On leaving it he carried with his own hands, and would not intrust to

any porter, the small valise, of which he always had the key about

him. This valise perplexed Cosette, owing to the aromatic smell which

issued from it. Let us say at once that this trunk never quitted him

again, he always had it in his bed-room, and it was the first and at

times the only thing which he carried away in his removals. Cosette

laughed, called this valise "the inseparable," and said, "I am jealous

of it." Jean Valjean, however, felt a profound anxiety when he returned

to the outer air. He discovered the house in the Rue Plumet, and hid

himself in it, henceforth remaining in possession of the name of Ultime

Fauchelevent. At the same time he hired two other lodgings in Paris,

so that he might attract less attention than if he had always remained

in the same quarter; that he might, if necessary, absent himself for

a while if anything alarmed him; and, lastly, that he might not be

taken unaware, as on the night when he so miraculously escaped from

Javert. These two lodgings were of a very mean appearance, and in

two quarters very distant from each other, one being in the Rue de

l'Ouest, the other in the Rue de l'Homme-armé. He spent a few weeks now

and then at one or the other of these lodgings, taking Cosette with

him and leaving Toussaint behind. He was waited on by the porters,

and represented himself as a person living in the country, who had a

lodging in town. This lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris in

order to escape the police.

CHAPTER II.

JEAN VALJEAN A NATIONAL GUARD.

Properly speaking, however, Jean Valjean's house was at the Rue Plumet,

and he had arranged his existence there in the following fashion:

Cosette and the servant occupied the pavilion, she had the best

bedroom, with the painted press, the boudoir with the gilt beading, the

president's drawing-room with its hangings and vast easy chairs, and

the garden. Jean Valjean placed in Cosette's room a bed with a canopy

of old damask in three colors, and an old and handsome Persian carpet,

purchased at Mother Gaucher's in the Rue Figuier St. Paul; while, to

correct the sternness of these old splendors, he added all the light

gay furniture of girls, an étagère, bookshelves with gilt books, a

desk and blotting-case, a work-table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a

silver dressing-case, and toilet articles of Japanese porcelain. Long

damask curtains of three colors, like those on the bed, festooned the

first-floor windows, while on the ground-floor they were of tapestry.

All through the winter Cosette's small house was warmed from top to

bottom, while Jean Valjean himself lived in the sort of porter's lodge

at the end of the back yard, which was furnished with a mattress

and common bedstead, a deal table, two straw-bottomed chairs, an

earthenware water-jug, a few books on a plank, and his dear valise in

a corner, but he never had any fire. He dined with Cosette, and black

bread was put on the table for him; and he had said to Toussaint, when

she came, "This young lady is mistress of the house." "And you, sir?"

Toussaint replied, quite stupefied. "Oh! I am much better than the

master,--I am the father."

Cosette had been taught house-keeping in the convent, and checked the

expenses, which were very small. Daily Jean Valjean took Cosette for a

walk, leading to the most sequestered path of the Luxembourg, and every

Sunday they attended Mass at the Church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas,

because it was a long distance off. As it is a very poor district,

he gave away a considerable amount of alms, and the wretched flocked

around him in the church, which produced the letter from Thénardier,

"To the Benevolent Gentleman of the Church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas."

He was fond of taking Cosette to visit the indigent and the sick,

but no stranger ever entered the house in the Rue Plumet. Toussaint

bought the provision, and Jean Valjean himself fetched the water from

a fountain close by, on the boulevard. The wood and wine were kept in

a semi-subterranean building covered with rock-work, near the door

in the Rue de Babylone, which had formerly served the president as a

grotto, for in the age of Follies and Petites Maisons, love was not

possible without a grotto. In the door opening on the Rue de Babylone

there was a letter-box, but, as the inhabitants of the house in the

Rue Plumet received no letters, this box, once on a time the go-between

in amourettes, and the confidant of a love-sick lawyer, was now only

of service to receive the tax-papers and the guard-notices. For M.

Fauchelevent, annuitant, belonged to the National Guard, and had been

unable to escape the close meshes of the census of 1831. The municipal

inquiries made at that period extended even to the convent of the

Little Picpus, whence Jean Valjean emerged venerable in the eyes of the

mayoralty, and consequently worthy of mounting guard. Three or four

times a year Jean Valjean donned his uniform and went on duty, and did

so readily enough, for it was a disguise which enabled him to mix with

everybody, while himself remaining solitary. Jean Valjean had attained

his sixtieth year, or the age of legal exemption; but he did not look

more than fifty; besides, he had no wish to escape his sergeant-major

and cheat Count Lobau. He had no civil status, hid his name, his

identity, his age, everything, and, as we just said, he was a willing

National Guard,--all his ambition was to resemble the first-comer who

pays taxes. The ideal of this man was internally an angel, externally a

bourgeois.

Let us mention one fact, by the way. When Jean Valjean went out with

Cosette he dressed himself in the way we have seen, and looked like

a retired officer; but when he went out alone, and he did so usually

at night, he was attired in a workman's jacket and trousers, and a

cap whose peak was pulled deep over his eyes. Was this precaution or

humility? Both at once. Cosette was accustomed to the enigmatical

side of her destiny, and hardly noticed her father's singularities; as

for Toussaint, she revered Jean Valjean, and considered everything he

did right. One day her butcher, who got a glimpse of her master, said,

"He's a queer looking stick," and she replied, "He's a--a--a--saint."

All three never left the house except by the gate in the Rue de

Babylone; and unless they were noticed through the garden gate it would

be difficult to guess that they lived in the Rue Plumet. This gate was

always locked, and Jean Valjean left the garden untended that it might

not be noticed. In this, perhaps, he deceived himself.

CHAPTER III.

FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS.

This garden, left to itself for more than half a century, had become

extraordinary and charming: passers-by forty years ago stopped in

the street to gaze at it, without suspecting the secrets which it

hid behind its fresh green screen. More than one dreamer at that day

allowed his eyes and thoughts indiscreetly to penetrate the bars of

the old locked, twisted, shaky gate, which hung from two mould-covered

pillars and was surmounted by a pediment covered with undecipherable

arabesques. There was a stone bank in a corner, there were one or

two mouldering statues, and some trellis-work, unnailed by time,

was rotting against the walls; there was no turf or walk left, but

there was dog's-grass everywhere. The artificiality of gardening

had departed, and nature had returned; weeds were abundant, and the

festival of the gilly-flowers was splendid there. Nothing in this

garden impeded the sacred efforts of things toward life, and growth

was at home there and held high holiday. The trees had bent down to

the briars, the briars had mounted toward the trees; the plants had

clambered up, the branches had bent down. What crawls on the ground

bad gone to meet what expands in the air, and what floats in the wind

stooped down to what drags along the moss; brambles, branches, leaves,

fibres, tufts, twigs, tendrils, and thorns were mixed together, wedded

and confounded; vegetation had celebrated and accomplished here, in

a close and profound embrace, and beneath the satisfied eye of the

Creator, the holy mystery of its fraternity, which is a symbol of human

paternity. This garden was no longer a garden, but a colossal thicket;

that is to say, something which is as impenetrable as a forest, as

populous as a city, as rustling as a nest, as dark as a cathedral, as

fragrant as a bouquet, as solitary as a tomb, and as lively as a crowd.

