passages of arms for the sake of progress often suffer shipwreck,
and we have just explained why.  The crowd is restive in the
presence of the impulses of paladins.  Heavy masses, the multitudes
which are fragile because of their very weight, fear adventures;
and there is a touch of adventure in the ideal.

Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not
very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the way. 
Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.

The grandeur and beauty of France lies in this, that she takes
less from the stomach than other nations:  she more easily knots
the rope about her loins.  She is the first awake, the last asleep. 
She marches forwards.  She is a seeker.

This arises from the fact that she is an artist.

The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic,
the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. 
Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples.  To love beauty is
to see the light.  That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say
of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy,
who handed it on to France.  Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! 
Vitaelampada tradunt.

It is an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is the element
of its progress.  The amount of civilization is measured by the
quantity of imagination.  Only, a civilizing people should remain
a manly people.  Corinth, yes; Sybaris, no.  Whoever becomes effeminate
makes himself a bastard.  He must be neither a dilettante nor
a virtuoso:  but he must be artistic.  In the matter of civilization,
he must not refine, but he must sublime.  On this condition,
one gives to the human race the pattern of the ideal.

The modern ideal has its type in art, and its means is science. 
It is through science that it will realize that august vision
of the poets, the socially beautiful.  Eden will be reconstructed
by A+B. At the point which civilization has now reached, the exact
is a necessary element of the splendid, and the artistic sentiment
is not only served, but completed by the scientific organ;
dreams must be calculated.  Art, which is the conqueror,
should have for support science, which is the walker; the solidity
of the creature which is ridden is of importance.  The modern spirit
is the genius of Greece with the genius of India as its vehicle;
Alexander on the elephant.

Races which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucre are unfit
to guide civilization.  Genuflection before the idol or before money
wastes away the muscles which walk and the will which advances. 
Hieratic or mercantile absorption lessens a people's power of radiance,
lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that
intelligence, at once both human and divine of the universal goal,
which makes missionaries of nations.  Babylon has no ideal;
Carthage has no ideal.  Athens and Rome have and keep, throughout
all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of civilization.

France is in the same quality of race as Greece and Italy. 
She is Athenian in the matter of beauty, and Roman in her greatness. 
Moreover, she is good.  She gives herself.  Oftener than is the case
with other races, is she in the humor for self-devotion and sacrifice. 
Only, this humor seizes upon her, and again abandons her. 
And therein lies the great peril for those who run when she
desires only to walk, or who walk on when she desires to halt. 
France has her relapses into materialism, and, at certain instants,
the ideas which obstruct that sublime brain have no longer anything
which recalls French greatness and are of the dimensions of a
Missouri or a South Carolina.  What is to be done in such a case? 
The giantess plays at being a dwarf; immense France has her freaks
of pettiness.  That is all.

To this there is nothing to say.  Peoples, like planets, possess the
right to an eclipse.  And all is well, provided that the light
returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. 
Dawn and resurrection are synonymous.  The reappearance of the light
is identical with the persistence of the _I_.

Let us state these facts calmly.  Death on the barricade
or the tomb in exile, is an acceptable occasion for devotion. 
The real name of devotion is disinterestedness.  Let the abandoned
allow themselves to be abandoned, let the exiled allow themselves
to be exiled, and let us confine ourselves to entreating great
nations not to retreat too far, when they do retreat.  One must
not push too far in descent under pretext of a return to reason.

Matter exists, the minute exists, interest exists, the stomach exists;
but the stomach must not be the sole wisdom.  The life of the moment
has its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. 
Alas! the fact that one is mounted does not preclude a fall. 
This can be seen in history more frequently than is desirable: 
A nation is great, it tastes the ideal, then it bites the mire,
and finds it good; and if it be asked how it happens that it
has abandoned Socrates for Falstaff, it replies:  "Because I
love statesmen."

One word more before returning to our subject, the conflict.

A battle like the one which we are engaged in describing is nothing
else than a convulsion towards the ideal.  Progress trammelled
is sickly, and is subject to these tragic epilepsies.  With that malady
of progress, civil war, we have been obliged to come in contact
in our passage.  This is one of the fatal phases, at once act
and entr'acte of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation,
and whose veritable title is Progress.

Progress!

The cry to which we frequently give utterance is our whole thought;
and, at the point of this drama which we have now reached, the idea
which it contains having still more than one trial to undergo,
it is, perhaps, permitted to us, if not to lift the veil from it,
to at least allow its light to shine through.

The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is,
from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may
be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil
to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite
to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven,
from nothingness to God.  Point of departure:  matter; point of arrival: 
the soul.  The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.



CHAPTER XXI

THE HEROES


All at once, the drum beat the charge.

The attack was a hurricane.  On the evening before, in the darkness,
the barricade had been approached silently, as by a boa.  Now, in broad
daylight, in that widening street, surprise was decidedly impossible,
rude force had, moreover, been unmasked, the cannon had begun the roar,
the army hurled itself on the barricade.  Fury now became skill. 
A powerful detachment of infantry of the line, broken at regular
intervals, by the National Guard and the Municipal Guard on foot,
and supported by serried masses which could be heard though
not seen, debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating,
trumpets braying, bayonets levelled, the sappers at their head,
and, imperturbable under the projectiles, charged straight
for the barricade with the weight of a brazen beam against a wall.

The wall held firm.

The insurgents fired impetuously.  The barricade once scaled
had a mane of lightning flashes.  The assault was so furious,
that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it
shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs, and it
was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam,
to re-appear, a moment later, beetling, black and formidable.

The column, forced to retreat, remained massed in the street,
unprotected but terrible, and replied to the redoubt with a terrible
discharge of musketry.  Any one who has seen fireworks will recall
the sheaf formed of interlacing lightnings which is called a bouquet. 
Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer vertical
but horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaien at the
tip of each one of its jets of flame, and picking off dead men
one after another from its clusters of lightning.  The barricade
was underneath it.

On both sides, the resolution was equal.  The bravery exhibited
there was almost barbarous and was complicated with a sort of heroic
ferocity which began by the sacrifice of self.

This was the epoch when a National Guardsman fought like a Zouave. 
The troop wished to make an end of it, insurrection was desirous
of fighting.  The acceptance of the death agony in the flower
of youth and in the flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. 
In this fray, each one underwent the broadening growth of the death hour. 
The street was strewn with corpses.

The barricade had Enjolras at one of its extremities and Marius at
the other.  Enjolras, who carried the whole barricade in his head,
reserved and sheltered himself; three soldiers fell, one after
the other, under his embrasure, without having even seen him;
Marius fought unprotected.  He made himself a target.  He stood
with more than half his body above the breastworks.  There is no
more violent prodigal than the avaricious man who takes the bit in
his teeth; there is no man more terrible in action than a dreamer. 
Marius was formidable and pensive.  In battle he was as in a dream. 
One would have pronounced him a phantom engaged in firing a gun.

The insurgents' cartridges were giving out; but not their sarcasms. 
In this whirlwind of the sepulchre in which they stood, they laughed.

Courfeyrac was bare-headed.

"What have you done with your hat?"  Bossuet asked him.

Courfeyrac replied:

"They have finally taken it away from me with cannon-balls."

Or they uttered haughty comments.

"Can any one understand," exclaimed Feuilly bitterly, "those
men,--[and he cited names, well-known names, even celebrated names,
some belonging to the old army]--who had promised to join us,
and taken an oath to aid us, and who had pledged their honor to it,
and who are our generals, and who abandon us!"

And Combeferre restricted himself to replying with a grave smile.

"There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes
the stars, from a great distance."

The interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges
that one would have said that there had been a snowstorm.

The assailants had numbers in their favor; the insurgents had position. 
They were at the top of a wall, and they thundered point-blank
upon the soldiers tripping over the dead and wounded and entangled
in the escarpment.  This barricade, constructed as it was and
admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations where a handful
of men hold a legion in check.  Nevertheless, the attacking column,
constantly recruited and enlarged under the shower of bullets,
drew inexorably nearer, and now, little by little, step by step,
but surely, the army closed in around the barricade as the vice
grasps the wine-press.

One assault followed another.  The horror of the situation
kept increasing.

Then there burst forth on that heap of paving-stones, in that
Rue de la Chanvrerie, a battle worthy of a wall of Troy. 
These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had had nothing to eat
for four and twenty hours, who had not slept, who had but a few
more rounds to fire, who were fumbling in their pockets which had
been emptied of cartridges, nearly all of whom were wounded,
with head or arm bandaged with black and blood-stained linen,
with holes in their clothes from which the blood trickled, and who
were hardly armed with poor guns and notched swords, became Titans. 
The barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed, scaled,
and never captured.

In order to form an idea of this struggle, it is necessary to
imagine fire set to a throng of terrible courages, and then to gaze
at the conflagration.  It was not a combat, it was the interior
of a furnace; there mouths breathed the flame; there countenances
were extraordinary.  The human form seemed impossible there,
the combatants flamed forth there, and it was formidable to behold
the going and coming in that red glow of those salamanders of the fray.

The successive and simultaneous scenes of this grand slaughter we
renounce all attempts at depicting.  The epic alone has the right
to fill twelve thousand verses with a battle.

One would have pronounced this that hell of Brahmanism,
the most redoubtable of the seventeen abysses,
which the Veda calls the Forest of Swords.

They fought hand to hand, foot to foot, with pistol shots, with blows
of the sword, with their fists, at a distance, close at hand,
from above, from below, from everywhere, from the roofs of the houses,
from the windows of the wine-shop, from the cellar windows,
whither some had crawled.  They were one against sixty.

The facade of Corinthe, half demolished, was hideous.  The window,
tattooed with grape-shot, had lost glass and frame and was nothing
now but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with paving-stones.

Bossuet was killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed;
Combeferre, transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the
breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier,
had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired.

Marius, still fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in
the head, that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood,
and one would have said that his face was covered with a red kerchief.

Enjolras alone was not struck.  When he had no longer any weapon,
he reached out his hands to right and left and an insurgent thrust
some arm or other into his fist.  All he had left was the stumps
of four swords; one more than Francois I. at Marignan.  Homer says: 
"Diomedes cuts the throat of Axylus, son of Teuthranis, who dwelt
in happy Arisba; Euryalus, son of Mecistaeus, exterminates Dresos
and Opheltios, Esepius, and that Pedasus whom the naiad Abarbarea bore
to the blameless Bucolion; Ulysses overthrows Pidytes of Percosius;
Antilochus, Ablerus; Polypaetes, Astyalus; Polydamas, Otos, of Cyllene;
and Teucer, Aretaon.  Meganthios dies under the blows of Euripylus'
pike.  Agamemnon, king of the heroes, flings to earth Elatos,
born in the rocky city which is laved by the sounding river Satnois." 
In our old poems of exploits, Esplandian attacks the giant marquis
Swantibore with a cobbler's shoulder-stick of fire, and the latter
defends himself by stoning the hero with towers which he plucks up
by the roots.  Our ancient mural frescoes show us the two Dukes of
Bretagne and Bourbon, armed, emblazoned and crested in war-like guise,
on horseback and approaching each other, their battle-axes in hand,
masked with iron, gloved with iron, booted with iron, the one
caparisoned in ermine, the other draped in azure:  Bretagne with
his lion between the two horns of his crown, Bourbon helmeted with
a monster fleur de lys on his visor.  But, in order to be superb,
it is not necessary to wear, like Yvon, the ducal morion, to have
in the fist, like Esplandian, a living flame, or, like Phyles,
father of Polydamas, to have brought back from Ephyra a good suit of mail,
a present from the king of men, Euphetes; it suffices to give one's
life for a conviction or a loyalty.  This ingenuous little soldier,
yesterday a peasant of Bauce or Limousin, who prowls with his clasp-knife
by his side, around the children's nurses in the Luxembourg garden,
this pale young student bent over a piece of anatomy or a book,
a blond youth who shaves his beard with scissors,--take both of them,
breathe upon them with a breath of duty, place them face to face
in the Carrefour Boucherat or in the blind alley Planche-Mibray,
and let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal,
and let both of them imagine that they are fighting for their country;
the struggle will be colossal; and the shadow which this raw recruit
and this sawbones in conflict will produce in that grand epic field
where humanity is striving, will equal the shadow cast by Megaryon,
King of Lycia, tiger-filled, crushing in his embrace the immense
body of Ajax, equal to the gods.



CHAPTER XXII

FOOT TO FOOT


When there were no longer any of the leaders left alive,
except Enjolras and Marius at the two extremities of the barricade,
the centre, which had so long sustained Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet,
Feuilly and Combeferre, gave way.  The cannon, though it had not
effected a practicable breach, had made a rather large hollow
in the middle of the redoubt; there, the summit of the wall had
disappeared before the balls, and had crumbled away; and the rubbish
which had fallen, now inside, now outside, had, as it accumulated,
formed two piles in the nature of slopes on the two sides
of the barrier, one on the inside, the other on the outside. 
The exterior slope presented an inclined plane to the attack.

A final assault was there attempted, and this assault succeeded. 
The mass bristling with bayonets and hurled forward at a run,
came up with irresistible force, and the serried front of battle
of the attacking column made its appearance through the smoke
on the crest of the battlements.  This time, it was decisive. 
The group of insurgents who were defending the centre retreated
in confusion.

Then the gloomy love of life awoke once more in some of them. 
Many, finding themselves under the muzzles of this forest of guns,
did not wish to die.  This is a moment when the instinct of
self-preservation emits howls, when the beast re-appears in men. 
They were hemmed in by the lofty, six-story house which formed the
background of their redoubt.  This house might prove their salvation. 
The building was barricaded, and walled, as it were, from top to bottom. 
Before the troops of the line had reached the interior of the redoubt,
there was time for a door to open and shut, the space of a flash
of lightning was sufficient for that, and the door of that house,
suddenly opened a crack and closed again instantly, was life
for these despairing men.  Behind this house, there were streets,
possible flight, space.  They set to knocking at that door with the
butts of their guns, and with kicks, shouting, calling, entreating,
wringing their hands.  No one opened.  From the little window
on the third floor, the head of the dead man gazed down upon them.

But Enjolras and Marius, and the seven or eight rallied about them,
sprang forward and protected them.  Enjolras had shouted to
the soldiers:  "Don't advance!" and as an officer had not obeyed,
Enjolras had killed the officer.  He was now in the little inner court
of the redoubt, with his back planted against the Corinthe building,
a sword in one hand, a rifle in the other, holding open the door
of the wine-shop which he barred against assailants.  He shouted
to the desperate men:--"There is but one door open; this one."--
And shielding them with his body, and facing an entire battalion alone,
he made them pass in behind him.  All precipitated themselves thither. 
Enjolras, executing with his rifle, which he now used like a cane,
what single-stick players call a "covered rose" round his head,
levelled the bayonets around and in front of him, and was the last
to enter; and then ensued a horrible moment, when the soldiers tried
to make their way in, and the insurgents strove to bar them out. 
The door was slammed with such violence, that, as it fell back into
its frame, it showed the five fingers of a soldier who had been
clinging to it, cut off and glued to the post.

Marius remained outside.  A shot had just broken his collar bone,
he felt that he was fainting and falling.  At that moment, with eyes
already shut, he felt the shock of a vigorous hand seizing him,
and the swoon in which his senses vanished, hardly allowed him time
for the thought, mingled with a last memory of Cosette:--"I am
taken prisoner.  I shall be shot."

Enjolras, not seeing Marius among those who had taken refuge in
the wine-shop, had the same idea.  But they had reached a moment
when each man has not the time to meditate on his own death. 
Enjolras fixed the bar across the door, and bolted it, and double-locked
it with key and chain, while those outside were battering furiously
at it, the soldiers with the butts of their muskets, the sappers
with their axes.  The assailants were grouped about that door. 
The siege of the wine-shop was now beginning.

The soldiers, we will observe, were full of wrath.

The death of the artillery-sergeant had enraged them, and then,
a still more melancholy circumstance.  during the few hours which had
preceded the attack, it had been reported among them that the insurgents
were mutilating their prisoners, and that there was the headless body
of a soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usual
accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this
kind which, later on, produced the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain.

When the door was barricaded, Enjolras said to the others:

"Let us sell our lives dearly."

Then he approached the table on which lay Mabeuf and Gavroche. 
Beneath the black cloth two straight and rigid forms were visible,
one large, the other small, and the two faces were vaguely outlined
beneath the cold folds of the shroud.  A hand projected from beneath
the winding sheet and hung near the floor.  It was that of the
old man.

Enjolras bent down and kissed that venerable hand, just as he
had kissed his brow on the preceding evening.

These were the only two kisses which he had bestowed in the course
of his life.

Let us abridge the tale.  The barricade had fought like a gate
of Thebes; the wine-shop fought like a house of Saragossa. 
These resistances are dogged.  No quarter.  No flag of truce possible. 
Men are willing to die, provided their opponent will kill them.

When Suchet says:--"Capitulate,"--Palafox replies:  "After the war
with cannon, the war with knives."  Nothing was lacking in the capture
by assault of the Hucheloup wine-shop; neither paving-stones raining
from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating
the soldiers by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the
attic-windows and the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally,
when the door yielded, the frenzied madness of extermination. 
The assailants, rushing into the wine-shop, their feet entangled
in the panels of the door which had been beaten in and flung on
the ground, found not a single combatant there.  The spiral staircase,
hewn asunder with the axe, lay in the middle of the tap-room, a few
wounded men were just breathing their last, every one who was not
killed was on the first floor, and from there, through the hole
in the ceiling, which had formed the entrance of the stairs,
a terrific fire burst forth.  It was the last of their cartridges. 
When they were exhausted, when these formidable men on the point
of death had no longer either powder or ball, each grasped
in his hands two of the bottles which Enjolras had reserved,
and of which we have spoken, and held the scaling party in check
with these frightfully fragile clubs.  They were bottles of aquafortis.

We relate these gloomy incidents of carnage as they occurred. 
The besieged man, alas! converts everything into a weapon.  Greek fire
did not disgrace Archimedes, boiling pitch did not disgrace Bayard. 
All war is a thing of terror, and there is no choice in it. 
The musketry of the besiegers, though confined and embarrassed by
being directed from below upwards, was deadly.  The rim of the hole
in the ceiling was speedily surrounded by heads of the slain, whence
dripped long, red and smoking streams, the uproar was indescribable;
a close and burning smoke almost produced night over this combat. 
Words are lacking to express horror when it has reached this pitch. 
There were no longer men in this conflict, which was now infernal. 
They were no longer giants matched with colossi.  It resembled Milton
and Dante rather than Homer.  Demons attacked, spectres resisted.

It was heroism become monstrous.



CHAPTER XXIII

ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK


At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs,
aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up
the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink
of the trap-door, the last one who offered resistance, a score
of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen,
in utter confusion, the majority disfigured by wounds in the face during
that redoubtable ascent, blinded by blood, furious, rendered savage,
made an irruption into the apartment on the first floor.  There they
found only one man still on his feet, Enjolras.  Without cartridges,
without sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the barrel of his gun
whose stock he had broken over the head of those who were entering. 
He had placed the billiard table between his assailants and himself;
he had retreated into the corner of the room, and there, with haughty eye,
and head borne high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still
so alarming as to speedily create an empty space around him.  A cry arose:

"He is the leader!  It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is
well that he has placed himself there.  Let him remain there. 
Let us shoot him down on the spot."

"Shoot me," said Enjolras.

And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms,
he offered his breast.

The audacity of a fine death always affects men.  As soon as
Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife
ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort
of sepulchral solemnity.  The menacing majesty of Enjolras
disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this
young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound,
who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the
authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister
rabble to kill him respectfully.  His beauty, at that moment
augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy
after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed,
as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded.  It was
of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council
of war:  "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." 
A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered
his gun, saying:  "It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower."

Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras,
and silently made ready their guns.

Then a sergeant shouted:

"Take aim!"

An officer intervened.

"Wait."

And addressing Enjolras:

"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"

"No."

"Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?"

"Yes."

Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.

Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the
preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated
on a chair and leaning on the table.

He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of "dead drunk." 
The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown
him into a lethargy.  His table being small, and not suitable
for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it. 
He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over
the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses,
beer-jugs and bottles.  His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid
bear and the satiated leech.  Nothing had had any effect upon it,
neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot
which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. 
Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault.  He merely replied to
the cannonade, now and then, by a snore.  He seemed to be waiting
there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. 
Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance,
there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers
of death.

Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him.  The fall
of everything around him only augmented Grantaire's prostration;
the crumbling of all things was his lullaby.  The sort of halt which
the tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this
heavy slumber.  It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed,
which suddenly comes to a dead stop.  The persons dozing within it
wake up.  Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out
his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.

A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which
is torn away.  One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole,
all that it has concealed.  All suddenly presents itself to the memory;
and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place
during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than
he is perfectly informed.  Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity;
the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured
the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply
outlined importunity of realities.

Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the
billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras,
had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing
to repeat his order:  "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard
a strong voice shout beside them:

"Long live the Republic!  I'm one of them."

Grantaire had risen.  The immense gleam of the whole combat
which he had missed, and in which he had had no part,
appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.

He repeated:  "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm
stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.

"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.

And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:

"Do you permit it?"

Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.

This smile was not ended when the report resounded.

Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall,
as though the balls had nailed him there.  Only, his head was bowed.

Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.

A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last remaining insurgents,
who had taken refuge at the top of the house.  They fired into the
attic through a wooden lattice.  They fought under the very roof. 
They flung bodies, some of them still alive, out through the windows. 
Two light-infantrymen, who tried to lift the shattered omnibus,
were slain by two shots fired from the attic.  A man in a blouse was
flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and breathed
his last on the ground.  A soldier and an insurgent slipped together
on the sloping slates of the roof, and, as they would not release
each other, they fell, clasped in a ferocious embrace.  A similar
conflict went on in the cellar.  Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. 
Then silence.  The barricade was captured.

The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue
the fugitives.



CHAPTER XXIV

PRISONER


Marius was, in fact, a prisoner.

The hand which had seized him from behind and whose grasp he
had felt at the moment of his fall and his loss of consciousness
was that of Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had taken no other part in the combat than to expose
himself in it.  Had it not been for him, no one, in that supreme
phase of agony, would have thought of the wounded.  Thanks to him,
everywhere present in the carnage, like a providence, those who
fell were picked up, transported to the tap-room, and cared for. 
In the intervals, he reappeared on the barricade.  But nothing
which could resemble a blow, an attack or even personal defence
proceeded from his hands.  He held his peace and lent succor. 
Moreover he had received only a few scratches.  The bullets would
have none of him.  If suicide formed part of what he had meditated
on coming to this sepulchre, to that spot, he had not succeeded. 
But we doubt whether he had thought of suicide, an irreligious act.

Jean Valjean, in the thick cloud of the combat, did not appear to
see Marius; the truth is, that he never took his eyes from the latter. 
When a shot laid Marius low, Jean Valjean leaped forward with the
agility of a tiger, fell upon him as on his prey, and bore him off.

The whirlwind of the attack was, at that moment, so violently
concentrated upon Enjolras and upon the door of the wine-shop, that
no one saw Jean Valjean sustaining the fainting Marius in his arms,
traverse the unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind
the angle of the Corinthe building.

The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on
the street; it afforded shelter from the bullets, the grape-shot,
and all eyes, and a few square feet of space.  There is sometimes
a chamber which does not burn in the midst of a conflagration,
and in the midst of raging seas, beyond a promontory or at the
extremity of a blind alley of shoals, a tranquil nook.  It was
in this sort of fold in the interior trapezium of the barricade,
that Eponine had breathed her last.

There Jean Valjean halted, let Marius slide to the ground,
placed his back against the wall, and cast his eyes about him.

The situation was alarming.

For an instant, for two or three perhaps, this bit of wall was
a shelter, but how was he to escape from this massacre?  He recalled
the anguish which he had suffered in the Rue Polonceau eight
years before, and in what manner he had contrived to make his escape;
it was difficult then, to-day it was impossible.  He had before him
that deaf and implacable house, six stories in height, which appeared
to be inhabited only by a dead man leaning out of his window;
he had on his right the rather low barricade, which shut off the
Rue de la Petite Truanderie; to pass this obstacle seemed easy,
but beyond the crest of the barrier a line of bayonets was visible. 
The troops of the line were posted on the watch behind that barricade. 
It was evident, that to pass the barricade was to go in quest of the
fire of the platoon, and that any head which should run the risk
of lifting itself above the top of that wall of stones would serve
as a target for sixty shots.  On his left he had the field of battle. 
Death lurked round the corner of that wall.

What was to be done?

Only a bird could have extricated itself from this predicament.

And it was necessary to decide on the instant, to devise some
expedient, to come to some decision.  Fighting was going on a few
paces away; fortunately, all were raging around a single point,
the door of the wine-shop; but if it should occur to one soldier,
to one single soldier, to turn the corner of the house,
or to attack him on the flank, all was over.

Jean Valjean gazed at the house facing him, he gazed at the
barricade at one side of him, then he looked at the ground,
with the violence of the last extremity, bewildered,
and as though he would have liked to pierce a hole there with his eyes.

By dint of staring, something vaguely striking in such an agony
began to assume form and outline at his feet, as though it had
been a power of glance which made the thing desired unfold. 
A few paces distant he perceived, at the base of the small barrier
so pitilessly guarded and watched on the exterior, beneath a disordered
mass of paving-stones which partly concealed it, an iron grating,
placed flat and on a level with the soil.  This grating,
made of stout, transverse bars, was about two feet square. 
The frame of paving-stones which supported it had been torn up,
and it was, as it were, unfastened.

Through the bars a view could be had of a dark aperture,
something like the flue of a chimney, or the pipe of a cistern. 
Jean Valjean darted forward.  His old art of escape rose to his
brain like an illumination.  To thrust aside the stones, to raise
the grating, to lift Marius, who was as inert as a dead body,
upon his shoulders, to descend, with this burden on his loins,
and with the aid of his elbows and knees into that sort of well,
fortunately not very deep, to let the heavy trap, upon which the
loosened stones rolled down afresh, fall into its place behind him,
to gain his footing on a flagged surface three metres below
the surface,--all this was executed like that which one does
in dreams, with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of an eagle;
this took only a few minutes.

Jean Valjean found himself with Marius, who was still unconscious,
in a sort of long, subterranean corridor.

There reigned profound peace, absolute silence, night.

The impression which he had formerly experienced when falling
from the wall into the convent recurred to him.  Only, what he was
carrying to-day was not Cosette; it was Marius.  He could barely
hear the formidable tumult in the wine-shop, taken by assault,
like a vague murmur overhead.



BOOK SECOND.--THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN



CHAPTER I

THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA


Paris casts twenty-five millions yearly into the water.  And this
without metaphor.  How, and in what manner?  Day and night. 
With what object?  With no object.  With what intention? 
With no intention.  Why?  For no reason.  By means of what organ? 
By means of its intestine.  What is its intestine?  The sewer.

Twenty-five millions is the most moderate approximative figure
which the valuations of special science have set upon it.

Science, after having long groped about, now knows that the most
fecundating and the most efficacious of fertilizers is human manure. 
The Chinese, let us confess it to our shame, knew it before us. 
Not a Chinese peasant--it is Eckberg who says this,--goes to town without
bringing back with him, at the two extremities of his bamboo pole,
two full buckets of what we designate as filth.  Thanks to human dung,
the earth in China is still as young as in the days of Abraham. 
Chinese wheat yields a hundred fold of the seed.  There is no
guano comparable in fertility with the detritus of a capital. 
A great city is the most mighty of dung-makers. Certain success
would attend the experiment of employing the city to manure
the plain.  If our gold is manure, our manure, on the other hand,
is gold.

What is done with this golden manure?  It is swept into the abyss.

Fleets of vessels are despatched, at great expense, to collect the
dung of petrels and penguins at the South Pole, and the incalculable
element of opulence which we have on hand, we send to the sea. 
All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, restored to
the land instead of being cast into the water, would suffice
to nourish the world.

Those heaps of filth at the gate-posts, those tumbrils of mud
which jolt through the street by night, those terrible casks of
the street department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire,
which the pavements hide from you,--do you know what they are? 
They are the meadow in flower, the green grass, wild thyme,
thyme and sage, they are game, they are cattle, they are the satisfied
bellows of great oxen in the evening, they are perfumed hay, they are
golden wheat, they are the bread on your table, they are the warm
blood in your veins, they are health, they are joy, they are life. 
This is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation
on earth and transfiguration in heaven.

Restore this to the great crucible; your abundance will flow forth
from it.  The nutrition of the plains furnishes the nourishment
of men.

You have it in your power to lose this wealth, and to consider me
ridiculous to boot.  This will form the master-piece of your ignorance.

Statisticians have calculated that France alone makes a deposit
of half a milliard every year, in the Atlantic, through the mouths
of her rivers.  Note this:  with five hundred millions we could
pay one quarter of the expenses of our budget.  The cleverness
of man is such that he prefers to get rid of these five hundred
millions in the gutter.  It is the very substance of the people
that is carried off, here drop by drop, there wave after wave,
the wretched outpour of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic
collection of our rivers into the ocean.  Every hiccough of our
sewers costs us a thousand francs.  From this spring two results,
the land impoverished, and the water tainted.  Hunger arising
from the furrow, and disease from the stream.

It is notorious, for example, that at the present hour, the Thames
is poisoning London.

So far as Paris is concerned, it has become indispensable of late,
to transport the mouths of the sewers down stream, below the
last bridge.

A double tubular apparatus, provided with valves and sluices,
sucking up and driving back, a system of elementary drainage,
simple as the lungs of a man, and which is already in full working
order in many communities in England, would suffice to conduct
the pure water of the fields into our cities, and to send back
to the fields the rich water of the cities, and this easy exchange,
the simplest in the world, would retain among us the five hundred
millions now thrown away.  People are thinking of other things.

The process actually in use does evil, with the intention of doing good. 
The intention is good, the result is melancholy.  Thinking to purge
the city, the population is blanched like plants raised in cellars. 
A sewer is a mistake.  When drainage, everywhere, with its double
function, restoring what it takes, shall have replaced the sewer,
which is a simple impoverishing washing, then, this being combined
with the data of a now social economy, the product of the earth will
be increased tenfold, and the problem of misery will be singularly
lightened.  Add the suppression of parasitism, and it will be solved.

In the meanwhile, the public wealth flows away to the river,
and leakage takes place.  Leakage is the word.  Europe is being
ruined in this manner by exhaustion.

As for France, we have just cited its figures.  Now, Paris contains
one twenty-fifth of the total population of France, and Parisian
guano being the richest of all, we understate the truth when we value
the loss on the part of Paris at twenty-five millions in the half
milliard which France annually rejects.  These twenty-five millions,
employed in assistance and enjoyment, would double the splendor
of Paris.  The city spends them in sewers.  So that we may say that
Paris's great prodigality, its wonderful festival, its Beaujon folly,
its orgy, its stream of gold from full hands, its pomp, its luxury,
its magnificence, is its sewer system.

It is in this manner that, in the blindness of a poor
political economy, we drown and allow to float down
stream and to be lost in the gulfs the well-being
of all.  There should be nets at Saint-Cloud for the public fortune.

Economically considered, the matter can be summed up thus: 
Paris is a spendthrift.  Paris, that model city, that patron of
well-arranged capitals, of which every nation strives to possess a copy,
that metropolis of the ideal, that august country of the initiative,
of impulse and of effort, that centre and that dwelling of minds,
that nation-city, that hive of the future, that marvellous combination
of Babylon and Corinth, would make a peasant of the Fo-Kian shrug
his shoulders, from the point of view which we have just indicated.

Imitate Paris and you will ruin yourselves.

Moreover, and particularly in this immemorial and senseless waste,
Paris is itself an imitator.

These surprising exhibitions of stupidity are not novel;
this is no young folly.  The ancients did like the moderns. 
"The sewers of Rome," says Liebig, "have absorbed all the well-being
of the Roman peasant."  When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by
the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted Italy, and when she had put Italy
in her sewer, she poured in Sicily, then Sardinia, then Africa. 
The sewer of Rome has engulfed the world.  This cess-pool offered
its engulfment to the city and the universe.  Urbi et orbi. 
Eternal city, unfathomable sewer.

Rome sets the example for these things as well as for others.

Paris follows this example with all the stupidity peculiar
to intelligent towns.

For the requirements of the operation upon the subject of which we
have just explained our views, Paris has beneath it another Paris;
a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its cross-roads, its squares,
its blind-alleys, its arteries, and its circulation, which is of mire
and minus the human form.

For nothing must be flattered, not even a great people; where there
is everything there is also ignominy by the side of sublimity;
and, if Paris contains Athens, the city of light, Tyre, the city
of might, Sparta, the city of virtue, Nineveh, the city of marvels,
it also contains Lutetia, the city of mud.

However, the stamp of its power is there also, and the Titanic sink
of Paris realizes, among monuments, that strange ideal realized
in humanity by some men like Macchiavelli, Bacon and Mirabeau,
grandiose vileness.

The sub-soil of Paris, if the eye could penetrate its surface,
would present the aspect of a colossal madrepore.  A sponge has no
more partitions and ducts than the mound of earth for a circuit of six
leagues round about, on which rests the great and ancient city. 
Not to mention its catacombs, which are a separate cellar,
not to mention the inextricable trellis-work of gas pipes,
without reckoning the vast tubular system for the distribution
of fresh water which ends in the pillar fountains, the sewers
alone form a tremendous, shadowy net-work under the two banks;
a labyrinth which has its slope for its guiding thread.

There appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product
to which Paris has given birth.



CHAPTER II

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER


Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean
net-work of sewers, from a bird's eye view, will outline on the banks
a species of large branch grafted on the river.  On the right bank,
the belt sewer will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary
ducts will form the branches, and those without exit the twigs.

This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle,
which is the customary angle of this species of subterranean
ramifications, being very rare in vegetation.

A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed
by supposing that one is viewing some eccentric oriental alphabet,
as intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows,
and the misshapen letters should be welded one to another in
apparent confusion, and as at haphazard, now by their angles,
again by their extremities.

Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages,
in the Lower Empire and in the Orient of old.  The masses regarded
these beds of decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death,
with a fear that was almost religious.  The vermin ditch of Benares
is no less conducive to giddiness than the lions' ditch of Babylon. 
Teglath-Phalasar, according to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink
of Nineveh.  It was from the sewer of Munster that John of Leyden
produced his false moon, and it was from the cess-pool of Kekscheb
that oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Khorassan,
caused his false sun to emerge.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. 
The Germoniae[58] narrated Rome.  The sewer of Paris has been
an ancient and formidable thing.  It has been a sepulchre,
it has served as an asylum.  Crime, intelligence, social protest,
liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws persecute
or have persecuted, is hidden in that hole; the maillotins in the
fourteenth century, the tire-laine of the fifteenth, the Huguenots
in the sixteenth, Morin's illuminated in the seventeenth,
the chauffeurs [brigands] in the eighteenth.  A hundred years ago,
the nocturnal blow of the dagger emerged thence, the pickpocket in
danger slipped thither; the forest had its cave, Paris had its sewer. 
Vagrancy, that Gallic picareria, accepted the sewer as the adjunct
of the Cour des Miracles, and at evening, it returned thither,
fierce and sly, through the Maubuee outlet, as into a bed-chamber.


[58] Steps on the Aventine Hill, leading to the Tiber, to which the
bodies of executed criminals were dragged by hooks to be thrown
into the Tiber.


It was quite natural, that those who had the blind-alley Vide-Gousset,
[Empty-Pocket] or the Rue Coupe-Gorge [Cut-Throat], for the scene
of their daily labor, should have for their domicile by night
the culvert of the Chemin-Vert, or the catch basin of Hurepoix. 
Hence a throng of souvenirs.  All sorts of phantoms haunt these long,
solitary corridors; everywhere is putrescence and miasma;
here and there are breathing-holes, where Villon within converses
with Rabelais without.

The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions
and of all attempts.  Political economy therein spies a detritus,
social philosophy there beholds a residuum.

The sewer is the conscience of the city.  Everything there
converges and confronts everything else.  In that livid spot
there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets. 
Each thing bears its true form, or at least, its definitive form. 
The mass of filth has this in its favor, that it is not a liar. 
Ingenuousness has taken refuge there.  The mask of Basil is to be
found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its strings and the
inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated by honest mud. 
Scapin's false nose is its next-door neighbor.  All the uncleannesses
of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth,
where the immense social sliding ends.  They are there engulfed,
but they display themselves there.  This mixture is a confession. 
There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible,
filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout all
illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really exists,
presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end. 
There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a basket-handle
tells a tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has
entertained literary opinions becomes an apple-core once more;
the effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris,
Caiphas' spittle meets Falstaff's puking, the louis-d'or which comes
from the gaming-house jostles the nail whence hangs the rope's end
of the suicide.  a livid foetus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles
which danced at the Opera last Shrove-Tuesday, a cap which has
pronounced judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which
was formerly Margoton's petticoat; it is more than fraternization,
it is equivalent to addressing each other as thou.  All which was
formerly rouged, is washed free.  The last veil is torn away. 
A sewer is a cynic.  It tells everything.

The sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul.  When one
has passed one's time in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the
great airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity,
human justice, professional probity, the austerities of situation,
incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer
and to behold the mire which befits it.

This is instructive at the same time.  We have just said that history
passes through the sewer.  The Saint-Barthelemys filter through there,
drop by drop, between the paving-stones. Great public assassinations,
political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground
passage of civilization, and thrust their corpses there.  For the
eye of the thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there,
in that hideous penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their
winding-sheet for an apron, dismally sponging out their work. 
Louis XI.  is there with Tristan, Francois I. with Duprat, Charles IX. 
is there with his mother, Richelieu is there with Louis XIII.,
Louvois is there, Letellier is there, Hebert and Maillard are there,
scratching the stones, and trying to make the traces of their actions
disappear.  Beneath these vaults one hears the brooms of spectres. 
One there breathes the enormous fetidness of social catastrophes. 
One beholds reddish reflections in the corners.  There flows
a terrible stream, in which bloody hands have been washed.

The social observer should enter these shadows.  They form a part
of his laboratory.  Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. 
Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. 
Tergiversation is useless.  What side of oneself does one display
in evasions? the shameful side.  Philosophy pursues with its glance,
probes the evil, and does not permit it to escape into nothingness. 
In the obliteration of things which disappear, in the watching
of things which vanish, it recognizes all.  It reconstructs the
purple from the rag, and the woman from the scrap of her dress. 
From the cess-pool, it re-constitutes the city; from mud,
it reconstructs manners; from the potsherd it infers the amphora
or the jug.  By the imprint of a finger-nail on a piece of parchment,
it recognizes the difference which separates the Jewry of the Judengasse
from the Jewry of the Ghetto.  It re-discovers in what remains that
which has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of the palace,
the ink-blot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the brothel,
trials undergone, temptations welcomed, orgies cast forth,
the turn which characters have taken as they became abased,
the trace of prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered
them capable, and on the vesture of the porters of Rome the mark of
Messalina's elbowing.



CHAPTER III

BRUNESEAU


The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary.  In the
sixteenth century, Henri II.  attempted a bore, which failed. 
Not a hundred years ago, the cess-pool, Mercier attests the fact,
was abandoned to itself, and fared as best it might.

Such was this ancient Paris, delivered over to quarrels, to indecision,
and to gropings.  It was tolerably stupid for a long time. 
Later on, '89 showed how understanding comes to cities.  But in
the good, old times, the capital had not much head.  It did not
know how to manage its own affairs either morally or materially,
and could not sweep out filth any better than it could abuses. 
Everything presented an obstacle, everything raised a question. 
The sewer, for example, was refractory to every itinerary. 
One could no more find one's bearings in the sewer than one could
understand one's position in the city; above the unintelligible,
below the inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues there reigned
the confusion of caverns; Daedalus backed up Babel.

Sometimes the Paris sewer took a notion to overflow, as though
this misunderstood Nile were suddenly seized with a fit of rage. 
There occurred, infamous to relate, inundations of the sewer. 
At times, that stomach of civilization digested badly, the cess-pool
flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste
of her own filth.  These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had
their good points; they were warnings; very badly accepted, however;
the city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not
admit that the filth should return.  Drive it out better.

The inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of Parisians
of the age of eighty.  The mud spread in cross-form over the Place
des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV.; it entered the Rue
Saint-Honore by the two mouths to the sewer in the Champs-Elysees,
the Rue Saint-Florentin through the Saint-Florentin sewer,
the Rue Pierre-a-Poisson through the sewer de la Sonnerie,
the Rue Popincourt, through the sewer of the Chemin-Vert,
the Rue de la Roquette, through the sewer of the Rue de Lappe;
it covered the drain of the Rue des Champs-Elysees to the height
of thirty-five centimetres; and, to the South, through the vent of
the Seine, performing its functions in inverse sense, it penetrated
the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de l'Echaude, and the Rue des Marais,
where it stopped at a distance of one hundred and nine metres,
a few paces distant from the house in which Racine had lived,
respecting, in the seventeenth century, the poet more than the King. 
It attained its maximum depth in the Rue Saint-Pierre, where it
rose to the height of three feet above the flag-stones of the
water-spout, and its maximum length in the Rue Saint-Sabin, where it
spread out over a stretch two hundred and thirty-eight metres in length.

At the beginning of this century, the sewer of Paris was still
a mysterious place.  Mud can never enjoy a good fame; but in this
case its evil renown reached the verge of the terrible.  Paris knew,
in a confused way, that she had under her a terrible cavern. 
People talked of it as of that monstrous bed of Thebes in which
swarmed centipedes fifteen long feet in length, and which might have
served Behemoth for a bathtub.  The great boots of the sewermen
never ventured further than certain well-known points.  We were then
very near the epoch when the scavenger's carts, from the summit
of which Sainte-Foix fraternized with the Marquis de Crequi,
discharged their loads directly into the sewer.  As for cleaning out,--
that function was entrusted to the pouring rains which encumbered
rather than swept away.  Rome left some poetry to her sewer,
and called it the Gemoniae; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it
the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. 
The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to legend. 
The goblin was developed under the fetid covering of the Mouffetard sewer;
the corpses of the Marmousets had been cast into the sewer de
la Barillerie; Fagon attributed the redoubtable malignant fever of 1685
to the great hiatus of the sewer of the Marais, which remained yawning
until 1833 in the Rue Saint-Louis, almost opposite the sign of the
Gallant Messenger.  The mouth of the sewer of the Rue de la Mortellerie
was celebrated for the pestilences which had their source there;
with its grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth,
it was like a dragon's maw in that fatal street, breathing forth
hell upon men.  The popular imagination seasoned the sombre Parisian
sink with some indescribably hideous intermixture of the infinite. 
The sewer had no bottom.  The sewer was the lower world.  The idea
of exploring these leprous regions did not even occur to the police. 
To try that unknown thing, to cast the plummet into that shadow,
to set out on a voyage of discovery in that abyss--who would have dared? 
It was alarming.  Nevertheless, some one did present himself. 
The cess-pool had its Christopher Columbus.

One day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the
Emperor made in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, some Decres
or Cretet or other, came to the master's intimate levee. 
In the Carrousel there was audible the clanking of swords of all
those extraordinary soldiers of the great Republic, and of the
great Empire; then Napoleon's door was blocked with heroes;
men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the Adige, and from
the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, of Hoche,
of Kleber; the aerostiers of Fleurus, the grenadiers of Mayence,
the pontoon-builders of Genoa, hussars whom the Pyramids had looked
down upon, artillerists whom Junot's cannon-ball had spattered
with mud, cuirassiers who had taken by assault the fleet lying at
anchor in the Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge
of Lodi, others had accompanied Murat in the trenches of Mantua,
others had preceded Lannes in the hollow road of Montebello. 
The whole army of that day was present there, in the court-yard of
the Tuileries, represented by a squadron or a platoon, and guarding
Napoleon in repose; and that was the splendid epoch when the grand
army had Marengo behind it and Austerlitz before it.--"Sire,"
said the Minister of the Interior to Napoleon, "yesterday I saw
the most intrepid man in your Empire."--"What man is that?"
said the Emperor brusquely, "and what has he done?"--"He wants
to do something, Sire."--"What is it?"--"To visit the sewers of Paris."

This man existed and his name was Bruneseau.



CHAPTER IV


The visit took place.  It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal
battle against pestilence and suffocation.  It was, at the same time,
a voyage of discovery.  One of the survivors of this expedition,
an intelligent workingman, who was very young at the time, related curious
details with regard to it, several years ago, which Bruneseau thought
himself obliged to omit in his report to the prefect of police,
as unworthy of official style.  The processes of disinfection were,
at that epoch, extremely rudimentary.  Hardly had Bruneseau crossed
the first articulations of that subterranean network, when eight
laborers out of the twenty refused to go any further.  The operation
was complicated; the visit entailed the necessity of cleaning;
hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed;
to note the entrances of water, to count the gratings and the vents,
to lay out in detail the branches, to indicate the currents at
the point where they parted, to define the respective bounds of the
divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal
sewer, to measure the height under the key-stone of each drain,
and the width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the bottom,
in order to determine the arrangements with regard to the level
of each water-entrance, either of the bottom of the arch, or on
the soil of the street.  They advanced with toil.  The lanterns
pined away in the foul atmosphere.  From time to time, a fainting
sewerman was carried out.  At certain points, there were precipices. 
The soil had given away, the pavement had crumbled, the sewer
had changed into a bottomless well; they found nothing solid;
a man disappeared suddenly; they had great difficulty in getting
him out again.  On the advice of Fourcroy, they lighted large cages
filled with tow steeped in resin, from time to time, in spots
which had been sufficiently disinfected.  In some places, the wall
was covered with misshapen fungi,--one would have said tumors;
the very stone seemed diseased within this unbreathable atmosphere.

Bruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down hill.  At the point
of separation of the two water-conduits of the Grand-Hurleur, he
deciphered upon a projecting stone the date of 1550; this stone
indicated the limits where Philibert Delorme, charged by Henri II. 
with visiting the subterranean drains of Paris, had halted. 
This stone was the mark of the sixteenth century on the sewer;
Bruneseau found the handiwork of the seventeenth century once more
in the Ponceau drain of the old Rue Vielle-du-Temple, vaulted between
1600 and 1650; and the handiwork of the eighteenth in the western
section of the collecting canal, walled and vaulted in 1740. 
These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that of 1740,
were more cracked and decrepit than the masonry of the belt sewer,
which dated from 1412, an epoch when the brook of fresh water of
Menilmontant was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Sewer of Paris,
an advancement analogous to that of a peasant who should become first
valet de chambre to the King; something like Gros-Jean transformed
into Lebel.

Here and there, particularly beneath the Court-House, they thought
they recognized the hollows of ancient dungeons, excavated in the
very sewer itself.  Hideous in-pace. An iron neck-collar was hanging
in one of these cells.  They walled them all up.  Some of their finds
were singular; among others, the skeleton of an ourang-outan, who had
disappeared from the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a disappearance
probably connected with the famous and indisputable apparition of the
devil in the Rue des Bernardins, in the last year of the eighteenth
century.  The poor devil had ended by drowning himself in the sewer.

Beneath this long, arched drain which terminated at the Arche-Marion,
a perfectly preserved rag-picker's basket excited the admiration
of all connoisseurs.  Everywhere, the mire, which the sewermen came
to handle with intrepidity, abounded in precious objects, jewels of
gold and silver, precious stones, coins.  If a giant had filtered
this cesspool, he would have had the riches of centuries in his lair. 
At the point where the two branches of the Rue du Temple and of the
Rue Sainte-Avoye separate, they picked up a singular Huguenot medal
in copper, bearing on one side the pig hooded with a cardinal's hat,
and on the other, a wolf with a tiara on his head.

The most surprising rencounter was at the entrance to the Grand Sewer. 
This entrance had formerly been closed by a grating of which nothing
but the hinges remained.  From one of these hinges hung a dirty
and shapeless rag which, arrested there in its passage, no doubt,
had floated there in the darkness and finished its process of being
torn apart.  Bruneseau held his lantern close to this rag and
examined it.  It was of very fine batiste, and in one of the corners,
less frayed than the rest, they made out a heraldic coronet and
embroidered above these seven letters:  LAVBESP.  The crown was the
coronet of a Marquis, and the seven letters signified Laubespine. 
They recognized the fact, that what they had before their eyes
was a morsel of the shroud of Marat.  Marat in his youth had had
amorous intrigues.  This was when he was a member of the household
of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. 
From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady,
he had retained this sheet.  As a waif or a souvenir.  At his death,
as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house,
they buried him in it.  Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb
in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people
had enjoyed voluptuousness.  Bruneseau passed on.  They left that
rag where it hung; they did not put the finishing touch to it. 
Did this arise from scorn or from respect?  Marat deserved both. 
And then, destiny was there sufficiently stamped to make them
hesitate to touch it.  Besides, the things of the sepulchre must
be left in the spot which they select.  In short, the relic was
a strange one.  A Marquise had slept in it; Marat had rotted in it;
it had traversed the Pantheon to end with the rats of the sewer. 
This chamber rag, of which Watteau would formerly have joyfully
sketched every fold, had ended in becoming worthy of the fixed gaze
of Dante.

The whole visit to the subterranean stream of filth of Paris
lasted seven years, from 1805 to 1812.  As he proceeded,
Bruneseau drew, directed, and completed considerable works;
in 1808 he lowered the arch of the Ponceau, and, everywhere creating
new lines, he pushed the sewer, in 1809, under the Rue Saint-Denis
as far as the fountain of the Innocents; in 1810, under the Rue
Froidmanteau and under the Salpetriere; in 1811 under the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Peres, under the Rue du Mail, under the Rue de
l'Echarpe, under the Place Royale; in 1812, under the Rue de la Paix,
and under the Chaussee d'Antin. At the same time, he had the whole
net-work disinfected and rendered healthful.  In the second year
of his work, Bruneseau engaged the assistance of his son-in-law Nargaud.

It was thus that, at the beginning of the century, ancient society
cleansed its double bottom, and performed the toilet of its sewer. 
There was that much clean, at all events.

Tortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies,
jolted by eccentric elbows, mounting and descending illogically,
fetid, wild, fierce, submerged in obscurity, with cicatrices
on its pavements and scars on its walls, terrible,--such was,
retrospectively viewed, the antique sewer of Paris.  Ramifications in
every direction, crossings, of trenches, branches, goose-feet, stars,
as in military mines, coecum, blind alleys, vaults lined with saltpetre,
pestiferous pools, scabby sweats, on the walls, drops dripping
from the ceilings, darkness; nothing could equal the horror
of this old, waste crypt, the digestive apparatus of Babylon,
a cavern, ditch, gulf pierced with streets, a titanic mole-burrow,
where the mind seems to behold that enormous blind mole, the past,
prowling through the shadows, in the filth which has been splendor.

This, we repeat, was the sewer of the past.



CHAPTER V

PRESENT PROGRESS


To-day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, correct.  It almost
realizes the ideal of what is understood in England by the
word "respectable."  It is proper and grayish; laid out by rule
and line; one might almost say as though it came out of a bandbox. 
It resembles a tradesman who has become a councillor of state. 
One can almost see distinctly there.  The mire there comports
itself with decency.  At first, one might readily mistake it
for one of those subterranean corridors, which were so common
in former days, and so useful in flights of monarchs and princes,
in those good old times, "when the people loved their kings." 
The present sewer is a beautiful sewer; the pure style reigns there;
the classical rectilinear alexandrine which, driven out of poetry,
appears to have taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled
with all the stones of that long, dark and whitish vault;
each outlet is an arcade; the Rue de Rivoli serves as pattern even
in the sewer.  However, if the geometrical line is in place anywhere,
it is certainly in the drainage trench of a great city. 
There, everything should be subordinated to the shortest road. 
The sewer has, nowadays, assumed a certain official aspect. 
The very police reports, of which it sometimes forms the subject,
no longer are wanting in respect towards it.  The words which
characterize it in administrative language are sonorous and dignified. 
What used to be called a gut is now called a gallery; what used
to be called a hole is now called a surveying orifice.  Villon would
no longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging. 
This net-work of cellars has its immemorial population of prowlers,
rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time,
an aged and veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer
and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow tame,
so satisfied are they with their subterranean palace.  The cesspool
no longer retains anything of its primitive ferocity.  The rain,
which in former days soiled the sewer, now washes it.  Nevertheless,
do not trust yourself too much to it.  Miasmas still inhabit it. 
It is more hypocritical than irreproachable.  The prefecture
of police and the commission of health have done their best. 
But, in spite of all the processes of disinfection, it exhales,
a vague, suspicious odor like Tartuffe after confession.

Let us confess, that, taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage
which the sewer pays to civilization, and as, from this point of view,
Tartuffe's conscience is a progress over the Augean stables,
it is certain that the sewers of Paris have been improved.

It is more than progress; it is transmutation.  Between the ancient
and the present sewer there is a revolution.  What has effected
this revolution?

The man whom all the world forgets, and whom we have mentioned, Bruneseau.



CHAPTER VI

FUTURE PROGRESS


The excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight task. 
The last ten centuries have toiled at it without being able to
bring it to a termination, any more than they have been able to
finish Paris.  The sewer, in fact, receives all the counter-shocks
of the growth of Paris.  Within the bosom of the earth, it is a sort
of mysterious polyp with a thousand antennae, which expands below
as the city expands above.  Every time that the city cuts a street,
the sewer stretches out an arm.  The old monarchy had constructed
only twenty-three thousand three hundred metres of sewers; that was
where Paris stood in this respect on the first of January, 1806. 
Beginning with this epoch, of which we shall shortly speak,
the work was usefully and energetically resumed and prosecuted;
Napoleon built--the figures are curious--four thousand eight
hundred and four metres; Louis XVIII., five thousand seven hundred
and nine; Charles X., ten thousand eight hundred and thirty-six;
Louis-Philippe, eighty-nine thousand and twenty; the Republic
of 1848, twenty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one;
the present government, seventy thousand five hundred; in all,
at the present time, two hundred and twenty-six thousand six hundred
and ten metres; sixty leagues of sewers; the enormous entrails
of Paris.  An obscure ramification ever at work; a construction
which is immense and ignored.

As the reader sees, the subterranean labyrinth of Paris is to-day
more than ten times what it was at the beginning of the century. 
It is difficult to form any idea of all the perseverance and the efforts
which have been required to bring this cess-pool to the point of
relative perfection in which it now is.  It was with great difficulty
that the ancient monarchical provostship and, during the last ten
years of the eighteenth century, the revolutionary mayoralty,
had succeeded in perforating the five leagues of sewer which existed
previous to 1806.  All sorts of obstacles hindered this operation,
some peculiar to the soil, others inherent in the very prejudices
of the laborious population of Paris.  Paris is built upon a soil
which is singularly rebellious to the pick, the hoe, the bore,
and to human manipulation.  There is nothing more difficult to
pierce and to penetrate than the geological formation upon which
is superposed the marvellous historical formation called Paris;
as soon as work in any form whatsoever is begun and adventures
upon this stretch of alluvium, subterranean resistances abound. 
There are liquid clays, springs, hard rocks, and those soft
and deep quagmires which special science calls moutardes.[59]
The pick advances laboriously through the calcareous layers
alternating with very slender threads of clay, and schistose beds
in plates incrusted with oyster-shells, the contemporaries of the
pre-Adamite oceans.  Sometimes a rivulet suddenly bursts through
a vault that has been begun, and inundates the laborers; or a layer
of marl is laid bare, and rolls down with the fury of a cataract,
breaking the stoutest supporting beams like glass.  Quite recently,
at Villette, when it became necessary to pass the collecting sewer
under the Saint-Martin canal without interrupting navigation or
emptying the canal, a fissure appeared in the basin of the canal,
water suddenly became abundant in the subterranean tunnel, which was
beyond the power of the pumping engines; it was necessary to send
a diver to explore the fissure which had been made in the narrow
entrance of the grand basin, and it was not without great difficulty
that it was stopped up.  Elsewhere near the Seine, and even at a
considerable distance from the river, as for instance, at Belleville,
Grand-Rue and Lumiere Passage, quicksands are encountered in which
one sticks fast, and in which a man sinks visibly.  Add suffocation
by miasmas, burial by slides, and sudden crumbling of the earth. 
Add the typhus, with which the workmen become slowly impregnated. 
In our own day, after having excavated the gallery of Clichy,
with a banquette to receive the principal water-conduit of Ourcq,
a piece of work which was executed in a trench ten metres deep;
after having, in the midst of land-slides, and with the aid of
excavations often putrid, and of shoring up, vaulted the Bievre
from the Boulevard de l'Hopital, as far as the Seine; after having,
in order to deliver Paris from the floods of Montmartre and in order
to provide an outlet for that river-like pool nine hectares in extent,
which crouched near the Barriere des Martyrs, after having,
let us state, constructed the line of sewers from the Barriere Blanche
to the road of Aubervilliers, in four months, working day and night,
at a depth of eleven metres; after having--a thing heretofore unseen--
made a subterranean sewer in the Rue Barre-du-Bec, without a trench,
six metres below the surface, the superintendent, Monnot, died. 
After having vaulted three thousand metres of sewer in all quarters
of the city, from the Rue Traversiere-Saint-Antoine to the Rue de
l'Ourcine, after having freed the Carrefour Censier-Mouffetard
from inundations of rain by means of the branch of the Arbalete,
after having built the Saint-Georges sewer, on rock and concrete
in the fluid sands, after having directed the formidable lowering of
the flooring of the vault timber in the Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth branch,
Duleau the engineer died.  There are no bulletins for such acts of
bravery as these, which are more useful, nevertheless, than the brutal
slaughter of the field of battle.


[59] Mustards.


The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are
to-day. Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was
required to bring about the vast reconstruction which took place
later on.  It is surprising to say, for example, that in 1821,
a part of the belt sewer, called the Grand Canal, as in Venice,
still stood stagnating uncovered to the sky, in the Rue des Gourdes. 
It was only in 1821 that the city of Paris found in its pocket
the two hundred and sixty-thousand eighty francs and six centimes
required for covering this mass of filth.  The three absorbing
wells, of the Combat, the Cunette, and Saint-Mande, with their
discharging mouths, their apparatus, their cesspools, and their
depuratory branches, only date from 1836.  The intestinal sewer
of Paris has been made over anew, and, as we have said, it has
been extended more than tenfold within the last quarter of a century.

Thirty years ago, at the epoch of the insurrection of the 5th and 6th
of June, it was still, in many localities, nearly the same ancient sewer. 
A very great number of streets which are now convex were then
sunken causeways.  At the end of a slope, where the tributaries
of a street or cross-roads ended, there were often to be seen large,
square gratings with heavy bars, whose iron, polished by the footsteps
of the throng, gleamed dangerous and slippery for vehicles,
and caused horses to fall.  The official language of the Roads
and Bridges gave to these gratings the expressive name of Cassis.[60]


[60] From casser, to break:  break-necks.


In 1832, in a number of streets, in the Rue de l'Etoile, the Rue
Saint-Louis, the Rue du Temple, the Rue Vielle-duTemple, the Rue
Notre-Dame de Nazareth, the Rue Folie-Mericourt, the Quai aux Fleurs,
the Rue du Petit-Muse, the Rue du Normandie, the Rue Pont-Aux-Biches,
the Rue des Marais, the Faubourg Saint-Martin, the Rue Notre Dame
des-Victoires, the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Grange-Bateliere,
in the Champs-Elysees, the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon,
the ancient gothic sewer still cynically displayed its maw. 
It consisted of enormous voids of stone catch-basins sometimes
surrounded by stone posts, with monumental effrontery.

Paris in 1806 still had nearly the same sewers numerically as stated
in 1663; five thousand three hundred fathoms.  After Bruneseau,
on the 1st of January, 1832, it had forty thousand three hundred metres. 
Between 1806 and 1831, there had been built, on an average,
seven hundred and fifty metres annually, afterwards eight and even
ten thousand metres of galleries were constructed every year,
in masonry, of small stones, with hydraulic mortar which hardens
under water, on a cement foundation.  At two hundred francs the metre,
the sixty leagues of Paris' sewers of the present day represent
forty-eight millions.

In addition to the economic progress which we have indicated
at the beginning, grave problems of public hygiene are connected
with that immense question:  the sewers of Paris.

Paris is the centre of two sheets, a sheet of water and a sheet of air. 
The sheet of water, lying at a tolerably great depth underground,
but already sounded by two bores, is furnished by the layer of green
clay situated between the chalk and the Jurassic lime-stone; this layer
may be represented by a disk five and twenty leagues in circumference;
a multitude of rivers and brooks ooze there; one drinks the Seine,
the Marne, the Yonne, the Oise, the Aisne, the Cher, the Vienne
and the Loire in a glass of water from the well of Grenelle. 
The sheet of water is healthy, it comes from heaven in the first
place and next from the earth; the sheet of air is unhealthy,
it comes from the sewer.  All the miasms of the cess-pool are mingled
with the breath of the city; hence this bad breath.  The air taken
from above a dung-heap, as has been scientifically proved, is purer
than the air taken from above Paris.  In a given time, with the aid
of progress, mechanisms become perfected, and as light increases,
the sheet of water will be employed to purify the sheet of air;
that is to say, to wash the sewer.  The reader knows, that by "washing
the sewer" we mean:  the restitution of the filth to the earth;
the return to the soil of dung and of manure to the fields. 
Through this simple act, the entire social community will
experience a diminution of misery and an augmentation of health. 
At the present hour, the radiation of diseases from Paris extends
to fifty leagues around the Louvre, taken as the hub of this
pestilential wheel.

We might say that, for ten centuries, the cess-pool has been the disease
of Paris.  The sewer is the blemish which Paris has in her blood. 
The popular instinct has never been deceived in it.  The occupation
of sewermen was formerly almost as perilous, and almost as repugnant
to the people, as the occupation of knacker, which was so long
held in horror and handed over to the executioner.  High wages
were necessary to induce a mason to disappear in that fetid mine;
the ladder of the cess-pool cleaner hesitated to plunge into it;
it was said, in proverbial form:  "to descend into the sewer is to
enter the grave;" and all sorts of hideous legends, as we have said,
covered this colossal sink with terror; a dread sink-hole which bears
the traces of the revolutions of the globe as of the revolutions
of man, and where are to be found vestiges of all cataclysms from
the shells of the Deluge to the rag of Marat.



BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL



CHAPTER I

THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES


It was in the sewers of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself.

Still another resemblance between Paris and the sea.  As in the ocean,
the diver may disappear there.

The transition was an unheard-of one.  In the very heart of the city,
Jean Valjean had escaped from the city, and, in the twinkling of
an eye, in the time required to lift the cover and to replace it,
he had passed from broad daylight to complete obscurity,
from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind
of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude
far more tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau,
from the most extreme peril to the most absolute obscurity.

An abrupt fall into a cavern; a disappearance into the secret
trap-door of Paris; to quit that street where death was on
every side, for that sort of sepulchre where there was life,
was a strange instant.  He remained for several seconds as
though bewildered; listening, stupefied.  The waste-trap of safety
had suddenly yawned beneath him.  Celestial goodness had, in
a manner, captured him by treachery.  Adorable ambuscades of providence!

Only, the wounded man did not stir, and Jean Valjean did not know
whether that which he was carrying in that grave was a living being
or a dead corpse.

His first sensation was one of blindness.  All of a sudden,
he could see nothing.  It seemed to him too, that, in one instant,
he had become deaf.  He no longer heard anything.  The frantic
storm of murder which had been let loose a few feet above his
head did not reach him, thanks to the thickness of the earth
which separated him from it, as we have said, otherwise than
faintly and indistinctly, and like a rumbling, in the depths. 
He felt that the ground was solid under his feet; that was all;
but that was enough.  He extended one arm and then the other,
touched the walls on both sides, and perceived that the passage
was narrow; he slipped, and thus perceived that the pavement was wet. 
He cautiously put forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf;
he discovered that the paving continued.  A gust of fetidness informed
him of the place in which he stood.

After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind.  A little light
fell through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his eyes
became accustomed to this cavern.  He began to distinguish something. 
The passage in which he had burrowed--no other word can better
express the situation--was walled in behind him.  It was one
of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches. 
In front of him there was another wall, a wall like night. 
The light of the air-hole died out ten or twelve paces from the point
where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres
of the damp walls of the sewer.  Beyond, the opaqueness was massive;
to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into it appeared
like an engulfment.  A man could, however, plunge into that wall
of fog and it was necessary so to do.  Haste was even requisite. 
It occurred to Jean Valjean that the grating which he had caught sight
of under the flag-stones might also catch the eye of the soldiery,
and that everything hung upon this chance.  They also might descend
into that well and search it.  There was not a minute to be lost. 
He had deposited Marius on the ground, he picked him up again,--
that is the real word for it,--placed him on his shoulders once more,
and set out.  He plunged resolutely into the gloom.

The truth is, that they were less safe than Jean Valjean fancied. 
Perils of another sort and no less serious were awaiting them,
perchance.  After the lightning-charged whirlwind of the combat,
the cavern of miasmas and traps; after chaos, the sewer. 
Jean Valjean had fallen from one circle of hell into another.

When he had advanced fifty paces, he was obliged to halt.  A problem
presented itself.  The passage terminated in another gut which he
encountered across his path.  There two ways presented themselves. 
Which should he take?  Ought he to turn to the left or to the right? 
How was he to find his bearings in that black labyrinth? 
This labyrinth, to which we have already called the reader's attention,
has a clue, which is its slope.  To follow to the slope is to arrive
at the river.

This Jean Valjean instantly comprehended.

He said to himself that he was probably in the sewer des Halles;
that if he were to choose the path to the left and follow the slope,
he would arrive, in less than a quarter of an hour, at some mouth on
the Seine between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf, that is to say,
he would make his appearance in broad daylight on the most densely
peopled spot in Paris.  Perhaps he would come out on some man-hole
at the intersection of streets.  Amazement of the passers-by at
beholding two bleeding men emerge from the earth at their feet. 
Arrival of the police, a call to arms of the neighboring post
of guards.  Thus they would be seized before they had even got out. 
It would be better to plunge into that labyrinth, to confide
themselves to that black gloom, and to trust to Providence for
the outcome.

He ascended the incline, and turned to the right.

When he had turned the angle of the gallery, the distant glimmer
of an air-hole disappeared, the curtain of obscurity fell upon him
once more, and he became blind again.  Nevertheless, he advanced
as rapidly as possible.  Marius' two arms were passed round
his neck, and the former's feet dragged behind him.  He held
both these arms with one hand, and groped along the wall with
the other.  Marius' cheek touched his, and clung there, bleeding. 
He felt a warm stream which came from Marius trickling down upon
him and making its way under his clothes.  But a humid warmth
near his ear, which the mouth of the wounded man touched,
indicated respiration, and consequently, life.  The passage along
which Jean Valjean was now proceeding was not so narrow as the first. 
Jean Valjean walked through it with considerable difficulty. 
The rain of the preceding day had not, as yet, entirely run off,
and it created a little torrent in the centre of the bottom, and he
was forced to hug the wall in order not to have his feet in the water.

Thus he proceeded in the gloom.  He resembled the beings of the
night groping in the invisible and lost beneath the earth in veins
of shadow.

Still, little by little, whether it was that the distant air-holes
emitted a little wavering light in this opaque gloom, or whether
his eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity, some vague vision
returned to him, and he began once more to gain a confused idea,
now of the wall which he touched, now of the vault beneath which he
was passing.  The pupil dilates in the dark, and the soul dilates
in misfortune and ends by finding God there.

It was not easy to direct his course.

The line of the sewer re-echoes, so to speak, the line of the
streets which lie above it.  There were then in Paris two thousand
two hundred streets.  Let the reader imagine himself beneath
that forest of gloomy branches which is called the sewer. 
The system of sewers existing at that epoch, placed end to end,
would have given a length of eleven leagues.  We have said above,
that the actual net-work, thanks to the special activity of the
last thirty years, was no less than sixty leagues in extent.

Jean Valjean began by committing a blunder.  He thought that he was
beneath the Rue Saint-Denis, and it was a pity that it was not so. 
Under the Rue Saint-Denis there is an old stone sewer which dates
from Louis XIII.  and which runs straight to the collecting sewer,
called the Grand Sewer, with but a single elbow, on the right,
on the elevation of the ancient Cour des Miracles, and a single branch,
the Saint-Martin sewer, whose four arms describe a cross.  But the gut
of the Petite-Truanderie the entrance to which was in the vicinity
of the Corinthe wine-shop has never communicated with the sewer
of the Rue Saint-Denis; it ended at the Montmartre sewer, and it
was in this that Jean Valjean was entangled.  There opportunities
of losing oneself abound.  The Montmartre sewer is one of the most
labyrinthine of the ancient network.  Fortunately, Jean Valjean
had left behind him the sewer of the markets whose geometrical plan
presents the appearance of a multitude of parrots' roosts piled on
top of each other; but he had before him more than one embarrassing
encounter and more than one street corner--for they are streets--
presenting itself in the gloom like an interrogation point;
first, on his left, the vast sewer of the Platriere, a sort of
Chinese puzzle, thrusting out and entangling its chaos of Ts and Zs
under the Post-Office and under the rotunda of the Wheat Market,
as far as the Seine, where it terminates in a Y; secondly,
on his right, the curving corridor of the Rue du Cadran with its
three teeth, which are also blind courts; thirdly, on his left,
the branch of the Mail, complicated, almost at its inception,
with a sort of fork, and proceeding from zig-zag to zig-zag
until it ends in the grand crypt of the outlet of the Louvre,
truncated and ramified in every direction; and lastly, the blind
alley of a passage of the Rue des Jeuneurs, without counting little
ducts here and there, before reaching the belt sewer, which alone
could conduct him to some issue sufficiently distant to be safe.

Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here pointed out,
he would speedily have perceived, merely by feeling the wall,
that he was not in the subterranean gallery of the Rue Saint-Denis.
Instead of the ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture,
haughty and royal even in the sewer, with pavement and string courses
of granite and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom,
he would have felt under his hand contemporary cheapness,
economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a
concrete foundation, which costs two hundred francs the metre,
and the bourgeoise masonry known as a petits materiaux--small stuff;
but of all this he knew nothing.

He advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing nothing,
knowing nothing, buried in chance, that is to say, engulfed in providence.

By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him. 
The gloom which enveloped him penetrated his spirit.  He walked
in an enigma.  This aqueduct of the sewer is formidable;
it interlaces in a dizzy fashion.  It is a melancholy thing to be
caught in this Paris of shadows.  Jean Valjean was obliged to find
and even to invent his route without seeing it.  In this unknown,
every step that he risked might be his last.  How was he to get
out? should he find an issue? should he find it in time? would
that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities,
allow itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there encounter
some unexpected knot in the darkness? should he arrive at the
inextricable and the impassable? would Marius die there of hemorrhage
and he of hunger? should they end by both getting lost, and by
furnishing two skeletons in a nook of that night?  He did not know. 
He put all these questions to himself without replying to them. 
The intestines of Paris form a precipice.  Like the prophet,
he was in the belly of the monster.

All at once, he had a surprise.  At the most unforeseen moment,
and without having ceased to walk in a straight line, he perceived
that he was no longer ascending; the water of the rivulet was
beating against his heels, instead of meeting him at his toes. 
The sewer was now descending.  Why?  Was he about to arrive
suddenly at the Seine?  This danger was a great one, but the peril
of retreating was still greater.  He continued to advance.

It was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding.  The ridge
which the soil of Paris forms on its right bank empties one of its
water-sheds into the Seine and the other into the Grand Sewer. 
The crest of this ridge which determines the division of the waters
describes a very capricious line.  The culminating point, which is
the point of separation of the currents, is in the Sainte-Avoye sewer,
beyond the Rue Michelle-Comte, in the sewer of the Louvre,
near the boulevards, and in the Montmartre sewer, near the Halles. 
It was this culminating point that Jean Valjean had reached.  He was
directing his course towards the belt sewer; he was on the right path. 
But he did not know it.

Every time that he encountered a branch, he felt of its angles,
and if he found that the opening which presented itself was smaller
than the passage in which he was, he did not enter but continued
his route, rightly judging that every narrower way must needs terminate
in a blind alley, and could only lead him further from his goal,
that is to say, the outlet.  Thus he avoided the quadruple trap
which was set for him in the darkness by the four labyrinths
which we have just enumerated.

At a certain moment, he perceived that he was emerging from beneath
the Paris which was petrified by the uprising, where the barricades
had suppressed circulation, and that he was entering beneath the living
and normal Paris.  Overhead he suddenly heard a noise as of thunder,
distant but continuous.  It was the rumbling of vehicles.

He had been walking for about half an hour, at least according
to the calculation which he made in his own mind, and he had not
yet thought of rest; he had merely changed the hand with which he
was holding Marius.  The darkness was more profound than ever,
but its very depth reassured him.

All at once, he saw his shadow in front of him.  It was outlined
on a faint, almost indistinct reddish glow, which vaguely empurpled
the flooring vault underfoot, and the vault overhead, and gilded
to his right and to his left the two viscous walls of the passage. 
Stupefied, he turned round.

Behind him, in the portion of the passage which he had just
passed through, at a distance which appeared to him immense,
piercing the dense obscurity, flamed a sort of horrible star
which had the air of surveying him.

It was the gloomy star of the police which was rising in the sewer.

In the rear of that star eight or ten forms were moving about
in a confused way, black, upright, indistinct, horrible.



CHAPTER II

EXPLANATION


On the day of the sixth of June, a battue of the sewers had been ordered. 
It was feared that the vanquished might have taken to them for refuge,
and Prefect Gisquet was to search occult Paris while General
Bugeaud swept public Paris; a double and connected operation
which exacted a double strategy on the part of the public force,
represented above by the army and below by the police.  Three squads
of agents and sewermen explored the subterranean drain of Paris,
the first on the right bank, the second on the left bank, the third
in the city.  The agents of police were armed with carabines,
with bludgeons, swords and poignards.

That which was directed at Jean Valjean at that moment, was the
lantern of the patrol of the right bank.

This patrol had just visited the curving gallery and the three
blind alleys which lie beneath the Rue du Cadran.  While they were
passing their lantern through the depths of these blind alleys,
Jean Valjean had encountered on his path the entrance to the gallery,
had perceived that it was narrower than the principal passage
and had not penetrated thither.  He had passed on.  The police,
on emerging from the gallery du Cadran, had fancied that they
heard the sound of footsteps in the direction of the belt sewer. 
They were, in fact, the steps of Jean Valjean.  The sergeant in
command of the patrol had raised his lantern, and the squad had begun
to gaze into the mist in the direction whence the sound proceeded.

This was an indescribable moment for Jean Valjean.

Happily, if he saw the lantern well, the lantern saw him but ill. 
It was light and he was shadow.  He was very far off, and mingled
with the darkness of the place.  He hugged the wall and halted. 
Moreover, he did not understand what it was that was moving behind him. 
The lack of sleep and food, and his emotions had caused him also to
pass into the state of a visionary.  He beheld a gleam, and around
that gleam, forms.  What was it?  He did not comprehend.

Jean Valjean having paused, the sound ceased.

The men of the patrol listened, and heard nothing, they looked
and saw nothing.  They held a consultation.

There existed at that epoch at this point of the Montmartre
sewer a sort of cross-roads called de service, which was
afterwards suppressed, on account of the little interior lake which
formed there, swallowing up the torrent of rain in heavy storms. 
The patrol could form a cluster in this open space.  Jean Valjean
saw these spectres form a sort of circle.  These bull-dogs'
heads approached each other closely and whispered together.

The result of this council held by the watch dogs was, that they
had been mistaken, that there had been no noise, that it was useless
to get entangled in the belt sewer, that it would only be a waste
of time, but that they ought to hasten towards Saint-Merry;
that if there was anything to do, and any "bousingot" to track out,
it was in that quarter.

From time to time, parties re-sole their old insults.  In 1832,
the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin,
which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since
rendered such excellent service.

The sergeant gave orders to turn to the left, towards the watershed
of the Seine.

If it had occurred to them to separate into two squads, and to go
in both directions, Jean Valjean would have been captured. 
All hung on that thread.  It is probable that the instructions
of the prefecture, foreseeing a possibility of combat and
insurgents in force, had forbidden the patrol to part company. 
The patrol resumed its march, leaving Jean Valjean behind it. 
Of all this movement, Jean Valjean perceived nothing, except the
eclipse of the lantern which suddenly wheeled round.

Before taking his departure, the Sergeant, in order to acquit
his policeman's conscience, discharged his gun in the direction of
Jean Valjean.  The detonation rolled from echo to echo in the crypt,
like the rumbling of that titanic entrail.  A bit of plaster which
fell into the stream and splashed up the water a few paces away from
Jean Valjean, warned him that the ball had struck the arch over his head.

Slow and measured steps resounded for some time on the timber work,
gradually dying away as they retreated to a greater distance;
the group of black forms vanished, a glimmer of light oscillated
and floated, communicating to the vault a reddish glow which grew
fainter, then disappeared; the silence became profound once more,
the obscurity became complete, blindness and deafness resumed
possession of the shadows; and Jean Valjean, not daring to stir as yet,
remained for a long time leaning with his back against the wall,
with straining ears, and dilated pupils, watching the disappearance
of that phantom patrol.



CHAPTER III

THE "SPUN" MAN


This justice must be rendered to the police of that period,
that even in the most serious public junctures, it imperturbably
fulfilled its duties connected with the sewers and surveillance. 
A revolt was, in its eyes, no pretext for allowing malefactors
to take the bit in their own mouths, and for neglecting society
for the reason that the government was in peril.  The ordinary
service was performed correctly in company with the extraordinary
service, and was not troubled by the latter.  In the midst of an
incalculable political event already begun, under the pressure
of a possible revolution, a police agent, "spun" a thief without
allowing himself to be distracted by insurrection and barricades.

It was something precisely parallel which took place on the
afternoon of the 6th of June on the banks of the Seine, on the
slope of the right shore, a little beyond the Pont des Invalides.

There is no longer any bank there now.  The aspect of the locality
has changed.

On that bank, two men, separated by a certain distance,
seemed to be watching each other while mutually avoiding
each other.  The one who was in advance was trying to get away,
the one in the rear was trying to overtake the other.

It was like a game of checkers played at a distance and in silence. 
Neither seemed to be in any hurry, and both walked slowly, as though
each of them feared by too much haste to make his partner redouble
his pace.

One would have said that it was an appetite following its prey,
and purposely without wearing the air of doing so.  The prey was
crafty and on its guard.

The proper relations between the hunted pole-cat and the hunting dog
were observed.  The one who was seeking to escape had an insignificant
mien and not an impressive appearance; the one who was seeking
to seize him was rude of aspect, and must have been rude to encounter.

The first, conscious that he was the more feeble, avoided the second;
but he avoided him in a manner which was deeply furious; any one
who could have observed him would have discerned in his eyes the
sombre hostility of flight, and all the menace that fear contains.

The shore was deserted; there were no passers-by; not even a boatman
nor a lighter-man was in the skiffs which were moored here and there.

It was not easy to see these two men, except from the quay opposite,
and to any person who had scrutinized them at that distance,
the man who was in advance would have appeared like a bristling,
tattered, and equivocal being, who was uneasy and trembling beneath
a ragged blouse, and the other like a classic and official personage,
wearing the frock-coat of authority buttoned to the chin.

Perchance the reader might recognize these two men, if he were
to see them closer at hand.

What was the object of the second man?

Probably to succeed in clothing the first more warmly.

When a man clothed by the state pursues a man in rags, it is in order
to make of him a man who is also clothed by the state.  Only, the whole
question lies in the color.  To be dressed in blue is glorious;
to be dressed in red is disagreeable.

There is a purple from below.

It is probably some unpleasantness and some purple of this sort
which the first man is desirous of shirking.

If the other allowed him to walk on, and had not seized him as yet,
it was, judging from all appearances, in the hope of seeing him lead up
to some significant meeting-place and to some group worth catching. 
This delicate operation is called "spinning."

What renders this conjecture entirely probable is that the
buttoned-up man, on catching sight from the shore of a hackney-coach
on the quay as it was passing along empty, made a sign to the driver;
the driver understood, evidently recognized the person with whom
he had to deal, turned about and began to follow the two men
at the top of the quay, at a foot-pace. This was not observed
by the slouching and tattered personage who was in advance.

The hackney-coach rolled along the trees of the Champs-Elysees.
The bust of the driver, whip in hand, could be seen moving along
above the parapet.

One of the secret instructions of the police authorities to their
agents contains this article:  "Always have on hand a hackney-coach,
in case of emergency."

While these two men were manoeuvring, each on his own side,
with irreproachable strategy, they approached an inclined plane on
the quay which descended to the shore, and which permitted cab-drivers
arriving from Passy to come to the river and water their horses. 
This inclined plane was suppressed later on, for the sake of symmetry;
horses may die of thirst, but the eye is gratified.

It is probable that the man in the blouse had intended to ascend
this inclined plane, with a view to making his escape into the
Champs-Elysees, a place ornamented with trees, but, in return,

much infested with policemen, and where the other could easily
exercise violence.

This point on the quay is not very far distant from the house brought
to Paris from Moret in 1824, by Colonel Brack, and designated
as "the house of Francois I." A guard house is situated close at hand.

To the great surprise of his watcher, the man who was being tracked
did not mount by the inclined plane for watering.  He continued
to advance along the quay on the shore.

His position was visibly becoming critical.

What was he intending to do, if not to throw himself into the Seine?

Henceforth, there existed no means of ascending to the quay;
there was no other inclined plane, no staircase; and they were near
the spot, marked by the bend in the Seine towards the Pont de Jena,
where the bank, growing constantly narrower, ended in a slender tongue,
and was lost in the water.  There he would inevitably find himself
blocked between the perpendicular wall on his right, the river on
his left and in front of him, and the authorities on his heels.

It is true that this termination of the shore was hidden from sight
by a heap of rubbish six or seven feet in height, produced by some
demolition or other.  But did this man hope to conceal himself
effectually behind that heap of rubbish, which one need but skirt? 
The expedient would have been puerile.  He certainly was not
dreaming of such a thing.  The innocence of thieves does not extend
to that point.

The pile of rubbish formed a sort of projection at the water's edge,
which was prolonged in a promontory as far as the wall of the quay.

The man who was being followed arrived at this little mound and went
round it, so that he ceased to be seen by the other.

The latter, as he did not see, could not be seen; he took advantage
of this fact to abandon all dissimulation and to walk very rapidly. 
In a few moments, he had reached the rubbish heap and passed round it. 
There he halted in sheer amazement.  The man whom he had been pursuing
was no longer there.

Total eclipse of the man in the blouse.

The shore, beginning with the rubbish heap, was only about thirty
paces long, then it plunged into the water which beat against the
wall of the quay.  The fugitive could not have thrown himself into
the Seine without being seen by the man who was following him. 
What had become of him?

The man in the buttoned-up coat walked to the extremity of the shore,
and remained there in thought for a moment, his fists clenched,
his eyes searching.  All at once he smote his brow.  He had
just perceived, at the point where the land came to an end and the
water began, a large iron grating, low, arched, garnished with a
heavy lock and with three massive hinges.  This grating, a sort
of door pierced at the base of the quay, opened on the river
as well as on the shore.  A blackish stream passed under it. 
This stream discharged into the Seine.

Beyond the heavy, rusty iron bars, a sort of dark and vaulted
corridor could be descried.  The man folded his arms and stared
at the grating with an air of reproach.

As this gaze did not suffice, he tried to thrust it aside; he shook it,
it resisted solidly.  It is probable that it had just been opened,
although no sound had been heard, a singular circumstance in so
rusty a grating; but it is certain that it had been closed again. 
This indicated that the man before whom that door had just opened
had not a hook but a key.

This evidence suddenly burst upon the mind of the man who was trying
to move the grating, and evoked from him this indignant ejaculation:

"That is too much!  A government key!"

Then, immediately regaining his composure, he expressed a whole
world of interior ideas by this outburst of monosyllables accented
almost ironically:  "Come!  Come!  Come!  Come!"

That said, and in the hope of something or other, either that he
should see the man emerge or other men enter, he posted himself on
the watch behind a heap of rubbish, with the patient rage of a pointer.

The hackney-coach, which regulated all its movements on his, had,
in its turn, halted on the quay above him, close to the parapet. 
The coachman, foreseeing a prolonged wait, encased his horses'
muzzles in the bag of oats which is damp at the bottom, and which
is so familiar to Parisians, to whom, be it said in parenthesis,
the Government sometimes applies it.  The rare passers-by on the Pont
de Jena turned their heads, before they pursued their way, to take
a momentary glance at these two motionless items in the landscape,
the man on the shore, the carriage on the quay.



CHAPTER IV

HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS


Jean Valjean had resumed his march and had not again paused.

This march became more and more laborious.  The level of
these vaults varies; the average height is about five feet,
six inches, and has been calculated for the stature of a man;
Jean Valjean was forced to bend over, in order not to strike Marius
against the vault; at every step he had to bend, then to rise,
and to feel incessantly of the wall.  The moisture of the stones,
and the viscous nature of the timber framework furnished but poor
supports to which to cling, either for hand or foot.  He stumbled
along in the hideous dung-heap of the city.  The intermittent gleams
from the air-holes only appeared at very long intervals, and were
so wan that the full sunlight seemed like the light of the moon;
all the rest was mist, miasma, opaqueness, blackness.  Jean Valjean
was both hungry and thirsty; especially thirsty; and this, like the sea,
was a place full of water where a man cannot drink.  His strength,
which was prodigious, as the reader knows, and which had been
but little decreased by age, thanks to his chaste and sober life,
began to give way, nevertheless.  Fatigue began to gain on him;
and as his strength decreased, it made the weight of his burden
increase.  Marius, who was, perhaps, dead, weighed him down as inert
bodies weigh.  Jean Valjean held him in such a manner that his chest
was not oppressed, and so that respiration could proceed as well
as possible.  Between his legs he felt the rapid gliding of the rats. 
One of them was frightened to such a degree that he bit him. 
From time to time, a breath of fresh air reached him through
the vent-holes of the mouths of the sewer, and re-animated him.

It might have been three hours past midday when he reached the belt-sewer.

He was, at first, astonished at this sudden widening.  He found himself,
all at once, in a gallery where his outstretched hands could not reach
the two walls, and beneath a vault which his head did not touch. 
The Grand Sewer is, in fact, eight feet wide and seven feet high.

At the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the Grand Sewer,
two other subterranean galleries, that of the Rue de Provence,
and that of the Abattoir, form a square.  Between these four ways,
a less sagacious man would have remained undecided.  Jean Valjean
selected the broadest, that is to say, the belt-sewer. But
here the question again came up--should he descend or ascend? 
He thought that the situation required haste, and that he must
now gain the Seine at any risk.  In other terms, he must descend. 
He turned to the left.

It was well that he did so, for it is an error to suppose that the
belt-sewer has two outlets, the one in the direction of Bercy,
the other towards Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates,
the subterranean girdle of the Paris on the right bank.  The Grand Sewer,
which is, it must be remembered, nothing else than the old brook
of Menilmontant, terminates, if one ascends it, in a blind sack,
that is to say, at its ancient point of departure which was its source,
at the foot of the knoll of Menilmontant.  There is no direct
communication with the branch which collects the waters of Paris
beginning with the Quartier Popincourt, and which falls into the
Seine through the Amelot sewer above the ancient Isle Louviers. 
This branch, which completes the collecting sewer, is separated
from it, under the Rue Menilmontant itself, by a pile which marks
the dividing point of the waters, between upstream and downstream. 
If Jean Valjean had ascended the gallery he would have arrived,
after a thousand efforts, and broken down with fatigue, and in
an expiring condition, in the gloom, at a wall.  He would have
been lost.

In case of necessity, by retracing his steps a little way, and entering
the passage of the Filles-du-Calvaire, on condition that he did not
hesitate at the subterranean crossing of the Carrefour Boucherat, and by
taking the corridor Saint-Louis, then the Saint-Gilles gut on the left,
then turning to the right and avoiding the Saint-Sebastian gallery,
he might have reached the Amelot sewer, and thence, provided that he
did not go astray in the sort of F which lies under the Bastille,
he might have attained the outlet on the Seine near the Arsenal. 
But in order to do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar
with the enormous madrepore of the sewer in all its ramifications
and in all its openings.  Now, we must again insist that he
knew nothing of that frightful drain which he was traversing;
and had any one asked him in what he was, he would have answered: 
"In the night."

His instinct served him well.  To descend was, in fact, possible safety.

He left on his right the two narrow passages which branch out in
the form of a claw under the Rue Laffitte and the Rue Saint-Georges
and the long, bifurcated corridor of the Chaussee d'Antin.

A little beyond an affluent, which was, probably, the Madeleine branch,
he halted.  He was extremely weary.  A passably large air-hole, probably
the man-hole in the Rue d'Anjou, furnished a light that was almost vivid. 
Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother would
exercise towards his wounded brother, deposited Marius on the banquette
of the sewer.  Marius' blood-stained face appeared under the wan
light of the air-hole like the ashes at the bottom of a tomb. 
His eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his temples
like a painter's brushes dried in red wash; his hands hung limp
and dead.  A clot of blood had collected in the knot of his cravat;
his limbs were cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of
his mouth; his shirt had thrust itself into his wounds, the cloth
of his coat was chafing the yawning gashes in the living flesh. 
Jean Valjean, pushing aside the garments with the tips of his fingers,
laid his hand upon Marius' breast; his heart was still beating. 
Jean Valjean tore up his shirt, bandaged the young man's wounds
as well as he was able and stopped the flowing blood; then bending
over Marius, who still lay unconscious and almost without breathing,
in that half light, he gazed at him with inexpressible hatred.

On disarranging Marius' garments, he had found two things in his pockets,
the roll which had been forgotten there on the preceding evening,
and Marius' pocketbook.  He ate the roll and opened the pocketbook. 
On the first page he found the four lines written by Marius. 
The reader will recall them:

"My name is Marius Pontmercy.  Carry my body to my grandfather,
M. Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais."

Jean Valjean read these four lines by the light of the air-hole,
and remained for a moment as though absorbed in thought,
repeating in a low tone:  "Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6,
Monsieur Gillenormand."  He replaced the pocketbook in Marius'
pocket.  He had eaten, his strength had returned to him; he took
Marius up once more upon his back, placed the latter's head
carefully on his right shoulder, and resumed his descent of the sewer.

The Grand Sewer, directed according to the course of the valley
of Menilmontant, is about two leagues long.  It is paved throughout
a notable portion of its extent.