In spring this enormous thicket, at liberty within its four walls,

played its part in the dull task of universal germination, and quivered

in the rising sun almost like an animal that inhales the effluvia

of cosmic love and feels the sap of April ascending and boiling in

its veins, and shaking in the wind its prodigious green foliage,

scattered over the damp ground, over the weather-beaten statues,

over the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even over the pavement

of the deserted street, constellations of flowers, pearls of dew,

fecundity, beauty, life, joy, and perfumes. At midday thousands of

white butterflies took refuge in it, and it was a divine sight to watch

this living snow of summer falling in flakes through the shadows. In

the pleasant gloom of the foliage a multitude of soft voices gently

addressed the soul, and what the twittering forgot to say, the buzzing

completed. At night a dreamy vapor rose from the garden and enveloped

it; a cere-cloth of mist, a celestial and calm melancholy, covered it;

the intoxicating smell of the honeysuckle and the bind-weed ascended

from all sides like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals

of the woodpeckers and the goldfinches could be heard, ere they fell

asleep under the branches, and the sacred intimacy between the bird

and the trees was felt, for by day, wings gladden the leaves, and at

night the leaves protect the wings. In winter, the thicket was black,

dank, bristling, and shivering, and allowed a glimpse at the house to

be taken. Instead of flowers among the stalks and dew upon the flowers,

the long silvery trail of the snails could be seen on the cold thick

bed of yellow leaves; but in any case, under any aspect, and at all

seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, this little enclosure

exhaled melancholy contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence of

man and the presence of God, and the old rusty railings had an air of

saying, "This garden is mine."

Although the pavement of Paris was all around, the classical and

splendid mansions of the Rue de Varennes two yards off, the dome of the

Invalides close by, and the Chamber of Deputies at no great distance,

although the carriages from the Rues de Bourgogne and St. Dominique

rolled along luxuriously in the vicinity, and yellow, brown, white,

and red omnibuses crossed the adjoining square,--the Rue Plumet was a

desert; and the death of the old proprietors, a revolution which had

passed, the overthrow of old fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, and

forty years of desertion and widowhood, had sufficed to bring back

to this privileged spot ferns, torch-weeds, hemlock, ragwort, tall

grass, dock-leaves, lizards, beetles, and restless and rapid insects.

A savage and stern grandeur had re-appeared between these four walls,

and nature, who disconcerts all the paltry arrangements of man, and

is as perfect in the ant as in the man, had displayed herself in a

poor little Parisian garden with as much roughness and majesty as in

a virgin forest of the New World. Nothing, in fact, is small, and any

one who is affected by the profound penetrations of nature is aware of

this fact. Although no absolute satisfaction is granted to philosophy,

and though it can no more circumscribe the cause than limit the effect,

the contemplator falls into unfathomable ecstasy when he watches all

those decompositions of force which result in unity. Everything labors

for everything; algebra is applied to the clouds, the irradiation of

the planet benefits the rose, and no thinker would dare to say that

the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who can

calculate the passage of a molecule? Who among us knows whether the

creations of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand?

Who is acquainted with the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely

great and the infinitely little? A maggot is of importance, the little

is great and the great little, all is in a state of equilibrium in

nature. This is a terrific vision for the mind. There are prodigious

relations between beings and things; and in this inexhaustible total,

from the flea to the sun, nothing despises the other, for all have

need of each other. Light does not bear into the sky terrestrial

perfumes without knowing what to do with them, and night distributes

the planetary essence to the sleepy flowers. Every bird that flies has

round its foot the thread of infinity; germination is equally displayed

in the outburst of a meteor and the peck of the swallow breaking the

egg, and it places the birth of a worm and the advent of Socrates in

the same parallel. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins,

and which of the two has the grandest sight? you can choose. A patch

of green mould is a pleiad of flowers, and a nebula is an ant-hill of

stars. There is the same and even a more extraordinary promiscuity of

the things of the intellect and the facts of the substance; elements

and principles are mingled, combined, wedded together, and multiply

each other till they lead both the moral and the material world into

the same light. In the vast cosmic exchanges universal life comes and

goes in unknown quantities, revolving everything in the invisible

mystery of effluvia, employing everything, losing not a single dream

of a sleep, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling away a star there,

oscillating and winding, making of light a force, and of thought an

element, disseminated and invisible, and dissolving everything save

that geometrical point, the _Ego_; bringing back everything to the

atom soul, expanding everything in God; entangling all activities from

the highest to the lowest in the obscurity of a vertiginous mechanism;

attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, and

subordinating, perhaps, if only through the identity of the law, the

evolution of the comet in the firmament to the rotary movement of the

Infusoria in the drop of water,--a machine made of soul; an enormous

gearing of which the prime mover is the gnat, and the last wheel is the

Zodiac.

CHAPTER IV.

CHANGE OF GRATING.

It seemed as if this garden, created in former times to conceal

libertine mysteries, had been transformed and become fitting to shelter

chaste mysteries. There were no longer any cradles, bowling-greens,

covered walks, or grottos; but there was a magnificent tangled

obscurity which fell all around, and Paphos was changed into Eden.

A penitent feeling had refreshed this retreat, and the coquettish

garden, once on a time so compromised, had returned to virginity and

modesty. A president assisted by a gardener, a good fellow who believed

himself the successor of Lamoignon, and another good fellow who fancied

himself the successor of Lenôtre, had turned it about, clipped it, and

prepared it for purposes of gallantry, but nature had seized it again,

filled it with shadow, and prepared it for love. There was, too, in

this solitude a heart which was quite ready, and love had only to show

itself; for there were here a temple composed of verdure, grass, moss,

the sighs of birds, gentle shadows, waving branches, and a soul formed

of gentleness, faith, candor, hope, aspirations, and illusions.

Cosette left the convent while still almost a child. She was but little

more than fourteen, and at the "unpromising age," as we have said. With

the exception of her eyes, she seemed rather ugly than pretty; still

she had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid and

bold at the same time, in short, a grown-up little girl. Her education

was finished, that is to say, she had been taught religion, and more

especially devotion, also "history," that is to say, the thing so

called in a convent; geography, grammar, the participles, the kings of

France, and a little music, drawing, etc.; but in other respects she

was ignorant of everything, which is at once a charm and a peril. The

mind of a young girl ought not to be left in darkness, for at a later

date, mirages too sudden and vivid are produced in it as in a camera

obscura. She should be gently and discreetly enlightened, rather by the

reflection of realities than by their direct and harsh light; for this

is a useful and gracefully obscure semi-light which dissipates childish

fears and prevents falls. There is only the maternal instinct,--that

admirable intuition into which the recollections of the virgin and

the experience of the wife enter,--that knows how or of what this

semi-light should be composed. Nothing can take the place of this

instinct, and in forming a girl's mind, all the nuns in the world are

not equal to one mother. Cosette had had no mother, she had only had

a great many mothers: as for Jean Valjean, he had within him every

possible tenderness and every possible anxiety; but he was only an

old man who knew nothing at all. Now, in this work of education, in

this serious matter of preparing a woman for life, what knowledge is

needed to contend against the other great ignorance which is called

innocence! Nothing prepares a girl for passions like the convent, for

it directs her thoughts to the unknown. The heart is driven back on

itself, and hence come visions, suppositions, conjectures, romances

sketched, adventures longed for, fantastic constructions, and edifices

built entirely on the inner darkness of the mind,--gloomy and secret

dwellings in which the passions alone find a lodging so soon as passing

through the convent gate allows it. The convent is a compression

which must last the whole life, if it is to triumph over the human

heart. On leaving the convent, Cosette could not have found anything

sweeter or more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet. It was the

commencement of solitude with the commencement of liberty, a closed

garden, but a sharp, kind, rich, voluptuous, and odorous nature; there

were the same dreams as in the convent, but glimpses could be caught of

young men,--it was a grating, but it looked on the street. Still, we

repeat, when Cosette first came here, she was but a child. Jean Valjean

gave over to her this uncultivated garden, and said to her, "Do what

you like with it." This amused Cosette, she moved all the tufts and all

the stones in search of "beasts;" she played about while waiting till

the time came to think, and she loved this garden for the sake of the

insects which she found in the grass under her feet, while waiting till

she should love it for the sake of the stars she could see through the

branches above her head.

And then, too, she loved her father, that is to say, Jean Valjean,

with all her soul, with a simple filial passion, which rendered the

worthy man a desired and delightful companion to her. Our readers

will remember that M. Madeleine was fond of reading, and Jean Valjean

continued in the same track; he had learned to speak well, and he

possessed the secret wealth and the eloquence of a humble, true, and

self-cultivated intellect. He had retained just sufficient roughness

to season his kindness, and he had a rough mind and a soft heart.

During their _tête-à-têtes_ in the Luxembourg garden he gave her long

explanations about all sorts of things, deriving his information from

what he had read, and also from what he had suffered. While Cosette was

listening to him, her eyes vaguely wandered around. This simple man was

sufficient for Cosette's, thoughts, in the same way as the wild garden

was for her eyes. When she had chased the butterflies for a while she

would run up to him panting, and say, "Oh! how tired I am!" and he

would kiss her forehead. Cosette adored this good man, and she was ever

at his heels, for wherever Jean Valjean was, happiness was. As he did

not live either in the pavilion or the garden, she was more attached

to the paved back-yard than to the flower-laden garden, and preferred

the little outhouse with the straw chairs to the large drawing-room

hung with tapestry, along which silk-covered chairs were arranged. Jean

Valjean at times said to her with a smile of a man who is delighted to

be annoyed: "Come, go to your own rooms! leave me at peace for a little

while."

She scolded him in that charming tender way which is so graceful when

addressed by a daughter to a parent.

"Father, I feel very cold in your room; why don't you have a carpet and

a stove?"

"My dear child, there are so many persons more deserving than myself

who have not even a roof to cover them."

"Then, why is there fire in my room and everything that I want?"

"Because you are a woman and a child."

"Nonsense! then men must be cold and hungry?"

"Some men."

"Very good! I'll come here so often that you will be obliged to have a

fire."

Or else it was,--

"Father, why do you eat such wretched bread as that?"

"Because I do, my daughter."

"Well, if you eat it I shall eat it too."

And so to prevent Cosette from eating black bread Jean Valjean ate

white. Cosette remembered her childhood but confusedly, and she

prayed night and morning for the mother whom she had never known. The

Thénardiers were like two hideous beings seen in a dream, and she

merely remembered that she had gone "one day at night" to fetch water

in a wood,--she thought that it was a long distance from Paris. It

seemed to her as if she had commenced life in an abyss, and that Jean

Valjean had drawn her out of it, and her childhood produced on her the

effect of a time when she had had nought but centipedes, spiders, and

snakes around her. When she thought at night before she fell asleep,

as she had no very clear idea of being Jean Valjean's daughter, she

imagined that her mother's soul had passed into this good man, and

had come to dwell near her. When he was sitting down she rested her

cheek on his white hair, and silently dropped a tear, while saying to

herself, "Perhaps this man is my mother!" Cosette, strange though it

is to say, in her profound ignorance as a girl educated in a convent,

and as, too, maternity is absolutely unintelligible to virginity,

eventually imagined that she had had as little of a mother as was

possible. This mother's name she did not know, and whenever it happened

that she spoke to Jean Valjean on the subject he held his tongue. If

she repeated her question he answered by a smile, and once, when she

pressed him, the smile terminated in a tear. This silence on his part

cast a night over Fantine. Was it through prudence? Was it through

respect? Or was it through a fear of intrusting this name to the

chances of another memory besides his own?

So long as Cosette was young Jean Valjean readily talked to her about

her mother; but when she grew up it was impossible for him to do

so,--he felt as if he dared not do it. Was it on account of Cosette

or of Fantine? He felt a species of religious horror at making this

shadow enter Cosette's thoughts, and rendering a dead woman a third

person in their society. The more sacred this shade was to him, the

more formidable was it. He thought of Fantine, and felt himself

overwhelmed by the silence. He saw vaguely in the darkness something

that resembled a finger laid on a lip. Had all the modesty which was in

Fantine, and which during her life quitted her with violence, returned

after her death, to watch indignantly over the dead woman's peace, and

sternly guard her in the tomb? Was Jean Valjean himself unconsciously

oppressed by it? We who believe in death are not prepared to reject

this mysterious explanation, and hence arose the impossibility of

pronouncing, even to Cosette, the name of Fantine. One day Cosette said

to him,--

"Father, I saw my mother last night in a dream. She had two large

wings, and in life she must have been a sainted woman."