This torch of the names of the streets of Paris, with which we
are illuminating for the reader Jean Valjean's subterranean march,
Jean Valjean himself did not possess.  Nothing told him what
zone of the city he was traversing, nor what way he had made. 
Only the growing pallor of the pools of light which he encountered
from time to time indicated to him that the sun was withdrawing from
the pavement, and that the day would soon be over; and the rolling
of vehicles overhead, having become intermittent instead of continuous,
then having almost ceased, he concluded that he was no longer under
central Paris, and that he was approaching some solitary region,
in the vicinity of the outer boulevards, or the extreme outer quays. 
Where there are fewer houses and streets, the sewer has fewer air-holes.
The gloom deepened around Jean Valjean.  Nevertheless, he continued
to advance, groping his way in the dark.

Suddenly this darkness became terrible.



CHAPTER V

IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS WHICH
IS TREACHEROUS


He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer
had a pavement under his feet, but only mud.

It sometimes happens, that on certain shores of Bretagne or Scotland
a man, either a traveller or a fisherman, while walking at low
tide on the beach far from shore, suddenly notices that for
several minutes past, he has been walking with some difficulty. 
The beach under foot is like pitch; his soles stick fast to it;
it is no longer sand, it is bird-lime. The strand is perfectly dry,
but at every step that he takes, as soon as the foot is raised,
the print is filled with water.  The eye, however, has perceived
no change; the immense beach is smooth and tranquil, all the sand
has the same aspect, nothing distinguishes the soil that is solid
from that which is not solid; the joyous little cloud of sand-lice
continues to leap tumultuously under the feet of the passer-by.

The man pursues his way, he walks on, turns towards the land,
endeavors to approach the shore.  He is not uneasy.  Uneasy about what? 
Only he is conscious that the heaviness of his feet seems to be
increasing at every step that he takes.  All at once he sinks in. 
He sinks in two or three inches.  Decidedly, he is not on the right road;
he halts to get his bearings.  Suddenly he glances at his feet;
his feet have disappeared.  The sand has covered them.  He draws his
feet out of the sand, he tries to retrace his steps, he turns back,
he sinks in more deeply than before.  The sand is up to his ankles,
he tears himself free from it and flings himself to the left,
the sand reaches to mid-leg, he flings himself to the right,
the sand comes up to his knees.  Then, with indescribable terror,
he recognizes the fact that he is caught in a quicksand, and that he
has beneath him that frightful medium in which neither man can walk
nor fish can swim.  He flings away his burden, if he have one,
he lightens himself, like a ship in distress; it is too late,
the sand is above his knees.

He shouts, he waves his hat, or his handkerchief, the sand
continually gains on him; if the beach is deserted, if the land is
too far away, if the bank of sand is too ill-famed, there is no hero
in the neighborhood, all is over, he is condemned to be engulfed. 
He is condemned to that terrible interment, long, infallible, implacable,
which it is impossible to either retard or hasten, which lasts
for hours, which will not come to an end, which seizes you erect,
free, in the flush of health, which drags you down by the feet, which,
at every effort that you attempt, at every shout that you utter,
draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you for your
resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man to return slowly
to earth, while leaving him time to survey the horizon, the trees,
the verdant country, the smoke of the villages on the plain,
the sails of the ships on the sea, the birds which fly and sing,
the sun and the sky.  This engulfment is the sepulchre which assumes
a tide, and which mounts from the depths of the earth towards
a living man.  Each minute is an inexorable layer-out of the dead. 
The wretched man tries to sit down, to lie down, to climb;
every movement that he makes buries him deeper; he straightens
himself up, he sinks; he feels that he is being swallowed up;
he shrieks, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands,
grows desperate.  Behold him in the sand up to his belly, the sand
reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now.  He uplifts his hands,
utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the beach, tries to
cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows in order
to raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically;
the sand mounts higher.  The sand has reached his shoulders, the sand
reaches to his throat; only his face is visible now.  His mouth
cries aloud, the sand fills it; silence.  His eyes still gaze forth,
the sand closes them, night.  Then his brow decreases, a little
hair quivers above the sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface
of the beach, waves and disappears.  Sinister obliteration of a man.

Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes the carter
is swallowed up with his cart; all founders in that strand. 
It is shipwreck elsewhere than in the water.  It is the earth drowning
a man.  The earth, permeated with the ocean, becomes a pitfall. 
It presents itself in the guise of a plain, and it yawns like a wave. 
The abyss is subject to these treacheries.

This melancholy fate, always possible on certain sea beaches,
was also possible, thirty years ago, in the sewers of Paris.

Before the important works, undertaken in 1833, the subterranean
drain of Paris was subject to these sudden slides.

The water filtered into certain subjacent strata, which were
particularly friable; the foot-way, which was of flag-stones,
as in the ancient sewers, or of cement on concrete, as in the
new galleries, having no longer an underpinning, gave way. 
A fold in a flooring of this sort means a crack, means crumbling. 
The framework crumbled away for a certain length.  This crevice,
the hiatus of a gulf of mire, was called a fontis, in the special tongue. 
What is a fontis?  It is the quicksands of the seashore suddenly
encountered under the surface of the earth; it is the beach of Mont
Saint-Michel in a sewer.  The soaked soil is in a state of fusion,
as it were; all its molecules are in suspension in soft medium;
it is not earth and it is not water.  The depth is sometimes
very great.  Nothing can be more formidable than such an encounter. 
If the water predominates, death is prompt, the man is swallowed up;
if earth predominates, death is slow.

Can any one picture to himself such a death?  If being swallowed
by the earth is terrible on the seashore, what is it in a cess-pool?
Instead of the open air, the broad daylight, the clear horizon,
those vast sounds, those free clouds whence rains life, instead of
those barks descried in the distance, of that hope under all sorts
of forms, of probable passers-by, of succor possible up to the very
last moment,--instead of all this, deafness, blindness, a black vault,
the inside of a tomb already prepared, death in the mire beneath
a cover! slow suffocation by filth, a stone box where asphyxia
opens its claw in the mire and clutches you by the throat;
fetidness mingled with the death-rattle; slime instead of the strand,
sulfuretted hydrogen in place of the hurricane, dung in place
of the ocean!  And to shout, to gnash one's teeth, and to writhe,
and to struggle, and to agonize, with that enormous city which
knows nothing of it all, over one's head!

Inexpressible is the horror of dying thus!  Death sometimes redeems
his atrocity by a certain terrible dignity.  On the funeral pile,
in shipwreck, one can be great; in the flames as in the foam, a superb
attitude is possible; one there becomes transfigured as one perishes. 
But not here.  Death is filthy.  It is humiliating to expire. 
The supreme floating visions are abject.  Mud is synonymous with shame. 
It is petty, ugly, infamous.  To die in a butt of Malvoisie,
like Clarence, is permissible; in the ditch of a scavenger,
like Escoubleau, is horrible.  To struggle therein is hideous;
at the same time that one is going through the death agony,
one is floundering about.  There are shadows enough for hell,
and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying
man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a spectre or
a frog.

Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister; here it is deformed.

The depth of the fontis varied, as well as their length and their density,
according to the more or less bad quality of the sub-soil. Sometimes
a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten;
sometimes the bottom was unfathomable.  Here the mire was almost solid,
there almost liquid.  In the Luniere fontis, it would have taken
a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five
minutes by the Philippeaux slough.  The mire bears up more or less,
according to its density.  A child can escape where a man will perish. 
The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load. 
Every sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began
by flinging away his sack of tools, or his back-basket, or his hod.

The fontis were due to different causes:  the friability of the soil;
some landslip at a depth beyond the reach of man; the violent
summer rains; the incessant flooding of winter; long, drizzling showers. 
Sometimes the weight of the surrounding houses on a marly or sandy
soil forced out the vaults of the subterranean galleries and caused
them to bend aside, or it chanced that a flooring vault burst
and split under this crushing thrust.  In this manner, the heaping
up of the Parthenon, obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the
vaults of Saint-Genevieve hill.  When a sewer was broken in under
the pressure of the houses, the mischief was sometimes betrayed
in the street above by a sort of space, like the teeth of a saw,
between the paving-stones; this crevice was developed in an undulating
line throughout the entire length of the cracked vault, and then,
the evil being visible, the remedy could be promptly applied. 
It also frequently happened, that the interior ravages were not
revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the sewermen. 
When they entered without precaution into the sewer, they were liable
to be lost.  Ancient registers make mention of several scavengers
who were buried in fontis in this manner.  They give many names;
among others, that of the sewerman who was swallowed up in a quagmire
under the man-hole of the Rue Careme-Prenant, a certain Blaise Poutrain;
this Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain,
who was the last grave-digger of the cemetery called the Charnier
des Innocents, in 1785, the epoch when that cemetery expired.

There was also that young and charming Vicomte d'Escoubleau, of whom we
have just spoken, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where they
delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head. 
D'Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin's, the Duchess de
Sourdis', was drowned in a quagmire of the Beautreillis sewer,
in which he had taken refuge in order to escape from the Duke. 
Madame de Sourdis, when informed of his death, demanded her
smelling-bottle, and forgot to weep, through sniffling at her salts. 
In such cases, there is no love which holds fast; the sewer
extinguishes it.  Hero refuses to wash the body of Leander. 
Thisbe stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and says:  "Phew!"



CHAPTER VI

THE FONTIS


Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontis.

This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil
of the Champs-Elysees, difficult to handle in the hydraulic
works and a bad preservative of the subterranean constructions,
on account of its excessive fluidity.  This fluidity exceeds even
the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier Saint-Georges,
which could only be conquered by a stone construction on a
concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, infected with gas,
of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that the only way
in which a passage was effected under the gallery des Martyrs was
by means of a cast-iron pipe.  When, in 1836, the old stone sewer
beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honore, in which we now see Jean Valjean,
was demolished for the purpose of reconstructing it, the quicksand,
which forms the subsoil of the Champs-Elysees as far as the Seine,
presented such an obstacle, that the operation lasted nearly
six months, to the great clamor of the dwellers on the riverside,
particularly those who had hotels and carriages.  The work was
more than unhealthy; it was dangerous.  It is true that they
had four months and a half of rain, and three floods of the Seine.

The fontis which Jean Valjean had encountered was caused by the
downpour of the preceding day.  The pavement, badly sustained
by the subjacent sand, had given way and had produced a stoppage
of the water.  Infiltration had taken place, a slip had followed. 
The dislocated bottom had sunk into the ooze.  To what extent? 
Impossible to say.  The obscurity was more dense there than elsewhere. 
It was a pit of mire in a cavern of night.

Jean Valjean felt the pavement vanishing beneath his feet. 
He entered this slime.  There was water on the surface, slime at
the bottom.  He must pass it.  To retrace his steps was impossible. 
Marius was dying, and Jean Valjean exhausted.  Besides, where was
he to go?  Jean Valjean advanced.  Moreover, the pit seemed,
for the first few steps, not to be very deep.  But in proportion
as he advanced, his feet plunged deeper.  Soon he had the slime
up to his calves and water above his knees.  He walked on,
raising Marius in his arms, as far above the water as he could. 
The mire now reached to his knees, and the water to his waist. 
He could no longer retreat.  This mud, dense enough for one man,
could not, obviously, uphold two.  Marius and Jean Valjean would
have stood a chance of extricating themselves singly.  Jean Valjean
continued to advance, supporting the dying man, who was, perhaps,
a corpse.

The water came up to his arm-pits; he felt that he was sinking;
it was only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of ooze
which he had now reached.  The density, which was his support,
was also an obstacle.  He still held Marius on high, and with an
unheard-of expenditure of force, he advanced still; but he was sinking. 
He had only his head above the water now and his two arms holding
up Marius.  In the old paintings of the deluge there is a mother
holding her child thus.

He sank still deeper, he turned his face to the rear, to escape
the water, and in order that he might be able to breathe;
anyone who had seen him in that gloom would have thought that what
he beheld was a mask floating on the shadows; he caught a faint
glimpse above him of the drooping head and livid face of Marius;
he made a desperate effort and launched his foot forward; his foot
struck something solid; a point of support.  It was high time.

He straightened himself up, and rooted himself upon that point
of support with a sort of fury.  This produced upon him the effect
of the first step in a staircase leading back to life.

The point of support, thus encountered in the mire at the supreme
moment, was the beginning of the other water-shed of the pavement,
which had bent but had not given way, and which had curved under
the water like a plank and in a single piece.  Well built pavements
form a vault and possess this sort of firmness.  This fragment
of the vaulting, partly submerged, but solid, was a veritable
inclined plane, and, once on this plane, he was safe.  Jean Valjean
mounted this inclined plane and reached the other side of the quagmire.

As he emerged from the water, he came in contact with a stone
and fell upon his knees.  He reflected that this was but just,
and he remained there for some time, with his soul absorbed in words
addressed to God.

He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed
beneath the dying man whom he was dragging after him, all dripping
with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light.



CHAPTER VII

ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING


He set out on his way once more.

However, although he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed
to have left his strength behind him there.  That supreme effort
had exhausted him.  His lassitude was now such that he was obliged
to pause for breath every three or four steps, and lean against
the wall.  Once he was forced to seat himself on the banquette in
order to alter Marius' position, and he thought that he should have
to remain there.  But if his vigor was dead, his energy was not. 
He rose again.

He walked on desperately, almost fast, proceeded thus for a
hundred paces, almost without drawing breath, and suddenly came
in contact with the wall.  He had reached an elbow of the sewer, and,
arriving at the turn with head bent down, he had struck the wall. 
He raised his eyes, and at the extremity of the vault, far, very far
away in front of him, he perceived a light.  This time it was not
that terrible light; it was good, white light.  It was daylight. 
Jean Valjean saw the outlet.

A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceive
the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Valjean felt. 
It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that
radiant portal.  Jean Valjean was no longer conscious of fatigue,
he no longer felt Marius' weight, he found his legs once more
of steel, he ran rather than walked.  As he approached, the outlet
became more and more distinctly defined.  It was a pointed arch,
lower than the vault, which gradually narrowed, and narrower
than the gallery, which closed in as the vault grew lower. 
The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel; a faulty construction,
imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison,
illogical in a sewer, and which has since been corrected.

Jean Valjean reached the outlet.

There he halted.

It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.

The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which,
to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped
to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like
an enormous brick.  The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch,
deeply sunk in the iron staple.  The door was plainly double-locked.
It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.

Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight,
the shore, very narrow but sufficient for escape.  The distant
quays, Paris, that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself,
the broad horizon, liberty.  On the right, down stream, the bridge
of Jena was discernible, on the left, upstream, the bridge
of the Invalides; the place would have been a propitious one in
which to await the night and to escape.  It was one of the most
solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the Grand-Caillou.
Flies were entering and emerging through the bars of the grating.

It might have been half-past eight o'clock in the evening. 
The day was declining.

Jean Valjean laid Marius down along the wall, on the dry portion
of the vaulting, then he went to the grating and clenched both
fists round the bars; the shock which he gave it was frenzied,
but it did not move.  The grating did not stir.  Jean Valjean seized
the bars one after the other, in the hope that he might be able
to tear away the least solid, and to make of it a lever wherewith
to raise the door or to break the lock.  Not a bar stirred. 
The teeth of a tiger are not more firmly fixed in their sockets. 
No lever; no prying possible.  The obstacle was invincible. 
There was no means of opening the gate.

Must he then stop there?  What was he to do?  What was to become
of him?  He had not the strength to retrace his steps, to recommence
the journey which he had already taken.  Besides, how was he
to again traverse that quagmire whence he had only extricated
himself as by a miracle?  And after the quagmire, was there not
the police patrol, which assuredly could not be twice avoided? 
And then, whither was he to go?  What direction should he pursue? 
To follow the incline would not conduct him to his goal.  If he
were to reach another outlet, he would find it obstructed by a plug
or a grating.  Every outlet was, undoubtedly, closed in that manner. 
Chance had unsealed the grating through which he had entered,
but it was evident that all the other sewer mouths were barred. 
He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.

All was over.  Everything that Jean Valjean had done was useless. 
Exhaustion had ended in failure.

They were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Jean
Valjean felt the terrible spider running along those black strands
and quivering in the shadows.  He turned his back to the grating,
and fell upon the pavement, hurled to earth rather than seated,
close to Marius, who still made no movement, and with his head bent
between his knees.  This was the last drop of anguish.

Of what was he thinking during this profound depression? 
Neither of himself nor of Marius.  He was thinking of Cosette.



CHAPTER VIII

THE TORN COAT-TAIL


In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder,
and a low voice said to him:

"Half shares."

Some person in that gloom?  Nothing so closely resembles a
dream as despair.  Jean Valjean thought that he was dreaming. 
He had heard no footsteps.  Was it possible?  He raised his eyes.

A man stood before him.

This man was clad in a blouse; his feet were bare; he held his shoes
in his left hand; he had evidently removed them in order to reach
Jean Valjean, without allowing his steps to be heard.

Jean Valjean did not hesitate for an instant.  Unexpected as was
this encounter, this man was known to him.  The man was Thenardier.

Although awakened, so to speak, with a start, Jean Valjean,
accustomed to alarms, and steeled to unforeseen shocks that must
be promptly parried, instantly regained possession of his presence
of mind.  Moreover, the situation could not be made worse,
a certain degree of distress is no longer capable of a crescendo,
and Thenardier himself could add nothing to this blackness of this night.

A momentary pause ensued.

Thenardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead,
formed with it a shade, then he brought his eyelashes together,
by screwing up his eyes, a motion which, in connection with a slight
contraction of the mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man
who is endeavoring to recognize another man.  He did not succeed. 
Jean Valjean, as we have just stated, had his back turned to the light,
and he was, moreover, so disfigured, so bemired, so bleeding that he
would have been unrecognizable in full noonday.  On the contrary,
illuminated by the light from the grating, a cellar light,
it is true, livid, yet precise in its lividness, Thenardier, as the
energetic popular metaphor expresses it, immediately "leaped into"
Jean Valjean's eyes.  This inequality of conditions sufficed
to assure some advantage to Jean Valjean in that mysterious duel
which was on the point of beginning between the two situations and
the two men.  The encounter took place between Jean Valjean veiled
and Thenardier unmasked.

Jean Valjean immediately perceived that Thenardier did not recognize him.

They surveyed each other for a moment in that half-gloom, as though
taking each other's measure.  Thenardier was the first to break
the silence.

"How are you going to manage to get out?"

Jean Valjean made no reply.  Thenardier continued:

"It's impossible to pick the lock of that gate.  But still you must
get out of this."

"That is true," said Jean Valjean.

"Well, half shares then."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You have killed that man; that's all right.  I have the key."

Thenardier pointed to Marius.  He went on:

"I don't know you, but I want to help you.  You must be a friend."

Jean Valjean began to comprehend.  Thenardier took him for an assassin.

Thenardier resumed:

"Listen, comrade.  You didn't kill that man without looking to see
what he had in his pockets.  Give me my half.  I'll open the door
for you."

And half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse a huge key,
he added:

"Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made?  Look here."

Jean Valjean "remained stupid"--the expression belongs to the
elder Corneille--to such a degree that he doubted whether what he
beheld was real.  It was providence appearing in horrible guise,
and his good angel springing from the earth in the form of Thenardier.

Thenardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under
his blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Jean Valjean.

"Hold on," said he, "I'll give you the rope to boot."

"What is the rope for?"

"You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. 
There's a heap of rubbish."

"What am I to do with a stone?"

"Idiot, you'll want to sling that stiff into the river, you'll need
a stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water."

Jean Valjean took the rope.  There is no one who does not occasionally
accept in this mechanical way.

Thenardier snapped his fingers as though an idea had suddenly
occurred to him.

"Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that
slough yonder?  I haven't dared to risk myself in it.  Phew! you
don't smell good."

After a pause he added:

"I'm asking you questions, but you're perfectly right not to answer. 
It's an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before
the examining magistrate.  And then, when you don't talk at all,
you run no risk of talking too loud.  That's no matter, as I can't
see your face and as I don't know your name, you are wrong in
supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want.  I twig. 
You've broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him
away somewhere.  The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. 
I'll get you out of your scrape.  Helping a good fellow in a pinch
is what suits me to a hair."

While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean's silence, he endeavored to
force him to talk.  He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight
of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone:

"Apropos of that quagmire, you're a hearty animal.  Why didn't you
toss the man in there?"

Jean Valjean preserved silence.

Thenardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat
to the level of his Adam's apple, a gesture which completes
the capable air of a serious man:

"After all, you acted wisely.  The workmen, when they come to-morrow to
stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there,
and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw,
to pick up the scent and reach you.  Some one has passed through
the sewer.  Who?  Where did he get out?  Was he seen to come out? 
The police are full of cleverness.  The sewer is treacherous and
tells tales of you.  Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention,
very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs,
while the river belongs to everybody.  The river is the true grave. 
At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at
Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that?  It's carrion! 
Who killed that man?  Paris.  And justice makes no inquiries. 
You have done well."

The more loquacious Thenardier became, the more mute was Jean Valjean.

Again Thenardier shook him by the shoulder.

"Now let's settle this business.  Let's go shares.  You have seen
my key, show me your money."

Thenardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing,
yet amicable.

There was one singular circumstance; Thenardier's manners were
not simple; he had not the air of being wholly at his ease;
while affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time
he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered, "hush!"  It was
difficult to divine why.  There was no one there except themselves. 
Jean Valjean thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed
in some nook, not very far off, and that Thenardier did not care
to share with them.

Thenardier resumed:

"Let's settle up.  How much did the stiff have in his bags?"

Jean Valjean searched his pockets.

It was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some
money about him.  The mournful life of expedients to which he had
been condemned imposed this as a law upon him.  On this occasion,
however, he had been caught unprepared.  When donning his uniform
of a National Guardsman on the preceding evening, he had forgotten,
dolefully absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book. He had
only some small change in his fob.  He turned out his pocket,
all soaked with ooze, and spread out on the banquette of the vault
one louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and five or six large sous.

Thenardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist
of the neck.

"You knocked him over cheap," said he.

He set to feeling the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius,
with the greatest familiarity.  Jean Valjean, who was chiefly
concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way.

While handling Marius' coat, Thenardier, with the skill of a pickpocket,
and without being noticed by Jean Valjean, tore off a strip which he
concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel
of stuff might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man
and the assassin.  However, he found no more than the thirty francs.

"That's true," said he, "both of you together have no more than that."

And, forgetting his motto:  "half shares," he took all.

He hesitated a little over the large sous.  After due reflection,
he took them also, muttering:

"Never mind!  You cut folks' throats too cheap altogether."

That done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse.

"Now, my friend, you must leave.  It's like the fair here, you pay
when you go out.  You have paid, now clear out."

And he began to laugh.

Had he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in
making some other man than himself emerge from that portal,
the pure and disinterested intention of rescuing an assassin? 
We may be permitted to doubt this.

Thenardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his shoulders,
then he betook himself to the grating on tiptoe, and barefooted,
making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger
on his mouth, and remained for several seconds, as though in suspense;
his inspection finished, he placed the key in the lock.  The bolt
slipped back and the gate swung open.  It neither grated nor squeaked. 
It moved very softly.

It was obvious that this gate and those hinges, carefully oiled,
were in the habit of opening more frequently than was supposed. 
This softness was suspicious; it hinted at furtive goings and comings,
silent entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread
of crime.

The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some mysterious band. 
This taciturn grating was a receiver of stolen goods.

Thenardier opened the gate a little way, allowing just sufficient
space for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the grating again,
gave the key a double turn in the lock and plunged back into
the darkness, without making any more noise than a breath. 
He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger.

A moment later, that hideous providence had retreated into
the invisibility.

Jean Valjean found himself in the open air.



CHAPTER IX

MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT
OF BEING DEAD


He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.

They were in the open air!

The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him.  The pure, healthful,
living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. 
Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when
the sun has set in an unclouded azure sky.  Twilight had descended;
night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those
who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. 
The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. 
The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss.  The aerial
dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms
of the Champs-Elysees was audible.  A few stars, daintily piercing
the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone,
formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity.  Evening was
unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.

It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no. 
Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible
to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient
daylight to permit of recognition at close quarters.

For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that
august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion do come
to men; suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch;
everything is eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer
like night; and, beneath the twilight which beams and in imitation
of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. 
Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating that vast,
clear shadow which rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea
of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. 
Then he bent down swiftly to Marius, as though the sentiment
of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the hollow
of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the latter's face. 
Marius' eyelids did not open; but his half-open mouth still breathed.

Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more,
when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment, such
as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does not see.

We have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone
is familiar.

He turned round.

Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short
while before.

A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms,
and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head
was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean
Valjean was crouching over Marius.

With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. 
An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight,
a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon.  Jean Valjean
recognized Javert.

The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's pursuer was
no other than Javert.  Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from
the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police,
had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief
audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied--
the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on
his person--a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank
of the Seine near the Champs-Elysees, which had, for some time past,
aroused the attention of the police.  There he had caught sight
of Thenardier and had followed him.  The reader knows the rest.

Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly
opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's part. 
Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there;
the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was
necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin,
what a godsend!  Such an opportunity must never be allowed
to slip.  Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead,
provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent,
made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for
his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs,
and counted with certainty, so far as he himself was concerned,
on escaping with the aid of this diversion.

Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.

These two encounters, this falling one after the other,
from Thenardier upon Javert, was a rude shock.

Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated,
no longer looked like himself.  He did not unfold his arms, he made
sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement,
and said in a curt, calm voice:

"Who are you?"

"I."

"Who is `I'?"

"Jean Valjean."

Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees,
inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of
Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices,
scrutinized him, and recognized him.  Their faces almost touched. 
Javert's look was terrible.

Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion
submitting to the claws of a lynx.

"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power.  Moreover,
I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. 
I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. 
Take me.  Only grant me one favor."

Javert did not appear to hear him.  He kept his eyes riveted on
Jean Valjean.  His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards
towards his nose, a sign of savage revery.  At length he released
Jean Valjean, straightened himself stiffly up without bending,
grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and, as though in a dream,
he murmured rather than uttered this question:

"What are you doing here?  And who is this man?"

He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as thou.

Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse Javert:

"It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. 
Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home. 
That is all that I ask of you."

Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed
to think him capable of making a concession.  Nevertheless, he did
not say "no."

Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he
moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius'
blood-stained brow.

"This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice and as
though speaking to himself.  "He is the one they called Marius."

A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything,
listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought
that he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony,
and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulchre,
had taken notes.

He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse.

"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.

"He is a dead man," said Javert.

Jean Valjean replied:

"No. Not yet."

"So you have brought him thither from the barricade?" remarked Javert.

His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not
to insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him
not to even notice Jean Valjean's silence after his question.

Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. 
He resumed:

"He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with
his grandfather.  I do not recollect his name."

Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius' coat, pulled out his pocket-book,
opened it at the page which Marius had pencilled, and held it
out to Javert.

There was still sufficient light to admit of reading.  Besides this,
Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of night birds. 
He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered: 
"Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-duCalvaire, No. 6."

Then he exclaimed:  "Coachman!"

The reader will remember that the hackney-coach was waiting in case
of need.

Javert kept Marius' pocket-book.

A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined
plane of the watering-place, was on the shore.  Marius was laid
upon the back seat, and Javert seated himself on the front seat
beside Jean Valjean.

The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the
quays in the direction of the Bastille.

They quitted the quays and entered the streets.  The coachman,
a black form on his box, whipped up his thin horses.  A glacial
silence reigned in the carriage.  Marius, motionless, with his
body resting in the corner, and his head drooping on his breast,
his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin;
Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone, and in that
vehicle full of night, whose interior, every time that it passed
in front of a street lantern, appeared to be turned lividly wan,
as by an intermittent flash of lightning, chance had united and seemed
to be bringing face to face the three forms of tragic immobility,
the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.



CHAPTER X

RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE


At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled
from Marius' hair.

Night had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at No. 6,
Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

Javert was the first to alight; he made sure with one glance
of the number on the carriage gate, and, raising the heavy knocker
of beaten iron, embellished in the old style, with a male goat
and a satyr confronting each other, he gave a violent peal. 
The gate opened a little way and Javert gave it a push.  The porter
half made his appearance yawning, vaguely awake, and with a candle
in his hand.

Everyone in the house was asleep.  People go to bed betimes in
the Marais, especially on days when there is a revolt.  This good,
old quarter, terrified at the Revolution, takes refuge in slumber,
as children, when they hear the Bugaboo coming, hide their heads
hastily under their coverlet.

In the meantime Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius
out of the carriage, Jean Valjean supporting him under the armpits,
and the coachman under the knees.

As they thus bore Marius, Jean Valjean slipped his hand under
the latter's clothes, which were broadly rent, felt his breast,
and assured himself that his heart was still beating.  It was even
beating a little less feebly, as though the movement of the carriage
had brought about a certain fresh access of life.

Javert addressed the porter in a tone befitting the government,
and the presence of the porter of a factious person.

"Some person whose name is Gillenormand?"

"Here.  What do you want with him?"

"His son is brought back."

"His son?" said the porter stupidly.

"He is dead."

Jean Valjean, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert,
and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign
to him with his head that this was not so.

The porter did not appear to understand either Javert's words
or Jean Valjean's sign.

Javert continued:

"He went to the barricade, and here he is."

"To the barricade?" ejaculated the porter.

"He has got himself killed.  Go waken his father."

The porter did not stir.

"Go along with you!" repeated Javert.

And he added:

"There will be a funeral here to-morrow."

For Javert, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically
classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance,
and each contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were
arranged in drawers, as it were, whence they emerged on occasion, in
variable quantities; in the street, uproar, revolt, carnival, and funeral.

The porter contented himself with waking Basque.  Basque woke Nicolette;
Nicolette roused great-aunt Gillenormand.

As for the grandfather, they let him sleep on, thinking that he
would hear about the matter early enough in any case.

Marius was carried up to the first floor, without any one in the
other parts of the house being aware of the fact, and deposited
on an old sofa in M. Gillenormand's antechamber; and while Basque
went in search of a physician, and while Nicolette opened the
linen-presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch him on the shoulder. 
He understood and descended the stairs, having behind him the step
of Javert who was following him.

The porter watched them take their departure as he had watched
their arrival, in terrified somnolence.

They entered the carriage once more, and the coachman mounted
his box.

"Inspector Javert," said Jean, "grant me yet another favor."

"What is it?" demanded Javert roughly.

"Let me go home for one instant.  Then you shall do whatever you
like with me."

Javert remained silent for a few moments, with his chin drawn
back into the collar of his great-coat, then he lowered the glass
and front:

"Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."



CHAPTER XI

CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE


They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride.

What did Jean Valjean want?  To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette,
to tell her where Marius was, to give her, possibly, some other
useful information, to take, if he could, certain final measures. 
As for himself, so far as he was personally concerned, all was over;
he had been seized by Javert and had not resisted; any other man
than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague
thoughts connected with the rope which Thenardier had given him,
and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us
impress it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in
Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence,
even when directed against himself.

Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which
may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible
to Jean Valjean.

At the entrance to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, the carriage halted,
the way being too narrow to admit of the entrance of vehicles. 
Javert and Jean Valjean alighted.

The coachman humbly represented to "monsieur l'Inspecteur,"
that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all spotted with the blood
of the assassinated man, and with mire from the assassin.  That is
the way he understood it.  He added that an indemnity was due him. 
At the same time, drawing his certificate book from his pocket,
he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him "a bit
of an attestation."

Javert thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him,
and said:

"How much do you want, including your time of waiting and the drive?"

"It comes to seven hours and a quarter," replied the man, "and my
velvet was perfectly new.  Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector."

Javert drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage.

Jean Valjean fancied that it was Javert's intention to conduct
him on foot to the post of the Blancs-Manteaux or to the post
of the Archives, both of which are close at hand.

They entered the street.  It was deserted as usual.  Javert followed
Jean Valjean.  They reached No. 7.  Jean Valjean knocked. 
The door opened.

"It is well," said Javert.  "Go up stairs."

He added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting
an effort in speaking in this manner:

"I will wait for you here."

Jean Valjean looked at Javert.  This mode of procedure was but
little in accord with Javert's habits.  However, he could not be
greatly surprised that Javert should now have a sort of haughty
confidence in him, the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse
liberty to the length of its claws, seeing that Jean Valjean had
made up his mind to surrender himself and to make an end of it. 
He pushed open the door, entered the house, called to the porter
who was in bed and who had pulled the cord from his couch:  "It is I!"
and ascended the stairs.

On arriving at the first floor, he paused.  All sorrowful roads
have their stations.  The window on the landing-place, which was
a sash-window, was open.  As in many ancient houses, the staircase
got its light from without and had a view on the street. 
The street-lantern, situated directly opposite, cast some light
on the stairs, and thus effected some economy in illumination.

Jean Valjean, either for the sake of getting the air, or mechanically,
thrust his head out of this window.  He leaned out over the street. 
It is short, and the lantern lighted it from end to end. 
Jean Valjean was overwhelmed with amazement; there was no longer
any one there.

Javert had taken his departure.



CHAPTER XII

THE GRANDFATHER


Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room,
as he still lay stretched out, motionless, on the sofa upon
which he had been placed on his arrival.  The doctor who had
been sent for had hastened thither.  Aunt Gillenormand had risen.

Aunt Gillenormand went and came, in affright, wringing her hands and
incapable of doing anything but saying:  "Heavens! is it possible?" 
At times she added:  "Everything will be covered with blood." 
When her first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the
situation penetrated her mind, and took form in the exclamation: 
"It was bound to end in this way!"  She did not go so far as: 
"I told you so!" which is customary on this sort of occasion. 
At the physician's orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. 
The doctor examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse
was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on
his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded
from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow,
with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower,
and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. 
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that they were undressing
Marius, withdrew.  She set herself to telling her beads in her
own chamber.

The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet,
deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour
of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth,
and consequently, not dangerous.  The long, underground journey had
completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder
there was serious.  The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. 
Not a single scar disfigured his face; but his head was fairly covered
with cuts; what would be the result of these wounds on the head? 
Would they stop short at the hairy cuticle, or would they attack
the brain?  As yet, this could not be decided.  A grave symptom was
that they had caused a swoon, and that people do not always recover
from such swoons.  Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted
by hemorrhage.  From the waist down, the barricade had protected
the lower part of the body from injury.

Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette
sewed them, Basque rolled them.  As lint was lacking, the doctor,
for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. 
Beside the bed, three candles burned on a table where the case
of surgical instruments lay spread out.  The doctor bathed Marius'
face and hair with cold water.  A full pail was reddened in an instant. 
The porter, candle in hand, lighted them.

The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly.  From time to time,
he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some
question which he had inwardly addressed to himself.

A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues
of the doctor with himself.

At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius' face, and lightly
touching his still closed eyes with his finger, a door opened
at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made
its appearance.

This was the grandfather.

The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and
engrossed the mind of M. Gillenormand.  He had not been able to sleep
on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. 
In the evening, he had gone to bed very early, recommending that
everything in the house should be well barred, and he had fallen
into a doze through sheer fatigue.

Old men sleep lightly; M. Gillenormand's chamber adjoined
the drawing-room, and in spite of all the precautions that had
been taken, the noise had awakened him.  Surprised at the rift
of light which he saw under his door, he had risen from his bed,
and had groped his way thither.

He stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the
half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering,
his body wrapped in a white dressing-gown, which was straight
and as destitute of folds as a winding-sheet; and he had the air
of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb.

He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding,
white with a waxen whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth,
and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with
crimson wounds, motionless and brilliantly lighted up.

The grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified
limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose corneae were yellow on account
of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter,
his whole face assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull,
his arms fell pendent, as though a spring had broken, and his
amazement was betrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his
two aged hands, which quivered all over, his knees formed an angle
in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressing-gown,
a view of his poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs,
and he murmured:

"Marius!"

"Sir," said Basque, "Monsieur has just been brought back. 
He went to the barricade, and..."

"He is dead!" cried the old man in a terrible voice.  "Ah!  The rascal!"

Then a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this
centenarian as erect as a young man.

"Sir," said he, "you are the doctor.  Begin by telling me one thing. 
He is dead, is he not?"

The doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent.

M. Gillenormand wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter.

"He is dead!  He is dead!  He is dead!  He has got himself
killed on the barricades!  Out of hatred to me!  He did that to
spite me!  Ah!  You blood-drinker! This is the way he returns to me! 
Misery of my life, he is dead!"

He went to the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling,
and, erect before the darkness, he began to talk into the street,
to the night:

"Pierced, sabred, exterminated, slashed, hacked in pieces!  Just look
at that, the villain!  He knew well that I was waiting for him,
and that I had had his room arranged, and that I had placed at
the head of my bed his portrait taken when he was a little child! 
He knew well that he had only to come back, and that I had been
recalling him for years, and that I remained by my fireside,
with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was mad
over it!  You knew well, that you had but to return and to say: 
`It is I,' and you would have been the master of the house, and that I
should have obeyed you, and that you could have done whatever you
pleased with your old numskull of a grandfather! you knew that well,
and you said:

"No, he is a Royalist, I will not go!  And you went to the barricades,
and you got yourself killed out of malice!  To revenge yourself
for what I said to you about Monsieur le Duc de Berry. 
It is infamous!  Go to bed then and sleep tranquilly! he is dead,
and this is my awakening."

The doctor, who was beginning to be uneasy in both quarters,
quitted Marius for a moment, went to M. Gillenormand, and took his arm. 
The grandfather turned round, gazed at him with eyes which seemed
exaggerated in size and bloodshot, and said to him calmly:

"I thank you, sir.  I am composed, I am a man, I witnessed the death
of Louis XVI., I know how to bear events.  One thing is terrible and
that is to think that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. 
You will have scribblers, chatterers, lawyers, orators, tribunes,
discussions, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty
of the press, and this is the way that your children will be brought
home to you.  Ah!  Marius!  It is abominable!  Killed!  Dead before me! 
A barricade!  Ah, the scamp!  Doctor, you live in this quarter,
I believe?  Oh!  I know you well.  I see your cabriolet pass
my window.  I am going to tell you.  You are wrong to think that I
am angry.  One does not fly into a rage against a dead man. 
That would be stupid.  This is a child whom I have reared. 
I was already old while he was very young.  He played in the
Tuileries garden with his little shovel and his little chair,
and in order that the inspectors might not grumble, I stopped up
the holes that he made in the earth with his shovel, with my cane. 
One day he exclaimed:  Down with Louis XVIII.! and off he went. 
It was no fault of mine.  He was all rosy and blond.  His mother
is dead.  Have you ever noticed that all little children are blond? 
Why is it so?  He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire,
but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes.  I remember when he
was no higher than that.  He could not manage to pronounce his Ds. 
He had a way of talking that was so sweet and indistinct that you
would have thought it was a bird chirping.  I remember that once,
in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a circle to admire
him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that child! 
He had a head such as you see in pictures.  I talked in a deep voice,
and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it
was only to make him laugh.  In the morning, when he entered my room,
I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. 
One cannot defend oneself against those brats.  They take hold of you,
they hold you fast, they never let you go again.  The truth is,
that there never was a cupid like that child.  Now, what can you say
for your Lafayettes, your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de
Corcelles who have killed him?  This cannot be allowed to pass in
this fashion."

He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to
whom the physician had returned, and began once more to wring
his hands.  The old man's pallid lips moved as though mechanically,
and permitted the passage of words that were barely audible,
like breaths in the death agony:

"Ah! heartless lad!  Ah! clubbist!  Ah! wretch!  Ah!  Septembrist!"

Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.

Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal
eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of words returned,
but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength
to utter them, his voice was so weak, and extinct, that it seemed
to come from the other side of an abyss:

"It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am. 
And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have
been delighted to make this wretch happy!  A scamp who, instead of
amusing himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself
shot down like a brute!  And for whom?  Why?  For the Republic! 
Instead of going to dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young
folks to do!  What's the use of being twenty years old?  The Republic,
a cursed pretty folly!  Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do!  Come, he
is dead.  That will make two funerals under the same carriage gate. 
So you have got yourself arranged like this for the sake of General
Lamarque's handsome eyes!  What had that General Lamarque done to you? 
A slasher!  A chatter-box! To get oneself killed for a dead man! 
If that isn't enough to drive any one mad!  Just think of it! 
At twenty!  And without so much as turning his head to see whether
he was not leaving something behind him!  That's the way poor,
good old fellows are forced to die alone, now-adays. Perish in
your corner, owl!  Well, after all, so much the better, that is
what I was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot.  I am too old,
I am a hundred years old, I am a hundred thousand years old, I ought,
by rights, to have been dead long ago.  This blow puts an end to it. 
So all is over, what happiness!  What is the good of making him
inhale ammonia and all that parcel of drugs?  You are wasting
your trouble, you fool of a doctor!  Come, he's dead, completely dead. 
I know all about it, I am dead myself too.  He hasn't done things
by half.  Yes, this age is infamous, infamous and that's what I
think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters,
of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scape-graces of writers,
of your rascally philosophers, and of all the revolutions which,
for the last sixty years, have been frightening the flocks of crows
in the Tuileries!  But you were pitiless in getting yourself killed
like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand,
you assassin?"

At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance,
still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Gillenormand.

"Marius!" cried the old man.  "Marius!  My little Marius! my
child! my well-beloved son!  You open your eyes, you gaze upon me,
you are alive, thanks!"

And he fell fainting.



BOOK FOURTH.--JAVERT DERAILED


CHAPTER I


Javert passed slowly down the Rue de l'Homme Arme.

He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life,
and likewise, for the first time in his life, with his hands behind
his back.

Up to that day, Javert had borrowed from Napoleon's attitudes,
only that which is expressive of resolution, with arms folded across
the chest; that which is expressive of uncertainty--with the hands behind
the back--had been unknown to him.  Now, a change had taken place;
his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety.

He plunged into the silent streets.

Nevertheless, he followed one given direction.

He took the shortest cut to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes,
skirted the quay, passed the Greve, and halted at some distance
from the post of the Place du Chatelet, at the angle of the Pont
Notre-Dame. There, between the Notre-Dame and the Pont au Change
on the one hand, and the Quai de la Megisserie and the Quai aux
Fleurs on the other, the Seine forms a sort of square lake,
traversed by a rapid.

This point of the Seine is dreaded by mariners.  Nothing is more
dangerous than this rapid, hemmed in, at that epoch, and irritated
by the piles of the mill on the bridge, now demolished. 
The two bridges, situated thus close together, augment the peril;
the water hurries in formidable wise through the arches.  It rolls
in vast and terrible waves; it accumulates and piles up there;
the flood attacks the piles of the bridges as though in an effort
to pluck them up with great liquid ropes.  Men who fall in there
never re-appear; the best of swimmers are drowned there.

Javert leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin resting
in both hands, and, while his nails were mechanically twined
in the abundance of his whiskers, he meditated.

A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place in the
depths of his being; and he had something upon which to examine himself.

Javert was undergoing horrible suffering.

For several hours, Javert had ceased to be simple.  He was troubled;
that brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency;
that crystal was clouded.  Javert felt duty divided within his conscience,
and he could not conceal the fact from himself.  When he had so
unexpectedly encountered Jean Valjean on the banks of the Seine,
there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip
on his prey, and of the dog who finds his master again.

He beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he
beheld two; and that terrified him; him, who had never in all his
life known more than one straight line.  And, the poignant anguish
lay in this, that the two paths were contrary to each other. 
One of these straight lines excluded the other.  Which of the two
was the true one?

His situation was indescribable.

To owe his life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to repay it;
to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice,
and to repay his service with another service; to allow it to be said
to him, "Go," and to say to the latter in his turn:  "Be free";
to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation,
and to be conscious, in those personal motives, of something that
was also general, and, perchance, superior, to betray society in
order to remain true to his conscience; that all these absurdities
should be realized and should accumulate upon him,--this was what
overwhelmed him.

One thing had amazed him,--this was that Jean Valjean
should have done him a favor, and one thing petrified him,--
that he, Javert, should have done Jean Valjean a favor.

Where did he stand?  He sought to comprehend his position, and could
no longer find his bearings.

What was he to do now?  To deliver up Jean Valjean was bad;
to leave Jean Valjean at liberty was bad.  In the first case,
the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys,
in the second, a convict rose above the law, and set his foot
upon it.  In both cases, dishonor for him, Javert.  There was
disgrace in any resolution at which he might arrive.  Destiny has
some extremities which rise perpendicularly from the impossible,
and beyond which life is no longer anything but a precipice. 
Javert had reached one of those extremities.

One of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. 
The very violence of all these conflicting emotions forced him to it. 
Thought was something to which he was unused, and which was
peculiarly painful.

In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion;
and it irritated him to have that within him.

Thought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of
his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue;
thought on the day which had just passed was a torture.  Nevertheless,
it was indispensable that he should take a look into his conscience,
after such shocks, and render to himself an account of himself.

What he had just done made him shudder.  He, Javert, had seen fit
to decide, contrary to all the regulations of the police, contrary to
the whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code,
upon a release; this had suited him; he had substituted his own
affairs for the affairs of the public; was not this unjustifiable? 
Every time that he brought himself face to face with this deed without
a name which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. 
Upon what should he decide?  One sole resource remained to him;
to return in all haste to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, and commit Jean
Valjean to prison.  It was clear that that was what he ought to do. 
He could not.

Something barred his way in that direction.

Something?  What?  Is there in the world, anything outside of
the tribunals, executory sentences, the police and the authorities? 
Javert was overwhelmed.