"Through martyrdom," Jean Valjean replied. Altogether, though, he

was happy; when Cosette went out with him she leaned on his arm,

proudly and happily, in the fulness of her heart. Jean Valjean felt

his thoughts melt into delight at all these marks of a tenderness

so exclusive and so satisfied with himself alone. The poor wretch,

inundated with an angelic joy, trembled; he assured himself with

transport that this would last his whole life; he said to himself that

he had not really suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness,

and he thanked God in the depths of his soul for having allowed

him--the wretched--to be thus loved by this innocent being.

CHAPTER V.

THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT SHE IS AN IMPLEMENT OF WAR.

One day Cosette happened to look at herself in the glass, and said,

"Good gracious!" She fancied that she was almost pretty, and this threw

her into a singular trouble. Up to this moment she had not thought of

her face, and though she saw herself in the mirror she did not look at

herself. And, then, she had often been told that she was ugly; Jean

Valjean alone would say gently, "Oh, no, oh, no!" However this might

be, Cosette had always believed herself ugly, and had grown up in this

idea with the facile resignation of childhood. And now all at once her

looking-glass said to her, as Jean Valjean had done, "Oh, no!" She

did not sleep that night. "Suppose I were pretty," she thought, "how

droll it would be if I were pretty!" and she remembered those of her

companions whose beauty produced an effect in the convent, and said to

herself, "What! I might be like Mademoiselle So-and-so!"

On the next day she looked at herself, but not accidentally, and

doubted. "Where was my sense?" she said; "No, I am ugly." She had

simply slept badly, her eyes were heavy and her cheeks pale. She had

not felt very joyous on the previous day when she fancied herself

pretty; but was sad at no longer believing it. She did not look at

herself again, and for upwards of a fortnight tried to dress her hair

with her back to the glass. In the evening, after dinner, she usually

worked at her embroidery in the drawing-room, while Jean Valjean read

by her side. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was greatly

surprised by the anxious way in which her father was gazing at her.

Another time she was walking along the street, and fancied she heard

some one behind her, whom she did not see, say, "A pretty woman,

but badly dressed." "Nonsense," she thought, "it is not I, for I am

well-dressed and ugly." At that time she wore her plush bonnet and

merino dress. One day, at last, she was in the garden, and heard poor

old Toussaint saying, "Master, do you notice how pretty our young lady

is growing?" Cosette did not hear her father's answer, for Toussaint's

words produced a sort of commotion in her. She ran out of the garden

up to her room, looked in the glass, which she had not done for three

months, and uttered a cry,--she dazzled herself.

She was beautiful and pretty, and could not refrain from being of the

same opinion as Toussaint and her glass. Her figure was formed, her

skin had grown white, her hair was glossy, and an unknown splendor

was kindled in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty came to

her fully in a minute, like the sudden dawn of day; others, besides,

noticed her, Toussaint said so; it was evidently to her that the

passer-by alluded, and doubt was no longer possible. She returned to

the garden, believing herself a queen, hearing the birds sing, though

it was winter, seeing the golden sky, the sun amid the trees, flowers

on the shrubs; she was wild, distraught, and in a state of ineffable

ravishment. On his side, Jean Valjean experienced a profound and

inexplicable contraction of the heart; for some time past, in truth,

he had contemplated with terror the beauty which daily appeared more

radiant in Cosette's sweet face. It was a laughing dawn for all, but

most mournful for him.

Cosette had been for a long time beautiful ere she perceived the fact,

but, from the first day, this unexpected light which slowly rose and

gradually enveloped the girl's entire person hurt Jean Valjean's sombre

eyes. He felt that it was a change in a happy life, so happy that he

did not dare stir in it, for fear of deranging it somewhere. This man,

who had passed through every possible distress, who was still bleeding

from the wounds dealt him by his destiny, who had been almost wicked,

and had become almost a saint, who, after dragging the galley chain,

was now dragging the invisible but weighty chain of indefinite infamy;

this man whom the law had not liberated, and who might at any moment

be recaptured and taken from the obscurity of virtue to the broad

daylight of further opprobrium,--this man accepted everything, excused

everything, pardoned everything, blessed everything, wished everything

well, and only asked one thing of Providence, of men, of the laws,

of society, of nature, of the world,--that Cosette should love him,

that Cosette might continue to love him; that God would not prevent

the heart of this child turning to him and remaining with him! Loved

by Cosette he felt cured, at rest, appeased, overwhelmed, rewarded,

and crowned. With Cosette's love all was well, and he asked no more.

Had any one said to him, "Would you like to be better off?" he would

have answered, "No." Had God said to him, "Do you wish for heaven?"

he would have answered, "I should lose by it." All that could affect

this situation, even on the surface, appeared to him the beginning of

something else. He had never known thoroughly what a woman's beauty

was, but he understood instinctively that it was terrible. This beauty,

which continually expanded more triumphantly and superbly by his side

upon the ingenuous and formidable brow of the child, from the depths of

his ugliness, old age, misery, reprobation, and despondency, terrified

him, and he said to himself, "How beautiful she is! what will become

of me?" Here lay the difference between his tenderness and that of a

mother,--what he saw with agony a mother would have seen with joy.

The first symptoms speedily manifested themselves. From the day

when Cosette said to herself, "I am decidedly good-looking," she

paid attention to her toilet. She remembered the remark of the

passer-by,--pretty, but badly dressed,--a blast of the oracle which

passed by her and died out, after depositing in her heart one of those

two germs which are destined at a later period to occupy a woman's

entire life,--coquettishness. The other is love. With faith in her

beauty, all her feminine soul was expanded within her; she had a horror

of merinos, and felt ashamed of plush. Her father never refused her

anything, and she knew at once the whole science of the hat, the dress,

the mantle, the slipper, and the sleeve, of the fabric that suits, and

the color that is becoming,--the science which makes the Parisian woman

something so charming, profound, and dangerous. The expression "femme

capiteuse" was invented for the Parisian. In less than a month little

Cosette was in this Thebaïs of the Rue de Babylone, not only one of

the prettiest women, which is something, but one of the best dressed

in Paris, which is a great deal more. She would have liked to meet her

"passer-by," to see what he would say, and teach him a lesson. The

fact is, that she was in every respect ravishing, and could admirably

distinguish a bonnet of Gerard's from one of Herbaut's. Jean Valjean

regarded these ravages with anxiety, and while feeling that he could

never do more than crawl or walk at the most, he could see Cosette's

wings growing. However, by the simple inspection of Cosette's toilet, a

woman would have seen that she had no mother. Certain small proprieties

and social conventionalisms were not observed by Cosette; a mother,

for instance, would have told her that an unmarried girl does not wear

brocade.