A galley-slave sacred!  A convict who could not be touched by the law! 
And that the deed of Javert!

Was it not a fearful thing that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made
to proceed with vigor, the man made to submit,--that these two men
who were both the things of the law, should have come to such a pass,
that both of them had set themselves above the law?  What then! such
enormities were to happen and no one was to be punished!  Jean Valjean,
stronger than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty,
and he, Javert, was to go on eating the government's bread!

His revery gradually became terrible.

He might, athwart this revery, have also reproached himself
on the subject of that insurgent who had been taken to the Rue
des Filles-du-Calvaire; but he never even thought of that. 
The lesser fault was lost in the greater.  Besides, that insurgent
was, obviously, a dead man, and, legally, death puts an end to pursuit.

Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit.

Jean Valjean disconcerted him.  All the axioms which had served
him as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away
in the presence of this man.  Jean Valjean's generosity towards
him, Javert, crushed him.  Other facts which he now recalled,
and which he had formerly treated as lies and folly, now recurred
to him as realities.  M. Madeleine re-appeared behind Jean Valjean,
and the two figures were superposed in such fashion that they now
formed but one, which was venerable.  Javert felt that something
terrible was penetrating his soul--admiration for a convict. 
Respect for a galley-slave--is that a possible thing?  He shuddered
at it, yet could not escape from it.  In vain did he struggle,
he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity
of that wretch.  This was odious.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement,
a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred,
preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather
than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on
the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. 
Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.

Things could not go on in this manner.

Certainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded
without resistance to that monster, to that infamous angel,
to that hideous hero, who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. 
Twenty times, as he sat in that carriage face to face with Jean Valjean,
the legal tiger had roared within him.  A score of times he had
been tempted to fling himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him
and devour him, that is to say, to arrest him.  What more simple,
in fact?  To cry out at the first post that they passed:--"Here
is a fugitive from justice, who has broken his ban!" to summon
the gendarmes and say to them:  "This man is yours!" then to go off,
leaving that condemned man there, to ignore the rest and not to meddle
further in the matter.  This man is forever a prisoner of the law;
the law may do with him what it will.  What could be more just? 
Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to pass beyond,
to act, to apprehend the man, and then, as at present, he had not been
able to do it; and every time that his arm had been raised convulsively
towards Jean Valjean's collar, his hand had fallen back again,
as beneath an enormous weight, and in the depths of his thought he
had heard a voice, a strange voice crying to him:--"It is well. 
Deliver up your savior.  Then have the basin of Pontius Pilate
brought and wash your claws."

Then his reflections reverted to himself and beside Jean Valjean
glorified he beheld himself, Javert, degraded.

A convict was his benefactor!

But then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? 
He had the right to be killed in that barricade.  He should have
asserted that right.  It would have been better to summon the other
insurgents to his succor against Jean Valjean, to get himself shot
by force.

His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty.  He felt that he had
been uprooted.  The code was no longer anything more than a stump
in his hand.  He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. 
There had taken place within him a sentimental revelation entirely
distinct from legal affirmation, his only standard of measurement
hitherto.  To remain in his former uprightness did not suffice. 
A whole order of unexpected facts had cropped up and subjugated him. 
A whole new world was dawning on his soul:  kindness accepted
and repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violences committed by pity
on austerity, respect for persons, no more definitive condemnation,
no more conviction, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law,
no one knows what justice according to God, running in inverse sense
to justice according to men.  He perceived amid the shadows the terrible
rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified and dazzled him. 
An owl forced to the gaze of an eagle.

He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional
cases, that authority might be put out of countenance,
that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact,
that everything could not be framed within the text of the code,
that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a
convict might set a snare for the virtue of the functionary,
that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected with
despair that he himself had not even been fortified against a surprise.

He was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist.  This convict
had been good.  And he himself, unprecedented circumstance,
had just been good also.  So he was becoming depraved.

He found that he was a coward.  He conceived a horror of himself.

Javert's ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime;
it was to be irreproachable.

Now, he had just failed in this.

How had he come to such a pass?  How had all this happened? 
He could not have told himself.  He clasped his head in both hands,
but in spite of all that he could do, he could not contrive to explain
it to himself.

He had certainly always entertained the intention of restoring
Jean Valjean to the law of which Jean Valjean was the captive,
and of which he, Javert, was the slave.  Not for a single instant
while he held him in his grasp had he confessed to himself that he
entertained the idea of releasing him.  It was, in some sort,
without his consciousness, that his hand had relaxed and had let him
go free.

All sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes.  He put
questions to himself, and made replies to himself, and his replies
frightened him.  He asked himself:  "What has that convict done,
that desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution,
and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself,
and who owed it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me
my life, in showing mercy upon me?  His duty?  No. Something more. 
And I in showing mercy upon him in my turn--what have I done? 
My duty?  No. Something more.  So there is something beyond duty?" 
Here he took fright; his balance became disjointed; one of the scales
fell into the abyss, the other rose heavenward, and Javert was no
less terrified by the one which was on high than by the one which
was below.  Without being in the least in the world what is called
Voltairian or a philosopher, or incredulous, being, on the contrary,
respectful by instinct, towards the established church, he knew it
only as an august fragment of the social whole; order was his dogma,
and sufficed for him; ever since he had attained to man's estate
and the rank of a functionary, he had centred nearly all his religion
in the police.  Being,--and here we employ words without the least
irony and in their most serious acceptation, being, as we have said,
a spy as other men are priests.  He had a superior, M. Gisquet;
up to that day he had never dreamed of that other superior,
God.

This new chief, God, he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt
embarrassed by him.  This unforeseen presence threw him off his bearings;
he did not know what to do with this superior, he, who was not
ignorant of the fact that the subordinate is bound always to bow,
that he must not disobey, nor find fault, nor discuss, and that,
in the presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior
has no other resource than that of handing in his resignation.

But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God?

However things might stand,--and it was to this point that he
reverted constantly,--one fact dominated everything else for him,
and that was, that he had just committed a terrible infraction
of the law.  He had just shut his eyes on an escaped convict
who had broken his ban.  He had just set a galley-slave at large. 
He had just robbed the laws of a man who belonged to them. 
That was what he had done.  He no longer understood himself. 
The very reasons for his action escaped him; only their vertigo
was left with him.  Up to that moment he had lived with that blind
faith which gloomy probity engenders.  This faith had quitted him,
this probity had deserted him.  All that he had believed in
melted away.  Truths which he did not wish to recognize were
besieging him, inexorably.  Henceforth, he must be a different man. 
He was suffering from the strange pains of a conscience abruptly
operated on for the cataract.  He saw that which it was repugnant
to him to behold.  He felt himself emptied, useless, put out of joint
with his past life, turned out, dissolved.  Authority was dead
within him.  He had no longer any reason for existing.

A terrible situation! to be touched.

To be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast
in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware
of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze
something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! 
To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has
said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! to be the
watch-dog, and to lick the intruder's hand! to be ice and melt!
to be the pincers and to turn into a hand! to suddenly feel one's
fingers opening! to relax one's grip,--what a terrible thing!

The man-projectile no longer acquainted with his route and retreating!

To be obliged to confess this to oneself:  infallibility is
not infallible, there may exist error in the dogma, all has not
been said when a code speaks, society is not perfect, authority is
complicated with vacillation, a crack is possible in the immutable,
judges are but men, the law may err, tribunals may make a mistake!
to behold a rift in the immense blue pane of the firmament!

That which was passing in Javert was the Fampoux of a rectilinear
conscience, the derailment of a soul, the crushing of a probity
which had been irresistibly launched in a straight line and was
breaking against God.  It certainly was singular that the stoker
of order, that the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron
horse with its rigid road, could be unseated by a flash of light!
that the immovable, the direct, the correct, the geometrical,
the passive, the perfect, could bend! that there should exist
for the locomotive a road to Damascus!

God, always within man, and refractory, He, the true conscience,
to the false; a prohibition to the spark to die out; an order to
the ray to remember the sun; an injunction to the soul to recognize
the veritable absolute when confronted with the fictitious absolute,
humanity which cannot be lost; the human heart indestructible;
that splendid phenomenon, the finest, perhaps, of all our interior
marvels, did Javert understand this?  Did Javert penetrate it? 
Did Javert account for it to himself?  Evidently he did not. 
But beneath the pressure of that incontestable incomprehensibility he
felt his brain bursting.

He was less the man transfigured than the victim of this prodigy. 
In all this he perceived only the tremendous difficulty of existence. 
It seemed to him that, henceforth, his respiration was repressed forever. 
He was not accustomed to having something unknown hanging over
his head.

Up to this point, everything above him had been, to his gaze,
merely a smooth, limpid and simple surface; there was nothing
incomprehensible, nothing obscure; nothing that was not defined,
regularly disposed, linked, precise, circumscribed, exact, limited,
closed, fully provided for; authority was a plane surface; there was
no fall in it, no dizziness in its presence.  Javert had never beheld
the unknown except from below.  The irregular, the unforeseen,
the disordered opening of chaos, the possible slip over a precipice--
this was the work of the lower regions, of rebels, of the wicked,
of wretches.  Now Javert threw himself back, and he was suddenly
terrified by this unprecedented apparition:  a gulf on high.

What! one was dismantled from top to bottom! one was disconcerted,
absolutely!  In what could one trust!  That which had been agreed
upon was giving way!  What! the defect in society's armor could
be discovered by a magnanimous wretch!  What! an honest servitor
of the law could suddenly find himself caught between two crimes--
the crime of allowing a man to escape and the crime of arresting
him! everything was not settled in the orders given by the State
to the functionary!  There might be blind alleys in duty!  What,--
all this was real! was it true that an ex-ruffian, weighed down
with convictions, could rise erect and end by being in the right? 
Was this credible? were there cases in which the law should retire
before transfigured crime, and stammer its excuses?--Yes, that was
the state of the case! and Javert saw it! and Javert had touched it!
and not only could he not deny it, but he had taken part in it. 
These were realities.  It was abominable that actual facts could
reach such deformity.  If facts did their duty, they would confine
themselves to being proofs of the law; facts--it is God who sends them. 
Was anarchy, then, on the point of now descending from on high?

Thus,--and in the exaggeration of anguish, and the optical illusion
of consternation, all that might have corrected and restrained
this impression was effaced, and society, and the human race,
and the universe were, henceforth, summed up in his eyes, in one
simple and terrible feature,--thus the penal laws, the thing judged,
the force due to legislation, the decrees of the sovereign courts,
the magistracy, the government, prevention, repression,
official cruelty, wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle
of authority, all the dogmas on which rest political and civil
security, sovereignty, justice, public truth, all this was rubbish,
a shapeless mass, chaos; he himself, Javert, the spy of order,
incorruptibility in the service of the police, the bull-dog providence
of society, vanquished and hurled to earth; and, erect, at the
summit of all that ruin, a man with a green cap on his head and a
halo round his brow; this was the astounding confusion to which
he had come; this was the fearful vision which he bore within his soul.

Was this to be endured?  No.

A violent state, if ever such existed.  There were only two ways
of escaping from it.  One was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean,
and restore to his cell the convict from the galleys.  The other..
.

Javert quitted the parapet, and, with head erect this time,
betook himself, with a firm tread, towards the station-house indicated
by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du Chatelet.

On arriving there, he saw through the window a sergeant of police,
and he entered.  Policemen recognize each other by the very way
in which they open the door of a station-house. Javert mentioned
his name, showed his card to the sergeant, and seated himself at
the table of the post on which a candle was burning.  On a table
lay a pen, a leaden inkstand and paper, provided in the event of
possible reports and the orders of the night patrols.  This table,
still completed by its straw-seated chair, is an institution;
it exists in all police stations; it is invariably ornamented with a
box-wood saucer filled with sawdust and a wafer box of cardboard filled
with red wafers, and it forms the lowest stage of official style. 
It is there that the literature of the State has its beginning.

Javert took a pen and a sheet of paper, and began to write. 
This is what he wrote:

     A FEW OBSERVATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.


"In the first place:  I beg Monsieur le Prefet to cast his eyes
on this.

"Secondly:  prisoners, on arriving after examination, take off
their shoes and stand barefoot on the flagstones while they are
being searched.  Many of them cough on their return to prison. 
This entails hospital expenses.

"Thirdly:  the mode of keeping track of a man with relays of police
agents from distance to distance, is good, but, on important occasions,
it is requisite that at least two agents should never lose sight
of each other, so that, in case one agent should, for any cause,
grow weak in his service, the other may supervise him and take
his place.

"Fourthly:  it is inexplicable why the special regulation of the prison
of the Madelonettes interdicts the prisoner from having a chair,
even by paying for it.

"Fifthly:  in the Madelonettes there are only two bars to the canteen,
so that the canteen woman can touch the prisoners with her hand.

"Sixthly:  the prisoners called barkers, who summon the other
prisoners to the parlor, force the prisoner to pay them two sous
to call his name distinctly.  This is a theft.

"Seventhly:  for a broken thread ten sous are withheld in the
weaving shop; this is an abuse of the contractor, since the cloth
is none the worse for it.

"Eighthly:  it is annoying for visitors to La Force to be
obliged to traverse the boys' court in order to reach the parlor
of Sainte-Marie-l'Egyptienne.

"Ninthly:  it is a fact that any day gendarmes can be overheard
relating in the court-yard of the prefecture the interrogations put
by the magistrates to prisoners.  For a gendarme, who should be
sworn to secrecy, to repeat what he has heard in the examination
room is a grave disorder.

"Tenthly:  Mme. Henry is an honest woman; her canteen is very neat;
but it is bad to have a woman keep the wicket to the mouse-trap
of the secret cells.  This is unworthy of the Conciergerie of a
great civilization."

Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct chirography,
not omitting a single comma, and making the paper screech under his pen. 
Below the last line he signed:

                                              "JAVERT,
                                   "Inspector of the 1st class.
      "The Post of the Place du Chatelet.
                "June 7th, 1832, about one o'clock in the morning."


Javert dried the fresh ink on the paper, folded it like a letter,
sealed it, wrote on the back:  Note for the administration, left it
on the table, and quitted the post.  The glazed and grated door fell
to behind him.

Again he traversed the Place du Chatelet diagonally, regained the quay,
and returned with automatic precision to the very point which he
had abandoned a quarter of an hour previously, leaned on his elbows
and found himself again in the same attitude on the same paving-stone
of the parapet.  He did not appear to have stirred.

The darkness was complete.  It was the sepulchral moment which
follows midnight.  A ceiling of clouds concealed the stars.  Not a
single light burned in the houses of the city; no one was passing;
all of the streets and quays which could be seen were deserted;
Notre-Dame and the towers of the Court-House seemed features
of the night.  A street lantern reddened the margin of the quay. 
The outlines of the bridges lay shapeless in the mist one behind
the other.  Recent rains had swollen the river.

The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered,
situated precisely over the rapids of the Seine, perpendicularly above
that formidable spiral of whirlpools which loose and knot themselves
again like an endless screw.

Javert bent his head and gazed.  All was black.  Nothing was to
be distinguished.  A sound of foam was audible; but the river could not
be seen.  At moments, in that dizzy depth, a gleam of light appeared,
and undulated vaguely, water possessing the power of taking light,
no one knows whence, and converting it into a snake.  The light
vanished, and all became indistinct once more.  Immensity seemed
thrown open there.  What lay below was not water, it was a gulf. 
The wall of the quay, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapors,
instantly concealed from sight, produced the effect of an escarpment
of the infinite.  Nothing was to be seen, but the hostile chill
of the water and the stale odor of the wet stones could be felt. 
A fierce breath rose from this abyss.  The flood in the river,
divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves,
the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable
fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow was full of horror.

Javert remained motionless for several minutes, gazing at this
opening of shadow; he considered the invisible with a fixity that
resembled attention.  The water roared.  All at once he took off
his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay.  A moment later,
a tall black figure, which a belated passer-by in the distance
might have taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet
of the quay, bent over towards the Seine, then drew itself up again,
and fell straight down into the shadows; a dull splash followed;
and the shadow alone was in the secret of the convulsions of that
obscure form which had disappeared beneath the water.



BOOK FIFTH.--GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER


CHAPTER I

IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN


Some time after the events which we have just recorded,
Sieur Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion.

Sieur Boulatruelle was that road-mender of Montfermeil whom
the reader has already seen in the gloomy parts of this book.

Boulatruelle, as the reader may, perchance, recall, was a man
who was occupied with divers and troublesome matters.  He broke
stones and damaged travellers on the highway.

Road-mender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream; he believed
in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil.  He hoped
some day to find the money in the earth at the foot of a tree;
in the meanwhile, he lived to search the pockets of passers-by.

Nevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent.  He had just
escaped neatly.  He had been, as the reader is aware, picked up
in Jondrette's garret in company with the other ruffians. 
Utility of a vice:  his drunkenness had been his salvation. 
The authorities had never been able to make out whether he had been
there in the quality of a robber or a man who had been robbed. 
An order of nolle prosequi, founded on his well authenticated state
of intoxication on the evening of the ambush, had set him at liberty. 
He had taken to his heels.  He had returned to his road from Gagny
to Lagny, to make, under administrative supervision, broken stone
for the good of the state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive mood,
his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted none
the less tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him.

As for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short time
after his return to his road-mender's turf-thatched cot, here it is:

One morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his wont,
to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a little before
daybreak caught sight, through the branches of the trees, of a man,
whose back alone he saw, but the shape of whose shoulders, as it
seemed to him at that distance and in the early dusk, was not
entirely unfamiliar to him.  Boulatruelle, although intoxicated,
had a correct and lucid memory, a defensive arm that is indispensable
to any one who is at all in conflict with legal order.

"Where the deuce have I seen something like that man yonder?"
he said to himself.  But he could make himself no answer,
except that the man resembled some one of whom his memory preserved
a confused trace.

However, apart from the identity which he could not manage to catch,
Boulatruelle put things together and made calculations.  This man
did not belong in the country-side. He had just arrived there. 
On foot, evidently.  No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil
at that hour.  He had walked all night.  Whence came he?  Not from
a very great distance; for he had neither haversack, nor bundle. 
From Paris, no doubt.  Why was he in these woods? why was he there at
such an hour? what had he come there for?

Boulatruelle thought of the treasure.  By dint of ransacking his memory,
he recalled in a vague way that he had already, many years before,
had a similar alarm in connection with a man who produced on him
the effect that he might well be this very individual.

"By the deuce," said Boulatruelle, "I'll find him again. 
I'll discover the parish of that parishioner.  This prowler
of Patron-Minette has a reason, and I'll know it.  People can't
have secrets in my forest if I don't have a finger in the pie."

He took his pick-axe which was very sharply pointed.

"There now," he grumbled, "is something that will search the earth
and a man."

And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line
of march at his best pace in the direction which the man must follow,
and set out across the thickets.

When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already
beginning to break, came to his assistance.  Footprints stamped
in the sand, weeds trodden down here and there, heather crushed,
young branches in the brushwood bent and in the act of straightening
themselves up again with the graceful deliberation of the arms of a
pretty woman who stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him
a sort of track.  He followed it, then lost it.  Time was flying. 
He plunged deeper into the woods and came to a sort of eminence. 
An early huntsman who was passing in the distance along a path,
whistling the air of Guillery, suggested to him the idea of climbing
a tree.  Old as he was, he was agile.  There stood close at hand
a beech-tree of great size, worthy of Tityrus and of Boulatruelle. 
Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as he was able.

The idea was a good one.  On scrutinizing the solitary waste
on the side where the forest is thoroughly entangled and wild,
Boulatruelle suddenly caught sight of his man.

Hardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of him.

The man entered, or rather, glided into, an open glade, at a
considerable distance, masked by large trees, but with which
Boulatruelle was perfectly familiar, on account of having noticed,
near a large pile of porous stones, an ailing chestnut-tree
bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark. 
This glade was the one which was formerly called the Blaru-bottom.
The heap of stones, destined for no one knows what employment,
which was visible there thirty years ago, is doubtless still there. 
Nothing equals a heap of stones in longevity, unless it is a board fence. 
They are temporary expedients.  What a reason for lasting!

Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, dropped rather than descended
from the tree.  The lair was unearthed, the question now was to seize
the beast.  That famous treasure of his dreams was probably there.

It was no small matter to reach that glade.  By the beaten paths,
which indulge in a thousand teasing zigzags, it required a good
quarter of an hour.  In a bee-line, through the underbrush, which is
peculiarly dense, very thorny, and very aggressive in that locality,
a full half hour was necessary.  Boulatruelle committed the error
of not comprehending this.  He believed in the straight line;
a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.  The thicket,
bristling as it was, struck him as the best road.

"Let's take to the wolves' Rue de Rivoli," said he.

Boulatruelle, accustomed to taking crooked courses, was on this
occasion guilty of the fault of going straight.

He flung himself resolutely into the tangle of undergrowth.

He had to deal with holly bushes, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines,
thistles, and very irascible brambles.  He was much lacerated.

At the bottom of the ravine he found water which he was obliged
to traverse.

At last he reached the Blaru-bottom, after the lapse of forty
minutes, sweating, soaked, breathless, scratched, and ferocious.

There was no one in the glade.  Boulatruelle rushed to the heap
of stones.  It was in its place.  It had not been carried off.

As for the man, he had vanished in the forest.  He had made his escape. 
Where? in what direction? into what thicket?  Impossible to guess.

And, heartrending to say, there, behind the pile of stones, in front
of the tree with the sheet of zinc, was freshly turned earth,
a pick-axe, abandoned or forgotten, and a hole.

The hole was empty.

"Thief!" shrieked Boulatruelle, shaking his fist at the horizon.



CHAPTER II

MARIUS, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR DOMESTIC WAR


For a long time, Marius was neither dead nor alive.  For many
weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, and by tolerably
grave cerebral symptoms, caused more by the shocks of the wounds
on the head than by the wounds themselves.

He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity
of fever, and with the sombre obstinacy of agony.  The extent of some
of the lesions presented a serious danger, the suppuration of large
wounds being always liable to become re-absorbed, and consequently,
to kill the sick man, under certain atmospheric conditions; at every
change of weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.

"Above all things," he repeated, "let the wounded man be subjected
to no emotion."  The dressing of the wounds was complicated
and difficult, the fixation of apparatus and bandages by
cerecloths not having been invented as yet, at that epoch. 
Nicolette used up a sheet "as big as the ceiling," as she put it,
for lint.  It was not without difficulty that the chloruretted
lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the gangrene. 
As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenormand, seated in despair
at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius, neither alive nor dead.

Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed gentleman
with white hair,--such was the description given by the porter,--
came to inquire about the wounded man, and left a large package
of lint for the dressings.

Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day, after the
sorrowful night when he had been brought back to his grandfather
in a dying condition, the doctor declared that he would answer
for Marius.  Convalescence began.  But Marius was forced to remain
for two months more stretched out on a long chair, on account of the
results called up by the fracture of his collar-bone. There always
is a last wound like that which will not close, and which prolongs
the dressings indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick person.

However, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him
from all pursuit.  In France, there is no wrath, not even of a
public character, which six months will not extinguish.  Revolts,
in the present state of society, are so much the fault of every one,
that they are followed by a certain necessity of shutting the eyes.

Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined
doctors to lodge information against the wounded, having outraged
public opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all,
the wounded were covered and protected by this indignation; and,
with the exception of those who had been made prisoners in the very
act of combat, the councils of war did not dare to trouble any one. 
So Marius was left in peace.

M. Gillenormand first passed through all manner of anguish, and then
through every form of ecstasy.  It was found difficult to prevent
his passing every night beside the wounded man; he had his big
arm-chair carried to Marius' bedside; he required his daughter
to take the finest linen in the house for compresses and bandages. 
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, like a sage and elderly person,
contrived to spare the fine linen, while allowing the grandfather
to think that he was obeyed.  M. Gillenormand would not permit
any one to explain to him, that for the preparation of lint
batiste is not nearly so good as coarse linen, nor new linen
as old linen.  He was present at all the dressings of the wounds
from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. 
When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors, he said:  "Aie! aie!" 
Nothing was more touching than to see him with his gentle,
senile palsy, offer the wounded man a cup of his cooling-draught.
He overwhelmed the doctor with questions.  He did not observe
that he asked the same ones over and over again.

On the day when the doctor announced to him that Marius was out
of danger, the good man was in a delirium.  He made his porter a present
of three louis.  That evening, on his return to his own chamber,
he danced a gavotte, using his thumb and forefinger as castanets,
and he sang the following song:

      "Jeanne est nee a Fougere     "Amour, tu vis en elle;
       Vrai nid d'une bergere;       Car c'est dans sa prunelle
       J'adore son jupon,            Que tu mets ton carquois.
           Fripon.                       Narquois!

                "Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
                 Plus que Diane meme,
                 Jeanne et ses durs tetons
                     Bretons."[61]



[61] "Jeanne was born at Fougere, a true shepherd's nest; I adore
her petticoat, the rogue.

"Love, thou dwellest in her; For 'tis in her eyes that thou placest
thy quiver, sly scamp!

"As for me, I sing her, and I love, more than Diana herself,
Jeanne and her firm Breton breasts."


Then he knelt upon a chair, and Basque, who was watching him
through the half-open door, made sure that he was praying.

Up to that time, he had not believed in God.

At each succeeding phase of improvement, which became more and
more pronounced, the grandfather raved.  He executed a multitude of
mechanical actions full of joy; he ascended and descended the stairs,
without knowing why.  A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning
at receiving a big bouquet; it was M. Gillenormand who had sent it
to her.  The husband made a jealous scene.  M. Gillenormand tried
to draw Nicolette upon his knees.  He called Marius, "M. le Baron." 
He shouted:  "Long live the Republic!"

Every moment, he kept asking the doctor:  "Is he no longer in danger?" 
He gazed upon Marius with the eyes of a grandmother.  He brooded
over him while he ate.  He no longer knew himself, he no longer
rendered himself an account of himself.  Marius was the master
of the house, there was abdication in his joy, he was the grandson
of his grandson.

In the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most venerable
of children.  In his fear lest he might fatigue or annoy the convalescent,
he stepped behind him to smile.  He was content, joyous, delighted,
charming, young.  His white locks added a gentle majesty to the gay
radiance of his visage.  When grace is mingled with wrinkles,
it is adorable.  There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.

As for Marius, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and care
for him, he had but one fixed idea:  Cosette.

After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce
her name, and it might have been supposed that he no longer thought
of her.  He held his peace, precisely because his soul was there.

He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole affair of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows that were
almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf,
the Thenardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke
of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through
that adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest;
he understood nothing connected with his own life, he did not know
how nor by whom he had been saved, and no one of those around him
knew this; all that they had been able to tell him was, that he
had been brought home at night in a hackney-coach, to the Rue
des Filles-du-Calvaire; past, present, future were nothing more
to him than the mist of a vague idea; but in that fog there was
one immovable point, one clear and precise outline, something made
of granite, a resolution, a will; to find Cosette once more. 
For him, the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of Cosette. 
He had decreed in his heart that he would not accept the one without
the other, and he was immovably resolved to exact of any person whatever,
who should desire to force him to live,--from his grandfather,
from fate, from hell,--the restitution of his vanished Eden.

He did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles existed.

Let us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and was but little
softened by all the solicitude and tenderness of his grandfather. 
In the first place, he was not in the secret; then, in his reveries
of an invalid, which were still feverish, possibly, he distrusted
this tenderness as a strange and novel thing, which had for its
object his conquest.  He remained cold.  The grandfather absolutely
wasted his poor old smile.  Marius said to himself that it was
all right so long as he, Marius, did not speak, and let things
take their course; but that when it became a question of Cosette,
he would find another face, and that his grandfather's true attitude
would be unmasked.  Then there would be an unpleasant scene;
a recrudescence of family questions, a confrontation of positions,
every sort of sarcasm and all manner of objections at one and the
same time, Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, a stone about
his neck, the future.  Violent resistance; conclusion:  a refusal. 
Marius stiffened himself in advance.

And then, in proportion as he regained life, the old ulcers
of his memory opened once more, he reflected again on the past,
Colonel Pontmercy placed himself once more between M. Gillenormand
and him, Marius, he told himself that he had no true kindness to expect
from a person who had been so unjust and so hard to his father. 
And with health, there returned to him a sort of harshness
towards his grandfather.  The old man was gently pained by this. 
M. Gillenormand, without however allowing it to appear, observed
that Marius, ever since the latter had been brought back to him
and had regained consciousness, had not once called him father. 
It is true that he did not say "monsieur" to him; but he contrived
not to say either the one or the other, by means of a certain way
of turning his phrases.  Obviously, a crisis was approaching.

As almost always happens in such cases, Marius skirmished before
giving battle, by way of proving himself.  This is called "feeling
the ground."  One morning it came to pass that M. Gillenormand spoke
slightingly of the Convention, apropos of a newspaper which had fallen
into his hands, and gave vent to a Royalist harangue on Danton,
Saint-Juste and Robespierre.--"The men of '93 were giants,"
said Marius with severity.  The old man held his peace, and uttered
not a sound during the remainder of that day.

Marius, who had always present to his mind the inflexible grandfather
of his early years, interpreted this silence as a profound
concentration of wrath, augured from it a hot conflict, and augmented
his preparations for the fray in the inmost recesses of his mind.

He decided that, in case of a refusal, he would tear off his bandages,
dislocate his collar-bone, that he would lay bare all the wounds
which he had left, and would reject all food.  His wounds were his
munitions of war.  He would have Cosette or die.

He awaited the propitious moment with the crafty patience of the sick.

That moment arrived.



CHAPTER III

MARIUS ATTACKED


One day, M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting in order
the phials and cups on the marble of the commode, bent over Marius
and said to him in his tenderest accents:  "Look here, my little Marius,
if I were in your place, I would eat meat now in preference to fish. 
A fried sole is excellent to begin a convalescence with, but a good
cutlet is needed to put a sick man on his feet."

Marius, who had almost entirely recovered his strength,
collected the whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture,
laid his two clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his
grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said:

"This leads me to say something to you."

"What is it?"

"That I wish to marry."

"Agreed," said his grandfather.--And he burst out laughing.

"How agreed?"

"Yes, agreed.  You shall have your little girl."

Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock,
trembled in every limb.

M. Gillenormand went on:

"Yes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of yours. 
She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman to inquire
after you.  Ever since you were wounded, she has passed her time
in weeping and making lint.  I have made inquiries.  She lives
in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7.  Ah!  There we have it! 
Ah! so you want her!  Well, you shall have her.  You're caught. 
You had arranged your little plot, you had said to yourself:--`I'm
going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to that mummy
of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau, to that
Dorante turned Geronte; he has indulged in his frivolities also,
that he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes
and his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings,
he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.' 
Ah! you take the cockchafer by the horns.  That's good.  I offer
you a cutlet and you answer me:  `By the way, I want to marry.' 
There's a transition for you!  Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! 
You do not know that I am an old coward.  What do you say to that? 
You are vexed?  You did not expect to find your grandfather still
more foolish than yourself, you are wasting the discourse which
you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's vexatious. 
Well, so much the worse, rage away.  I'll do whatever you wish,
and that cuts you short, imbecile!  Listen.  I have made my inquiries,
I'm cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not true
about the lancer, she has made heaps of lint, she's a jewel,
she adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us,
her coffin would have accompanied mine.  I have had an idea,
ever since you have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside,
but it is only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides
of handsome young wounded men who interest them.  It is not done. 
What would your aunt have said to it?  You were nude three quarters
of the time, my good fellow.  Ask Nicolette, who has not left you
for a moment, if there was any possibility of having a woman here. 
And then, what would the doctor have said?  A pretty girl does
not cure a man of fever.  In short, it's all right, let us say no
more about it, all's said, all's done, it's all settled, take her. 
Such is my ferocity.  You see, I perceived that you did not love me. 
I said to myself:  `Here now, I have my little Cosette right under
my hand, I'm going to give her to him, he will be obliged to love
me a little then, or he must tell the reason why.'  Ah! so you
thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on a big voice,
to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora.  Not a bit
of it.  Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better. 
Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir.  Be happy, my well-beloved
child."

That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.

And he seized Marius' head, and pressed it with both arms against
his breast, and both fell to weeping.  This is one of the forms
of supreme happiness.

"Father!" cried Marius.

"Ah, so you love me!" said the old man.

An ineffable moment ensued.  They were choking and could not speak.

At length the old man stammered:

"Come! his mouth is unstopped at last.  He has said:  `Father' to me."

Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently:

"But, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me that I
might see her."

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

"Father!"

"What?"

"Why not to-day?"

"Well, to-day then.  Let it be to-day. You have called me `father'
three times, and it is worth it.  I will attend to it.  She shall
be brought hither.  Agreed, I tell you.  It has already been put
into verse.  This is the ending of the elegy of the `Jeune Malade'
by Andre Chenier, by Andre Chenier whose throat was cut by the ras.
.. by the giants of '93."

M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part
of Marius, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no longer listening
to him, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793.

The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced
Andre Chenier, resumed precipitately:

"Cut his throat is not the word.  The fact is that the great
revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is incontestable,
who were heroes, pardi! found that Andre Chenier embarrassed
them somewhat, and they had him guillot... that is to say,
those great men on the 7th of Thermidor, besought Andre Chenier,
in the interests of public safety, to be so good as to go..."

M. Gillenormand, clutched by the throat by his own phrase,
could not proceed.  Being able neither to finish it nor to retract it,
while his daughter arranged the pillow behind Marius, who was
overwhelmed with so many emotions, the old man rushed headlong,
with as much rapidity as his age permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut
the door behind him, and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth,
his eyes starting from his head, he found himself nose to nose
with honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom. 
He seized Basque by the collar, and shouted full in his face
in fury:--"By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil,
those ruffians did assassinate him!"

"Who, sir?"

"Andre Chenier!"

"Yes, sir," said Basque in alarm.



CHAPTER IV

MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND ENDS BY NO LONGER THINKING IT A BAD THING
THAT M. FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD HAVE ENTERED WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS
ARM


Cosette and Marius beheld each other once more.

What that interview was like we decline to say.  There are things
which one must not attempt to depict; the sun is one of them.

The entire family, including Basque and Nicolette, were assembled
in Marius' chamber at the moment when Cosette entered it.

Precisely at that moment, the grandfather was on the point of blowing
his nose; he stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief,
and gazing over it at Cosette.

She appeared on the threshold; it seemed to him that she was
surrounded by a glory.

"Adorable!" he exclaimed.

Then he blew his nose noisily.

Cosette was intoxicated, delighted, frightened, in heaven. 
She was as thoroughly alarmed as any one can be by happiness. 
She stammered all pale, yet flushed, she wanted to fling herself
into Marius' arms, and dared not.  Ashamed of loving in the presence
of all these people.  People are pitiless towards happy lovers;
they remain when the latter most desire to be left alone.  Lovers have
no need of any people whatever.

With Cosette, and behind her, there had entered a man with white hair
who was grave yet smiling, though with a vague and heartrending smile. 
It was "Monsieur Fauchelevent"; it was Jean Valjean.

He was very well dressed, as the porter had said, entirely in black,
in perfectly new garments, and with a white cravat.

The porter was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this
correct bourgeois, in this probable notary, the fear-inspiring
bearer of the corpse, who had sprung up at his door on the night
of the 7th of June, tattered, muddy, hideous, haggard, his face
masked in blood and mire, supporting in his arms the fainting Marius;
still, his porter's scent was aroused.  When M. Fauchelevent
arrived with Cosette, the porter had not been able to refrain
from communicating to his wife this aside:  "I don't know
why it is, but I can't help fancying that I've seen that face before."

M. Fauchelevent in Marius' chamber, remained apart near the door. 
He had under his arm, a package which bore considerable resemblance
to an octavo volume enveloped in paper.  The enveloping paper was
of a greenish hue, and appeared to be mouldy.

"Does the gentleman always have books like that under his arm?" 
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who did not like books, demanded in a low
tone of Nicolette.

"Well," retorted M. Gillenormand, who had overheard her, in the
same tone, "he's a learned man.  What then?  Is that his fault? 
Monsieur Boulard, one of my acquaintances, never walked out without
a book under his arm either, and he always had some old volume
hugged to his heart like that."

And, with a bow, he said aloud:

"Monsieur Tranchelevent..."

Father Gillenormand did not do it intentionally, but inattention
to proper names was an aristocratic habit of his.

"Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of asking you, on behalf
of my grandson, Baron Marius Pontmercy, for the hand of Mademoiselle."

Monsieur Tranchelevent bowed.

"That's settled," said the grandfather.

And, turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended
in blessing, he cried:

"Permission to adore each other!"

They did not require him to repeat it twice.  So much the worse!
the chirping began.  They talked low.  Marius, resting on his elbow
on his reclining chair, Cosette standing beside him.  "Oh, heavens!"
murmured Cosette, "I see you once again! it is thou! it is you! 
The idea of going and fighting like that!  But why?  It is horrible. 
I have been dead for four months.  Oh! how wicked it was of you
to go to that battle!  What had I done to you?  I pardon you,
but you will never do it again.  A little while ago, when they
came to tell us to come to you, I still thought that I was about
to die, but it was from joy.  I was so sad!  I have not taken
the time to dress myself, I must frighten people with my looks! 
What will your relatives say to see me in a crumpled collar? 
Do speak!  You let me do all the talking.  We are still in the Rue
de l'Homme Arme.  It seems that your shoulder was terrible. 
They told me that you could put your fist in it.  And then, it seems
that they cut your flesh with the scissors.  That is frightful. 
I have cried till I have no eyes left.  It is queer that a person
can suffer like that.  Your grandfather has a very kindly air. 
Don't disturb yourself, don't rise on your elbow, you will
injure yourself.  Oh! how happy I am!  So our unhappiness is over! 
I am quite foolish.  I had things to say to you, and I no longer
know in the least what they were.  Do you still love me?  We live
in the Rue de l'Homme Arme.  There is no garden.  I made lint all
the time; stay, sir, look, it is your fault, I have a callous on my
fingers."

"Angel!" said Marius.

Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out. 
No other word could resist the merciless use which lovers make
of it.

Then as there were spectators, they paused and said not a word more,
contenting themselves with softly touching each other's hands.

M. Gillenormand turned towards those who were in the room and cried:

"Talk loud, the rest of you.  Make a noise, you people behind
the scenes.  Come, a little uproar, the deuce! so that the children
can chatter at their ease."

And, approaching Marius and Cosette, he said to them in a very
low voice:

"Call each other thou.  Don't stand on ceremony."

Aunt Gillenormand looked on in amazement at this irruption
of light in her elderly household.  There was nothing aggressive
about this amazement; it was not the least in the world like the
scandalized and envious glance of an owl at two turtle-doves, it
was the stupid eye of a poor innocent seven and fifty years of age;
it was a life which had been a failure gazing at that triumph, love.

"Mademoiselle Gillenormand senior," said her father to her,
"I told you that this is what would happen to you."

He remained silent for a moment, and then added:

"Look at the happiness of others."

Then he turned to Cosette.

"How pretty she is! how pretty she is!  She's a Greuze. 
So you are going to have that all to yourself, you scamp! 
Ah! my rogue, you are getting off nicely with me, you are happy;
if I were not fifteen years too old, we would fight with swords
to see which of us should have her.  Come now!  I am in love
with you, mademoiselle.  It's perfectly simple.  It is your right. 
You are in the right.  Ah! what a sweet, charming little wedding
this will make!  Our parish is Saint-Denis du Saint Sacrament,
but I will get a dispensation so that you can be married at
Saint-Paul. The church is better.  It was built by the Jesuits. 
It is more coquettish.  It is opposite the fountain of Cardinal
de Birague.  The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at Namur. 
It is called Saint-Loup. You must go there after you are married. 
It is worth the journey.  Mademoiselle, I am quite of your mind,
I think girls ought to marry; that is what they are made for. 
There is a certain Sainte-Catherine whom I should always like
to see uncoiffed.[62] It's a fine thing to remain a spinster,
but it is chilly.  The Bible says:  Multiply.  In order to save
the people, Jeanne d'Arc is needed; but in order to make people,
what is needed is Mother Goose.  So, marry, my beauties.  I really
do not see the use in remaining a spinster!  I know that they
have their chapel apart in the church, and that they fall back
on the Society of the Virgin; but, sapristi, a handsome husband,
a fine fellow, and at the expiration of a year, a big, blond brat
who nurses lustily, and who has fine rolls of fat on his thighs,
and who musses up your breast in handfuls with his little rosy paws,
laughing the while like the dawn,--that's better than holding a candle
at vespers, and chanting Turris eburnea!"

[62] In allusion to the expression, coiffer Sainte-Catherine, "to
remain unmarried."


The grandfather executed a pirouette on his eighty-year-old heels,
and began to talk again like a spring that has broken loose once more:

           "Ainsi, bornant les cours de tes revasseries,
            Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries."[63]

[63] "Thus, hemming in the course of thy musings, Alcippus, it is
true that thou wilt wed ere long."


"By the way!"

"What is it, father?"

"Have not you an intimate friend?"

"Yes, Courfeyrac."

"What has become of him?"

"He is dead."

"That is good."

He seated himself near them, made Cosette sit down, and took their
four hands in his aged and wrinkled hands:

"She is exquisite, this darling.  She's a masterpiece, this Cosette! 
She is a very little girl and a very great lady.  She will only be
a Baroness, which is a come down for her; she was born a Marquise. 
What eyelashes she has!  Get it well fixed in your noddles,
my children, that you are in the true road.  Love each other. 
Be foolish about it.  Love is the folly of men and the wit of God. 
Adore each other.  Only," he added, suddenly becoming gloomy,
"what a misfortune!  It has just occurred to me!  More than half
of what I possess is swallowed up in an annuity; so long as I live,
it will not matter, but after my death, a score of years hence, ah! my
poor children, you will not have a sou!  Your beautiful white hands,
Madame la Baronne, will do the devil the honor of pulling him by the
tail."[64]


[64] Tirer le diable par la queue, "to live from hand to mouth."


At this point they heard a grave and tranquil voice say:

"Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent possesses six hundred
thousand francs."

It was the voice of Jean Valjean.

So far he had not uttered a single word, no one seemed to be aware
that he was there, and he had remained standing erect and motionless,
behind all these happy people.

"What has Mademoiselle Euphrasie to do with the question?"
inquired the startled grandfather.

"I am she," replied Cosette.

"Six hundred thousand francs?" resumed M. Gillenormand.

"Minus fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, possibly," said Jean Valjean.

And he laid on the table the package which Mademoiselle Gillenormand
had mistaken for a book.

Jean Valjean himself opened the package; it was a bundle of bank-notes.
They were turned over and counted.  There were five hundred notes
for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixty-eight
of five hundred.  In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

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

"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" murmured the aunt.

"This arranges things well, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand
senior?" said the grandfather.  "That devil of a Marius has ferreted
out the nest of a millionaire grisette in his tree of dreams! 
Just trust to the love affairs of young folks now, will you! 
Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. 
Cherubino works better than Rothschild."

"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" repeated Mademoiselle
Gillenormand, in a low tone.  "Five hundred and eighty-four!
one might as well say six hundred thousand!"

As for Marius and Cosette, they were gazing at each other while this
was going on; they hardly heeded this detail.



CHAPTER V

DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY


The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating a
lengthy explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu affair,
had been able, thanks to his first escape of a few days' duration, to come
to Paris and to withdraw in season, from the hands of Laffitte,
the sum earned by him, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine,
at Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that fearing that he might be recaptured,--
which eventually happened--he had buried and hidden that sum in the
forest of Montfermeil, in the locality known as the Blaru-bottom.
The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-bills,
was not very bulky, and was contained in a box; only, in order
to preserve the box from dampness, he had placed it in a coffer
filled with chestnut shavings.  In the same coffer he had placed his
other treasures, the Bishop's candlesticks.  It will be remembered
that he had carried off the candlesticks when he made his escape
from Montreuil-sur-Mer. The man seen one evening for the first time
by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean.  Later on, every time that Jean
Valjean needed money, he went to get it in the Blaru-bottom. Hence
the absences which we have mentioned.  He had a pickaxe somewhere
in the heather, in a hiding-place known to himself alone.  When he
beheld Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand, when that
money might prove of service, he had gone to get it; it was he again,
whom Boulatruelle had seen in the woods, but on this occasion, in the
morning instead of in the evening.  Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.

The actual sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand,
five hundred francs.  Jean Valjean withdrew the five hundred
francs for himself.--"We shall see hereafter," he thought.

The difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty
thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte represented his expenditure
in ten years, from 1823 to 1833.  The five years of his stay
in the convent had cost only five thousand francs.

Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece,
where they glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint.


Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. 
The story had been told in his presence, and he had verified the fact
in the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Javert had been found
drowned under a boat belonging to some laundresses, between the Pont
au Change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing left by this man,
otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his superiors,
pointed to a fit of mental aberration and a suicide.--"In fact,"
thought Jean Valjean, "since he left me at liberty, once having got me
in his power, he must have been already mad."



CHAPTER VI

THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN FASHION,
TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY


Everything was made ready for the wedding.  The doctor,
on being consulted, declared that it might take place in February. 
It was then December.  A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.

The grandfather was not the least happy of them all.  He remained
for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.

"The wonderful, beautiful girl!" he exclaimed.  "And she has so sweet
and good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl
that I have ever seen in my life.  Later on, she'll have virtues
with an odor of violets.  How graceful! one cannot live otherwise
than nobly with such a creature.  Marius, my boy, you are a Baron,
you are rich, don't go to pettifogging, I beg of you."

Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise. 
The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned,
had they not been dazzled by it.

"Do you understand anything about it?" said Marius to Cosette.

"No," replied Cosette, "but it seems to me that the good God
is caring for us."

Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty,
arranged everything, made everything easy.  He hastened towards
Cosette's happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with
as much joy, as Cosette herself.

As he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate
problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted,
Cosette's civil status.  If he were to announce her origin bluntly,
it might prevent the marriage, who knows?  He extricated
Cosette from all difficulties.  He concocted for her a family
of dead people, a sure means of not encountering any objections. 
Cosette was the only scion of an extinct family; Cosette was not
his own daughter, but the daughter of the other Fauchelevent. 
Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners to the convent of
the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry was made at that convent; the very best
information and the most respectable references abounded; the good nuns,
not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of paternity,
and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never understood
exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter. 
They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal.  An acte de
notoriete was drawn up.  Cosette became in the eyes of the law,
Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent.  She was declared an orphan,
both father and mother being dead.  Jean Valjean so arranged it
that he was appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's
guardian, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian over him.

As for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted
a legacy bequeathed to Cosette by a dead person, who desired
to remain unknown.  The original legacy had consisted of five
hundred and ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs
had been expended on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie,
five thousand francs of that amount having been paid to the convent. 
This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be turned
over to Cosette at her majority, or at the date of her marriage. 
This, taken as a whole, was very acceptable, as the reader will perceive,
especially when the sum due was half a million.  There were some
peculiarities here and there, it is true, but they were not noticed;
one of the interested parties had his eyes blindfolded by love,
the others by the six hundred thousand francs.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man
whom she had so long called father.  He was merely a kinsman;
another Fauchelevent was her real father.  At any other time this
would have broken her heart.  But at the ineffable moment which she
was then passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud,
and she was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. 
She had Marius.  The young man arrived, the old man was effaced;
such is life.

And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing
enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood
is always prepared for certain renunciations.

Nevertheless, she continued to call Jean Valjean:  Father.

Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Gillenormand. 
It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant compliments
and presents.  While Jean Valjean was building up for Cosette a normal
situation in society and an unassailable status, M. Gillenormand
was superintending the basket of wedding gifts.  Nothing so
amused him as being magnificent.  He had given to Cosette a robe
of Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.

"These fashions come up again," said he, "ancient things are
the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old
women of my childhood."

He rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer,
with swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.--"Let us
hear the confession of these dowagers," he said, "let us see what they
have in their paunches."  He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers
of all his wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. 
Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros
de Tours, India kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed,
dauphines without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and
Alencon point lace, parures in antique goldsmith's work, ivory bon-bon
boxes ornamented with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons--
he lavished everything on Cosette.  Cosette, amazed, desperately in
love with Marius, and wild with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand,
dreamed of a happiness without limit clothed in satin and velvet. 
Her wedding basket seemed to her to be upheld by seraphim. 
Her soul flew out into the azure depths, with wings of Mechlin lace.

The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have
already said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather.  A sort of flourish
of trumpets went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-a-brac from the grandfather
to Cosette.  All possible knickknacks glittered around her.

One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst
of his bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:

"The men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige
of the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them
seems to me an antique memory."

"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman.  "Thanks, Marius. 
That is precisely the idea of which I was in search."

And on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose colored
moire antique was added to Cosette's wedding presents.

From these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of wisdom.

"Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go
with it.  The useless must be mingled with happiness.  Happiness is
only the necessary.  Season that enormously with the superfluous
for me.  A palace and her heart.  Her heart and the Louvre. 
Her heart and the grand waterworks of Versailles.  Give me my
shepherdess and try to make her a duchess.  Fetch me Phyllis crowned
with corn-flowers, and add a hundred thousand francs income. 
Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a
marble colonnade.  I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy
spectacle of marble and gold.  Dry happiness resembles dry bread. 
One eats, but one does not dine.  I want the superfluous,
the useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. 
I remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a clock,
as tall as a three-story house which marked the hours, which had
the kindness to indicate the hour, but which had not the air of being
made for that; and which, after having struck midday, or midnight,--
midday, the hour of the sun, or midnight, the hour of love,--
or any other hour that you like, gave you the moon and the stars,
the earth and the sea, birds and fishes, Phoebus and Phoebe, and a
host of things which emerged from a niche, and the twelve apostles,
and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Eponine, and Sabinus,
and a throng of little gilded goodmen, who played on the trumpet
to boot.  Without reckoning delicious chimes which it sprinkled
through the air, on every occasion, without any one's knowing why. 
Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells the hour equal to that? 
For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg,
and I prefer it to the cuckoo clock from the Black Forest."

M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the wedding,
and all the fripperies of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell
through his dithyrambs.

"You are ignorant of the art of festivals.  You do not know
how to organize a day of enjoyment in this age," he exclaimed. 
"Your nineteenth century is weak.  It lacks excess.  It ignores
the rich, it ignores the noble.  In everything it is clean-shaven.
Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. 
The dreams of your bourgeois who set up, as they express it: 
a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet, ebony and calico. 
Make way!  Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle
Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and splendor.  A louis d'or has been
stuck to a candle.  There's the epoch for you.  My demand is that I
may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians.  Ah! in 1787, I predict
that all was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan,
Prince de Leon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Sonbise,
Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecu! 
That has borne its fruits.  In this century, men attend to business,
they gamble on 'Change, they win money, they are stingy.  People take
care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one is dressed as though
just out of a band-box, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked,
smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable,
polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at the same time,
death of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have
dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who blows
his nose in his fingers, recoil.  I grant to this age the device: 
`Dirty Cleanliness.'  Don't be vexed, Marius, give me permission
to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am always
harping on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit
of a slap to the bourgeoisie.  I belong to it.  He who loves well
lashes well.  Thereupon, I say plainly, that now-a-days people marry,
but that they no longer know how to marry.  Ah! it is true, I regret
the grace of the ancient manners.  I regret everything about them,
their elegance, their chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways,
that joyous luxury which every one possessed, music forming part of
the wedding, a symphony above stairs, a beating of drums below stairs,
the dances, the joyous faces round the table, the fine-spun
gallant compliments, the songs, the fireworks, the frank laughter,
the devil's own row, the huge knots of ribbon.  I regret the
bride's garter.  The bride's garter is cousin to the girdle of Venus. 
On what does the war of Troy turn?  On Helen's garter, parbleu! 
Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break over the head
of Meriones that great brazen helmet of ten points? why did Achilles
and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances? 
Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter.  With Cosette's garter,
Homer would construct the Iliad.  He would put in his poem,
a loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call him Nestor. 
My friends, in bygone days, in those amiable days of yore,
people married wisely; they had a good contract, and then they
had a good carouse.  As soon as Cujas had taken his departure,
Gamacho entered.  But, in sooth! the stomach is an agreeable beast
which demands its due, and which wants to have its wedding also. 
People supped well, and had at table a beautiful neighbor without
a guimpe so that her throat was only moderately concealed. 
Oh! the large laughing mouths, and how gay we were in those days!
youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in a branch of
lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a warrior;
and if, by chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found means
to call oneself Florian.  People thought much of looking well. 
They embroidered and tinted themselves.  A bourgeois had the air
of a flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone.  People had
no straps to their boots, they had no boots.  They were spruce,
shining, waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not
at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides.  The humming-bird
has beak and claws.  That was the day of the Galland Indies.  One of
the sides of that century was delicate, the other was magnificent;
and by the green cabbages! people amused themselves.  To-day, people
are serious.  The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude;
your century is unfortunate.  People would drive away the Graces
as being too low in the neck.  Alas! beauty is concealed as though
it were ugliness.  Since the revolution, everything, including the
ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave;
your rigadoons are doctrinarian.  It is necessary to be majestic. 
People would be greatly annoyed if they did not carry their chins
in their cravats.  The ideal of an urchin of twenty when he marries,
is to resemble M. Royer-Collard. And do you know what one
arrives at with that majesty? at being petty.  Learn this: 
joy is not only joyous; it is great.  But be in love gayly then,
what the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever and giddiness,
and tumult, and the uproar of happiness!  Be grave in church,
well and good.  But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you
must make a dream whirl around the bride.  A marriage should be
royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the
cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup.  I have a horror
of a paltry wedding.  Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day,
at least.  Be one of the gods.  Ah! people might be sylphs. 
Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids.  My friends,
every recently made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. 
Profit by that unique minute in life to soar away to the empyrean
with the swans and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back
on the morrow into the bourgeoisie of the frogs.  Don't economize
on the nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don't scrimp
on the day when you beam.  The wedding is not the housekeeping. 
Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it would be gallant, violins would
be heard under the trees.  Here is my programme:  sky-blue and silver. 
I would mingle with the festival the rural divinities, I would
convoke the Dryads and the Nereids.  The nuptials of Amphitrite,
a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks and entirely naked,
an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a chariot drawn by
marine monsters.

           "Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque
            Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!"[65]

--there's a festive programme, there's a good one, or else I know
nothing of such matters, deuce take it!"


[65] "Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch-shell
sounds so ravishing that he delighted everyone!"


While the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was listening
to himself, Cosette and Marius grew intoxicated as they gazed
freely at each other.

Aunt Gillenormand surveyed all this with her imperturbable placidity. 
Within the last five or six months she had experienced a certain
amount of emotions.  Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding,
Marius brought back from a barricade, Marius dead, then living,
Marius reconciled, Marius betrothed, Marius wedding a poor girl,
Marius wedding a millionairess.  The six hundred thousand francs
had been her last surprise.  Then, her indifference of a girl taking
her first communion returned to her.  She went regularly to service,
told her beads, read her euchology, mumbled Aves in one corner
of the house, while I love you was being whispered in the other,
and she beheld Marius and Cosette in a vague way, like two shadows. 
The shadow was herself.

There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul,
neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated as the
business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or pleasant
or painful, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes. 
This devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his daughter,
corresponds to a cold in the head.  You smell nothing of life. 
Neither any bad, nor any good odor.

Moreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly
spinster's indecision.  Her father had acquired the habit of taking
her so little into account, that he had not consulted her in the
matter of consent to Marius' marriage.  He had acted impetuously,
according to his wont, having, a despot-turned slave, but a
single thought,--to satisfy Marius.  As for the aunt,--it had not
even occurred to him that the aunt existed, and that she could have
an opinion of her own, and, sheep as she was, this had vexed her. 
Somewhat resentful in her inmost soul, but impassible externally,
she had said to herself:  "My father has settled the question of
the marriage without reference to me; I shall settle the question
of the inheritance without consulting him."  She was rich, in fact,
and her father was not.  She had reserved her decision on this point. 
It is probable that, had the match been a poor one, she would have
left him poor.  "So much the worse for my nephew! he is wedding
a beggar, let him be a beggar himself!"  But Cosette's half-million
pleased the aunt, and altered her inward situation so far as this
pair of lovers were concerned.  One owes some consideration to six
hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do
otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, since they
did not need it.

It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather--
M. Gillenormand insisted on resigning to them his chamber,
the finest in the house.  "That will make me young again," he said. 
"It's an old plan of mine.  I have always entertained the idea of
having a wedding in my chamber."

He furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. 
He had the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff,
which he had by him in the piece, and which he believed to have
emanated from Utrecht with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered
with velvet auricula blossoms.--"It was with that stuff," said he,
"that the bed of the Duchesse d'Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped."--
On the chimney-piece, he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain,
carrying a muff against her nude stomach.

M. Gillenormand's library became the lawyer's study, which Marius needed;
a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council
of the order.



CHAPTER VII

THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS


The lovers saw each other every day.  Cosette came with
M. Fauchelevent.--"This is reversing things," said Mademoiselle
Gillenormand, "to have the bride come to the house to do the
courting like this."  But Marius' convalescence had caused the
habit to become established, and the arm-chairs of the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire, better adapted to interviews than the straw
chairs of the Rue de l'Homme Arme, had rooted it.  Marius and
M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not address each other. 
It seemed as though this had been agreed upon.  Every girl needs
a chaperon.  Cosette could not have come without M. Fauchelevent. 
In Marius' eyes, M. Fauchelevent was the condition attached to Cosette. 
He accepted it.  By dint of discussing political matters, vaguely and
without precision, from the point of view of the general amelioration
of the fate of all men, they came to say a little more than "yes"
and "no."  Once, on the subject of education, which Marius wished
to have free and obligatory, multiplied under all forms lavished
on every one, like the air and the sun in a word, respirable for the
entire population, they were in unison, and they almost conversed. 
M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even with a certain loftiness
of language--still he lacked something indescribable.  M. Fauchelevent
possessed something less and also something more, than a man of the world.

Marius, inwardly, and in the depths of his thought, surrounded with all
sorts of mute questions this M. Fauchelevent, who was to him simply
benevolent and cold.  There were moments when doubts as to his own
recollections occurred to him.  There was a void in his memory,
a black spot, an abyss excavated by four months of agony.--Many things
had been lost therein.  He had come to the point of asking himself
whether it were really a fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent,
so serious and so calm a man, in the barricade.

This was not, however, the only stupor which the apparitions
and the disappearances of the past had left in his mind.  It must
not be supposed that he was delivered from all those obsessions
of the memory which force us, even when happy, even when satisfied,
to glance sadly behind us.  The head which does not turn backwards
towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought
nor love.  At times, Marius clasped his face between his hands,
and the vague and tumultuous past traversed the twilight which
reigned in his brain.  Again he beheld Mabeuf fall, he heard
Gavroche singing amid the grape-shot, he felt beneath his lips
the cold brow of Eponine; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire,
Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose erect
before him, then dispersed into thin air.  Were all those dear,
sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragic beings merely dreams? had they
actually existed?  The revolt had enveloped everything in its smoke. 
These great fevers create great dreams.  He questioned himself;
he felt himself; all these vanished realities made him dizzy. 
Where were they all then? was it really true that all were dead? 
A fall into the shadows had carried off all except himself. 
It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain
of a theatre.  There are curtains like this which drop in life. 
God passes on to the following act.

And he himself--was he actually the same man?  He, the poor man,
was rich; he, the abandoned, had a family; he, the despairing,
was to marry Cosette.  It seemed to him that he had traversed a tomb,
and that he had entered into it black and had emerged from it white,
and in that tomb the others had remained.  At certain moments,
all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle
around him, and overshadowed him; then he thought of Cosette,
and recovered his serenity; but nothing less than this felicity could
have sufficed to efface that catastrophe.

M. Fauchelevent almost occupied a place among these vanished beings. 
Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent of the barricade
was the same as this Fauchelevent in flesh and blood, sitting so
gravely beside Cosette.  The first was, probably, one of those
nightmares occasioned and brought back by his hours of delirium. 
However, the natures of both men were rigid, no question from Marius
to M. Fauchelevent was possible.  Such an idea had not even occurred
to him.  We have already indicated this characteristic detail.

Two men who have a secret in common, and who, by a sort of
tacit agreement, exchange not a word on the subject, are less
rare than is commonly supposed.

Once only, did Marius make the attempt.  He introduced into the
conversation the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and, turning to M. Fauchelevent,
he said to him:

"Of course, you are acquainted with that street?"

"What street?"

"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."

"I have no idea of the name of that street," replied M. Fauchelevent,
in the most natural manner in the world.

The response which bore upon the name of the street and not upon
the street itself, appeared to Marius to be more conclusive than it
really was.

"Decidedly," thought he, "I have been dreaming.  I have been
subject to a hallucination.  It was some one who resembled him. 
M. Fauchelevent was not there."'



CHAPTER VIII

TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND


Marius' enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his
mind other pre-occupations.

While the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting the date
fixed upon, he caused difficult and scrupulous retrospective
researches to be made.

He owed gratitude in various quarters;
he owed it on his father's account, he owed it on his own.

There was Thenardier; there
was the unknown man who had brought him, Marius, back to M. Gillenormand.

Marius endeavored to find these two men, not intending to marry,
to be happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were these debts
of gratitude not discharged, they would leave a shadow on his life,
which promised so brightly for the future.

It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering
behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future,
to obtain a quittance from the past.

That Thenardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact
that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy.  Thenardier was a ruffian
in the eyes of all the world except Marius.

And Marius, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field
of Waterloo, was not aware of the peculiar detail, that his father,
so far as Thenardier was concerned was in the strange position
of being indebted to the latter for his life, without being
indebted to him for any gratitude.

None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded in
discovering any trace of Thenardier.  Obliteration appeared to be
complete in that quarter.  Madame Thenardier had died in prison
pending the trial.  Thenardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two
remaining of that lamentable group, had plunged back into the gloom. 
The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed above those beings. 
On the surface there was not visible so much as that quiver,
that trembling, those obscure concentric circles which announce
that something has fallen in, and that the plummet may be dropped.

Madame Thenardier being dead, Boulatruelle being eliminated
from the case, Claquesous having disappeared, the principal
persons accused having escaped from prison, the trial connected
with the ambush in the Gorbeau house had come to nothing.

That affair had remained rather obscure.  The bench of Assizes had
been obliged to content themselves with two subordinates.  Panchaud,
alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards,
who had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides
of the case, to ten years in the galleys.  Hard labor for life had been
the sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious accomplices.

Thenardier, the head and leader, had been, through contumacy,
likewise condemned to death.

This sentence was the only information remaining about Thenardier,
casting upon that buried name its sinister light like a candle beside
a bier.

Moreover, by thrusting Thenardier back into the very remotest depths,
through a fear of being re-captured, this sentence added to the
density of the shadows which enveloped this man.

As for the other person, as for the unknown man who had saved Marius,
the researches were at first to some extent successful, then came
to an abrupt conclusion.  They succeeded in finding the carriage
which had brought Marius to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire on
the evening of the 6th of June.

The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience
to the commands of a police-agent, he had stood from three o'clock
in the afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des Champs-Elysees,
above the outlet of the Grand Sewer; that, towards nine o'clock
in the evening, the grating of the sewer, which abuts on the bank
of the river, had opened; that a man had emerged therefrom, bearing on
his shoulders another man, who seemed to be dead; that the agent,
who was on the watch at that point, had arrested the living man and
had seized the dead man; that, at the order of the police-agent, he,
the coachman, had taken "all those folks" into his carriage;
that they had first driven to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire;
that they had there deposited the dead man; that the dead man was
Monsieur Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him perfectly,
although he was alive "this time"; that afterwards, they had
entered the vehicle again, that he had whipped up his horses;
a few paces from the gate of the Archives, they had called to him
to halt; that there, in the street, they had paid him and left him,
and that the police-agent had led the other man away; that he knew
nothing more; that the night had been very dark.

Marius, as we have said, recalled nothing.  He only remembered
that he had been seized from behind by an energetic hand at
the moment when he was falling backwards into the barricade;
then, everything vanished so far as he was concerned.

He had only regained consciousness at M. Gillenormand's.

He was lost in conjectures.

He could not doubt his own identity.  Still, how had it come
to pass that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had
been picked up by the police-agent on the banks of the Seine,
near the Pont des Invalides?

Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the
Champs-Elysees. And how?  Through the sewer.  Unheard-of devotion!

Some one?  Who?

This was the man for whom Marius was searching.

Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the
faintest indication.

Marius, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that direction,
pushed his inquiries as far as the prefecture of police.  There, no more
than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment.

The prefecture knew less about the matter than did the
hackney-coachman. They had no knowledge of any arrest
having been made on the 6th of June at the mouth of the Grand Sewer.

No report of any agent had been received there upon this matter,
which was regarded at the prefecture as a fable.  The invention
of this fable was attributed to the coachman.

A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even
of imagination.  The fact was assured, nevertheless, and Marius could
not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.

Everything about this singular enigma was inexplicable.

What had become of that man, that mysterious man, whom the coachman
had seen emerge from the grating of the Grand Sewer bearing upon
his back the unconscious Marius, and whom the police-agent on
the watch had arrested in the very act of rescuing an insurgent? 
What had become of the agent himself?

Why had this agent preserved silence?  Had the man succeeded
in making his escape?  Had he bribed the agent?  Why did this
man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? 
His disinterestedness was no less tremendous than his devotion. 
Why had not that man appeared again?  Perhaps he was above compensation,
but no one is above gratitude.  Was he dead?  Who was the man? 
What sort of a face had he?  No one could tell him this.

The coachman answered:  "The night was very dark."  Basque and Nicolette,
all in a flutter, had looked only at their young master all covered
with blood.

The porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of Marius,
had been the only one to take note of the man in question, and this
is the description that he gave:

"That man was terrible."

Marius had the blood-stained clothing which he had worn when he
had been brought back to his grandfather preserved, in the hope
that it would prove of service in his researches.

On examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had been torn
in a singular way.  A piece was missing.

One evening, Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean
Valjean of the whole of that singular adventure, of the innumerable
inquiries which he had made, and of the fruitlessness of his efforts. 
The cold countenance of "Monsieur Fauchelevent" angered him.

He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it:

"Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. 
Do you know what he did, sir?  He intervened like an archangel. 
He must have flung himself into the midst of the battle, have stolen
me away, have opened the sewer, have dragged me into it and have
carried me through it!  He must have traversed more than a league
and a half in those frightful subterranean galleries, bent over,
weighed down, in the dark, in the cess-pool,--more than a league
and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his back!  And with what object? 
With the sole object of saving the corpse.  And that corpse I was. 
He said to himself:  `There may still be a glimpse of life there,
perchance; I will risk my own existence for that miserable spark!' 
And his existence he risked not once but twenty times!  And every step
was a danger.  The proof of it is, that on emerging from the sewer,
he was arrested.  Do you know, sir, that that man did all this? 
And he had no recompense to expect.  What was I?  An insurgent. 
What was I?  One of the conquered.  Oh! if Cosette's six hundred
thousand francs were mine..."

"They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean.

"Well," resumed Marius, "I would give them all to find that man
once more."

Jean Valjean remained silent.



BOOK SIXTH.--THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT


CHAPTER I

THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833


The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. 
Above its shadows heaven stood open.  It was the wedding night
of Marius and Cosette.

The day had been adorable.

It had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather,
a fairy spectacle, with a confusion of cherubim and Cupids over
the heads of the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject
of a painting to be placed over a door; but it had been sweet
and smiling.

The manner of marriage in 1833 was not the same as it is to-day.
France had not yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy
of carrying off one's wife, of fleeing, on coming out of church,
of hiding oneself with shame from one's happiness, and of combining
the ways of a bankrupt with the delights of the Song of Songs. 
People had not yet grasped to the full the chastity, exquisiteness,
and decency of jolting their paradise in a posting-chaise, of breaking
up their mystery with clic-clacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed
of an inn, and of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber,
at so much a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled
pell-mell with the tete-a-tete of the conductor of the diligence
and the maid-servant of the inn.

In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living,
the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God
no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de Lonjumeau;
a blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons,
a plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to
the Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons,
varnished hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. 
France does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like
the English nobility, and raining down on the post-chaise of the
bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of
worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough,
or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the wrath of an
aunt which brought him good luck.  Old shoes and slippers do not,
as yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience,
as good taste continues to spread, we shall come to that.

In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not conducted at a full trot.

Strange to say, at that epoch, people still imagined that a wedding
was a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet
does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess,
provided it be honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that,
in short, it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion
of these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring,
should begin at home, and that the household should thenceforth
have its nuptial chamber as its witness.

And people were so immodest as to marry in their own homes.

The marriage took place, therefore, in accordance with this now
superannuated fashion, at M. Gillenormand's house.

Natural and commonplace as this matter of marrying is, the banns to
publish, the papers to be drawn up, the mayoralty, and the church produce
some complication.  They could not get ready before the 16th of February.

Now, we note this detail, for the pure satisfaction of being exact,
it chanced that the 16th fell on Shrove Tuesday.  Hesitations, scruples,
particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand.

"Shrove Tuesday!" exclaimed the grandfather, "so much the better. 
There is a proverb:

                "`Mariage un Mardi gras
                  N'aura point enfants ingrats.'[66]


[66] "A Shrove-Tuesday marriage will have no ungrateful children."


Let us proceed.  Here goes for the 16th!  Do you want to delay, Marius?"

"No, certainly not!" replied the lover.

"Let us marry, then," cried the grandfather.

Accordingly, the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the
public merrymaking.  It rained that day, but there is always in the sky
a tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which lovers see,
even when the rest of creation is under an umbrella.

On the preceding evening, Jean Valjean handed to Marius, in the presence
of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

As the marriage was taking place under the regime of community
of property, the papers had been simple.

Henceforth, Toussaint was of no use to Jean Valjean; Cosette inherited
her and promoted her to the rank of lady's maid.

As for Jean Valjean, a beautiful chamber in the Gillenormand
house had been furnished expressly for him, and Cosette had said
to him in such an irresistible manner:  "Father, I entreat you,"
that she had almost persuaded him to promise that he would come
and occupy it.

A few days before that fixed on for the marriage, an accident
happened to Jean Valjean; he crushed the thumb of his right hand. 
This was not a serious matter; and he had not allowed any one to
trouble himself about it, nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt,
not even Cosette.  Nevertheless, this had forced him to swathe
his hand in a linen bandage, and to carry his arm in a sling,
and had prevented his signing.  M. Gillenormand, in his capacity
of Cosette's supervising-guardian, had supplied his place.

We will not conduct the reader either to the mayor's office or to
the church.  One does not follow a pair of lovers to that extent,
and one is accustomed to turn one's back on the drama as soon as it
puts a wedding nosegay in its buttonhole.  We will confine ourselves
to noting an incident which, though unnoticed by the wedding party,
marked the transit from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire to the church
of Saint-Paul.

At that epoch, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint-Louis was in
process of repaving.  It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du
Pare-Royal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly
to Saint-Paul. They were obliged to alter their course, and the simplest
way was to turn through the boulevard.  One of the invited guests
observed that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be a jam
of vehicles.--"Why?" asked M. Gillenormand--"Because of the maskers."--
"Capital," said the grandfather, "let us go that way.  These young
folks are on the way to be married; they are about to enter the serious
part of life.  This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the masquerade."

They went by way of the boulevard.  The first wedding coach held
Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. 
Marius, still separated from his betrothed according to usage,
did not come until the second.  The nuptial train, on emerging
from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, became entangled in a long
procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the
Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. 
Maskers abounded on the boulevard.  In spite of the fact that it was
raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. 
In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised
itself as Venice.  Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen
now-a-days. Everything which exists being a scattered Carnival,
there is no longer any Carnival.

The sidewalks were overflowing with pedestrians and the windows with
curious spectators.  The terraces which crown the peristyles of the
theatres were bordered with spectators.  Besides the maskers, they stared
at that procession--peculiar to Shrove Tuesday as to Longchamps,--
of vehicles of every description, citadines, tapissieres, carioles,
cabriolets marching in order, rigorously riveted to each other
by the police regulations, and locked into rails, as it were. 
Any one in these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle. 
Police-sergeants maintained, on the sides of the boulevard,
these two interminable parallel files, moving in contrary directions,
and saw to it that nothing interfered with that double current,
those two brooks of carriages, flowing, the one down stream,
the other up stream, the one towards the Chaussee d'Antin, the other
towards the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The carriages of the peers
of France and of the Ambassadors, emblazoned with coats of arms,
held the middle of the way, going and coming freely.  Certain joyous
and magnificent trains, notably that of the Boeuf Gras, had the
same privilege.  In this gayety of Paris, England cracked her whip;
Lord Seymour's post-chaise, harassed by a nickname from the populace,
passed with great noise.

In the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like
sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts
and grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children
in disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six,
ravishing little creatures, who felt that they formed an official
part of the public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity
of their harlequinade, and who possessed the gravity of functionaries.

From time to time, a hitch arose somewhere in the procession
of vehicles; one or other of the two lateral files halted until
the knot was disentangled; one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze
the whole line.  Then they set out again on the march.

The wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille,
and skirting the right side of the Boulevard.  At the top of the
Pont-aux-Choux, there was a stoppage.  Nearly at the same moment,
the other file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine,
halted also.  At that point of the file there was a carriage-load
of maskers.

These carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagon-loads
of maskers are very familiar to Parisians.  If they were missing on
a Shrove Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part,
and people would say:  "There's something behind that.  Probably the
ministry is about to undergo a change."  A pile of Cassandras,
Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along high above the passers-by,
all possible grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage,
Hercules supporting Marquises, fishwives who would have made Rabelais
stop up his ears just as the Maenads made Aristophanes drop his eyes,
tow wigs, pink tights, dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer,
three-cornered hats of Janot tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed
at pedestrians, fists on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders,
immodesty unchained; a chaos of shamelessness driven by a coachman
crowned with flowers; this is what that institution was like.

Greece stood in need of the chariot of Thespis, France stands
in need of the hackney-coach of Vade.

Everything can be parodied, even parody.  The Saturnalia, that grimace
of antique beauty, ends, through exaggeration after exaggeration,
in Shrove Tuesday; and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with sprays
of vine leaves and grapes, inundated with sunshine, displaying her
marble breast in a divine semi-nudity, having at the present day
lost her shape under the soaked rags of the North, has finally
come to be called the Jack-pudding.

The tradition of carriage-loads of maskers runs back to the
most ancient days of the monarchy.  The accounts of Louis XI. 
allot to the bailiff of the palace "twenty sous, Tournois, for three
coaches of mascarades in the cross-roads." In our day, these noisy
heaps of creatures are accustomed to have themselves driven
in some ancient cuckoo carriage, whose imperial they load down,
or they overwhelm a hired landau, with its top thrown back,
with their tumultuous groups.  Twenty of them ride in a carriage
intended for six.  They cling to the seats, to the rumble,
on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts.  They even bestride the
carriage lamps.  They stand, sit, lie, with their knees drawn up
in a knot, and their legs hanging.  The women sit on the men's laps. 
Far away, above the throng of heads, their wild pyramid is visible. 
These carriage-loads form mountains of mirth in the midst of
the rout.  Colle, Panard and Piron flow from it, enriched with slang. 
This carriage which has become colossal through its freight,
has an air of conquest.  Uproar reigns in front, tumult behind. 
People vociferate, shout, howl, there they break forth and writhe
with enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames forth, joviality is
flaunted like a red flag; two jades there drag farce blossomed
forth into an apotheosis; it is the triumphal car of laughter.

A laughter that is too cynical to be frank.  In truth,
this laughter is suspicious.  This laughter has a mission. 
It is charged with proving the Carnival to the Parisians.

These fishwife vehicles, in which one feels one knows not what shadows,
set the philosopher to thinking.  There is government therein. 
There one lays one's finger on a mysterious affinity between public
men and public women.

It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total
of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should
be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids
to prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them,
that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags,
half dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing,
that they should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames,
that there would be no festival for the populace, did not the police
promenade in their midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy. 
But what can be done about it?  These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils
of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public. 
The laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation. 
Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people and convert them
into the populace.  And populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. 
The King has Roquelaure, the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is
a great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great sublime city. 
There the Carnival forms part of politics.  Paris,--let us
confess it--willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy. 
She only demands of her masters--when she has masters--one thing: 
"Paint me the mud."  Rome was of the same mind.  She loved Nero. 
Nero was a titanic lighterman.

Chance ordained, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless
clusters of masked men and women, dragged about on a vast calash,
should halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding train
halted on the right.  The carriage-load of masks caught sight
of the wedding carriage containing the bridal party opposite them
on the other side of the boulevard.

"Hullo!" said a masker, "here's a wedding."

"A sham wedding," retorted another.  "We are the genuine article."

And, being too far off to accost the wedding party, and fearing also,
the rebuke of the police, the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere.

At the end of another minute, the carriage-load of maskers had their
hands full, the multitude set to yelling, which is the crowd's
caress to masquerades; and the two maskers who had just spoken had
to face the throng with their comrades, and did not find the entire
repertory of projectiles of the fishmarkets too extensive to retort
to the enormous verbal attacks of the populace.  A frightful
exchange of metaphors took place between the maskers and the crowd.

In the meanwhile, two other maskers in the same carriage, a Spaniard
with an enormous nose, an elderly air, and huge black moustache,
and a gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked with a
loup,[67] had also noticed the wedding, and while their companions
and the passers-by were exchanging insults, they had held a dialogue
in a low voice.


[67] A short mask.


Their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. 
The gusts of rain had drenched the front of the vehicle, which was
wide open; the breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife,
clad in a low-necked gown, replied to the Spaniard, she shivered,
laughed and coughed.

Here is their dialogue:

"Say, now."

"What, daddy?"

"Do you see that old cove?"

"What old cove?"

"Yonder, in the first wedding-cart, on our side."

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

"Yes."

"Well?"

"I'm sure that I know him."

"Ah!"

"I'm willing that they should cut my throat, and I'm ready to swear
that I never said either you, thou, or I, in my life, if I don't
know that Parisian."  [pantinois.]

"Paris in Pantin to-day."

"Can you see the bride if you stoop down?"

"No."

"And the bridegroom?"

"There's no bridegroom in that trap."

"Bah!"

"Unless it's the old fellow."

"Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low."

"I can't."

"Never mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his
paw I know, and that I'm positive."

"And what good does it do to know him?"

"No one can tell.  Sometimes it does!"

"I don't care a hang for old fellows, that I don't!"

"I know him."

"Know him, if you want to."

"How the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party?"

"We are in it, too."

"Where does that wedding come from?"

"How should I know?"

"Listen."

"Well, what?"

"There's one thing you ought to do."

"What's that?"

"Get off of our trap and spin that wedding."

"What for?"

"To find out where it goes, and what it is.  Hurry up
and jump down, trot, my girl, your legs are young."

"I can't quit the vehicle."

"Why not?"

"I'm hired."

"Ah, the devil!"

"I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture."

"That's true."

"If I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me
will arrest me.  You know that well enough."

"Yes, I do."

"I'm bought by the government for to-day."

"All the same, that old fellow bothers me."

"Do the old fellows bother you?  But you're not a young girl."

"He's in the first carriage."

"Well?"

"In the bride's trap."

"What then?"

"So he is the father."

"What concern is that of mine?"

"I tell you that he's the father."

"As if he were the only father."

"Listen."

"What?"

"I can't go out otherwise than masked.  Here I'm concealed, no one
knows that I'm here.  But to-morrow, there will be no more maskers. 
It's Ash Wednesday.  I run the risk of being nabbed.  I must sneak
back into my hole.  But you are free."

"Not particularly."

"More than I am, at any rate."

"Well, what of that?"

"You must try to find out where that wedding-party went to."

"Where it went?"

"Yes."

"I know."

"Where is it going then?"

"To the Cadran-Bleu."

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

"Well! to la Rapee."

"Or elsewhere."

"It's free.  Wedding-parties are at liberty."

"That's not the point at all.  I tell you that you must try to
learn for me what that wedding is, who that old cove belongs to,
and where that wedding pair lives."

"I like that! that would be queer.  It's so easy to find out a
wedding-party that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday,
a week afterwards.  A pin in a hay-mow! It ain't possible!"

"That don't matter.  You must try.  You understand me, Azelma."

The two files resumed their movement on both sides of the boulevard,
in opposite directions, and the carriage of the maskers lost sight
of the "trap" of the bride.



CHAPTER II

JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING


To realize one's dream.  To whom is this accorded?  There must
be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown
to ourselves; the angels vote.  Cosette and Marius had been elected.

Cosette, both at the mayor's office and at church, was dazzling
and touching.  Toussaint, assisted by Nicolette, had dressed her.

Cosette wore over a petticoat of white taffeta, her robe of
Binche guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls,
a wreath of orange flowers; all this was white, and, from the midst
of that whiteness she beamed forth.  It was an exquisite candor
expanding and becoming transfigured in the light.  One would
have pronounced her a virgin on the point of turning into a goddess.

Marius' handsome hair was lustrous and perfumed; here and there,
beneath the thick curls, pale lines--the scars of the barricade--
were visible.

The grandfather, haughty, with head held high, amalgamating more
than ever in his toilet and his manners all the elegances
of the epoch of Barras, escorted Cosette.  He took the place of
Jean Valjean, who, on account of his arm being still in a sling,
could not give his hand to the bride.

Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile.

"Monsieur Fauchelevent," said the grandfather to him, "this is
a fine day.  I vote for the end of afflictions and sorrows. 
Henceforth, there must be no sadness anywhere.  Pardieu, I decree joy! 
Evil has no right to exist.  That there should be any unhappy men is,
in sooth, a disgrace to the azure of the sky.  Evil does not come
from man, who is good at bottom.  All human miseries have for
their capital and central government hell, otherwise, known as the
Devil's Tuileries.  Good, here I am uttering demagogical words! 
As far as I am concerned, I have no longer any political opinions;
let all me be rich, that is to say, mirthful, and I confine myself
to that."

When, at the conclusion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced
before the mayor and before the priest all possible "yesses," after
having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy,
after having exchanged their rings, after having knelt side by side
under the pall of white moire in the smoke of the censer, they arrived,
hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Marius in black, she in white,
preceded by the suisse, with the epaulets of a colonel, tapping the
pavement with his halberd, between two rows of astonished spectators,
at the portals of the church, both leaves of which were thrown
wide open, ready to enter their carriage again, and all being finished,
Cosette still could not believe that it was real.  She looked at Marius,
she looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky:  it seemed as though
she feared that she should wake up from her dream.  Her amazed and
uneasy air added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty. 
They entered the same carriage to return home, Marius beside Cosette;
M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat opposite them; Aunt Gillenormand
had withdrawn one degree, and was in the second vehicle.

"My children," said the grandfather, "here you are, Monsieur le Baron
and Madame la Baronne, with an income of thirty thousand livres."

And Cosette, nestling close to Marius, caressed his ear with an
angelic whisper:  "So it is true.  My name is Marius.  I am Madame Thou."

These two creatures were resplendent.  They had reached that
irrevocable and irrecoverable moment, at the dazzling intersection
of all youth and all joy.  They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire;
they were forty years old taken together.  It was marriage sublimated;
these two children were two lilies.  They did not see each other,
they did not contemplate each other.  Cosette perceived Marius
in the midst of a glory; Marius perceived Cosette on an altar. 
And on that altar, and in that glory, the two apotheoses mingling,
in the background, one knows not how, behind a cloud for Cosette,
in a flash for Marius, there was the ideal thing, the real thing,
the meeting of the kiss and the dream, the nuptial pillow. 
All the torments through which they had passed came back to them
in intoxication.  It seemed to them that their sorrows, their sleepless
nights, their tears, their anguish, their terrors, their despair,
converted into caresses and rays of light, rendered still more charming
the charming hour which was approaching; and that their griefs
were but so many handmaidens who were preparing the toilet of joy. 
How good it is to have suffered!  Their unhappiness formed a halo
round their happiness.  The long agony of their love was terminating
in an ascension.

It was the same enchantment in two souls, tinged with voluptuousness
in Marius, and with modesty in Cosette.  They said to each other
in low tones:  "We will go back to take a look at our little garden
in the Rue Plumet."  The folds of Cosette's gown lay across Marius.

Such a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of reality. 
One possesses and one supposes.  One still has time before one to divine. 
The emotion on that day, of being at mid-day and of dreaming
of midnight is indescribable.  The delights of these two hearts
overflowed upon the crowd, and inspired the passers-by with cheerfulness.

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

Then they returned home to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Marius,
triumphant and radiant, mounted side by side with Cosette the staircase
up which he had been borne in a dying condition.  The poor, who had
trooped to the door, and who shared their purses, blessed them. 
There were flowers everywhere.  The house was no less fragrant
than the church; after the incense, roses.  They thought they heard
voices carolling in the infinite; they had God in their hearts;
destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; above their heads
they beheld the light of a rising sun.  All at once, the clock struck. 
Marius glanced at Cosette's charming bare arm, and at the rosy
things which were vaguely visible through the lace of her bodice,
and Cosette, intercepting Marius' glance, blushed to her very hair.

Quite a number of old family friends of the Gillenormand family
had been invited; they pressed about Cosette.  Each one vied
with the rest in saluting her as Madame la Baronne.

The officer, Theodule Gillenormand, now a captain, had come
from Chartres, where he was stationed in garrison, to be present
at the wedding of his cousin Pontmercy.  Cosette did not recognize him.

He, on his side, habituated as he was to have women consider him handsome,
retained no more recollection of Cosette than of any other woman.

"How right I was not to believe in that story about the lancer!"
said Father Gillenormand, to himself.

Cosette had never been more tender with Jean Valjean. 
She was in unison with Father Gillenormand; while he erected joy
into aphorisms and maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. 
Happiness desires that all the world should be happy.

She regained, for the purpose of addressing Jean Valjean,
inflections of voice belonging to the time when she was a little girl. 
She caressed him with her smile.

A banquet had been spread in the dining-room.

Illumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning
of a great joy.  Mist and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. 
They do not consent to be black.  The night, yes; the shadows, no. 
If there is no sun, one must be made.

The dining-room was full of gay things.  In the centre, above the white
and glittering table, was a Venetian lustre with flat plates, with all
sorts of colored birds, blue, violet, red, and green, perched amid
the candles; around the chandelier, girandoles, on the walls, sconces with
triple and quintuple branches; mirrors, silverware, glassware, plate,
porcelain, faience, pottery, gold and silversmith's work, all was
sparkling and gay.  The empty spaces between the candelabra were filled
in with bouquets, so that where there was not a light, there was a flower.

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

Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room,
behind the door, the leaf of which folded back upon him in such
a manner as to nearly conceal him.  A few moments before they sat
down to table, Cosette came, as though inspired by a sudden whim,
and made him a deep courtesy, spreading out her bridal toilet
with both hands, and with a tenderly roguish glance, she asked him:

"Father, are you satisfied?"

"Yes," said Jean Valjean, "I am content!"

"Well, then, laugh."

Jean Valjean began to laugh.

A few moments later, Basque announced that dinner was served.

The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand with Cosette on his arm,
entered the dining-room, and arranged themselves in the proper order
around the table.

Two large arm-chairs figured on the right and left of the bride,
the first for M. Gillenormand, the other for Jean Valjean. 
M. Gillenormand took his seat.  The other arm-chair remained empty.

They looked about for M. Fauchelevent.

He was no longer there.

M. Gillenormand questioned Basque.

"Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?"

"Sir," replied Basque, "I do, precisely.  M. Fauchelevent told
me to say to you, sir, that he was suffering, his injured hand
was paining him somewhat, and that he could not dine with Monsieur
le Baron and Madame la Baronne.  That he begged to be excused,
that he would come to-morrow. He has just taken his departure."

That empty arm-chair chilled the effusion of the wedding
feast for a moment.  But, if M. Fauchelevent was absent,
M. Gillenormand was present, and the grandfather beamed for two. 
He affirmed that M. Fauchelevent had done well to retire early,
if he were suffering, but that it was only a slight ailment. 
This declaration sufficed.  Moreover, what is an obscure corner
in such a submersion of joy?  Cosette and Marius were passing
through one of those egotistical and blessed moments when no other
faculty is left to a person than that of receiving happiness. 
And then, an idea occurred to M. Gillenormand.--"Pardieu, this
armchair is empty.  Come hither, Marius.  Your aunt will permit it,
although she has a right to you.  This armchair is for you. 
That is legal and delightful.  Fortunatus beside Fortunata."--
Applause from the whole table.  Marius took Jean Valjean's place
beside Cosette, and things fell out so that Cosette, who had,
at first, been saddened by Jean Valjean's absence, ended by being
satisfied with it.  From the moment when Marius took his place,
and was the substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God himself. 
She set her sweet little foot, shod in white satin, on Marius' foot.

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

And, five minutes afterward, the whole table from one end to the other,
was laughing with all the animation of forgetfulness.

At dessert, M. Gillenormand, rising to his feet, with a glass
of champagne in his hand--only half full so that the palsy of his
eighty years might not cause an overflow,--proposed the health
of the married pair.