The first day that Cosette went out in her dress and cloak of black

brocade, and her white crape bonnet, she took Jean Valjean's arm, gay,

radiant, blushing, proud, and striking. "Father," she said, "how do you

think I look?" Jean Valjean replied, in a voice which resembled the

bitter voice of an envious person, "Charming." During the walk he was

as usual, but when he returned home he asked Cosette,--

"Will you not put on that dress and bonnet, you know which, again?"

This took place in Cosette's room; she returned to the wardrobe in

which her boarding-school dress was hanging.

"That disguise?" she said, "how can you expect it, father? Oh, no,

indeed, I shall never put on those horrors again; with that thing on my

head I look like a regular dowdy."

Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh.

From that moment he noticed that Cosette, who hitherto had wished to

stay at home, saying, "Father, I amuse myself much better here with

you," now constantly asked to go out. In truth, what good is it for

a girl to have a pretty face and a delicious toilet if she does not

show them? He also noticed that Cosette no longer had the same liking

for the back-yard, and at present preferred remaining in the garden,

where she walked, without displeasure, near the railings. Jean Valjean

never set foot in the garden, but remained in the back-yard, like

the dog. Cosette, knowing herself to be beautiful, lost the grace of

being ignorant of the fact, an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened

by simplicity is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a beauteous

innocent maiden who walks along unconsciously, holding in her hand the

key of a Paradise. Rut what she lost in ingenuous grace she regained in

a pensive and serious charm. Her whole person, impregnated with the

joys of youth, innocence, and beauty, exhaled a splendid melancholy. It

was at this period that Marius saw her again at the Luxembourg, after

an interval of six months.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BATTLE BEGINS.

Cosette was in her shadow, as Marius was in his, all ready to be

kindled. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, brought

slowly together these two beings, all charged with, and pining in, the

stormy electricity of passion,--these two souls which bore love as the

clouds bore thunder, and were destined to come together and be blended

in a glance like the clouds in a storm. The power of a glance has been

so abused in love-romances that it has been discredited in the end,

and a writer dares hardly assert nowadays that two beings fell in love

because they looked at each other. And yet, that is the way, and the

sole way, in which people fall in love; the rest is merely the rest,

and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than the mighty shocks which

two souls give each other by exchanging this spark. At the hour when

Cosette unconsciously gave that glance which troubled Marius, Marius

did not suspect that he too gave a glance which troubled Cosette. For

a long time she had seen and examined him in the way girls see and

examine, while looking elsewhere. Marius was still thinking Cosette

ugly, when Cosette had already considered Marius handsome, but as the

young man paid no attention to her he was an object of indifference.

Still she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had silky

hair, fine eyes, regular teeth, an agreeable voice, when she heard him

talking with his companions; that he perhaps walked badly, but with a

grace of his own, that he did not appear at all silly, that his whole

person was noble, gentle, simple, and proud; and, lastly, that though

he seemed poor, he had the bearing of a gentleman.

On the day when their eyes met, and at length suddenly said to each

other the first obscure and ineffable things which the eye stammers,

Cosette did not understand it at first. She returned pensively to the

house in the Rue de l'Ouest, where Jean Valjean was spending six weeks,

according to his wont. When she awoke the next morning she thought of

the young stranger, so long indifferent and cold, who now seemed to pay

attention to her, and this attention did not appear at all agreeable

to her; on the contrary, she felt a little angry with the handsome

disdainful man. A warlike feeling was aroused, and she felt a very

childish joy at the thought that she was at length about to be avenged;

knowing herself to be lovely, she felt, though in an indistinct way,

that she had a weapon. Women play with their beauty as lads do with

their knife, and cut themselves with it. Our readers will remember

Marius's hesitations, palpitations, and terrors; he remained on his

bench, and did not approach, and this vexed Cosette. One day she said

to Jean Valjean, "Father, suppose we take a walk in that direction?"

Seeing that Marius did not come to her, she went to him, for in such

cases, every woman resembles Mahomet. And then, strange it is, the

first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a girl it is

boldness. This will surprise, and yet nothing is more simple; the two

sexes have a tendency to approach, and each assumes the qualities of

the other. On this day Cosette's glance drove Marius mad, while his

glance made Cosette tremble. Marius went away confiding, and Cosette

restless. Now they adored each other. The first thing that Cosette

experienced was a confused and deep sorrow; it seemed to her that her

soul had become black in one day, and she no longer recognized herself.

The whiteness of the soul of maidens, which is composed of coldness and

gayety, resembles snow; it melts before love, which is its sun.

Cosette knew not what love was, and she had never heard the word

uttered in its earthly sense. In the books of profane music which

entered the convent, _tambour_ or _pandour_ was substituted for

_amour_. This produced enigmas, which exercised the imagination of the

big girls, such as: "Ah! how agreeable the drummer is!" or, "Pity is

not a pandour!" But Cosette left the convent at too early an age to

trouble herself much about the "drummer," and hence did not know what

name to give to that which now troubled her. But are we the less ill

through being ignorant of the name of our disease? She loved with the

more passion, because she loved in ignorance; she did not know whether

it was good or bad, useful or dangerous, necessary or mortal, eternal

or transient, permitted or prohibited,--she loved. She would have been

greatly surprised had any one said to her, "You do not sleep? that is

forbidden. You do not eat? that is very wrong. You have an oppression

and beating of the heart? that cannot be tolerated. You blush and

turn pale when a certain person dressed in black appears at the end

of a certain green walk? why, that is abominable!" She would not have

understood, and would have replied, "How can I be to blame in a matter

in which I can do nothing, and of which I know nothing?"

It happened that the love which presented itself was the one most in

harmony with the state of her soul; it was a sort of distant adoration,

a dumb contemplation, the deification of an unknown man. It was the

apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a romance

and remaining a dream, the wished-for phantom at length realized and

incarnated, but as yet having no name, or wrong, or flaw, or claim, or

defect; in a word, the distant lover who remained idealized, a chimera

which assumed a shape. Any more palpable and nearer meeting would at

this first stage have startled Cosette, who was still half plunged in

the magnifying fog of the cloister. She had all the fears of children

and all the fears of nuns blended together, and the essence of the

convent, with which she had been impregnated for five years, was still

slowly evaporating from her whole person, and making everything tremble

around her. In this situation, it was not a lover she wanted, not even

an admirer, but a vision, and she began adoring Marius as something

charming, luminous, and impossible.

As extreme simplicity trenches on extreme coquetry, she smiled upon him

most frankly. She daily awaited impatiently the hour for the walk; she

saw Marius, she felt indescribably happy, and sincerely believed that

she was expressing her entire thoughts when she said to Jean Valjean,

"What a delicious garden the Luxembourg is!" Marius and Cosette existed

for one another in the night: they did not speak, they did not bow,

they did not know each other, but they met; and like the stars in the

heavens, which are millions of leagues separate, they lived by looking

at each other. It is thus that Cosette gradually became a woman, and

was developed into a beautiful and loving woman, conscious of her

beauty and ignorant of her love. She was a coquette into the bargain,

through her innocence.