"You shall not escape two sermons," he exclaimed.  "This morning
you had one from the cure, this evening you shall have one from
your grandfather.  Listen to me; I will give you a bit of advice: 
Adore each other.  I do not make a pack of gyrations, I go straight
to the mark, be happy.  In all creation, only the turtle-doves are wise. 
Philosophers say:  `Moderate your joys.'  I say:  `Give rein
to your joys.'  Be as much smitten with each other as fiends. 
Be in a rage about it.  The philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. 
I should like to stuff their philosophy down their gullets again. 
Can there be too many perfumes, too many open rose-buds, too many
nightingales singing, too many green leaves, too much aurora
in life? can people love each other too much? can people please
each other too much?  Take care, Estelle, thou art too pretty! 
Have a care, Nemorin, thou art too handsome!  Fine stupidity, in sooth! 
Can people enchant each other too much, cajole each other too much,
charm each other too much?  Can one be too much alive, too happy? 
Moderate your joys.  Ah, indeed!  Down with the philosophers! 
Wisdom consists in jubilation.  Make merry, let us make merry. 
Are we happy because we are good, or are we good because we are happy? 
Is the Sancy diamond called the Sancy because it belonged
to Harley de Sancy, or because it weighs six hundred carats? 
I know nothing about it, life is full of such problems; the important
point is to possess the Sancy and happiness.  Let us be happy
without quibbling and quirking.  Let us obey the sun blindly. 
What is the sun?  It is love.  He who says love, says woman. 
Ah! ah! behold omnipotence--women.  Ask that demagogue of a Marius
if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a Cosette.  And of
his own free will, too, the coward!  Woman!  There is no Robespierre
who keeps his place but woman reigns.  I am no longer Royalist
except towards that royalty.  What is Adam?  The kingdom of Eve. 
No '89 for Eve.  There has been the royal sceptre surmounted by a
fleur-de-lys, there has been the imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe,
there has been the sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron,
there has been the sceptre of Louis the Great, which was of gold,--
the revolution twisted them between its thumb and forefinger,
ha'penny straws; it is done with, it is broken, it lies on the earth,
there is no longer any sceptre, but make me a revolution against
that little embroidered handkerchief, which smells of patchouli! 
I should like to see you do it.  Try.  Why is it so solid?  Because it
is a gewgaw.  Ah! you are the nineteenth century?  Well, what then? 
And we have been as foolish as you.  Do not imagine that you have
effected much change in the universe, because your trip-gallant is called
the cholera-morbus, and because your pourree is called the cachuca. 
In fact, the women must always be loved.  I defy you to escape from that. 
These friends are our angels.  Yes, love, woman, the kiss forms
a circle from which I defy you to escape; and, for my own part,
I should be only too happy to re-enter it.  Which of you has
seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss, the Celimene
of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming all here below? 
The ocean is a rough Alcestis.  Well, grumble as he will, when Venus
appears he is forced to smile.  That brute beast submits.  We are all
made so.  Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder, foam to the very ceiling. 
A woman enters on the scene, a planet rises; flat on your face! 
Marius was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married. 
That is well.  Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are in the right. 
Exist boldly for each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot
do the same, idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny
blades of felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest
for life.  Pardi, to love, to be loved, what a fine miracle when one
is young!  Don't imagine that you have invented that.  I, too, have had
my dream, I, too, have meditated, I, too, have sighed; I, too,
have had a moonlight soul.  Love is a child six thousand years old. 
Love has the right to a long white beard.  Methusalem is a street
arab beside Cupid.  For sixty centuries men and women have got
out of their scrape by loving.  The devil, who is cunning, took to
hating man; man, who is still more cunning, took to loving woman. 
In this way he does more good than the devil does him harm. 
This craft was discovered in the days of the terrestrial paradise. 
The invention is old, my friends, but it is perfectly new.  Profit by it. 
Be Daphnis and Chloe, while waiting to become Philemon and Baucis. 
Manage so that, when you are with each other, nothing shall
be lacking to you, and that Cosette may be the sun for Marius,
and that Marius may be the universe to Cosette.  Cosette, let your
fine weather be the smile of your husband; Marius, let your rain
be your wife's tears.  And let it never rain in your household. 
You have filched the winning number in the lottery; you have
gained the great prize, guard it well, keep it under lock and key,
do not squander it, adore each other and snap your fingers at
all the rest.  Believe what I say to you.  It is good sense. 
And good sense cannot lie.  Be a religion to each other. 
Each man has his own fashion of adoring God.  Saperlotte! the best
way to adore God is to love one's wife.  I love thee! that's
my catechism.  He who loves is orthodox.  The oath of Henri IV. 
places sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness. 
Ventre-saint-gris! I don't belong to the religion of that oath. 
Woman is forgotten in it.  This astonishes me on the part
of Henri IV.  My friends, long live women!  I am old, they say;
it's astonishing how much I feel in the mood to be young.  I should
like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods.  Children who
contrive to be beautiful and contented,--that intoxicates me. 
I would like greatly to get married, if any one would have me. 
It is impossible to imagine that God could have made us for anything
but this:  to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves, to be dove-like,
to be dainty, to bill and coo our loves from morn to night, to gaze
at one's image in one's little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant,
to plume oneself; that is the aim of life.  There, let not that displease
you which we used to think in our day, when we were young folks. 
Ah! vertu-bamboche! what charming women there were in those days,
and what pretty little faces and what lovely lasses!  I committed
my ravages among them.  Then love each other.  If people did
not love each other, I really do not see what use there would
be in having any springtime; and for my own part, I should pray
the good God to shut up all the beautiful things that he shows us,
and to take away from us and put back in his box, the flowers,
the birds, and the pretty maidens.  My children, receive an old man's
blessing.

The evening was gay, lively and agreeable.  The grandfather's
sovereign good humor gave the key-note to the whole feast, and each
person regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. 
They danced a little, they laughed a great deal; it was an
amiable wedding.  Goodman Days of Yore might have been invited
to it.  However, he was present in the person of Father Gillenormand.

There was a tumult, then silence.

The married pair disappeared.

A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple.

Here we pause.  On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling
angel with his finger on his lips.

The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where
the celebration of love takes place.

There should be flashes of light athwart such houses.  The joy
which they contain ought to make its escape through the stones
of the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom. 
It is impossible that this sacred and fatal festival should not give
off a celestial radiance to the infinite.  Love is the sublime
crucible wherein the fusion of the man and the woman takes place;
the being one, the being triple, the being final, the human trinity
proceeds from it.  This birth of two souls into one, ought to be
an emotion for the gloom.  The lover is the priest; the ravished
virgin is terrified.  Something of that joy ascends to God. 
Where true marriage is, that is to say, where there is love, the ideal
enters in.  A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the shadows. 
If it were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the formidable
and charming visions of the upper life, it is probable that we
should behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue
passers of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads,
around the luminous house, satisfied, showering benedictions,
pointing out to each other the virgin wife gently alarmed,
sweetly terrified, and bearing the reflection of human bliss upon
their divine countenances.  If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair,
dazzled with voluptuousness and believing themselves alone,
were to listen, they would hear in their chamber a confused rustling
of wings.  Perfect happiness implies a mutual understanding with
the angels.  That dark little chamber has all heaven for its ceiling. 
When two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach to create,
it is impossible that there should not be, above that ineffable kiss,
a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars.

These felicities are the true ones.  There is no joy outside
of these joys.  Love is the only ecstasy.  All the rest weeps.

To love, or to have loved,--this suffices.  Demand nothing more. 
There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. 
To love is a fulfilment.



CHAPTER III

THE INSEPARABLE


What had become of Jean Valjean?

Immediately after having laughed, at Cosette's graceful command,
when no one was paying any heed to him, Jean Valjean had risen
and had gained the antechamber unperceived.  This was the very
room which, eight months before, he had entered black with mud,
with blood and powder, bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. 
The old wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers;
the musicians were seated on the sofa on which they had laid
Marius down.  Basque, in a black coat, knee-breeches, white stockings
and white gloves, was arranging roses round all of the dishes that
were to be served.  Jean Valjean pointed to his arm in its sling,
charged Basque to explain his absence, and went away.

The long windows of the dining-room opened on the street. 
Jean Valjean stood for several minutes, erect and motionless
in the darkness, beneath those radiant windows.  He listened. 
The confused sounds of the banquet reached his ear.  He heard the loud,
commanding tones of the grandfather, the violins, the clatter of
the plates, the bursts of laughter, and through all that merry uproar,
he distinguished Cosette's sweet and joyous voice.

He quitted the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and returned to the Rue
de l'Homme Arme.

In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue
Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little longer,
but it was the road through which, for the last three months,
he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the
Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order
to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vielle-du-Temple.

This road, through which Cosette had passed, excluded for him
all possibility of any other itinerary.

Jean Valjean entered his lodgings.  He lighted his candle and
mounted the stairs.  The apartment was empty.  Even Toussaint
was no longer there.  Jean Valjean's step made more noise
than usual in the chambers.  All the cupboards stood open. 
He penetrated to Cosette's bedroom.  There were no sheets on the bed. 
The pillow, covered with ticking, and without a case or lace,
was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot of the mattress,
whose covering was visible, and on which no one was ever to sleep again. 
All the little feminine objects which Cosette was attached to had
been carried away; nothing remained except the heavy furniture
and the four walls.  Toussaint's bed was despoiled in like manner. 
One bed only was made up, and seemed to be waiting some one,
and this was Jean Valjean's bed.

Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors,
and went and came from one room to another.

Then he sought his own chamber once more, and set his candle
on a table.

He had disengaged his arm from the sling, and he used his right
hand as though it did not hurt him.

He approached his bed, and his eyes rested, was it by chance?
was it intentionally? on the inseparable of which Cosette had
been jealous, on the little portmanteau which never left him. 
On his arrival in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, on the 4th of June,
he had deposited it on a round table near the head of his bed. 
He went to this table with a sort of vivacity, took a key from
his pocket, and opened the valise.

From it he slowly drew forth the garments in which, ten years before,
Cosette had quitted Montfermeil; first the little gown, then the
black fichu, then the stout, coarse child's shoes which Cosette
might almost have worn still, so tiny were her feet, then the
fustian bodice, which was very thick, then the knitted petticoat,
next the apron with pockets, then the woollen stockings. 
These stockings, which still preserved the graceful form of a tiny leg,
were no longer than Jean Valjean's hand.  All this was black of hue. 
It was he who had brought those garments to Montfermeil for her. 
As he removed them from the valise, he laid them on the bed. 
He fell to thinking.  He called up memories.  It was in winter,
in a very cold month of December, she was shivering, half-naked,
in rags, her poor little feet were all red in their wooden shoes. 
He, Jean Valjean, had made her abandon those rags to clothe herself
in these mourning habiliments.  The mother must have felt pleased in
her grave, to see her daughter wearing mourning for her, and, above all,
to see that she was properly clothed, and that she was warm. 
He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed
it together, Cosette and he; he thought of what the weather had been,
of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the
sunless sky; it mattered not, it was charming.  He arranged the tiny
garments on the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings
beside the shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. 
She was no taller than that, she had her big doll in her arms,
she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of that apron, she had laughed,
they walked hand in hand, she had no one in the world but him.

Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed,
that stoical old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so to speak,
in Cosette's garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs
at that moment, he would have heard frightful sobs.



CHAPTER IV

THE IMMORTAL LIVER[68]

[68] In allusion to the story of Prometheus.


The old and formidable struggle, of which we have already witnessed
so many phases, began once more.

Jacob struggled with the angel but one night.  Alas! how many
times have we beheld Jean Valjean seized bodily by his conscience,
in the darkness, and struggling desperately against it!

Unheard-of conflict!  At certain moments the foot slips; at other
moments the ground crumbles away underfoot.  How many times had
that conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown him! 
How many times had the truth set her knee inexorably upon his breast! 
How many times, hurled to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! 
How many times had that implacable spark, lighted within him,
and upon him by the Bishop, dazzled him by force when he had
wished to be blind!  How many times had he risen to his feet
in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism,
dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience,
again overthrown by it!  How many times, after an equivoque,
after the specious and treacherous reasoning of egotism, had he heard
his irritated conscience cry in his ear:  "A trip! you wretch!" 
How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively
in his throat, under the evidence of duty!  Resistance to God. 
Funereal sweats.  What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed! 
What excoriations in his lamentable existence!  How many times
he had risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in
his heart, serenity in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt
himself the conqueror.  And, after having dislocated, broken,
and rent his conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him,
as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil:  "Now, go
in peace!"

But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious
peace, alas!

Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean felt that he was passing
through his final combat.

A heart-rending question presented itself.

Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a
straight avenue before the predestined man; they have blind courts,
impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering
the choice of many ways.  Jean Valjean had halted at that moment
at the most perilous of these crossroads.

He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil.  He had that
gloomy intersection beneath his eyes.  On this occasion once more,
as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads
opened out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.

Which was he to take?

He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious
index finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes
on the darkness.

Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the terrible port
and the smiling ambush.

Is it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate.  Frightful thing!
an incurable destiny!

This is the problem which presented itself to him:

In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness
of Cosette and Marius?  It was he who had willed that happiness,
it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it
in his entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it,
he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer
would experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife,
on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast.

Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette.  They had everything,
even riches.  And this was his doing.

But what was he, Jean Valjean, to do with this happiness,
now that it existed, now that it was there?  Should he force himself
on this happiness?  Should he treat it as belonging to him? 
No doubt, Cosette did belong to another; but should he, Jean Valjean,
retain of Cosette all that he could retain?  Should he remain the sort
of father, half seen but respected, which he had hitherto been? 
Should he, without saying a word, bring his past to that future? 
Should he present himself there, as though he had a right,
and should he seat himself, veiled, at that luminous fireside? 
Should he take those innocent hands into his tragic hands,
with a smile?  Should he place upon the peaceful fender of the
Gillenormand drawing-room those feet of his, which dragged
behind them the disgraceful shadow of the law?  Should he enter
into participation in the fair fortunes of Cosette and Marius? 
Should he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs
still more dense?  Should he place his catastrophe as a third
associate in their felicity?  Should he continue to hold his peace? 
In a word, should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these two
happy beings?

We must have become habituated to fatality and to encounters with it,
in order to have the daring to raise our eyes when certain questions
appear to us in all their horrible nakedness.  Good or evil stands
behind this severe interrogation point.  What are you going to do?
demands the sphinx.

This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed.  He gazed intently
at the sphinx.

He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.

Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. 
What was he to do?  To cling fast to it, or to let go his hold?

If he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend
again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water drip from
his garments and his hair, he was saved, he should live.

And if he let go his hold?

Then the abyss.

Thus he took sad council with his thoughts.  Or, to speak more correctly,
he fought; he kicked furiously internally, now against his will,
now against his conviction.

Happily for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. 
That relieved him, possibly.  But the beginning was savage. 
A tempest, more furious than the one which had formerly driven him
to Arras, broke loose within him.  The past surged up before him

facing the present; he compared them and sobbed.  The silence
of tears once opened, the despairing man writhed.

He felt that he had been stopped short.

Alas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and our duty,
when we thus retreat step by step before our immutable ideal,
bewildered, furious, exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground,
hoping for a possible flight, seeking an escape, what an abrupt
and sinister resistance does the foot of the wall offer in our rear!

To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!

The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!

Then, one is never done with conscience.  Make your choice, Brutus;
make your choice, Cato.  It is fathomless, since it is God. 
One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life, one flings in
one's fortune, one flings in one's riches, one flings in one's success,
one flings in one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's
well-being, one flings in one's repose, one flings in one's joy! 
More! more! more!  Empty the vase! tip the urn!  One must finish
by flinging in one's heart.

Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun like that.

Is not one pardonable, if one at last refuses!  Can the inexhaustible
have any right?  Are not chains which are endless above human strength? 
Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying:  "It is enough!"

The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit
to the obedience of the soul?  If perpetual motion is impossible,
can perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?

The first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. 
What was the Champmathieu affair in comparison with Cosette's marriage
and of that which it entailed?  What is a re-entrance into the galleys,
compared to entrance into the void?

Oh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art thou! 
Oh, second step, how black art thou!

How could he refrain from turning aside his head this time?

Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation.  It is a torture
which consecrates.  One can consent to it for the first hour;
one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one's
head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron,
one takes the sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still
remains to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable
flesh revolts and when one abdicates from suffering?

At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of exhaustion.

He weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives,
the mysterious balance of light and darkness.

Should he impose his galleys on those two dazzling children,
or should he consummate his irremediable engulfment by himself? 
On one side lay the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other that of himself.

At what solution should he arrive?  What decision did he come to?

What resolution did he take?  What was his own inward definitive
response to the unbribable interrogatory of fatality?  What door
did he decide to open?  Which side of his life did he resolve upon
closing and condemning?  Among all the unfathomable precipices which
surrounded him, which was his choice?  What extremity did he accept? 
To which of the gulfs did he nod his head?

His dizzy revery lasted all night long.

He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude,
bent double over that bed, prostrate beneath the enormity
of fate, crushed, perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms
outspread at right angles, like a man crucified who has been
un-nailed, and flung face down on the earth.  There he remained
for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long winter's night,
ice-cold, without once raising his head, and without uttering a word. 
He was as motionless as a corpse, while his thoughts wallowed
on the earth and soared, now like the hydra, now like the eagle. 
Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him dead;
all at once he shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to
Cosette's garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he was alive.

Who could see?  Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was no
one there.

The One who is in the shadows.



BOOK SEVENTH.--THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP



CHAPTER I

THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN


The days that follow weddings are solitary.  People respect the
meditations of the happy pair.  And also, their tardy slumbers,
to some degree.  The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins
later on.  On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little
past midday when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm,
busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at
the door.  There had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. 
Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent.  He introduced him
into the drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore
the air of a field of battle after the joys of the preceding evening.

"Dame, sir," remarked Basque, "we all woke up late."

"Is your master up?" asked Jean Valjean.

"How is Monsieur's arm?" replied Basque.

"Better.  Is your master up?"

"Which one? the old one or the new one?"

"Monsieur Pontmercy."

"Monsieur le Baron," said Basque, drawing himself up.

A man is a Baron most of all to his servants.  He counts for something
with them; they are what a philosopher would call, bespattered with
the title, and that flatters them.  Marius, be it said in passing,
a militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite
of himself.  A small revolution had taken place in the family
in connection with this title.  It was now M. Gillenormand
who clung to it, and Marius who detached himself from it. 
But Colonel Pontmercy had written:  "My son will bear my title." 
Marius obeyed.  And then, Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning
to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.

"Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque.  "I will go and see. 
I will tell him that M. Fauchelevent is here."

"No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes
to speak to him in private, and mention no name."

"Ah!" ejaculated Basque.

"I wish to surprise him."

"Ah!" ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second "ah!"
as an explanation of the first.

And he left the room.

Jean Valjean remained alone.

The drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder. 
It seemed as though, by lending an air, one might still hear the vague
noise of the wedding.  On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers
which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles,
burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of
the chandeliers.  Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. 
In the corners, three or four arm-chairs, drawn close together
in a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. 
The whole effect was cheerful.  A certain grace still lingers
round a dead feast.  It has been a happy thing.  On the chairs
in disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath those extinct lights,
people have thought of joy.  The sun had succeeded to the chandelier,
and made its way gayly into the drawing-room.

Several minutes elapsed.  Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot
where Basque had left him.  He was very pale.  His eyes were hollow,
and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly
disappeared in their orbits.  His black coat bore the weary folds
of a garment that has been up all night.  The elbows were whitened
with the down which the friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.

Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor
at his feet by the sun.

There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.

Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable
light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant. 
He had not slept either.

"It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean;
"that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air!  But you have come
too early.  It is only half past twelve.  Cosette is asleep."

That word:  "Father," said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: 
supreme felicity.  There had always existed, as the reader knows,
a lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them;
ice which must be broken or melted.  Marius had reached that point
of intoxication when the wall was lowered, when the ice dissolved,
and when M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.

He continued:  his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity
of divine paroxysms of joy.

"How glad I am to see you!  If you only knew how we missed you yesterday! 
Good morning, father.  How is your hand?  Better, is it not?"

And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself,
he pursued:

"We have both been talking about you.  Cosette loves you so dearly! 
You must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more
to do with the Rue de l'Homme Arme.  We will have no more of it at all. 
How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly,
which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end,
where one is cold, and into which one cannot enter?  You are to come
and install yourself here.  And this very day.  Or you will have to deal
with Cosette.  She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. 
You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on
the garden; the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed
is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. 
Near your bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered
with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it:  `Stretch out your arms
to him.'  A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite
your windows, every spring.  In two months more you will have it. 
You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right.  By night
it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle.  Your chamber faces
due South.  Cosette will arrange your books for you, your Voyages
of Captain Cook and the other,--Vancouver's and all your affairs. 
I believe that there is a little valise to which you are attached,
I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that.  You have conquered
my grandfather, you suit him.  We will live together.  Do you
play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you
play whist.  It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days
when I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know,
as you used to, in the Luxembourg.  We are absolutely resolved
to be happy.  And you shall be included in it, in our happiness,
do you hear, father?  Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?"

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

The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well
in the case of the mind as in that of the ear.  These words: 
"I am an ex-convict," proceeding from the mouth of M. Fauchelevent
and entering the ear of Marius overshot the possible.  It seemed to him
that something had just been said to him; but he did not know what. 
He stood with his mouth wide open.

Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful. 
Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that moment,
observed the other man's terrible pallor.

Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right arm,
unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb and showed
it to Marius.

"There is nothing the matter with my hand," said he.

Marius looked at the thumb.

"There has not been anything the matter with it," went on Jean Valjean.

There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.

Jean Valjean continued:

"It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. 
I absented myself as much as was in my power.  So I invented this
injury in order that I might not commit a forgery, that I might
not introduce a flaw into the marriage documents, in order that I
might escape from signing."

Marius stammered.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"The meaning of it is," replied Jean Valjean, "that I have been
in the galleys."

"You are driving me mad!" exclaimed Marius in terror.

"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years in
the galleys.  For theft.  Then, I was condemned for life for theft,
for a second offence.  At the present moment, I have broken my ban."

In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact,
resist the evidence, he was forced to give way.  He began to understand,
and, as always happens in such cases, he understood too much. 
An inward shudder of hideous enlightenment flashed through him;
an idea which made him quiver traversed his mind.  He caught
a glimpse of a wretched destiny for himself in the future.

"Say all, say all!" he cried.  "You are Cosette's father!"

And he retreated a couple of paces with a movement
of indescribable horror.

Jean Valjean elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude
that he seemed to grow even to the ceiling.

"It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our
oath to others may not be received in law..."

Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority,
he added, articulating slowly, and emphasizing the syllables:

"... You will believe me.  I the father of Cosette! before God, no. 
Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. 
I earned my living by pruning trees.  My name is not Fauchelevent,
but Jean Valjean.  I am not related to Cosette.  Reassure yourself."

Marius stammered:

"Who will prove that to me?"

"I. Since I tell you so."

Marius looked at the man.  He was melancholy yet tranquil.  No lie
could proceed from such a calm.  That which is icy is sincere. 
The truth could be felt in that chill of the tomb.

"I believe you," said Marius.

Jean Valjean bent his head, as though taking note of this,
and continued:

"What am I to Cosette?  A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know
that she was in existence.  I love her, it is true.  One loves a child
whom one has seen when very young, being old oneself.  When one is old,
one feels oneself a grandfather towards all little children. 
You may, it seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles
a heart.  She was an orphan.  Without either father or mother. 
She needed me.  That is why I began to love her.  Children are
so weak that the first comer, even a man like me, can become
their protector.  I have fulfilled this duty towards Cosette. 
I do not think that so slight a thing can be called a good action;
but if it be a good action, well, say that I have done it. 
Register this attenuating circumstance.  To-day, Cosette passes
out of my life; our two roads part.  Henceforth, I can do nothing
for her.  She is Madame Pontmercy.  Her providence has changed. 
And Cosette gains by the change.  All is well.  As for the six
hundred thousand francs, you do not mention them to me, but I
forestall your thought, they are a deposit.  How did that deposit
come into my hands?  What does that matter?  I restore the deposit. 
Nothing more can be demanded of me.  I complete the restitution
by announcing my true name.  That concerns me.  I have a reason
for desiring that you should know who I am."

And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.

All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. 
Certain gusts of destiny produce these billows in our souls.

We have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything
within us is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to us,
which are not always precisely those which should be said. 
There are sudden revelations which one cannot bear, and which
intoxicate like baleful wine.  Marius was stupefied by the novel
situation which presented itself to him, to the point of addressing
that man almost like a person who was angry with him for this avowal.

"But why," he exclaimed, "do you tell me all this?  Who forces
you to do so?  You could have kept your secret to yourself. 
You are neither denounced, nor tracked nor pursued.  You have a
reason for wantonly making such a revelation.  Conclude.  There is
something more.  In what connection do you make this confession? 
What is your motive?"

"My motive?" replied Jean Valjean in a voice so low and dull that one
would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Marius. 
"From what motive, in fact, has this convict just said `I am a
convict'? Well, yes! the motive is strange.  It is out of honesty. 
Stay, the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart,
which keeps me fast.  It is when one is old that that sort of
thread is particularly solid.  All life falls in ruin around one;
one resists.  Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it,
to undo the knot or to cut it, to go far away, I should have been safe. 
I had only to go away; there are diligences in the Rue Bouloy;
you are happy; I am going.  I have tried to break that thread,
I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore my heart with it. 
Then I said:  `I cannot live anywhere else than here.'  I must stay. 
Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not simply remain here? 
You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is sincerely
attached to me, she said to the arm-chair: `Stretch out your arms
to him,' your grandfather demands nothing better than to have me,
I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common,
I shall give Cosette my arm... Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is
a habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same
chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy,
that is happiness, that is everything.  We shall live as one family. 
One family!"

At that word, Jean Valjean became wild.  He folded his arms,
glared at the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated
an abyss therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:

"As one family!  No. I belong to no family.  I do not belong to yours. 
I do not belong to any family of men.  In houses where people
are among themselves, I am superfluous.  There are families,
but there is nothing of the sort for me.  I am an unlucky wretch;
I am left outside.  Did I have a father and mother?  I almost doubt it. 
On the day when I gave that child in marriage, all came to an end. 
I have seen her happy, and that she is with a man whom she loves,
and that there exists here a kind old man, a household of two angels,
and all joys in that house, and that it was well, I said to myself: 
`Enter thou not.'  I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all,
and remained Monsieur Fauchelevent.  So long as it was for her,
I could lie; but now it would be for myself, and I must not.  It was
sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and all would go on. 
You ask me what has forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. 
To hold my peace was very easy, however.  I passed the night in trying
to persuade myself to it; you questioned me, and what I have just
said to you is so extraordinary that you have the right to do it;
well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself,
and I gave myself very good reasons, I have done what I could. 
But there are two things in which I have not succeeded; in breaking
the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and sealed here by the heart,
or in silencing some one who speaks softly to me when I am alone. 
That is why I have come hither to tell you everything this morning. 
Everything or nearly everything.  It is useless to tell you
that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself.  You know
the essential points.  So I have taken my mystery and have brought
it to you.  And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. 
It was not a resolution that was easy to take.  I struggled all
night long.  Ah! you think that I did not tell myself that this
was no Champmathieu affair, that by concealing my name I was doing
no one any injury, that the name of Fauchelevent had been given
to me by Fauchelevent himself, out of gratitude for a service
rendered to him, and that I might assuredly keep it, and that I
should be happy in that chamber which you offer me, that I should
not be in any one's way, that I should be in my own little corner,
and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the idea that I
was in the same house with her.  Each one of us would have had his
share of happiness.  If I continued to be Monsieur Fauchelevent,
that would arrange everything.  Yes, with the exception of my soul. 
There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my soul
remained black.  It is not enough to be happy, one must be content. 
Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have
concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion,
I should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday,
I should have had shadows, thus, without crying `'ware,' I should
have simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should have
taken my seat at your table with the thought that if you knew
who I was, you would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself
to be served by domestics who, had they known, would have said: 
`How horrible!'  I should have touched you with my elbow,
which you have a right to dislike, I should have filched your clasps
of the hand!  There would have existed in your house a division
of respect between venerable white locks and tainted white locks;
at your most intimate hours, when all hearts thought themselves open
to the very bottom to all the rest, when we four were together,
your grandfather, you two and myself, a stranger would have been present! 
I should have been side by side with you in your existence,
having for my only care not to disarrange the cover of my dreadful pit. 
Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust myself upon you who are
living beings.  I should have condemned her to myself forever. 
You and Cosette and I would have had all three of our heads in
the green cap!  Does it not make you shudder?  I am only the most
crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. 
And I should have committed that crime every day!  And I should
have had that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! 
And I should have communicated to you a share in my taint every
day! every day! to you, my dearly beloved, my children, to you,
my innocent creatures!  Is it nothing to hold one's peace? is it
a simple matter to keep silence?  No, it is not simple.  There is
a silence which lies.  And my lie, and my fraud and my indignity,
and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I should have drained
drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then swallowed it again,
I should have finished at midnight and have begun again at midday,
and my `good morning' would have lied, and my `good night'
would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have eaten it,
with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face,
and I should have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile
of the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! 
Why should I do it? in order to be happy.  In order to be happy. 
Have I the right to be happy?  I stand outside of life,
Sir."

Jean Valjean paused.  Marius listened.  Such chains of ideas and of
anguishes cannot be interrupted.  Jean Valjean lowered his voice
once more, but it was no longer a dull voice--it was a sinister voice.

"You ask why I speak?  I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,
you say.  Yes!  I am denounced! yes!  I am tracked!  By whom? 
By myself.  It is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself,
and I push myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself,
and when one holds oneself, one is firmly held."

And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck
and extending it towards Marius:

"Do you see that fist?" he continued.  "Don't you think that
it holds that collar in such a wise as not to release it? 
Well! conscience is another grasp!  If one desires to be happy,
sir, one must never understand duty; for, as soon as one has
comprehended it, it is implacable.  One would say that it
punished you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you; for it
places you in a hell, where you feel God beside you.  One has
no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at peace with himself."

And, with a poignant accent, he added:

"Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. 
It is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. 
This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then;
it was a mere nothing.  Yes, an honest man.  I should not be so if,
through my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you
despise me, I am so.  I have that fatality hanging over me that,
not being able to ever have anything but stolen consideration,
that consideration humiliates me, and crushes me inwardly, and,
in order that I may respect myself, it is necessary that I should
be despised.  Then I straighten up again.  I am a galley-slave who
obeys his conscience.  I know well that that is most improbable. 
But what would you have me do about it? it is the fact.  I have entered
into engagements with myself; I keep them.  There are encounters
which bind us, there are chances which involve us in duties. 
You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me in
the course of my life."

Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort,
as though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:

"When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right
to make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right
to make them slip over one's own precipice without their perceiving it,
one has not the right to let one's red blouse drag upon them,
one has no right to slyly encumber with one's misery the happiness
of others.  It is hideous to approach those who are healthy,
and to touch them in the dark with one's ulcer.  In spite of the fact
that Fauchelevent lent me his name, I have no right to use it;
he could give it to me, but I could not take it.  A name is an _I_. 
You see, sir, that I have thought somewhat, I have read a little,
although I am a peasant; and you see that I express myself properly. 
I understand things.  I have procured myself an education.  Well, yes,
to abstract a name and to place oneself under it is dishonest. 
Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a purse or a watch. 
To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a living false key,
to enter the house of honest people by picking their lock,
never more to look straightforward, to forever eye askance,
to be infamous within the _I_, no! no! no! no! no!  It is better
to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear one's skin from the flesh
with one's nails, to pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour
oneself body and soul.  That is why I have just told you all this. 
Wantonly, as you say."

He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:

"In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live;
to-day, in order to live, I will not steal a name."

"To live!" interrupted Marius.  "You do not need that name in order
to live?"

"Ah!  I understand the matter," said Jean Valjean, raising and
lowering his head several times in succession.

A silence ensued.  Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf
of thoughts.  Marius was sitting near a table and resting the
corner of his mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. 
Jean Valjean was pacing to and fro.  He paused before a mirror,
and remained motionless.  Then, as though replying to some inward
course of reasoning, he said, as he gazed at the mirror, which he did
not see:

"While, at present, I am relieved."

He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the
drawing-room. At the moment when he turned round, he perceived that Marius
was watching his walk.  Then he said, with an inexpressible intonation:

"I drag my leg a little.  Now you understand why!"

Then he turned fully round towards Marius:

"And now, sir, imagine this:  I have said nothing, I have remained
Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house,
I am one of you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the
morning in slippers, in the evening all three of us go to the play,
I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries, and to the Place Royale,
we are together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there,
and I am there, we are conversing, we are laughing; all at once,
you hear a voice shouting this name:  `Jean Valjean!' and behold,
that terrible hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly
tears off my mask!"

Again he paused; Marius had sprung to his feet with a shudder. 
Jean Valjean resumed:

"What do you say to that?"

Marius' silence answered for him.

Jean Valjean continued:

"You see that I am right in not holding my peace.  Be happy, be in heaven,
be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content therewith,
and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor damned
wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come forth;
you have before you, sir, a wretched man."

Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close
to Jean Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.

But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was
not offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own way, and it seemed
to Marius that he pressed a hand of marble.

"My grandfather has friends," said Marius; "I will procure your pardon."

"It is useless," replied Jean Valjean.  "I am believed to be dead,
and that suffices.  The dead are not subjected to surveillance. 
They are supposed to rot in peace.  Death is the same thing
as pardon."

And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort
of inexorable dignity:

"Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty;
and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience."

At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened
gently half way, and in the opening Cosette's head appeared. 
They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder,
her eyelids were still swollen with sleep.  She made the movement
of a bird, which thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first at
her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a smile,
so that they seemed to behold a smile at the heart of a rose:

"I will wager that you are talking politics.  How stupid that is,
instead of being with me!"

Jean Valjean shuddered.

"Cosette!..." stammered Marius.

And he paused.  One would have said that they were two criminals.

Cosette, who was radiant, continued to gaze at both of them. 
There was something in her eyes like gleams of paradise.

"I have caught you in the very act," said Cosette.  "Just now,
I heard my father Fauchelevent through the door saying:  `Conscience.
.. doing my duty...' That is politics, indeed it is.  I will
not have it.  People should not talk politics the very next day. 
It is not right."

"You are mistaken.  Cosette," said Marius, "we are talking business. 
We are discussing the best investment of your six hundred thousand
francs..."

"That is not it at all " interrupted Cosette.  "I am coming. 
Does any body want me here?"

And, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawing-room.
She was dressed in a voluminous white dressing-gown, with a thousand
folds and large sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to
her feet.  In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures,
there are these charming sacks fit to clothe the angels.

She contemplated herself from head to foot in a long mirror,
then exclaimed, in an outburst of ineffable ecstasy:

"There was once a King and a Queen.  Oh! how happy I am!"

That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean.

"There," said she, "I am going to install myself near you in an
easy-chair, we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say anything
you like, I know well that men must talk, and I will be very good."

Marius took her by the arm and said lovingly to her:

"We are talking business."

"By the way," said Cosette, "I have opened my window, a flock
of pierrots has arrived in the garden,--Birds, not maskers. 
To-day is Ash-Wednesday; but not for the birds."

"I tell you that we are talking business, go, my little Cosette,
leave us alone for a moment.  We are talking figures.  That will
bore you."

"You have a charming cravat on this morning, Marius.  You are
very dandified, monseigneur.  No, it will not bore me."

"I assure you that it will bore you."

"No. Since it is you.  I shall not understand you, but I shall
listen to you.  When one hears the voices of those whom one loves,
one does not need to understand the words that they utter. 
That we should be here together--that is all that I desire. 
I shall remain with you, bah!"

"You are my beloved Cosette!  Impossible."

"Impossible!"

"Yes."

"Very good," said Cosette.  "I was going to tell you some news. 
I could have told you that your grandfather is still asleep,
that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent's
room smokes, that Nicolette has sent for the chimney-sweep, that
Toussaint and Nicolette have already quarrelled, that Nicolette
makes sport of Toussaint's stammer.  Well, you shall know nothing. 
Ah! it is impossible? you shall see, gentlemen, that I, in my turn,
can say:  It is impossible.  Then who will be caught?  I beseech you,
my little Marius, let me stay here with you two."

"I swear to you, that it is indispensable that we should be alone."

"Well, am I anybody?"

Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word.  Cosette turned to him:

"In the first place, father, I want you to come and embrace me. 
What do you mean by not saying anything instead of taking my part? who
gave me such a father as that?  You must perceive that my family life
is very unhappy.  My husband beats me.  Come, embrace me instantly."

Jean Valjean approached.

Cosette turned toward Marius.

"As for you, I shall make a face at you."

Then she presented her brow to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean advanced a step toward her.

Cosette recoiled.

"Father, you are pale.  Does your arm hurt you?"

"It is well," said Jean Valjean.

"Did you sleep badly?"

"No."

"Are you sad?"

"No."

"Embrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content,
I will not scold you."

And again she offered him her brow.

Jean Valjean dropped a kiss upon that brow whereon rested
a celestial gleam.

"Smile."

Jean Valjean obeyed.  It was the smile of a spectre.

"Now, defend me against my husband."

"Cosette!..." ejaculated Marius.

"Get angry, father.  Say that I must stay.  You can certainly
talk before me.  So you think me very silly.  What you say is
astonishing! business, placing money in a bank a great matter truly. 
Men make mysteries out of nothing.  I am very pretty this morning. 
Look at me, Marius."

And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably
exquisite pout, she glanced at Marius.

"I love you!" said Marius.

"I adore you!" said Cosette.

And they fell irresistibly into each other's arms.

"Now," said Cosette, adjusting a fold of her dressing-gown,
with a triumphant little grimace, "I shall stay."

"No, not that," said Marius, in a supplicating tone.  "We have
to finish something."

"Still no?"

Marius assumed a grave tone:

"I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."

"Ah! you put on your man's voice, sir.  That is well, I go. 
You, father, have not upheld me.  Monsieur my father, monsieur
my husband, you are tyrants.  I shall go and tell grandpapa. 
If you think that I am going to return and talk platitudes to you,
you are mistaken.  I am proud.  I shall wait for you now. 
You shall see, that it is you who are going to be bored without me. 
I am going, it is well."

And she left the room.

Two seconds later, the door opened once more, her fresh and rosy
head was again thrust between the two leaves, and she cried to them:

"I am very angry indeed."

The door closed again, and the shadows descended once more.

It was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed
the night, without itself being conscious of it.

Marius made sure that the door was securely closed.

"Poor Cosette!" he murmured, "when she finds out..."

At that word Jean Valjean trembled in every limb.  He fixed
on Marius a bewildered eye.

"Cosette! oh yes, it is true, you are going to tell Cosette about this. 
That is right.  Stay, I had not thought of that.  One has the
strength for one thing, but not for another.  Sir, I conjure you,
I entreat now, sir, give me your most sacred word of honor, that you
will not tell her.  Is it not enough that you should know it? 
I have been able to say it myself without being forced to it,
I could have told it to the universe, to the whole world,--it was
all one to me.  But she, she does not know what it is, it would
terrify her.  What, a convict! we should be obliged to explain matters
to her, to say to her:  `He is a man who has been in the galleys.' 
She saw the chain-gang pass by one day.  Oh!  My God!"... He
dropped into an arm-chair and hid his face in his hands.

His grief was not audible, but from the quivering of his shoulders
it was evident that he was weeping.  Silent tears, terrible tears.

There is something of suffocation in the sob.  He was seized with a
sort of convulsion, he threw himself against the back of the chair
as though to gain breath, letting his arms fall, and allowing Marius
to see his face inundated with tears, and Marius heard him murmur,
so low that his voice seemed to issue from fathomless depths:

"Oh! would that I could die!"

"Be at your ease," said Marius, "I will keep your secret for
myself alone."  x And, less touched, perhaps, than he ought to
have been, but forced, for the last hour, to familiarize himself
with something as unexpected as it was dreadful, gradually beholding
the convict superposed before his very eyes, upon M. Fauchelevent,
overcome, little by little, by that lugubrious reality, and led,
by the natural inclination of the situation, to recognize the space
which had just been placed between that man and himself, Marius added:

"It is impossible that I should not speak a word to you with regard
to the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. 
That is an act of probity.  It is just that some recompense should be
bestowed on you.  Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. 
Do not fear to set it very high."

"I thank you, sir," replied Jean Valjean, gently.

He remained in thought for a moment, mechanically passing the tip
of his fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice:

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

"What is it?"

Jean Valjean struggled with what seemed a last hesitation, and,
without voice, without breath, he stammered rather than said:

"Now that you know, do you think, sir, you, who are the master,
that I ought not to see Cosette any more?"

"I think that would be better," replied Marius coldly.

"I shall never see her more," murmured Jean Valjean.  And he
directed his steps towards the door.

He laid his hand on the knob, the latch yielded, the door opened. 
Jean Valjean pushed it open far enough to pass through, stood motionless
for a second, then closed the door again and turned to Marius.

He was no longer pale, he was livid.  There were no longer any
tears in his eyes, but only a sort of tragic flame.  His voice
had regained a strange composure.

"Stay, sir," he said.  "If you will allow it, I will come to see her. 
I assure you that I desire it greatly.  If I had not cared to
see Cosette, I should not have made to you the confession that I
have made, I should have gone away; but, as I desired to remain
in the place where Cosette is, and to continue to see her,
I had to tell you about it honestly.  You follow my reasoning,
do you not? it is a matter easily understood.  You see, I have had
her with me for more than nine years.  We lived first in that hut
on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the Luxembourg. 
That was where you saw her for the first time.  You remember
her blue plush hat.  Then we went to the Quartier des Invalides,
where there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet.  I lived
in a little back court-yard, whence I could hear her piano. 
That was my life.  We never left each other.  That lasted for nine
years and some months.  I was like her own father, and she was
my child.  I do not know whether you understand, Monsieur Pontmercy,
but to go away now, never to see her again, never to speak to
her again, to no longer have anything, would be hard.  If you do not
disapprove of it, I will come to see Cosette from time to time. 
I will not come often.  I will not remain long.  You shall give
orders that I am to be received in the little waiting-room. On
the ground floor.  I could enter perfectly well by the back door,
but that might create surprise perhaps, and it would be better,
I think, for me to enter by the usual door.  Truly, sir, I should
like to see a little more of Cosette.  As rarely as you please. 
Put yourself in my place, I have nothing left but that.  And then,
we must be cautious.  If I no longer come at all, it would produce
a bad effect, it would be considered singular.  What I can do,
by the way, is to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning
to fall."

"You shall come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will
be waiting for you."

"You are kind, sir," said Jean Valjean.

Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door,
and these two men parted.



CHAPTER II

THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN


Marius was quite upset.

The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man
beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained to him. 
There was something enigmatic about that person, of which his
instinct had warned him.

This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. 
This M. Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.

To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness
resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.

Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned
to such a neighborhood?  Was this an accomplished fact?  Did the
acceptance of that man form a part of the marriage now consummated? 
Was there nothing to be done?

Had Marius wedded the convict as well?

In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste
the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force
even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory,
to shudder.

As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked
himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. 
Had he been wanting in divination?  Had he been wanting in prudence? 
Had he involuntarily dulled his wits?  A little, perhaps.  Had he
entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his marriage
to Cosette, without taking sufficient precautions to throw light
upon the surroundings?  He admitted,--it is thus, by a series
of successive admissions of ourselves in regard to ourselves,
that life amends us, little by little,--he admitted the chimerical
and visionary side of his nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar
to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow,
dilates as the temperature of the soul changes, and invades the
entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing more than a
conscience bathed in a mist.  We have more than once indicated this
characteristic element of Marius' individuality.

He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet,
during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoke
to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim
had taken up such a singular line of silence during the struggle
and the ensuing flight.  How had it happened that he had not
mentioned this to Cosette?  Yet it was so near and so terrible! 
How had it come to pass that he had not even named the Thenardiers,
and, particularly, on the day when he had encountered Eponine? 
He now found it almost difficult to explain his silence of that time. 
Nevertheless, he could account for it.  He recalled his benumbed
state, his intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything,
that catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also,
like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent
and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him
to conceal and abolish in his memory that redoubtable adventure,
contact with which he dreaded, in which he did not wish to play
any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and in which he
could be neither narrator nor witness without being an accuser.

Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had
been no time for anything except love.

In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his mind,
examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if he
had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered
that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? 
Would that have changed her, Cosette?  Would he have drawn back? 
Would he have adored her any the less?  Would he have refrained
from marrying her?  No. Then there was nothing to regret,
nothing with which he need reproach himself.  All was well. 
There is a deity for those drunken men who are called lovers. 
Marius blind, had followed the path which he would have chosen had he
been in full possession of his sight.  Love had bandaged his eyes,
in order to lead him whither?  To paradise.

But this paradise was henceforth complicated
with an infernal accompaniment.

Marius' ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this Fauchelevent
who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present mingled with horror.

In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even
a certain surprise.

This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored
that deposit.  And what a deposit!  Six hundred thousand francs.

He alone was in the secret of that deposit.  He might have kept
it all, he had restored it all.

Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation.  Nothing forced him
to this.  If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. 
In this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation,
there was acceptance of peril.  For a condemned man, a mask is not
a mask, it is a shelter.  A false name is security, and he had rejected
that false name.  He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself
forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. 
And with what motive?  Through a conscientious scruple. 
He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. 
In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly,
a conscience which was awakening.  There existed some mysterious
re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances,
scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.  Such fits
of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. 
An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere.  This sincerity, visible, palpable,
irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered
inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said.

Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. 
What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.  What did Jean Valjean
inspire? confidence.

In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive
Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted
the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.

But all this went on as in a storm.  Marius, while endeavoring
to form a clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean,
so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him
again in a fatal mist.

The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession--
these were good.  This produced a lightening of the cloud,
then the cloud became black once more.

Troubled as were Marius' memories, a shadow of them returned to him.

After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? 
Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police,
instead of entering a complaint?

Here Marius found the answer.  Because that man was a fugitive
from justice, who had broken his ban.

Another question:  Why had that man come to the barricade?

For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection
which had re-appeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at
the application of heat.  This man had been in the barricade. 
He had not fought there.  What had he come there for?  In the presence
of this question a spectre sprang up and replied:  "Javert."

Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean
dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still
heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that frightful
pistol shot.  Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy
and the galley-slave. The one was in the other's way.  Jean Valjean
had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. 
He had arrived late.  He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. 
The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has
become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish
souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are
so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance,
may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the
matter of vengeance.  Jean Valjean had killed Javert.  At least,
that seemed to be evident.

This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was
no reply.  This question Marius felt like pincers.  How had it come
to pass that Jean Valjean's existence had elbowed that of Cosette
for so long a period?

What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed
that child in contact with that man?  Are there then chains
for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure

in coupling the angel with the demon?  So a crime and an innocence
can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness? 
In that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny,
can two brows pass side by side, the one ingenuous, the other
formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn,
the other forever blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? 
Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off?  In what manner,
in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life been
established between this celestial little creature and that old criminal?

Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still
more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? 
For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored
the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel
had had the monster as her point of support.  Cosette's childhood
and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards
life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous devotion. 
Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas,
abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses, and Marius could no longer bend
over Jean Valjean without becoming dizzy.  What was this man-precipice?

The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it
now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it,
there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean;
the one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is
according to evil is Cain.  What was this tender Cain?  What was
this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin,
watching over her, rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her,
and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity?

What was that cess-pool which had venerated that innocence to such
a point as not to leave upon it a single spot?  What was this Jean
Valjean educating Cosette?  What was this figure of the shadows
which had for its only object the preservation of the rising
of a star from every shadow and from every cloud?

That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's secret.

In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled.  The one,
in some sort, reassured him as to the other.  God was as visible
in this affair as was Jean Valjean.  God has his instruments. 
He makes use of the tool which he wills.  He is not responsible
to men.  Do we know how God sets about the work?  Jean Valjean
had labored over Cosette.  He had, to some extent, made that soul. 
That was incontestable.  Well, what then?  The workman was horrible;
but the work was admirable.  God produces his miracles as seems
good to him.  He had constructed that charming Cosette, and he had
employed Jean Valjean.  It had pleased him to choose this strange
collaborator for himself.  What account have we to demand of him? 
Is this the first time that the dung-heap has aided the spring to create
the rose?

Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself that they
were good.  He had not dared to press Jean Valjean on all the points
which we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that
he did not dare to do it.  He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette,
Cosette was splendidly pure.  That was sufficient for him. 
What enlightenment did he need?  Cosette was a light.  Does light require
enlightenment?  He had everything; what more could he desire?  All,--
is not that enough?  Jean Valjean's personal affairs did not concern him.

And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast,
convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy wretch: 
"I am nothing to Cosette.  Ten years ago I did not know that she
was in existence."

Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself. 
Well, he had passed.  Whatever he was, his part was finished.

Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence
to Cosette.  Cosette had sought the azure in a person like herself,
in her lover, her husband, her celestial male.  Cosette, as she took
her flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth
her hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned
to a certain horror for Jean Valjean.  A sacred horror, perhaps, for,
as we have just pointed out, he felt a quid divinum in that man. 
But do what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was
certainly forced to fall back upon this:  the man was a convict;
that is to say, a being who has not even a place in the social ladder,
since he is lower than the very lowest rung.  After the very last
of men comes the convict.  The convict is no longer, so to speak,
in the semblance of the living.  The law has deprived him of the entire
quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.

Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system,
though he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the
law on the subject of those whom the law strikes.  He had not yet
accomplished all progress, we admit.  He had not yet come to distinguish
between that which is written by man and that which is written by God,
between law and right.  He had not examined and weighed the right
which man takes to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. 
He was not shocked by the word vindicte.  He found it quite simple
that certain breaches of the written law should be followed by
eternal suffering, and he accepted, as the process of civilization,
social damnation.  He still stood at this point, though safe to advance
infallibly later on, since his nature was good, and, at bottom,
wholly formed of latent progress.

In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him hideous
and repulsive.  He was a man reproved, he was the convict. 
That word was for him like the sound of the trump on the Day
of Judgment; and, after having reflected upon Jean Valjean for
a long time, his final gesture had been to turn away his head. 
Vade retro.

Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact,
while interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point that Jean Valjean
had said:  "You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless, put to
him two or three decisive questions.

It was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind,
but that he had been afraid of them.  The Jondrette attic? 
The barricade?  Javert?  Who knows where these revelations would
have stopped?  Jean Valjean did not seem like a man who would
draw back, and who knows whether Marius, after having urged him on,
would not have himself desired to hold him back?

Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures,
to stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after we have
asked a question?  It is especially when one loves that one gives way
to these exhibitions of cowardice.  It is not wise to question sinister
situations to the last point, particularly when the indissoluble side
of our life is fatally intermingled with them.  What a terrible light
might have proceeded from the despairing explanations of Jean Valjean,
and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have darted
forth as far as Cosette?  Who knows whether a sort of infernal
glow would not have lingered behind it on the brow of that angel? 
The spattering of a lightning-flash is of the thunder also. 
Fatality has points of juncture where innocence itself is stamped
with crime by the gloomy law of the reflections which give color. 
The purest figures may forever preserve the reflection of a
horrible association.  Rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. 
He already knew too much.  He sought to dull his senses rather
than to gain further light.

In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes
to Jean Valjean.

That man was the night, the living and horrible night. 
How should he dare to seek the bottom of it?  It is a terrible thing
to interrogate the shadow.  Who knows what its reply will be? 
The dawn may be blackened forever by it.

In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth,
come into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending
perplexity to Marius.

He now almost reproached himself for not having put those
formidable questions, before which he had recoiled, and from
which an implacable and definitive decision might have sprung. 
He felt that he was too good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say
the word.  This weakness had led him to an imprudent concession. 
He had allowed himself to be touched.  He had been in the wrong. 
He ought to have simply and purely rejected Jean Valjean.  Jean Valjean
played the part of fire, and that is what he should have done,
and have freed his house from that man.

He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind
of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away. 
He was displeased with himself.

What was he to do now?  Jean Valjean's visits were profoundly repugnant
to him.  What was the use in having that man in his house?  What did
the man want?  Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down,
he did not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. 
He had promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise;
Jean Valjean held his promise; one must keep one's word even to a convict,
above all to a convict.  Still, his first duty was to Cosette. 
In short, he was carried away by the repugnance which dominated him.

Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind,
passing from one to the other, and moved by all of them. 
Hence arose a profound trouble.

It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette, but love
is a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.

However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette,
who was as candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing;
he talked of her childhood and her youth, and he became more
and more convinced that that convict had been everything good,
paternal and respectable that a man can be towards Cosette. 
All that Marius had caught a glimpse of and had surmised was real. 
That sinister nettle had loved and protected that lily.



BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT



CHAPTER I

THE LOWER CHAMBER


On the following day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the carriage
gate of the Gillenormand house.  It was Basque who received him. 
Basque was in the courtyard at the appointed hour, as though he had
received his orders.  It sometimes happens that one says to a servant: 
"You will watch for Mr. So and So, when he arrives."

Basque addressed Jean Valjean without waiting for the latter
to approach him:

"Monsieur le Baron has charged me to inquire whether monsieur
desires to go upstairs or to remain below?"

"I will remain below," replied Jean Valjean.

Basque, who was perfectly respectful, opened the door of the
waiting-room and said:

"I will go and inform Madame."

The room which Jean Valjean entered was a damp, vaulted room on the ground
floor, which served as a cellar on occasion, which opened on the street,
was paved with red squares and was badly lighted by a grated window.

This chamber was not one of those which are harassed by
the feather-duster, the pope's head brush, and the broom. 
The dust rested tranquilly there.  Persecution of the spiders
was not organized there.  A fine web, which spread far and wide,
and was very black and ornamented with dead flies, formed a wheel
on one of the window-panes. The room, which was small and low-ceiled,
was furnished with a heap of empty bottles piled up in one corner.

The wall, which was daubed with an ochre yellow wash, was scaling
off in large flakes.  At one end there was a chimney-piece
painted in black with a narrow shelf.  A fire was burning there;
which indicated that Jean Valjean's reply:  "I will remain below,"
had been foreseen.

Two arm-chairs were placed at the two corners of the fireplace. 
Between the chairs an old bedside rug, which displayed more foundation
thread than wool, had been spread by way of a carpet.

The chamber was lighted by the fire on the hearth and the twilight
falling through the window.

Jean Valjean was fatigued.  For days he had neither eaten nor slept. 
He threw himself into one of the arm-chairs.

Basque returned, set a lighted candle on the chimney-piece and retired. 
Jean Valjean, his head drooping and his chin resting on his breast,
perceived neither Basque nor the candle.

All at once, he drew himself up with a start.  Cosette was standing
beside him.

He had not seen her enter, but he had felt that she was there.

He turned round.  He gazed at her.  She was adorably lovely. 
But what he was contemplating with that profound gaze was not her
beauty but her soul.

"Well," exclaimed Cosette, "father, I knew that you were peculiar,
but I never should have expected this.  What an idea!  Marius told
me that you wish me to receive you here."

"Yes, it is my wish."

"I expected that reply.  Good.  I warn you that I am going to make
a scene for you.  Let us begin at the beginning.  Embrace me, father."

And she offered him her cheek.

Jean Valjean remained motionless.

"You do not stir.  I take note of it.  Attitude of guilt. 
But never mind, I pardon you.  Jesus Christ said:  Offer the
other cheek.  Here it is."

And she presented her other cheek.

Jean Valjean did not move.  It seemed as though his feet were nailed
to the pavement.

"This is becoming serious," said Cosette.  "What have I done to you? 
I declare that I am perplexed.  You owe me reparation.  You will dine
with us."

"I have dined."

"That is not true.  I will get M. Gillenormand to scold you. 
Grandfathers are made to reprimand fathers.  Come.  Go upstairs
with me to the drawing-room. Immediately."

"Impossible."

Here Cosette lost ground a little.  She ceased to command and passed
to questioning.

"But why? and you choose the ugliest chamber in the house in which
to see me.  It's horrible here."

"Thou knowest..."

Jean Valjean caught himself up.

"You know, madame, that I am peculiar, I have my freaks."

Cosette struck her tiny hands together.

"Madame!... You know!... more novelties!  What is the meaning
of this?"

Jean Valjean directed upon her that heartrending smile to which he
occasionally had recourse:

"You wished to be Madame.  You are so."

"Not for you, father."

"Do not call me father."

"What?"

"Call me `Monsieur Jean.'  `Jean,' if you like."

"You are no longer my father?  I am no longer Cosette? 
`Monsieur Jean'? What does this mean? why, these are revolutions,
aren't they? what has taken place? come, look me in the face. 
And you won't live with us!  And you won't have my chamber! 
What have I done to you?  Has anything happened?"

"Nothing."

"Well then?"

"Everything is as usual."

"Why do you change your name?"

"You have changed yours, surely."

He smiled again with the same smile as before and added:

"Since you are Madame Pontmercy, I certainly can be Monsieur Jean."

"I don't understand anything about it.  All this is idiotic. 
I shall ask permission of my husband for you to be `Monsieur Jean.' 
I hope that he will not consent to it.  You cause me a great deal
of pain.  One does have freaks, but one does not cause one's little
Cosette grief.  That is wrong.  You have no right to be wicked,
you who are so good."

He made no reply.

She seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face
with an irresistible movement, she pressed them against her neck
beneath her chin, which is a gesture of profound tenderness.

"Oh!" she said to him, "be good!"

And she went on:

"This is what I call being good:  being nice and coming and living here,--
there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet,--living with us,
quitting that hole of a Rue de l'Homme Arme, not giving us riddles
to guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us,
breakfasting with us, being my father."

He loosed her hands.

"You no longer need a father, you have a husband."

Cosette became angry.

"I no longer need a father!  One really does not know what to say
to things like that, which are not common sense!"

"If Toussaint were here," resumed Jean Valjean, like a person who
is driven to seek authorities, and who clutches at every branch,
"she would be the first to agree that it is true that I have always
had ways of my own.  There is nothing new in this.  I always have
loved my black corner."

"But it is cold here.  One cannot see distinctly.  It is abominable,
that it is, to wish to be Monsieur Jean!  I will not have you say
`you' to me.

"Just now, as I was coming hither," replied Jean Valjean,
"I saw a piece of furniture in the Rue Saint Louis.  It was
at a cabinet-maker's. If I were a pretty woman, I would treat
myself to that bit of furniture.  A very neat toilet table in the
reigning style.  What you call rosewood, I think.  It is inlaid. 
The mirror is quite large.  There are drawers.  It is pretty."

"Hou! the villainous bear!" replied Cosette.

And with supreme grace, setting her teeth and drawing back her lips,
she blew at Jean Valjean.  She was a Grace copying a cat.

"I am furious," she resumed.  "Ever since yesterday, you have made
me rage, all of you.  I am greatly vexed.  I don't understand.  You do
not defend me against Marius.  Marius will not uphold me against you. 
I am all alone.  I arrange a chamber prettily.  If I could have put the
good God there I would have done it.  My chamber is left on my hands. 
My lodger sends me into bankruptcy.  I order a nice little dinner
of Nicolette.  We will have nothing to do with your dinner, Madame. 
And my father Fauchelevent wants me to call him `Monsieur Jean,'
and to receive him in a frightful, old, ugly cellar, where the walls
have beards, and where the crystal consists of empty bottles,
and the curtains are of spiders' webs!  You are singular, I admit,
that is your style, but people who get married are granted a truce. 
You ought not to have begun being singular again instantly. 
So you are going to be perfectly contented in your abominable Rue
de l'Homme Arme.  I was very desperate indeed there, that I was. 
What have you against me?  You cause me a great deal of grief. 
Fi!"

And, becoming suddenly serious, she gazed intently at Jean Valjean
and added:

"Are you angry with me because I am happy?"

Ingenuousness sometimes unconsciously penetrates deep.  This question,
which was simple for Cosette, was profound for Jean Valjean. 
Cosette had meant to scratch, and she lacerated.

Jean Valjean turned pale.

He remained for a moment without replying, then, with an
inexpressible intonation, and speaking to himself, he murmured:

"Her happiness was the object of my life.  Now God may sign
my dismissal.  Cosette, thou art happy; my day is over."

"Ah, you have said thou to me!" exclaimed Cosette.

And she sprang to his neck.

Jean Valjean, in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. 
It almost seemed to him as though he were taking her back.

"Thanks, father!" said Cosette.

This enthusiastic impulse was on the point of becoming poignant
for Jean Valjean.  He gently removed Cosette's arms, and took his hat.

"Well?" said Cosette.

"I leave you, Madame, they are waiting for you."

And, from the threshold, he added:

"I have said thou to you.  Tell your husband that this shall not
happen again.  Pardon me."

Jean Valjean quitted the room, leaving Cosette stupefied at this
enigmatical farewell.



CHAPTER II

ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS


On the following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came.

Cosette asked him no questions, was no longer astonished, no longer
exclaimed that she was cold, no longer spoke of the drawing-room,
she avoided saying either "father" or "Monsieur Jean."  She allowed
herself to be addressed as you.  She allowed herself to be
called Madame.  Only, her joy had undergone a certain diminution. 
She would have been sad, if sadness had been possible to her.

It is probable that she had had with Marius one of those conversations
in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing,
and satisfies the beloved woman.  The curiosity of lovers does
not extend very far beyond their own love.

The lower room had made a little toilet.  Basque had suppressed
the bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.

All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. 
He came every day, because he had not the strength to take Marius'
words otherwise than literally.  Marius arranged matters so as to
be absent at the hours when Jean Valjean came.  The house grew
accustomed to the novel ways of M. Fauchelevent.  Toussaint helped
in this direction:  "Monsieur has always been like that," she repeated. 
The grandfather issued this decree:--"He's an original."  And all
was said.  Moreover, at the age of ninety-six, no bond is any longer
possible, all is merely juxtaposition; a newcomer is in the way. 
There is no longer any room; all habits are acquired.  M. Fauchelevent,
M. Tranchelevent, Father Gillenormand asked nothing better than
to be relieved from "that gentleman."  He added:--"Nothing is more
common than those originals.  They do all sorts of queer things. 
They have no reason.  The Marquis de Canaples was still worse. 
He bought a palace that he might lodge in the garret.  These are
fantastic appearances that people affect."

No one caught a glimpse of the sinister foundation.  And moreover,
who could have guessed such a thing?  There are marshes of this
description in India.  The water seems extraordinary, inexplicable,
rippling though there is no wind, and agitated where it should
be calm.  One gazes at the surface of these causeless ebullitions;
one does not perceive the hydra which crawls on the bottom.

Many men have a secret monster in this same manner, a dragon
which gnaws them, a despair which inhabits their night.  Such a man
resembles other men, he goes and comes.  No one knows that he
bears within him a frightful parasitic pain with a thousand teeth,
which lives within the unhappy man, and of which he is dying. 
No one knows that this man is a gulf.  He is stagnant but deep. 
From time to time, a trouble of which the onlooker understands
nothing appears on his surface.  A mysterious wrinkle is formed,
then vanishes, then re-appears; an air-bubble rises and bursts. 
It is the breathing of the unknown beast.

Certain strange habits:  arriving at the hour when other people
are taking their leave, keeping in the background when other people
are displaying themselves, preserving on all occasions what may be
designated as the wall-colored mantle, seeking the solitary walk,
preferring the deserted street, avoiding any share in conversation,
avoiding crowds and festivals, seeming at one's ease and living
poorly, having one's key in one's pocket, and one's candle at the
porter's lodge, however rich one may be, entering by the side door,
ascending the private staircase,--all these insignificant singularities,
fugitive folds on the surface, often proceed from a formidable foundation.

Many weeks passed in this manner.  A new life gradually took possession
of Cosette:  the relations which marriage creates, visits, the care
of the house, pleasures, great matters.  Cosette's pleasures were
not costly, they consisted in one thing:  being with Marius.  The great
occupation of her life was to go out with him, to remain with him. 
It was for them a joy that was always fresh, to go out arm in arm,
in the face of the sun, in the open street, without hiding themselves,
before the whole world, both of them completely alone.

Cosette had one vexation.  Toussaint could not get on with Nicolette,
the soldering of two elderly maids being impossible, and she went away. 
The grandfather was well; Marius argued a case here and there;
Aunt Gillenormand peacefully led that life aside which sufficed for her,
beside the new household.  Jean Valjean came every day.

The address as thou disappeared, the you, the "Madame," the
"Monsieur Jean," rendered him another person to Cosette.  The care
which he had himself taken to detach her from him was succeeding. 
She became more and more gay and less and less tender.  Yet she
still loved him sincerely, and he felt it.

One day she said to him suddenly:  "You used to be my father, you are
no longer my father, you were my uncle, you are no longer my uncle,
you were Monsieur Fauchelevent, you are Jean.  Who are you then? 
I don't like all this.  If I did not know how good you are, I should
be afraid of you."

He still lived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, because he could not make
up his mind to remove to a distance from the quarter where Cosette dwelt.

At first, he only remained a few minutes with Cosette, and then
went away.

Little by little he acquired the habit of making his visits less brief. 
One would have said that he was taking advantage of the authorization
of the days which were lengthening, he arrived earlier and departed later.

One day Cosette chanced to say "father" to him.  A flash
of joy illuminated Jean Valjean's melancholy old countenance. 
He caught her up:  "Say Jean."--"Ah! truly," she replied with a
burst of laughter, "Monsieur Jean."--"That is right," said he. 
And he turned aside so that she might not see him wipe his eyes.



CHAPTER III

THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET


This was the last time.  After that last flash of light, complete
extinction ensued.  No more familiarity, no more good-morning with
a kiss, never more that word so profoundly sweet:  "My father!" 
He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out
of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow,
that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards
obliged to lose her again in detail.

The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. 
In short, it sufficed for him to have an apparition of Cosette
every day.  His whole life was concentrated in that one hour.

He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he
talked to her of years gone by, of her childhood, of the convent,
of her little friends of those bygone days.

One afternoon,--it was on one of those early days in April,
already warm and fresh, the moment of the sun's great gayety,
the gardens which surrounded the windows of Marius and Cosette felt
the emotion of waking, the hawthorn was on the point of budding,
a jewelled garniture of gillyflowers spread over the ancient walls,
snapdragons yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the
grass there was a charming beginning of daisies, and buttercups,
the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance,
the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees
the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which the old poets
called the springtide,--Marius said to Cosette:--"We said that we
would go back to take a look at our garden in the Rue Plumet. 
Let us go thither.  We must not be ungrateful."--And away they flitted,
like two swallows towards the spring.  This garden of the Rue
Plumet produced on them the effect of the dawn.  They already
had behind them in life something which was like the springtime
of their love.  The house in the Rue Plumet being held on a lease,
still belonged to Cosette.  They went to that garden and that house. 
There they found themselves again, there they forgot themselves. 
That evening, at the usual hour, Jean Valjean came to the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire.--"Madame went out with Monsieur and has not
yet returned," Basque said to him.  He seated himself in silence,
and waited an hour.  Cosette did not return.  He departed with
drooping head.

Cosette was so intoxicated with her walk to "their garden,"
and so joyous at having "lived a whole day in her past," that she
talked of nothing else on the morrow.  She did not notice that she
had not seen Jean Valjean.

"In what way did you go thither?"  Jean Valjean asked her."

"On foot."

"And how did you return?"

"In a hackney carriage."

For some time, Jean Valjean had noticed the economical life led
by the young people.  He was troubled by it.  Marius' economy was
severe, and that word had its absolute meaning for Jean Valjean. 
He hazarded a query:

"Why do you not have a carriage of your own?  A pretty coupe would
only cost you five hundred francs a month.  You are rich."

"I don't know," replied Cosette.

"It is like Toussaint," resumed Jean Valjean.  "She is gone. 
You have not replaced her.  Why?"

"Nicolette suffices."

"But you ought to have a maid."

"Have I not Marius?"

"You ought to have a house of your own, your own servants, a carriage,
a box at the theatre.  There is nothing too fine for you. 
Why not profit by your riches?  Wealth adds to happiness."

Cosette made no reply.

Jean Valjean's visits were not abridged.  Far from it.  When it is
the heart which is slipping, one does not halt on the downward slope.

When Jean Valjean wished to prolong his visit and to induce forgetfulness
of the hour, he sang the praises of Marius; he pronounced him handsome,
noble, courageous, witty, eloquent, good.  Cosette outdid him. 
Jean Valjean began again.  They were never weary.  Marius--that word
was inexhaustible; those six letters contained volumes. 
In this manner, Jean Valjean contrived to remain a long time.

It was so sweet to see Cosette, to forget by her side!  It alleviated
his wounds.  It frequently happened that Basque came twice to announce: 
"M. Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame la Baronne that dinner
is served."

On those days, Jean Valjean was very thoughtful on his return home.

Was there, then, any truth in that comparison of the chrysalis
which had presented itself to the mind of Marius?  Was Jean Valjean
really a chrysalis who would persist, and who would come to visit
his butterfly?

One day he remained still longer than usual.  On the following day he
observed that there was no fire on the hearth.--"Hello!" he thought. 
"No fire."--And he furnished the explanation for himself.--"It is
perfectly simple.  It is April.  The cold weather has ceased."

"Heavens! how cold it is here!" exclaimed Cosette when she entered.

"Why, no," said Jean Valjean.

"Was it you who told Basque not to make a fire then?"

"Yes, since we are now in the month of May."

"But we have a fire until June.  One is needed all the year
in this cellar."

"I thought that a fire was unnecessary."

"That is exactly like one of your ideas!" retorted Cosette.

On the following day there was a fire.  But the two arm-chairs
were arranged at the other end of the room near the door. 
"--What is the meaning of this?" thought Jean Valjean.

He went for the arm-chairs and restored them to their ordinary
place near the hearth.

This fire lighted once more encouraged him, however.  He prolonged
the conversation even beyond its customary limits.  As he rose
to take his leave, Cosette said to him:

"My husband said a queer thing to me yesterday."

"What was it?"

"He said to me:  `Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand livres. 
Twenty-seven that you own, and three that my grandfather
gives me.'  I replied:  `That makes thirty.'  He went on: 
`Would you have the courage to live on the three thousand?' 
I answered:  `Yes, on nothing.  Provided that it was with you.' 
And then I asked:  `Why do you say that to me?'  He replied: 
`I wanted to know.'"

Jean Valjean found not a word to answer.  Cosette probably expected
some explanation from him; he listened in gloomy silence. 
He went back to the Rue de l'Homme Arme; he was so deeply absorbed
that he mistook the door and instead of entering his own house,
he entered the adjoining dwelling.  It was only after having ascended
nearly two stories that he perceived his error and went down again.

His mind was swarming with conjectures.  It was evident that Marius
had his doubts as to the origin of the six hundred thousand francs,
that he feared some source that was not pure, who knows? that he
had even, perhaps, discovered that the money came from him,
Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this suspicious fortune,
and was disinclined to take it as his own,--preferring that both he
and Cosette should remain poor, rather than that they should be rich
with wealth that was not clean.

Moreover, Jean Valjean began vaguely to surmise that he was being
shown the door.

On the following day, he underwent something like a shock on
entering the ground-floor room.  The arm-chairs had disappeared. 
There was not a single chair of any sort.

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

"They are no longer here," replied Jean Valjean.

"This is too much!"

Jean Valjean stammered:

"It was I who told Basque to remove them."

"And your reason?"

"I have only a few minutes to stay to-day."

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

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

"Why?"

"You have company this evening, no doubt."

"We expect no one."

Jean Valjean had not another word to say.

Cosette shrugged her shoulders.

"To have the chairs carried off!  The other day you had the fire
put out.  How odd you are!"

"Adieu!" murmured Jean Valjean.

He did not say:  "Adieu, Cosette."  But he had not the strength to say: 
"Adieu, Madame."

He went away utterly overwhelmed.

This time he had understood.

On the following day he did not come.  Cosette only observed
the fact in the evening.

"Why," said she, "Monsieur Jean has not been here today."

And she felt a slight twinge at her heart, but she hardly perceived it,
being immediately diverted by a kiss from Marius.

On the following day he did not come.

Cosette paid no heed to this, passed her evening and slept well
that night, as usual, and thought of it only when she woke. 
She was so happy!  She speedily despatched Nicolette to M. Jean's
house to inquire whether he were ill, and why he had not come
on the previous evening.  Nicolette brought back the reply of
M. Jean that he was not ill.  He was busy.  He would come soon. 
As soon as he was able.  Moreover, he was on the point of taking
a little journey.  Madame must remember that it was his custom
to take trips from time to time.  They were not to worry about him. 
They were not to think of him.

Nicolette on entering M. Jean's had repeated to him her mistress'
very words.  That Madame had sent her to inquire why M. Jean bad
not come on the preceding evening."--It is two days since I have
been there," said Jean Valjean gently.

But the remark passed unnoticed by Nicolette, who did not report
it to Cosette.



CHAPTER IV

ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION


During the last months of spring and the first months of summer
in 1833, the rare passersby in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers,
the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in black,
who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall,
from the Rue de l'Homme Arme, on the side of the Rue
Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux,
gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and, on arriving at
the Rue de l'Echarpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue Saint-Louis.

There he walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a point
which seemed to be a star to him, which never varied, and which was no
other than the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The nearer
he approached the corner of the street the more his eye lighted up;
a sort of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora,
he had a fascinated and much affected air, his lips indulged in
obscure movements, as though he were talking to some one whom he
did not see, he smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible. 
One would have said that, while desirous of reaching his destination,
he feared the moment when he should be close at hand.  When only
a few houses remained between him and that street which appeared
to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree that, at times,
one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. 
The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs
suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. 
Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last;
he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted,
he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity
round the corner of the last house, and gazed into that street,
and there was in that tragic look something which resembled the
dazzling light of the impossible, and the reflection from a paradise
that was closed to him.  Then a tear, which had slowly gathered
in the corner of his lids, and had become large enough to fall,
trickled down his cheek, and sometimes stopped at his mouth. 
The old man tasted its bitter flavor.  Thus he remained for several
minutes as though made of stone, then he returned by the same road
and with the same step, and, in proportion as he retreated, his glance
died out.

Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the
Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in the Rue Saint-Louis;
sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer.

One day he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine
and looked at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire from a distance. 
Then he shook his head slowly from right to left, as though refusing
himself something, and retraced his steps.

Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far
as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; then he went no
further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep
the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum
which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing
shorter before ceasing altogether.

Every day he emerged from his house at the same hour, he undertook
the same trip, but he no longer completed it, and, perhaps without
himself being aware of the fact, he constantly shortened it. 
His whole countenance expressed this single idea:  What is the use?--
His eye was dim; no more radiance.  His tears were also exhausted;
they no longer collected in the corner of his eye-lid; that thoughtful
eye was dry.  The old man's head was still craned forward; his chin
moved at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to behold. 
Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm,
but he never opened it.

The good women of the quarter said:  "He is an innocent." 
The children followed him and laughed.



BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN


CHAPTER I

PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY


It is a terrible thing to be happy!  How content one is! 
How all-sufficient one finds it!  How, being in possession of the
false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object, duty!

Let us say, however, that the reader would do wrong were he
to blame Marius.

Marius, as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions
to M. Fauchelevent, and, since that time, he had feared to put any to
Jean Valjean.  He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed
himself to be drawn.  He had often said to himself that he had done
wrong in making that concession to despair.  He had confined himself
to gradually estranging Jean Valjean from his house and to effacing him,
as much as possible, from Cosette's mind.  He had, in a manner,
always placed himself between Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that,
in this way, she would not perceive nor think of the latter. 
It was more than effacement, it was an eclipse.

Marius did what he considered necessary and just.  He thought
that he had serious reasons which the reader has already seen,
and others which will be seen later on, for getting rid of Jean
Valjean without harshness, but without weakness.

Chance having ordained that he should encounter, in a case which he
had argued, a former employee of the Laffitte establishment, he had
acquired mysterious information, without seeking it, which he had
not been able, it is true, to probe, out of respect for the secret
which he had promised to guard, and out of consideration for Jean
Valjean's perilous position.  He believed at that moment that he had
a grave duty to perform:  the restitution of the six hundred thousand
francs to some one whom he sought with all possible discretion. 
In the meanwhile, he abstained from touching that money.

As for Cosette, she had not been initiated into any of these secrets;
but it would be harsh to condemn her also.

There existed between Marius and her an all-powerful magnetism,
which caused her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically,
what Marius wished.  She was conscious of Marius' will in the direction
of "Monsieur Jean," she conformed to it.  Her husband had not been
obliged to say anything to her; she yielded to the vague but clear
pressure of his tacit intentions, and obeyed blindly.  Her obedience
in this instance consisted in not remembering what Marius forgot. 
She was not obliged to make any effort to accomplish this. 
Without her knowing why herself, and without his having any cause
to accuse her of it, her soul had become so wholly her husband's
that that which was shrouded in gloom in Marius' mind became overcast
in hers.

Let us not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean,
this forgetfulness and obliteration were merely superficial. 
She was rather heedless than forgetful.  At bottom, she was sincerely
attached to the man whom she had so long called her father;
but she loved her husband still more dearly.  This was what had
somewhat disturbed the balance of her heart, which leaned to one
side only.

It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean and expressed
her surprise.  Then Marius calmed her:  "He is absent, I think. 
Did not he say that he was setting out on a journey?"--"That is true,"
thought Cosette.  "He had a habit of disappearing in this fashion. 
But not for so long."  Two or three times she despatched Nicolette
to inquire in the Rue de l'Homme Arme whether M. Jean had returned from
his journey.  Jean Valjean caused the answer "no" to be given.

Cosette asked nothing more, since she had but one need on earth, Marius.

Let us also say that, on their side, Cosette and Marius had also
been absent.  They had been to Vernon.  Marius had taken Cosette
to his father's grave.

Marius gradually won Cosette away from Jean Valjean.  Cosette allowed it.

Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases,
the ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving
of reproach as it is supposed.  It is the ingratitude of nature. 
Nature, as we have elsewhere said, "looks before her."  Nature divides
living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. 
Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who
are arriving towards the light.  Hence a gulf which is fatal on
the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. 
This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations
of branches.  The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk,
grow away from it.  It is no fault of theirs.  Youth goes where there
is joy, festivals, vivid lights, love.  Old age goes towards the end. 
They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer
a close connection.  Young people feel the cooling off of life;
old people, that of the tomb.  Let us not blame these poor children.



CHAPTER II

LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL


One day, Jean Valjean descended his staircase, took three steps
in the street, seated himself on a post, on that same stone post
where Gavroche had found him meditating on the night between the 5th
and the 6th of June; he remained there a few moments, then went
up stairs again.  This was the last oscillation of the pendulum. 
On the following day he did not leave his apartment.  On the day
after that, he did not leave his bed.

His portress, who prepared his scanty repasts, a few cabbages
or potatoes with bacon, glanced at the brown earthenware plate
and exclaimed:

"But you ate nothing yesterday, poor, dear man!"

"Certainly I did," replied Jean Valjean.

"The plate is quite full."

"Look at the water jug.  It is empty."

"That proves that you have drunk; it does not prove that you
have eaten."

"Well," said Jean Valjean, "what if I felt hungry only for water?"

"That is called thirst, and, when one does not eat at the same time,
it is called fever."

"I will eat to-morrow."

"Or at Trinity day.  Why not to-day? Is it the thing to say: 
`I will eat to-morrow'? The idea of leaving my platter without even
touching it!  My ladyfinger potatoes were so good!"

Jean Valjean took the old woman's hand:

"I promise you that I will eat them," he said, in his benevolent voice.

"I am not pleased with you," replied the portress.

Jean Valjean saw no other human creature than this good woman. 
There are streets in Paris through which no one ever passes,
and houses to which no one ever comes.  He was in one of those streets
and one of those houses.

While he still went out, he had purchased of a coppersmith,
for a few sous, a little copper crucifix which he had hung up
on a nail opposite his bed.  That gibbet is always good to look at.

A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. 
He still remained in bed.  The portress said to her husband:--"The
good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats,
he will not last long.  That man has his sorrows, that he has. 
You won't get it out of my head that his daughter has made a
bad marriage."

The porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:

"If he's rich, let him have a doctor.  If he is not rich, let him
go without.  If he has no doctor he will die."

"And if he has one?"

"He will die," said the porter.

The portress set to scraping away the grass from what she called
her pavement, with an old knife, and, as she tore out the blades,
she grumbled:

"It's a shame.  Such a neat old man!  He's as white as a chicken."

She caught sight of the doctor of the quarter as he passed the end
of the street; she took it upon herself to request him to come
up stairs.

"It's on the second floor," said she.  "You have only to enter. 
As the good man no longer stirs from his bed, the door is
always unlocked."

The doctor saw Jean Valjean and spoke with him.

When he came down again the portress interrogated him:

"Well, doctor?"

"Your sick man is very ill indeed."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Everything and nothing.  He is a man who, to all appearances,
has lost some person who is dear to him.  People die of that."

"What did he say to you?"

"He told me that he was in good health."

"Shall you come again, doctor?"

"Yes," replied the doctor.  "But some one else besides must come."



CHAPTER III

A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE FAUCHELEVENT'S CART


One evening Jean Valjean found difficulty in raising himself
on his elbow; he felt of his wrist and could not find his pulse;
his breath was short and halted at times; he recognized the fact
that he was weaker than he had ever been before.  Then, no doubt
under the pressure of some supreme preoccupation, he made an effort,
drew himself up into a sitting posture and dressed himself. 
He put on his old workingman's clothes.  As he no longer went out,
he had returned to them and preferred them.  He was obliged to pause
many times while dressing himself; merely putting his arms through his
waistcoat made the perspiration trickle from his forehead.

Since he had been alone, he had placed his bed in the antechamber,
in order to inhabit that deserted apartment as little as possible.

He opened the valise and drew from it Cosette's outfit.

He spread it out on his bed.

The Bishop's candlesticks were in their place on the chimney-piece. He
took from a drawer two wax candles and put them in the candlesticks. 
Then, although it was still broad daylight,--it was summer,--
he lighted them.  In the same way candles are to be seen lighted
in broad daylight in chambers where there is a corpse.

Every step that he took in going from one piece of furniture
to another exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down.  It was
not ordinary fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it;
it was the remnant of all movement possible to him, it was life
drained which flows away drop by drop in overwhelming efforts
and which will never be renewed.

The chair into which he allowed himself to fall was placed in front
of that mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Marius,
in which he had read Cosette's reversed writing on the blotting book. 
He caught sight of himself in this mirror, and did not recognize himself. 
He was eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, he would have hardly
been taken for fifty; that year had counted for thirty.  What he bore
on his brow was no longer the wrinkles of age, it was the mysterious mark
of death.  The hollowing of that pitiless nail could be felt there. 
His cheeks were pendulous; the skin of his face had the color
which would lead one to think that it already had earth upon it;
the corners of his mouth drooped as in the mask which the ancients
sculptured on tombs.  He gazed into space with an air of reproach;
one would have said that he was one of those grand tragic beings
who have cause to complain of some one.

He was in that condition, the last phase of dejection,
in which sorrow no longer flows; it is coagulated, so to speak;
there is something on the soul like a clot of despair.

Night had come.  He laboriously dragged a table and the old
arm-chair to the fireside, and placed upon the table a pen,
some ink and some paper.

That done, he had a fainting fit.  When he recovered consciousness,
he was thirsty.  As he could not lift the jug, he tipped it over
painfully towards his mouth, and swallowed a draught.

As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time,
the point of the pen had curled up, the ink had dried away, he was
forced to rise and put a few drops of water in the ink, which he did
not accomplish without pausing and sitting down two or three times,
and he was compelled to write with the back of the pen.  He wiped
his brow from time to time.

Then he turned towards the bed, and, still seated, for he could not stand,
he gazed at the little black gown and all those beloved objects.

These contemplations lasted for hours which seemed minutes.

All at once he shivered, he felt that a child was taking possession
of him; he rested his elbows on the table, which was illuminated
by the Bishop's candles and took up the pen.  His hand trembled. 
He wrote slowly the few following lines:

"Cosette, I bless thee.  I am going to explain to thee.  Thy husband
was right in giving me to understand that I ought to go away;
but there is a little error in what he believed, though he was in
the right.  He is excellent.  Love him well even after I am dead. 
Monsieur Pontmercy, love my darling child well.  Cosette, this paper
will be found; this is what I wish to say to thee, thou wilt see
the figures, if I have the strength to recall them, listen well,
this money is really thine.  Here is the whole matter:  White jet
comes from Norway, black jet comes from England, black glass jewellery
comes from Germany.  Jet is the lightest, the most precious,
the most costly.  Imitations can be made in France as well as in Germany. 
What is needed is a little anvil two inches square, and a lamp
burning spirits of wine to soften the wax.  The wax was formerly
made with resin and lampblack, and cost four livres the pound. 
I invented a way of making it with gum shellac and turpentine. 
It does not cost more than thirty sous, and is much better. 
Buckles are made with a violet glass which is stuck fast, by means
of this wax, to a little framework of black iron.  The glass must
be violet for iron jewellery, and black for gold jewellery. 
Spain buys a great deal of it.  It is the country of jet..
."

Here he paused, the pen fell from his fingers, he was seized by one of
those sobs which at times welled up from the very depths of his being;
the poor man clasped his head in both hands, and meditated.

"Oh!" he exclaimed within himself [lamentable cries, heard by God
alone], "all is over.  I shall never see her more.  She is a smile
which passed over me.  I am about to plunge into the night without
even seeing her again.  Oh! one minute, one instant, to hear her voice,
to touch her dress, to gaze upon her, upon her, the angel! and then
to die!  It is nothing to die, what is frightful is to die without
seeing her.  She would smile on me, she would say a word to me,
would that do any harm to any one?  No, all is over, and forever. 
Here I am all alone.  My God!  My God!  I shall never see her again!" 
At that moment there came a knock at the door.



CHAPTER IV

A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN WHITENING


That same day, or to speak more accurately, that same evening, as Marius
left the table, and was on the point of withdrawing to his study,
having a case to look over, Basque handed him a letter saying: 
"The person who wrote the letter is in the antechamber."

Cosette had taken the grandfather's arm and was strolling in the garden.

A letter, like a man, may have an unprepossessing exterior. 
Coarse paper, coarsely folded--the very sight of certain missives
is displeasing.

The letter which Basque had brought was of this sort.

Marius took it.  It smelled of tobacco.  Nothing evokes a memory
like an odor.  Marius recognized that tobacco.  He looked at
the superscription:  "To Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron Pommerci. 
At his hotel."  The recognition of the tobacco caused him to
recognize the writing as well.  It may be said that amazement
has its lightning flashes.

Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of these flashes.

The sense of smell, that mysterious aid to memory, had just
revived a whole world within him.  This was certainly the paper,
the fashion of folding, the dull tint of ink; it was certainly
the well-known handwriting, especially was it the same tobacco.

The Jondrette garret rose before his mind.

Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two scents which he had
so diligently sought, the one in connection with which he had lately
again exerted so many efforts and which he supposed to be forever lost,
had come and presented itself to him of its own accord.

He eagerly broke the seal, and read:


"Monsieur le Baron:--If the Supreme Being had given me the talents,
I might have been baron Thenard, member of the Institute [academy
of ciences], but I am not.  I only bear the same as him, happy if
this memory recommends me to the eccellence of your kindnesses. 
The benefit with which you will honor me will be reciprocle. 
I am in possession of a secret concerning an individual. 
This individual concerns you.  I hold the secret at your disposal
desiring to have the honor to be huseful to you.  I will furnish
you with the simple means of driving from your honorabel family
that individual who has no right there, madame la baronne being
of lofty birth.  The sanctuary of virtue cannot cohabit longer
with crime without abdicating.

I awate in the entichamber the orders of monsieur le baron.
                                              "With respect."


The letter was signed "Thenard."

This signature was not false.  It was merely a trifle abridged.

Moreover, the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation. 
The certificate of origin was complete.

Marius' emotion was profound.  After a start of surprise,
he underwent a feeling of happiness.  If he could now
but find that other man of whom he was in search, the man
who had saved him, Marius, there would be nothing left for him to desire.

He opened the drawer of his secretary, took out several bank-notes, put
them in his pocket, closed the secretary again, and rang the bell. 
Basque half opened the door.

"Show the man in," said Marius.

Basque announced:

"Monsieur Thenard."

A man entered.

A fresh surprise for Marius.  The man who entered was an utter
stranger to him.

This man, who was old, moreover, had a thick nose, his chin swathed
in a cravat, green spectacles with a double screen of green taffeta
over his eyes, and his hair was plastered and flattened down on his
brow on a level with his eyebrows like the wigs of English coachmen
in "high life."  His hair was gray.  He was dressed in black from
head to foot, in garments that were very threadbare but clean;
a bunch of seals depending from his fob suggested the idea of a watch. 
He held in his hand an old hat!  He walked in a bent attitude,
and the curve in his spine augmented the profundity of his bow.

The first thing that struck the observer was, that this
personage's coat, which was too ample although carefully buttoned,
had not been made for him.

Here a short digression becomes necessary.

There was in Paris at that epoch, in a low-lived old lodging
in the Rue Beautreillis, near the Arsenal, an ingenious Jew whose
profession was to change villains into honest men.  Not for too long,
which might have proved embarrassing for the villain.  The change
was on sight, for a day or two, at the rate of thirty sous a day,
by means of a costume which resembled the honesty of the world
in general as nearly as possible.  This costumer was called
"the Changer"; the pickpockets of Paris had given him this name
and knew him by no other.  He had a tolerably complete wardrobe. 
The rags with which he tricked out people were almost probable. 
He had specialties and categories; on each nail of his shop hung
a social status, threadbare and worn; here the suit of a magistrate,
there the outfit of a Cure, beyond the outfit of a banker, in one
corner the costume of a retired military man, elsewhere the habiliments
of a man of letters, and further on the dress of a statesman.

This creature was the costumer of the immense drama which knavery
plays in Paris.  His lair was the green-room whence theft emerged,
and into which roguery retreated.  A tattered knave arrived at this
dressing-room, deposited his thirty sous and selected, according to
the part which he wished to play, the costume which suited him,
and on descending the stairs once more, the knave was a somebody. 
On the following day, the clothes were faithfully returned,
and the Changer, who trusted the thieves with everything,
was never robbed.  There was one inconvenience about these clothes,
they "did not fit"; not having been made for those who wore them,
they were too tight for one, too loose for another and did not adjust
themselves to any one.  Every pickpocket who exceeded or fell short
of the human average was ill at his ease in the Changer's costumes. 
It was necessary that one should not be either too fat or too lean. 
The changer had foreseen only ordinary men.  He had taken the measure
of the species from the first rascal who came to hand, who is
neither stout nor thin, neither tall nor short.  Hence adaptations
which were sometimes difficult and from which the Changer's clients
extricated themselves as best they might.  So much the worse
for the exceptions!  The suit of the statesman, for instance,
black from head to foot, and consequently proper, would have been
too large for Pitt and too small for Castelcicala.  The costume
of a statesman was designated as follows in the Changer's catalogue;
we copy:

"A coat of black cloth, trowsers of black wool, a silk
waistcoat, boots and linen."  On the margin there stood: 
ex-ambassador, and a note which we also copy:  "In a separate box,
a neatly frizzed peruke, green glasses, seals, and two small
quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton."  All this belonged
to the statesman, the ex-ambassador. This whole costume was,
if we may so express ourselves, debilitated; the seams were white,
a vague button-hole yawned at one of the elbows; moreover, one of the
coat buttons was missing on the breast; but this was only detail;
as the hand of the statesman should always be thrust into his coat
and laid upon his heart, its function was to conceal the absent button.

If Marius had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris,
he would instantly have recognized upon the back of the visitor
whom Basque had just shown in, the statesman's suit borrowed from
the pick-me-down-that shop of the Changer.

Marius' disappointment on beholding another man than the one whom
he expected to see turned to the newcomer's disadvantage.

He surveyed him from head to foot, while that personage made
exaggerated bows, and demanded in a curt tone:

"What do you want?"