CHAPTER VII.

JEAN VALJEAN IS VERY SAD.

All situations have their instincts, and old and eternal mother Nature

warned Jean Valjean darkly of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean

trembled in the depth of his mind; he saw nothing, knew nothing, and

yet regarded with obstinate attention the darkness in which he was, as

if he felt on one side something being built up, on the other something

crumbling away. Marius, who was also warned by the same mother Nature,

did all in his power to conceal himself from the father, but for all

that, Jean Valjean sometimes perceived him. Marius's manner was no

longer wise; he displayed clumsy prudence and awkward temerity. He

no longer came quite close to them, as he had formerly done, he sat

down at a distance, and remained in an ecstasy: he had a book, and

pretended to read it; why did he pretend? Formerly he came in an old

coat, and now he came every day in his new one. Jean Valjean was not

quite sure whether he did not have his hair dressed; he had a strange

way of rolling his eyes, and wore gloves,--in short, Jean Valjean

cordially detested the young man. Cosette did not allow anything to

be guessed. Without knowing exactly what was the matter with her,

she had a feeling that it was something which must be hidden. There

was a parallelism which annoyed Jean Valjean between the taste for

dress which had come to Cosette, and the habit of wearing new clothes

displayed by this stranger. It was an accident, perhaps,--of course it

was,--but a menacing accident.

He never opened his mouth to Cosette about this stranger. One day,

however, he could not refrain, and said, with that vague despair which

suddenly thrusts the probe into its own misfortune, "That young man

looks like a pedant." Cosette, a year previously, when still a careless

little girl, would have answered, "Oh, no, he is very good-looking."

Ten years later, with the love of Marius in her heart, she would have

replied, "An insufferable pedant, you are quite right." At the present

moment of her life and heart, she restricted herself to saying, with

supreme calmness, "That young man!" as if she looked at him for the

first time in her life. "How stupid I am," Jean Valjean thought, "she

had not even noticed him, and now I have pointed him out to her." Oh,

simplicity of old people! oh, depth of children! It is another law of

these first years of suffering and care, of these sharp struggles of

first love with first obstacles, that the maiden cannot be caught in

any snare, while the young man falls into all. Jean Valjean had begun

a secret war against Marius, which Marius, in the sublime stupidity of

his passion and his age, did not guess. Jean Valjean laid all sorts

of snares for him. He changed his hours, he changed his bench, he

left his handkerchief, he went alone to the Luxembourg: and Marius

went headlong into the trap, and to all these notes of interrogation

which Jean Valjean planted in the road, ingenuously answered, "Yes."

Cosette, however, remained immured in her apparent carelessness and

imperturbable tranquillity, so that Jean Valjean arrived at this

conclusion: "That humbug is madly in love with Cosette, but Cosette

does not even know that he exists."

For all that, though, he had a painful tremor in his heart, for the

minute when Cosette would love might arrive at any instant. Does not

all this commence with indifference? Only once did Cosette commit an

error and startle him; he arose from his bench to go home after three

hours' sitting, and she said, "What, already?" Jean Valjean did not

give up his walks at the Luxembourg, as he did not wish to do anything

singular, or arouse Cosette's attention; but during the hours so

sweet for the two lovers, while Cosette was sending her smile to the

intoxicated Marius, who only perceived this, and now saw nothing more

in the world than a radiant adored face, Jean Valjean fixed on Marius

flashing and terrible eyes. He who had ended by no longer believing

himself capable of a malevolent feeling, had moments when he felt,

if Marius were present, as if he were growing savage and ferocious;

and those old depths of his soul which had formerly contained so much

anger opened again against this young man. It seemed to him as if

unknown craters were again being formed within him. What! the fellow

was there! What did he come to do? he came to sniff, examine, and

attempt; he came to say, Well, why not? he came to prowl round his,

Jean Valjean's, life, to prowl round his happiness, and carry it away

from him. Jean Valjean added, "Yes, that is it! What does he come to

seek? An adventure. What does he want? A love-affair. A love-affair?

and I! What? I was first the most wretched of men, and then the most

unhappy. I have spent sixty years on my knees, I have suffered all that

a man can suffer, I have grown old without ever having been young. I

have lived without family, parents, friends, children, or wife. I have

left some of my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every wall.

I have been gentle, though men were harsh to me, and good though they

were wicked. I have become an honest man again, in spite of everything;

I have repented of the evil I did, and pardoned the evil done to me,

and at the moment when I am rewarded, when all is finished, when I

touched my object, when I have what I wish,--and it is but fair as I

have paid for it and earned it,--all this is to fade away, and I am

to lose Cosette, my love, my joy, my soul, because it has pleased a

long-legged ass to saunter about the Luxembourg garden!"

Then his eyeballs were filled with a mournful and extraordinary

brilliancy; he was no longer a man looking at a man, no longer an enemy

looking at an enemy, he was a dog watching a robber. Our readers know

the rest. Marius continued to be foolish, and one day followed Cosette

to the Rue de l'Ouest. Another day he spoke to the porter, and the

porter spoke in his turn, and said to Jean Valjean, "Do you happen to

know, sir, a curious young man, who has been making inquiries about

you?" The next day Jean Valjean gave Marius that look which Marius

at length noticed, and a week later Jean Valjean went away. He made a

vow that he would never again set foot in the Rue de l'Ouest or the

Luxembourg, and returned to the Rue Plumet. Cosette did not complain,

she said nothing, she asked no questions, she did not attempt to

discover any motive, for she had reached that stage when a girl fears

that her thoughts may be perused, or she may betray herself. Jean

Valjean had no experience of these miseries, the only ones which are

charming, and the only ones he did not know, and on this account he

did not comprehend the grave significance of Cosette's silence. Still,

he noticed that she became sad, and he became gloomy. Inexperience was

contending on both sides. Once he made an essay, by asking Cosette,

"Will you go to the Luxembourg?" A beam illuminated Cosette's pale

face; "Yes," she said. They went there, but three months had elapsed,

and Marius no longer went there,--there was no Marius present. The next

day Jean Valjean again asked Cosette, "Will you go to the Luxembourg?"

She answered sadly and gently, "No." Jean Valjean was hurt by the

sadness, and heart-broken by the gentleness.

What was taking place in this young and already so impenetrable mind?