The man replied with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile
of a crocodile will furnish some idea:

"It seems to me impossible that I should not have already had
the honor of seeing Monsieur le Baron in society.  I think I
actually did meet monsieur personally, several years ago, at the
house of Madame la Princesse Bagration and in the drawing-rooms
of his Lordship the Vicomte Dambray, peer of France."

It is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize
some one whom one does not know.

Marius paid attention to the manner of this man's speech. 
He spied on his accent and gesture, but his disappointment increased;
the pronunciation was nasal and absolutely unlike the dry,
shrill tone which he had expected.

He was utterly routed.

"I know neither Madame Bagration nor M. Dambray," said he. 
"I have never set foot in the house of either of them in my life."

The reply was ungracious.  The personage, determined to be gracious
at any cost, insisted.

"Then it must have been at Chateaubriand's that I have seen Monsieur! 
I know Chateaubriand very well.  He is very affable.  He sometimes
says to me:  `Thenard, my friend... won't you drink a glass
of wine with me?'"

Marius' brow grew more and more severe:

"I have never had the honor of being received by M. de Chateaubriand. 
Let us cut it short.  What do you want?"

The man bowed lower at that harsh voice.


"Monsieur le Baron, deign to listen to me.  There is in America,
in a district near Panama, a village called la Joya.  That village
is composed of a single house, a large, square house of three stories,
built of bricks dried in the sun, each side of the square five
hundred feet in length, each story retreating twelve feet back
of the story below, in such a manner as to leave in front a terrace
which makes the circuit of the edifice, in the centre an inner court
where the provisions and munitions are kept; no windows, loopholes,
no doors, ladders, ladders to mount from the ground to the first terrace,
and from the first to the second, and from the second to the third,
ladders to descend into the inner court, no doors to the chambers,
trap-doors, no staircases to the chambers, ladders; in the evening
the traps are closed, the ladders are withdrawn carbines and
blunderbusses trained from the loopholes; no means of entering,
a house by day, a citadel by night, eight hundred inhabitants,--
that is the village.  Why so many precautions? because the country
is dangerous; it is full of cannibals.  Then why do people go there?
because the country is marvellous; gold is found there."

"What are you driving at?" interrupted Marius, who had passed
from disappointment to impatience.

"At this, Monsieur le Baron.  I am an old and weary diplomat. 
Ancient civilization has thrown me on my own devices.  I want to
try savages."

"Well?"

"Monsieur le Baron, egotism is the law of the world.  The proletarian
peasant woman, who toils by the day, turns round when the diligence
passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field,
does not turn round.  The dog of the poor man barks at the rich man,
the dog of the rich man barks at the poor man.  Each one for himself. 
Self-interest--that's the object of men.  Gold, that's the loadstone."

"What then?  Finish."

"I should like to go and establish myself at la Joya.  There are three
of us.  I have my spouse and my young lady; a very beautiful girl. 
The journey is long and costly.  I need a little money."

"What concern is that of mine?" demanded Marius.

The stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a gesture
characteristic of the vulture, and replied with an augmented smile.

"Has not Monsieur le Baron perused my letter?"

There was some truth in this.  The fact is, that the contents of the
epistle had slipped Marius' mind.  He had seen the writing rather
than read the letter.  He could hardly recall it.  But a moment
ago a fresh start had been given him.  He had noted that detail: 
"my spouse and my young lady."

He fixed a penetrating glance on the stranger.  An examining judge
could not have done the look better.  He almost lay in wait for him.

He confined himself to replying:

"State the case precisely."

The stranger inserted his two hands in both his fobs, drew himself
up without straightening his dorsal column, but scrutinizing Marius
in his turn, with the green gaze of his spectacles.

"So be it, Monsieur le Baron.  I will be precise.  I have a secret
to sell to you."

"A secret?"

"A secret."

"Which concerns me?"

"Somewhat."

"What is the secret?"

Marius scrutinized the man more and more as he listened to him.

"I commence gratis," said the stranger.  "You will see that I
am interesting."

"Speak."

"Monsieur le Baron, you have in your house a thief and an assassin."

Marius shuddered.

"In my house? no," said he.

The imperturbable stranger brushed his hat with his elbow and went on:

"An assassin and a thief.  Remark, Monsieur le Baron, that I do not
here speak of ancient deeds, deeds of the past which have lapsed,
which can be effaced by limitation before the law and by repentance
before God.  I speak of recent deeds, of actual facts as still
unknown to justice at this hour.  I continue.  This man has
insinuated himself into your confidence, and almost into your
family under a false name.  I am about to tell you his real name. 
And to tell it to you for nothing."

"I am listening."

"His name is Jean Valjean."

"I know it."

"I am going to tell you, equally for nothing, who he is."

"Say on."

"He is an ex-convict."

"I know it."

"You know it since I have had the honor of telling you."

"No. I knew it before."

Marius' cold tone, that double reply of "I know it," his laconicism,
which was not favorable to dialogue, stirred up some smouldering
wrath in the stranger.  He launched a furious glance on the sly
at Marius, which was instantly extinguished.  Rapid as it was,
this glance was of the kind which a man recognizes when he has once
beheld it; it did not escape Marius.  Certain flashes can only
proceed from certain souls; the eye, that vent-hole of the thought,
glows with it; spectacles hide nothing; try putting a pane of glass
over hell!

The stranger resumed with a smile:

"I will not permit myself to contradict Monsieur le Baron.  In any case,
you ought to perceive that I am well informed.  Now what I have
to tell you is known to myself alone.  This concerns the fortune
of Madame la Baronne.  It is an extraordinary secret.  It is for sale--
I make you the first offer of it.  Cheap.  Twenty thousand francs."

"I know that secret as well as the others," said Marius.

The personage felt the necessity of lowering his price a trifle.

"Monsieur le Baron, say ten thousand francs and I will speak."

"I repeat to you that there is nothing which you can tell me. 
I know what you wish to say to me."

A fresh flash gleamed in the man's eye.  He exclaimed:

"But I must dine to-day, nevertheless.  It is an extraordinary secret,
I tell you.  Monsieur le Baron, I will speak.  I speak.  Give me
twenty francs."

Marius gazed intently at him:

"I know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew Jean Valjean's name,
just as I know your name."

"My name?"

"Yes."

"That is not difficult, Monsieur le Baron.  I had the honor to write
to you and to tell it to you.  Thenard."

"--Dier."

"Hey?"

"Thenardier."

"Who's that?"

In danger the porcupine bristles up, the beetle feigns death,
the old guard forms in a square; this man burst into laughter.

Then he flicked a grain of dust from the sleeve of his coat
with a fillip.

Marius continued:

"You are also Jondrette the workman, Fabantou the comedian,
Genflot the poet, Don Alvares the Spaniard, and Mistress Balizard."

"Mistress what?"

"And you kept a pot-house at Montfermeil."

"A pot-house! Never."

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

"I deny it."

"And that you are a rascal.  Here."

And Marius drew a bank-note from his pocket and flung it in his face.

"Thanks!  Pardon me! five hundred francs!  Monsieur le Baron!"

And the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it.

"Five hundred francs!" he began again, taken aback.  And he stammered
in a low voice:  "An honest rustler."[69]


[69] Un fafiot serieux.  Fafiot is the slang term for a bank-bill,
derived from its rustling noise.


Then brusquely:

"Well, so be it!" he exclaimed.  "Let us put ourselves at our ease."

And with the agility of a monkey, flinging back his hair,
tearing off his spectacles, and withdrawing from his nose by
sleight of hand the two quills of which mention was recently made,
and which the reader has also met with on another page of this book,
he took off his face as the man takes off his hat.

His eye lighted up; his uneven brow, with hollows in some places
and bumps in others, hideously wrinkled at the top, was laid bare,
his nose had become as sharp as a beak; the fierce and sagacious
profile of the man of prey reappeared.

"Monsieur le Baron is infallible," he said in a clear voice whence
all nasal twang had disappeared, "I am Thenardier."

And he straightened up his crooked back.

Thenardier, for it was really he, was strangely surprised;
he would have been troubled, had he been capable of such a thing. 
He had come to bring astonishment, and it was he who had received it. 
This humiliation had been worth five hundred francs to him, and, taking it
all in all, he accepted it; but he was none the less bewildered.

He beheld this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and, in spite
of his disguise, this Baron Pontmercy recognized him, and recognized
him thoroughly.  And not only was this Baron perfectly informed
as to Thenardier, but he seemed well posted as to Jean Valjean. 
Who was this almost beardless young man, who was so glacial and
so generous, who knew people's names, who knew all their names,
and who opened his purse to them, who bullied rascals like a judge,
and who paid them like a dupe?

Thenardier, the reader will remember, although he had been Marius'
neighbor, had never seen him, which is not unusual in Paris;
he had formerly, in a vague way, heard his daughters talk of a very poor
young man named Marius who lived in the house.  He had written to him,
without knowing him, the letter with which the reader is acquainted.

No connection between that Marius and M. le Baron Pontmercy was
possible in his mind.

As for the name Pontmercy, it will be recalled that, on the
battlefield of Waterloo, he had only heard the last two syllables,
for which he always entertained the legitimate scorn which one
owes to what is merely an expression of thanks.

However, through his daughter Azelma, who had started on the scent
of the married pair on the 16th of February, and through his own
personal researches, he had succeeded in learning many things, and,
from the depths of his own gloom, he had contrived to grasp more
than one mysterious clew.  He had discovered, by dint of industry,
or, at least, by dint of induction, he had guessed who the man
was whom he had encountered on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. 
From the man he had easily reached the name.  He knew that Madame
la Baronne Pontmercy was Cosette.  But he meant to be discreet
in that quarter.

Who was Cosette?  He did not know exactly himself.  He did,
indeed, catch an inkling of illegitimacy, the history of Fantine
had always seemed to him equivocal; but what was the use of talking
about that? in order to cause himself to be paid for his silence? 
He had, or thought he had, better wares than that for sale. 
And, according to all appearances, if he were to come and make
to the Baron Pontmercy this revelation--and without proof: 
"Your wife is a bastard," the only result would be to attract
the boot of the husband towards the loins of the revealer.

From Thenardier's point of view, the conversation with Marius
had not yet begun.  He ought to have drawn back, to have modified
his strategy, to have abandoned his position, to have changed
his front; but nothing essential had been compromised as yet,
and he had five hundred francs in his pocket.  Moreover, he had
something decisive to say, and, even against this very well-informed
and well-armed Baron Pontmercy, he felt himself strong. 
For men of Thenardier's nature, every dialogue is a combat. 
In the one in which he was about to engage, what was his situation? 
He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he did know of what
he was speaking, he made this rapid review of his inner forces,
and after having said:  "I am Thenardier," he waited.

Marius had become thoughtful.  So he had hold of Thenardier at last. 
That man whom he had so greatly desired to find was before him. 
He could honor Colonel Pontmercy's recommendation.

He felt humiliated that that hero should have owned anything to
this villain, and that the letter of change drawn from the depths
of the tomb by his father upon him, Marius, had been protested up
to that day.  It also seemed to him, in the complex state of his
mind towards Thenardier, that there was occasion to avenge the
Colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. 
In any case, he was content.  He was about to deliver the Colonel's
shade from this unworthy creditor at last, and it seemed to him
that he was on the point of rescuing his father's memory from
the debtors' prison.  By the side of this duty there was another--
to elucidate, if possible, the source of Cosette's fortune. 
The opportunity appeared to present itself.  Perhaps Thenardier
knew something.  It might prove useful to see the bottom of this man.

He commenced with this.

Thenardier had caused the "honest rustler" to disappear in his fob,
and was gazing at Marius with a gentleness that was almost tender.

Marius broke the silence.

"Thenardier, I have told you your name.  Now, would you like to have
me tell you your secret--the one that you came here to reveal to me? 
I have information of my own, also.  You shall see that I know more
about it than you do.  Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin
and a thief.  A thief, because he robbed a wealthy manufacturer,
whose ruin he brought about.  An assassin, because he assassinated
police-agent Javert."

"I don't understand, sir," ejaculated Thenardier.

"I will make myself intelligible.  In a certain arrondissement
of the Pas de Calais, there was, in 1822, a man who had fallen out
with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had regained
his status and rehabilitated himself.  This man had become a just
man in the full force of the term.  In a trade, the manufacture
of black glass goods, he made the fortune of an entire city. 
As far as his personal fortune was concerned he made that also,
but as a secondary matter, and in some sort, by accident. 
He was the foster-father of the poor.  He founded hospitals,
opened schools, visited the sick, dowered young girls, supported widows,
and adopted orphans; he was like the guardian angel of the country. 
He refused the cross, he was appointed Mayor.  A liberated convict
knew the secret of a penalty incurred by this man in former days;
he denounced him, and had him arrested, and profited by the arrest
to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,--I have the fact
from the cashier himself,--by means of a false signature, to hand
over to him the sum of over half a million which belonged to
M. Madeleine.  This convict who robbed M. Madeleine was Jean Valjean. 
As for the other fact, you have nothing to tell me about it either. 
Jean Valjean killed the agent Javert; he shot him with a pistol. 
I, the person who is speaking to you, was present."

Thenardier cast upon Marius the sovereign glance of a conquered
man who lays his hand once more upon the victory, and who has
just regained, in one instant, all the ground which he has lost. 
But the smile returned instantly.  The inferior's triumph in the
presence of his superior must be wheedling.

Thenardier contented himself with saying to Marius:

"Monsieur le Baron, we are on the wrong track."

And he emphasized this phrase by making his bunch of seals execute
an expressive whirl.

"What!" broke forth Marius, "do you dispute that?  These are facts."

"They are chimeras.  The confidence with which Monsieur le Baron
honors me renders it my duty to tell him so.  Truth and justice
before all things.  I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. 
Monsieur le Baron, Jean Valjean did not rob M. Madeleine and Jean
Valjean did not kill Javert."

"This is too much!  How is this?"

"For two reasons."

"What are they?  Speak."

"This is the first:  he did not rob M. Madeleine, because it
is Jean Valjean himself who was M. Madeleine."

"What tale are you telling me?"

"And this is the second:  he did not assassinate Javert,
because the person who killed Javert was Javert."

"What do you mean to say?"

"That Javert committed suicide."

"Prove it! prove it!" cried Marius beside himself.

Thenardier resumed, scanning his phrase after the manner of the
ancient Alexandrine measure:

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


"But prove it!"

Thenardier drew from his pocket a large envelope of gray paper,
which seemed to contain sheets folded in different sizes.

"I have my papers," he said calmly.

And he added:

"Monsieur le Baron, in your interests I desired to know Jean
Valjean thoroughly.  I say that Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine are one and
the same man, and I say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert. 
If I speak, it is because I have proofs.  Not manuscript proofs--
writing is suspicious, handwriting is complaisant,--but printed proofs."

As he spoke, Thenardier extracted from the envelope two copies
of newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. 
One of these two newspapers, broken at every fold and falling into rags,
seemed much older than the other.

"Two facts, two proofs," remarked Thenardier.  And he offered
the two newspapers, unfolded, to Marius,

The reader is acquainted with these two papers.  One, the most ancient,
a number of the Drapeau Blanc of the 25th of July, 1823, the text
of which can be seen in the first volume, established the identity
of M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean.

The other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the
suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report
of Javert to the prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the
barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the
magnanimity of an insurgent who, holding him under his pistol,
had fired into the air, instead of blowing out his brains.

Marius read.  He had evidence, a certain date, irrefragable proof,
these two newspapers had not been printed expressly for the purpose
of backing up Thenardier's statements; the note printed in the Moniteur
had been an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. 
Marius could not doubt.

The information of the cashier-clerk had been false, and he himself
had been deceived.

Jean Valjean, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged from his cloud. 
Marius could not repress a cry of joy.

"Well, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man! the whole
of that fortune really belonged to him! he is Madeleine,
the providence of a whole countryside! he is Jean Valjean,
Javert's savior! he is a hero! he is a saint!"

"He's not a saint, and he's not a hero!" said Thenardier. 
"He's an assassin and a robber."

And he added, in the tone of a man who begins to feel that he
possesses some authority:

"Let us be calm."

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

"Again!" said he.

"Always," ejaculated Thenardier.  "Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine,
but he is a thief.  He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer."

"Will you speak," retorted Marius, "of that miserable theft,
committed forty years ago, and expiated, as your own newspapers prove,
by a whole life of repentance, of self-abnegation and of virtue?"

"I say assassination and theft, Monsieur le Baron, and I repeat
that I am speaking of actual facts.  What I have to reveal to
you is absolutely unknown.  It belongs to unpublished matter. 
And perhaps you will find in it the source of the fortune
so skilfully presented to Madame la Baronne by Jean Valjean. 
I say skilfully, because, by a gift of that nature it would not be so
very unskilful to slip into an honorable house whose comforts one would
then share, and, at the same stroke, to conceal one's crime, and to
enjoy one's theft, to bury one's name and to create for oneself a family."

"I might interrupt you at this point," said Marius, "but go on."

"Monsieur le Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to
your generosity.  This secret is worth massive gold.  You will say to me: 
`Why do not you apply to Jean Valjean?'  For a very simple reason;
I know that he has stripped himself, and stripped himself in your favor,
and I consider the combination ingenious; but he has no longer a son,
he would show me his empty hands, and, since I am in need of some
money for my trip to la Joya, I prefer you, you who have it all,
to him who has nothing.  I am a little fatigued, permit me to take
a chair."

Marius seated himself and motioned to him to do the same.

Thenardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up
his two newspapers, thrust them back into their envelope,
and murmured as he pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: 
"It cost me a good deal of trouble to get this one."

That done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back
of the chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure
of what they are saying, then he entered upon his subject gravely,
emphasizing his words:

"Monsieur le Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago,
on the day of the insurrection, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris,
at the point where the sewer enters the Seine, between the Pont des
Invalides and the Pont de Jena."

Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Thenardier. 
Thenardier noticed this movement and continued with the deliberation
of an orator who holds his interlocutor and who feels his adversary
palpitating under his words:

"This man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons, moreover,
which are foreign to politics, had adopted the sewer as his
domicile and had a key to it.  It was, I repeat, on the 6th
of June; it might have been eight o'clock in the evening. 
The man hears a noise in the sewer.  Greatly surprised, he hides
himself and lies in wait.  It was the sound of footsteps,
some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his direction. 
Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer besides himself. 
The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far off.  A little
light which fell through it permitted him to recognize the newcomer,
and to see that the man was carrying something on his back. 
He was walking in a bent attitude.  The man who was walking in a
bent attitude was an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his
shoulders was a corpse.  Assassination caught in the very act,
if ever there was such a thing.  As for the theft, that is understood;
one does not kill a man gratis.  This convict was on his way
to fling the body into the river.  One fact is to be noticed,
that before reaching the exit grating, this convict, who had come
a long distance in the sewer, must, necessarily, have encountered
a frightful quagmire where it seems as though he might have left
the body, but the sewermen would have found the assassinated man
the very next day, while at work on the quagmire, and that did
not suit the assassin's plans.  He had preferred to traverse that
quagmire with his burden, and his exertions must have been terrible,
for it is impossible to risk one's life more completely; I don't
understand how he could have come out of that alive."

Marius' chair approached still nearer.  Thenardier took advantage
of this to draw a long breath.  He went on:

"Monsieur le Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars.  One lacks
everything there, even room.  When two men are there, they must meet. 
That is what happened.  The man domiciled there and the passer-by
were forced to bid each other good-day, greatly to the regret
of both.  The passer-by said to the inhabitant:--"You see what I
have on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me." 
That convict was a man of terrible strength.  There was no way
of refusing.  Nevertheless, the man who had the key parleyed,
simply to gain time.  He examined the dead man, but he could
see nothing, except that the latter was young, well dressed,
with the air of being rich, and all disfigured with blood. 
While talking, the man contrived to tear and pull off behind,
without the assassin perceiving it, a bit of the assassinated
man's coat.  A document for conviction, you understand; a means
of recovering the trace of things and of bringing home the crime
to the criminal.  He put this document for conviction in his pocket. 
After which he opened the grating, made the man go out with his
embarrassment on his back, closed the grating again, and ran off,
not caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure
and above all, not wishing to be present when the assassin threw
the assassinated man into the river.  Now you comprehend.  The man
who was carrying the corpse was Jean Valjean; the one who had the key

is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of the coat..
."

Thenardier completed his phrase by drawing from his pocket,
and holding, on a level with his eyes, nipped between his two
thumbs and his two forefingers, a strip of torn black cloth,
all covered with dark spots.

Marius had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath,
with his eyes riveted on the fragment of black cloth, and, without
uttering a word, without taking his eyes from that fragment,
he retreated to the wall and fumbled with his right hand along
the wall for a key which was in the lock of a cupboard near the chimney.

He found the key, opened the cupboard, plunged his arm into it
without looking, and without his frightened gaze quitting the rag
which Thenardier still held outspread.

But Thenardier continued:

"Monsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing
that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger lured into
a trap by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money."

"The young man was myself, and here is the coat!" cried Marius,
and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood.

Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thenardier, he crouched
down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt. 
The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.

Thenardier was petrified.

This is what he thought:  "I'm struck all of a heap."

Marius rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant.

He fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Thenardier,
presenting to him and almost thrusting in his face his fist filled
with bank-notes for five hundred and a thousand francs.

"You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator,
a villain.  You came to accuse that man, you have only justified him;
you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him. 
And it is you who are the thief!  And it is you who are the assassin! 
I saw you, Thenardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de l'Hopital.
I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further
if I choose.  Here are a thousand francs, bully that you are!"

And he flung a thousand franc note at Thenardier.

"Ah!  Jondrette Thenardier, vile rascal!  Let this serve you as
a lesson, you dealer in second-hand secrets, merchant of mysteries,
rummager of the shadows, wretch!  Take these five hundred francs
and get out of here!  Waterloo protects you."

"Waterloo!" growled Thenardier, pocketing the five hundred francs
along with the thousand.

"Yes, assassin!  You there saved the life of a Colonel. .."

"Of a General," said Thenardier, elevating his head.

"Of a Colonel!" repeated Marius in a rage.  "I wouldn't give a ha'penny
for a general.  And you come here to commit infamies!  I tell you
that you have committed all crimes.  Go! disappear!  Only be happy,
that is all that I desire.  Ah! monster! here are three thousand
francs more.  Take them.  You will depart to-morrow, for America,
with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar. 
I shall watch over your departure, you ruffian, and at that moment
I will count out to you twenty thousand francs.  Go get yourself
hung elsewhere!"

"Monsieur le Baron!" replied Thenardier, bowing to the very earth,
"eternal gratitude."  And Thenardier left the room, understanding nothing,
stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold,
and with that thunder which had burst forth over his head in bank-bills.

Struck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and he would
have been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off
such lightning as that.

Let us finish with this man at once.

Two days after the events which we are at this moment narrating,
he set out, thanks to Marius' care, for America under a false name,
with his daughter Azelma, furnished with a draft on New York for twenty
thousand francs.

The moral wretchedness of Thenardier, the bourgeois who had missed
his vocation, was irremediable.  He was in America what he had
been in Europe.  Contact with an evil man sometimes suffices to
corrupt a good action and to cause evil things to spring from it. 
With Marius' money, Thenardier set up as a slave-dealer.

As soon as Thenardier had left the house, Marius rushed to the garden,
where Cosette was still walking.

"Cosette!  Cosette!" he cried.  "Come! come quick!  Let us go. 
Basque, a carriage!  Cosette, come.  Ah!  My God!  It was he
who saved my life!  Let us not lose a minute!  Put on your shawl."

Cosette thought him mad and obeyed.

He could not breathe, he laid his hand on his heart to restrain
its throbbing.  He paced back and forth with huge strides,
he embraced Cosette:

"Ah!  Cosette!  I am an unhappy wretch!" said he.

Marius was bewildered.  He began to catch a glimpse in Jean
Valjean of some indescribably lofty and melancholy figure. 
An unheard-of virtue, supreme and sweet, humble in its immensity,
appeared to him.  The convict was transfigured into Christ.

Marius was dazzled by this prodigy.  He did not know precisely
what he beheld, but it was grand.

In an instant, a hackney-carriage stood in front of the door.

Marius helped Cosette in and darted in himself.

"Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, Number 7."

The carriage drove off.

"Ah! what happiness!" ejaculated Cosette.  "Rue de l'Homme Arme,
I did not dare to speak to you of that.  We are going to see
M. Jean."

"Thy father!  Cosette, thy father more than ever.  Cosette, I
guess it.  You told me that you had never received the letter
that I sent you by Gavroche.  It must have fallen into his hands. 
Cosette, he went to the barricade to save me.  As it is a necessity
with him to be an angel, he saved others also; he saved Javert. 
He rescued me from that gulf to give me to you.  He carried me
on his back through that frightful sewer.  Ah!  I am a monster
of ingratitude.  Cosette, after having been your providence,
he became mine.  Just imagine, there was a terrible quagmire
enough to drown one a hundred times over, to drown one in mire. 
Cosette! he made me traverse it.  I was unconscious; I saw nothing,
I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own adventure. 
We are going to bring him back, to take him with us, whether he
is willing or not, he shall never leave us again.  If only he is
at home!  Provided only that we can find him, I will pass the rest
of my life in venerating him.  Yes, that is how it should be,
do you see, Cosette?  Gavroche must have delivered my letter to him. 
All is explained.  You understand."

Cosette did not understand a word.

"You are right," she said to him.

Meanwhile the carriage rolled on.



CHAPTER V

A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY


Jean Valjean turned round at the knock which he heard on his door.

"Come in," he said feebly.

The door opened.

Cosette and Marius made their appearance.

Cosette rushed into the room.

Marius remained on the threshold, leaning against the jamb of the door.

"Cosette!" said Jean Valjean.

And he sat erect in his chair, his arms outstretched and trembling,
haggard, livid, gloomy, an immense joy in his eyes.

Cosette, stifling with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast.

"Father!" said she.

Jean Valjean, overcome, stammered:

"Cosette! she! you!  Madame! it is thou!  Ah! my God!"

And, pressed close in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed:

"It is thou! thou art here!  Thou dost pardon me then!"

Marius, lowering his eyelids, in order to keep his tears from flowing,
took a step forward and murmured between lips convulsively contracted
to repress his sobs:

"My father!"

"And you also, you pardon me!"  Jean Valjean said to him.

Marius could find no words, and Jean Valjean added:

"Thanks."

Cosette tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed.

"It embarrasses me," said she.

And, seating herself on the old man's knees, she put aside his white
locks with an adorable movement, and kissed his brow.

Jean Valjean, bewildered, let her have her own way.

Cosette, who only understood in a very confused manner,
redoubled her caresses, as though she desired to pay Marius' debt.

Jean Valjean stammered:

"How stupid people are!  I thought that I should never see her again. 
Imagine, Monsieur Pontmercy, at the very moment when you entered,
I was saying to myself:  `All is over.  Here is her little gown,
I am a miserable man, I shall never see Cosette again,' and I was
saying that at the very moment when you were mounting the stairs. 
Was not I an idiot?  Just see how idiotic one can be!  One reckons
without the good God.  The good God says:

"`You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid!  No. No,
things will not go so.  Come, there is a good man yonder who is in
need of an angel.'  And the angel comes, and one sees one's Cosette
again! and one sees one's little Cosette once more!  Ah!  I was
very unhappy."

For a moment he could not speak, then he went on:

"I really needed to see Cosette a little bit now and then.  A heart needs
a bone to gnaw.  But I was perfectly conscious that I was in the way. 
I gave myself reasons:  `They do not want you, keep in your own course,
one has not the right to cling eternally.'  Ah!  God be praised, I see
her once more!  Dost thou know, Cosette, thy husband is very handsome? 
Ah! what a pretty embroidered collar thou hast on, luckily.  I am
fond of that pattern.  It was thy husband who chose it, was it not? 
And then, thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls.  Let me call
her thou, Monsieur Pontmercy.  It will not be for long."

And Cosette began again:

"How wicked of you to have left us like that!  Where did you go? 
Why have you stayed away so long?  Formerly your journeys only lasted
three or four days.  I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: 
`He is absent.'  How long have you been back?  Why did you
not let us know?  Do you know that you are very much changed? 
Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! 
Stay, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!"

"So you are here!  Monsieur Pontmercy, you pardon me!"
repeated Jean Valjean.

At that word which Jean Valjean had just uttered once more,
all that was swelling Marius' heart found vent.

He burst forth:

"Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! 
And do you know what he has done for me, Cosette?  He has saved
my life.  He has done more--he has given you to me.  And after having
saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he
done with himself?  He has sacrificed himself.  Behold the man. 
And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless,
to me the guilty one:  Thanks!  Cosette, my whole life passed
at the feet of this man would be too little.  That barricade,
that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,--all that he traversed
for me, for thee, Cosette!  He carried me away through all the
deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. 
Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity
he possesses!  Cosette, that man is an angel!"

"Hush! hush!" said Jean Valjean in a low voice.  "Why tell all that?"

"But you!" cried Marius with a wrath in which there was veneration,
"why did you not tell it to me?  It is your own fault, too. 
You save people's lives, and you conceal it from them!  You do more,
under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. 
It is frightful."

"I told the truth," replied Jean Valjean.

"No," retorted Marius, "the truth is the whole truth; and that you
did not tell.  You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? 
You saved Javert, why not have said so?  I owed my life to you,
why not have said so?"

"Because I thought as you do.  I thought that you were in the right. 
It was necessary that I should go away.  If you had known about
that affair, of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. 
I was therefore forced to hold my peace.  If I had spoken, it would
have caused embarrassment in every way."

"It would have embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?" retorted Marius. 
"Do you think that you are going to stay here?  We shall carry you off. 
Ah! good heavens! when I reflect that it was by an accident that I have
learned all this.  You form a part of ourselves.  You are her father,
and mine.  You shall not pass another day in this dreadful house. 
Do not imagine that you will be here to-morrow."

"To-morrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall not be here, but I shall
not be with you."

"What do you mean?" replied Marius.  "Ah! come now, we are not going
to permit any more journeys.  You shall never leave us again. 
You belong to us.  We shall not loose our hold of you."

"This time it is for good," added Cosette.  "We have a carriage
at the door.  I shall run away with you.  If necessary, I shall
employ force."

And she laughingly made a movement to lift the old man in her arms.

"Your chamber still stands ready in our house," she went on. 
"If you only knew how pretty the garden is now!  The azaleas
are doing very well there.  The walks are sanded with river sand;
there are tiny violet shells.  You shall eat my strawberries. 
I water them myself.  And no more `madame,' no more `Monsieur Jean,'
we are living under a Republic, everybody says thou, don't they, Marius? 
The programme is changed.  If you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow,
there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in
the wall, and a horrible cat ate her.  My poor, pretty, little robin
red-breast which used to put her head out of her window and look
at me!  I cried over it.  I should have liked to kill the cat. 
But now nobody cries any more.  Everybody laughs, everybody is happy. 
You are going to come with us.  How delighted grandfather will be! 
You shall have your plot in the garden, you shall cultivate it,
and we shall see whether your strawberries are as fine as mine. 
And, then, I shall do everything that you wish, and then, you will obey
me prettily."

Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her.  He heard
the music of her voice rather than the sense of her words;
one of those large tears which are the sombre pearls of the soul
welled up slowly in his eyes.

He murmured:

"The proof that God is good is that she is here."

"Father!" said Cosette.

Jean Valjean continued:

"It is quite true that it would be charming for us to live together. 
Their trees are full of birds.  I would walk with Cosette. 
It is sweet to be among living people who bid each other `good-day,'
who call to each other in the garden.  People see each other from
early morning.  We should each cultivate our own little corner. 
She would make me eat her strawberries.  I would make her gather
my roses.  That would be charming.  Only..."

He paused and said gently:

"It is a pity."

The tear did not fall, it retreated, and Jean Valjean replaced it
with a smile.

Cosette took both the old man's hands in hers.

"My God!" said she, "your hands are still colder than before. 
Are you ill?  Do you suffer?"

"I?  No," replied Jean Valjean.  "I am very well.  Only..."

He paused.

"Only what?"

"I am going to die presently."

Cosette and Marius shuddered.

"To die!" exclaimed Marius.

"Yes, but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.

He took breath, smiled and resumed:

"Cosette, thou wert talking to me, go on, so thy little robin
red-breast is dead?  Speak, so that I may hear thy voice."

Marius gazed at the old man in amazement.

Cosette uttered a heartrending cry.

"Father! my father! you will live.  You are going to live. 
I insist upon your living, do you hear?"

Jean Valjean raised his head towards her with adoration.

"Oh! yes, forbid me to die.  Who knows?  Perhaps I shall obey. 
I was on the verge of dying when you came.  That stopped me,
it seemed to me that I was born again."

"You are full of strength and life," cried Marius.  "Do you imagine
that a person can die like this?  You have had sorrow, you shall
have no more.  It is I who ask your forgiveness, and on my knees! 
You are going to live, and to live with us, and to live a long time. 
We take possession of you once more.  There are two of us here who
will henceforth have no other thought than your happiness."

"You see," resumed Cosette, all bathed in tears, "that Marius says
that you shall not die."

Jean Valjean continued to smile.

"Even if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Pontmercy,
would that make me other than I am?  No, God has thought like you
and myself, and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me
to go.  Death is a good arrangement.  God knows better than we what
we need.  May you be happy, may Monsieur Pontmercy have Cosette,
may youth wed the morning, may there be around you, my children,
lilacs and nightingales; may your life be a beautiful, sunny lawn,
may all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now let me,
who am good for nothing, die; it is certain that all this is right. 
Come, be reasonable, nothing is possible now, I am fully conscious that
all is over.  And then, last night, I drank that whole jug of water. 
How good thy husband is, Cosette!  Thou art much better off with him
than with me."

A noise became audible at the door.

It was the doctor entering.

"Good-day, and farewell, doctor," said Jean Valjean.  "Here are
my poor children."

Marius stepped up to the doctor.  He addressed to him only this
single word:  "Monsieur?..." But his manner of pronouncing it
contained a complete question.

The doctor replied to the question by an expressive glance.

"Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is
no reason for being unjust towards God."

A silence ensued.

All breasts were oppressed.

Jean Valjean turned to Cosette.  He began to gaze at her as though
he wished to retain her features for eternity.

In the depths of the shadow into which he had already descended,
ecstasy was still possible to him when gazing at Cosette. 
The reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.

The doctor felt of his pulse.

"Ah! it was you that he wanted!" he murmured, looking at Cosette
and Marius.


And bending down to Marius' ear, he added in a very low voice:

"Too late."

Jean Valjean surveyed the doctor and Marius serenely, almost without
ceasing to gaze at Cosette.

These barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:

"It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live."

All at once he rose to his feet.  These accesses of strength
are sometimes the sign of the death agony.  He walked with a firm
step to the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried
to help him, detached from the wall a little copper crucifix
which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the
freedom of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice,
as he laid the crucifix on the table:

"Behold the great martyr."

Then his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication
of the tomb were seizing hold upon him.

His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails
into the stuff of his trousers.

Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak
to him, but could not.

Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which
accompanies tears, they distinguished words like the following:

"Father, do not leave us.  Is it possible that we have found you
only to lose you again?"

It might be said that agony writhes.  It goes, comes,
advances towards the sepulchre, and returns towards life. 
There is groping in the action of dying.

Jean Valjean rallied after this semi-swoon, shook his brow as though
to make the shadows fall away from it and became almost perfectly
lucid once more.

He took a fold of Cosette's sleeve and kissed it.

"He is coming back! doctor, he is coming back," cried Marius.

"You are good, both of you," said Jean Valjean.  "I am going to tell
you what has caused me pain.  What has pained me, Monsieur Pontmercy,
is that you have not been willing to touch that money. 
That money really belongs to your wife.  I will explain to you,
my children, and for that reason, also, I am glad to see you. 
Black jet comes from England, white jet comes from Norway. 
All this is in this paper, which you will read.  For bracelets,
I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered sheet iron,
slides of iron laid together.  It is prettier, better and less costly. 
You will understand how much money can be made in that way. 
So Cosette's fortune is really hers.  I give you these details,
in order that your mind may be set at rest."

The portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the half-open door. 
The doctor dismissed her.

But he could not prevent this zealous woman from exclaiming
to the dying man before she disappeared:  "Would you like a priest?"

"I have had one," replied Jean Valjean.

And with his finger he seemed to indicate a point above his head
where one would have said that he saw some one.

It is probable, in fact, that the Bishop was present at this
death agony.

Cosette gently slipped a pillow under his loins.

Jean Valjean resumed:

"Have no fear, Monsieur Pontmercy, I adjure you.  The six hundred
thousand francs really belong to Cosette.  My life will have been
wasted if you do not enjoy them!  We managed to do very well with
those glass goods.  We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. 
However, we could not equal the black glass of England.  A gross,
which contains twelve hundred very well cut grains, only costs
three francs."

When a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze
upon him with a look which clings convulsively to him and which
would fain hold him back.

Cosette gave her hand to Marius, and both, mute with anguish,
not knowing what to say to the dying man, stood trembling and
despairing before him.

Jean Valjean sank moment by moment.  He was failing; he was drawing
near to the gloomy horizon.

His breath had become intermittent; a little rattling interrupted it. 
He found some difficulty in moving his forearm, his feet had lost
all movement, and in proportion as the wretchedness of limb
and feebleness of body increased, all the majesty of his soul
was displayed and spread over his brow.  The light of the unknown
world was already visible in his eyes.

His face paled and smiled.  Life was no longer there, it was
something else.

His breath sank, his glance grew grander.  He was a corpse
on which the wings could be felt.

He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last
minute of the last hour had, evidently, arrived.

He began to speak to them in a voice so feeble that it seemed
to come from a distance, and one would have said that a wall
now rose between them and him.

"Draw near, draw near, both of you.  I love you dearly.  Oh! how
good it is to die like this!  And thou lovest me also, my Cosette. 
I knew well that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. 
How kind it was of thee to place that pillow under my loins! 
Thou wilt weep for me a little, wilt thou not?  Not too much. 
I do not wish thee to have any real griefs.  You must enjoy yourselves
a great deal, my children.  I forgot to tell you that the profit was
greater still on the buckles without tongues than on all the rest. 
A gross of a dozen dozens cost ten francs and sold for sixty. 
It really was a good business.  So there is no occasion for
surprise at the six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Pontmercy. 
It is honest money.  You may be rich with a tranquil mind. 
Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theatres now and then,
and handsome ball dresses, my Cosette, and then, thou must give good
dinners to thy friends, and be very happy.  I was writing to Cosette
a while ago.  She will find my letter.  I bequeath to her the two
candlesticks which stand on the chimney-piece. They are of silver,
but to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles
which are placed in them into wax-tapers. I do not know whether
the person who gave them to me is pleased with me yonder on high. 
I have done what I could.  My children, you will not forget that I
am a poor man, you will have me buried in the first plot of earth
that you find, under a stone to mark the spot.  This is my wish. 
No name on the stone.  If Cosette cares to come for a little
while now and then, it will give me pleasure.  And you too,
Monsieur Pontmercy.  I must admit that I have not always loved you. 
I ask your pardon for that.  Now she and you form but one for me. 
I feel very grateful to you.  I am sure that you make Cosette happy. 
If you only knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her pretty rosy cheeks
were my delight; when I saw her in the least pale, I was sad. 
In the chest of drawers, there is a bank-bill for five hundred francs. 
I have not touched it.  It is for the poor.  Cosette, dost thou see
thy little gown yonder on the bed? dost thou recognize it?  That was
ten years ago, however.  How time flies!  We have been very happy. 
All is over.  Do not weep, my children, I am not going very far,
I shall see you from there, you will only have to look at night,
and you will see me smile.  Cosette, dost thou remember Montfermeil? 
Thou wert in the forest, thou wert greatly terrified; dost thou
remember how I took hold of the handle of the water-bucket? That was
the first time that I touched thy poor, little hand.  It was so cold! 
Ah! your hands were red then, mademoiselle, they are very white now. 
And the big doll! dost thou remember?  Thou didst call her Catherine. 
Thou regrettedest not having taken her to the convent! 
How thou didst make me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel!  When it
had been raining, thou didst float bits of straw on the gutters,
and watch them pass away.  One day I gave thee a willow battledore
and a shuttlecock with yellow, blue and green feathers.  Thou hast
forgotten it.  Thou wert roguish so young!  Thou didst play. 
Thou didst put cherries in thy ears.  Those are things of the past. 
The forests through which one has passed with one's child,
the trees under which one has strolled, the convents where one has
concealed oneself, the games, the hearty laughs of childhood,
are shadows.  I imagined that all that belonged to me.  In that lay
my stupidity.  Those Thenardiers were wicked.  Thou must forgive them. 
Cosette, the moment has come to tell thee the name of thy mother. 
She was called Fantine.  Remember that name--Fantine.  Kneel whenever
thou utterest it.  She suffered much.  She loved thee dearly. 
She had as much unhappiness as thou hast had happiness.  That is
the way God apportions things.  He is there on high, he sees us all,
and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars. 
I am on the verge of departure, my children.  Love each other
well and always.  There is nothing else but that in the world: 
love for each other.  You will think sometimes of the poor old
man who died here.  Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed,
that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut me to the heart;
I went as far as the corner of the street, I must have produced
a queer effect on the people who saw me pass, I was like a madman,
I once went out without my hat.  I no longer see clearly,
my children, I had still other things to say, but never mind. 
Think a little of me.  Come still nearer.  I die happy.  Give me
your dear and well-beloved heads, so that I may lay my hands upon
them."

Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, in despair,
suffocating with tears, each beneath one of Jean Valjean's hands. 
Those august hands no longer moved.

He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.

His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius
to cover his hands with kisses.

He was dead.

The night was starless and extremely dark.  No doubt, in the gloom,
some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.



CHAPTER VI

THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES


In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common
grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres,
far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of
eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner,
beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the
wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. 
That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time,
of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. 
The water turns it green, the air blackens it.  It is not near
any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction,
because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. 
When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither.  All around
there is a quivering of weeds.  In the spring, linnets warble in
the trees.

This stone is perfectly plain.  In cutting it the only thought
was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than
to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

No name is to be read there.

Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines,
which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust,
and which are, to-day, probably effaced:

           Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,
           Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.
           La chose simplement d'elle-meme arriva,
           Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va.[70]

[70] He sleeps.  Although his fate was very strange, he lived. 
He died when he had no longer his angel.  The thing came to pass simply,
of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.



LETTER TO M. DAELLI

Publisher of the Italian translation of Les Miserables in Milan.

                               HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.


You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Miserables is written
for all nations.  I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I
wrote it for all.  It is addressed to England as well as to Spain,
to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland,
to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. 
Social problems overstep frontiers.  The sores of the human race,
those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red
or blue lines traced upon the map.  In every place where man is
ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread,
wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should
instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book
of Les Miserables knocks at the door and says:  "Open to me, I come
for you."

At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing,
and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is
agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. 
Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it.  Does not
banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? 
Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I
have endeavored to fathom.  In spite of your possessing Rome,
Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua,
Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins,
magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. 
You are covered with marvels and vermin.  Assuredly, the sun of Italy
is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent rags on man.

Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms,
blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs.  You taste nothing
of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being
mingled with it.  You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage,
the lazzarone.  The social question is the same for you as for us. 
There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more
from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours;
shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy;
but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop,
and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. 
To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand
the Gospel badly.

Is it necessary to emphasize this?  Must this melancholy parallelism
be yet more completely verified?  Have you not indigent persons? 
Glance below.  Have you not parasites?  Glance up.  Does not
that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism,
so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before
you as it does before us?  Where is your army of schoolmasters,
the only army which civilization acknowledges?

Where are your free and compulsory schools?  Does every one
know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? 
Have you made public schools of your barracks?  Have you not,
like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? 
Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted
into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the
regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say,
upon the living honor of Italy?  Let us subject your social order
to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands,
let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. 
It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures
are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. 
Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? 
What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what
amount of justice springs from your tribunals?  Do you chance to be
so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: 
public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner,
the death penalty?  Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead
and Farinace is alive.  And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. 
Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality
and politics?  You have reached the point where you grant amnesty
to heroes!  Something very similar has been done in France. 
Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute
his pile, you are as rich as we.  Have you not, like ourselves,
two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest,
and social condemnation decreed by the judge?  Oh, great nation of Italy,
thou resemblest the great nation of France!  Alas! our brothers,
you are, like ourselves, Miserables.

From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see
much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals
of Eden.  Only, the priests are mistaken.  These holy portals
are before and not behind us.

I resume.  This book, Les Miserables, is no less your mirror than ours. 
Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,--
I understand that.  Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated;
that does not prevent them from being of use.

As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love
for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more
than by any other nation.  In proportion as I advance in life,
I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance
of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively French,
Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say
more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.

Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition
which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow,
of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.

In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight,
with having transgressed the bounds of what they call "French taste";
I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same
universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess
only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all:  "Help me!"

This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it
for you and for your country.  If I have insisted so strongly,
it is because of one phrase in your letter.  You write:--

"There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say:  `This book,
Les Miserables, is a French book.  It does not concern us.  Let the French
read it as a history, we read it as a romance.'"--Alas!  I repeat,
whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. 
Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated,
misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has
at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing,
upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment
of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.

If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some
minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty
to publish it, sir.  Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance
of my very distinguished sentiments.

                                                  VICTOR HUGO