What was going to be accomplished? What was happening to Cosette's

soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean would remain

seated by his bedside with his head between his hands, and spent

whole nights in asking himself, "What has Cosette on her mind?" and

in thinking of the things of which she might be thinking. Oh, at

such moments what sad glances he turned toward the convent, that

chaste summit, that abiding place of angels, that inaccessible glacier

of virtue! With what despairing ravishment did he contemplate that

garden, full of ignored flowers and immured virgins, where all the

perfumes and all the souls ascend direct to heaven! How he adored that

Eden, now closed against him forever, and which he had voluntarily

and madly left! How he lamented his self-denial and his madness in

bringing Cosette back to the world! He was the poor hero of the

sacrifice, seized and hurled down by his own devotion. How he said to

himself, What have I done? However, nothing of this was visible to

Cosette,--neither temper nor roughness,--it was ever the same serene

kind face. Jean Valjean's manner was even more tender and paternal than

before; and if anything could have shown that he was less joyous, it

was his greater gentleness.

On her side, Cosette was pining; she suffered from Marius's absence, as

she had revelled in his presence, singularly, and not exactly knowing

why. When Jean Valjean ceased taking her for her usual walk, a feminine

instinct had whispered to her heart that she must not appear to be

attached to the Luxembourg, and that if she displayed indifference in

the matter her father would take her back to it. But days, weeks, and

months succeeded each other, for Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted

Cosette's tacit consent. She regretted it, but it was too late, and

on the day when they returned to the Luxembourg, Marius was no longer

there. He had disappeared, then, it was all over. What could she do?

Would she ever see him again? She felt a contraction of the heart

which nothing dilated and which daily increased; she no longer knew

whether it were summer or winter, sunshine or rain, whether the birds

were singing, whether it was the dahlia or the daisy season, whether

the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether the

linen brought home by the washerwoman was too much or insufficiently

starched, or if Toussaint had gone to market well or ill; and she

remained crushed, absorbed, attentive to one thought alone, with a

vague and fixed eye, like a person gazing through the darkness at the

deep black spot where a phantom has just vanished. Still, she did not

allow Jean Valjean to see anything but her pallor, and her face was

ever gentle to him. This pallor, though, was more than sufficient to

render Jean Valjean anxious, and at times he would ask her:

"What is the matter with you?"

And she answered,--

"Nothing."

After a silence, she would add, as if guessing that he was sad too,--

"And, father, is there anything the matter with you?"

"With me? Oh, nothing," he would reply.

These two beings who had loved each other so exclusively, and one of

them with such a touching love, and had lived for a long time one

through the other, were now suffering side by side, one on account of

the other, without confessing it, without anger, and with a smile.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHAIN-GANG.

The more unhappy of the two was Jean Valjean; for youth, even in

its sorrow, has always a brilliancy of its own. At certain moments

Jean Valjean suffered so intensely that he became childish, for it

is the peculiarity of grief to bring out a man's childish side. He

felt invincibly that Cosette was slipping from him; and he would have

liked to struggle, hold her back, and excite her by some external and

brilliant achievement. These ideas, childish, as we said, but at the

same time senile, gave him through their very childishness a very fair

notion of the influence of gold lace upon the imagination of girls.

One day Count Coutard, Commandant of Paris, passed along the street on

horseback, and in full-dress uniform. He envied this gilded man, and

said to himself: What a happiness it would be to be able to put on that

coat, which was an undeniable thing; that if Cosette saw him in it it

would dazzle her, and when he passed before the Tuileries gates the

sentinels would present arms to him, and that would be sufficient for

Cosette, and prevent her looking at young men.

An unexpected shock was mingled with his sad thoughts. In the isolated

life they led, and since they had gone to reside in the Rue Plumet,

they had one habit. They sometimes had the pleasure of going to see the

sun rise, a species of sweet joy, which is agreeable to those who are

entering life and those who are leaving it. To walk about at daybreak

is equivalent, with the man who loves solitude, to walking about at

night with the gayety of nature added. The streets are deserted and

the birds sing. Cosette, herself a bird, generally woke at an early

hour. These morning excursions were arranged on the previous evening;

he proposed and she accepted. This was arranged like a plot; they went

out before day, and it was a delight for Cosette, as these innocent

eccentricities please youth. Jean Valjean had, as we know, a liking to

go to but little frequented places,--to solitary nooks, and forgotten

spots. There were at that time, in the vicinity of the gates of Paris,

poor fields, almost forming part of the city, where sickly wheat grew

in summer, and which in autumn, after the harvest was got in, did

not look as if they had been reaped, but skinned. Jean Valjean had a

predilection for these fields, and Cosette did not feel wearied there;

it was solitude for him and liberty for her. There she became a little

girl again; she ran about and almost played; she took off her bonnet,

laid it on Jean Valjean's knees, and plucked flowers. She watched the

butterflies, but did not catch them; for humanity and tenderness spring

up with love, and the maiden who has in her heart a trembling and

fragile ideal feels pity for the butterfly's wing. She twined poppies

into wreaths, which she placed on her head, and when the sun poured

its beams on them and rendered them almost purple, they formed a fiery

crown for her fresh pink face.

Even after their life had grown saddened they kept up their habit of

early walks. One October morning, then, tempted by the perfect serenity

of the autumn of 1831, they went out, and found themselves just before

daybreak near the Barrière du Maine. It was not quite morning yet, but

it was dawn, a ravishing and wild minute. There were a few stars in

the pale azure sky, the earth was all black, the heavens all white, a

shiver ran along the grass, and all around displayed the mysterious

influence of twilight. A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars,

was singing at a prodigious height, and it seemed as if this hymn of

littleness to infinitude calmed the immensity. In the east the dark

mass of Val de Grâce stood out against the bright steel-blue horizon,

and glittering Venus rose behind the dome and looked like a soul

escaping from a gloomy edifice. All was peace and silence, there was no

one in the highway; and a few workmen, going to their daily toil, could

be indistinctly seen in the distance.

Jean Valjean was seated on some planks deposited at the gate of a

timber-yard; his face was turned to the road, and his back to the

light. He forgot all about the sunrise, for he had fallen into one

of those profound reveries in which the mind is concentrated, which

imprison even the glance and are equivalent to four walls. There

are meditations which may be called wells, and when you are at the

bottom it takes some time to reach the ground again. Jean Valjean had

descended into one of these reveries; he was thinking of Cosette, of

the possible happiness if nothing came betwixt him and her, of that

light with which she filled his life, and which was the breath of his

soul. He was almost happy in this reverie; and Cosette, standing by his

side, was watching the clouds turn pink. All at once Cosette exclaimed,

"Father, there is something coming down there!" Jean Valjean raised his

eyes; Cosette was correct. The road which leads to the old Barrière du

Maine is a prolongation of the Rue de Sèvres, and is intersected at

right angles by the inner boulevard. At the spot where the roads cross,

a sound difficult to explain at such an hour could be heard, and a

sort of confused mass appeared. Some shapeless thing coming along the

boulevard was turning into the main road. It grew larger, and seemed to

be moving in an orderly way; although it shook and heaved, it seemed

to be a vehicle, but its load could not be distinguished. There were

horses, wheels, shouts, and the cracking of whips. By degrees the

lineaments became fixed, though drowned in darkness. It was really a

vehicle coming toward the barrière near which Jean Valjean was seated;

a second resembling it followed, then a third, then a fourth; seven

carts debouched in turn, the heads of the horses touching the back of

the vehicles. Figures moved on these carts; sparks could be seen in the

gloom, looking like bare sabres, and a clang could be heard resembling

chains being shaken. All this advanced, the voices became louder, and

it was a formidable thing, such as issues from the cavern of dreams.

On drawing nearer, this thing assumed a shape, and stood out behind the

trees with the lividness of an apparition. The mass grew whiter, and

the gradually dawning day threw a ghastly gleam over this mass, which

was at once sepulchral and alive,--the heads of the shadows became the

faces of corpses, and this is what it was. Seven vehicles were moving

in file along the road, and the first six had a singular shape; they

resembled brewers' drays, and consisted of long ladders laid upon

two wheels, and forming a shaft at the front end. Each dray, or, to

speak more correctly, each ladder, was drawn by a team of four horses,

and strange clusters of men were dragged along upon these ladders.

In the faint light these men could not be seen, so much as divined.

Twenty-four on each ladder, twelve on either side, leaning against each

other, had their faces turned to the passers-by, and their legs hanging

down; and they had behind their back something which rang and was a

chain, and something that glistened, which was a collar. Each man had

his collar, but the chain was for all; so that these twenty-four men,

if obliged to get down from the dray and walk, were seized by a species

of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind on the ground with the

chain as backbone, very nearly like centipedes. At the front and back

of each cart stood two men armed with guns, who stood with their feet

on the end of the chain. The seventh vehicle, a vast fourgon with

rack sides but no hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried

a resounding mass of coppers, boilers, chafing-dishes, and chains,

among which were mingled a few bound men lying their full length, who

seemed to be ill. This fourgon, which was quite open, was lined with

broken-down hurdles, which seemed to have been used for old punishments.

These vehicles held the crown of the causeway; and on either

side marched a double file of infamous-looking guards, wearing

three-cornered hats, like the soldiers of the Directory, and dirty,

torn, stained uniforms, half gray and blue, a coat of the Invalides and

the trousers of the undertaker's men, red epaulettes and yellow belts,

and were armed with short sabres, muskets, and sticks. These sbirri

seemed compounded of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of

the hangman; and the one who appeared their leader held a postilion's

whip in his hands. All these details grew more and more distinct in

the advancing daylight; and at the head and rear of the train marched

mounted gendarmes with drawn sabres. The train was so long that at the

moment when the first vehicle reached the barrière the last had scarce

turned out of the boulevard. A crowd, which came no one knew whence and

formed in a second, as is so common in Paris, lined both sides of the

road, and looked. In the side-lanes could be heard the shouts of people

calling to each other, and the wooden shoes of the kitchen-gardeners

running up to have a peep.

The men piled up on the drays allowed themselves to be jolted in

silence, and were livid with the morning chill. They all wore canvas

trousers, and their naked feet were thrust into wooden shoes; but the

rest of their attire was left to the fancy of wretchedness. Their

accoutrements were hideously disaccordant, for nothing is more mournful

than the harlequin garb of rags. There were crushed hats, oilskin

caps, frightful woollen night-caps, and side by side with the blouse,

an out-at-elbow black coat Some wore women's bonnets, and others had

baskets, as head-gear; hairy chests were visible, and through the rents

of the clothes tattooing could be distinguished,--temples of love,

burning hearts, and cupids,--but ringworm and other unhealthy red spots

might also be noticed. Two or three had passed a straw rope through the

side rail of the dray, which hung down like a stirrup and supported

their feet; while one of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth

something like a black stone, which he seemed to be gnawing,--it was

bread he was eating. All the eyes were dry, and either dull or luminous

with a wicked light. The escort cursed, but the chained men did not

breathe a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow dealt with

a stick on shoulder-blades or heads could be heard. Some of these men

yawned; the rags were terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders

oscillated, their heads struck against each other, their irons rattled,

their eyeballs flashed ferociously, their fists clenched or opened

inertly like the hands of death, and in the rear of the chain a band of

children burst into a laugh.

This file of vehicles, whatever their nature might be, was lugubrious.

It was plain that within an hour a shower might fall, that it might be

followed by another, and then another, that the ragged clothing would

be drenched; and that once wet through, these men would not dry again,

and once chilled, would never grow warm any more; that their canvas

trousers would be glued to their bones by the rain, that water would

fill their wooden shoes, that lashes could not prevent the chattering

of teeth, that the chain would continue to hold them by the neck, and

their feet would continue to hang; and it was impossible not to shudder

on seeing these human creatures thus bound and passive beneath the cold

autumnal clouds, and surrendered to the rain, the breezes, and all the

furies of the atmosphere, like trees and stones. The blows were not

even spared the sick who lay bound with ropes and motionless in the

seventh vehicle, and who seemed to have been thrown down there like

sacks filled with wretchedness.

All at once the sun appeared, the immense beam of the east flashed

forth; and it seemed as if it set fire to all these ferocious heads.

Tongues became untied, and a storm of furies, oaths, and songs

exploded. The wide horizontal light cut the whole file in two,

illumining the heads and bodies, and leaving the feet and wheels in

obscurity. Thoughts appeared on faces, and it was a fearful thing to

see demons with their masks thrown away, and ferocious souls laid bare.

Some of the merrier ones had in their mouths quills, through which

they blew vermin on the crowd, selecting women. The dawn caused their

lamentable faces to stand out in the darkness of the shadows. Not one

of these beings but was misshapen through wretchedness; and it was

so monstrous that it seemed to change the light of the sun into the

gleam of a lightning flash. The first cart-load had struck up, and

were droning out at the top of their voices, with a haggard joviality,

a pot-pourri of Desaugiers, at that time famous under the title of

_La Vestale_. The trees shook mournfully, while in the side-walks

bourgeois faces were listening with an idiotic beatitude to these

comic songs chanted by spectres. All destinies could be found in this

gang, like a chaos; there were there the facial angles of all animals,

old men, youths, naked skulls, gray beards, cynical monstrosities,

sulky resignation, savage grins, wild attitudes, youth, girlish

heads with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantine, and for that

reason horrible, faces, and then countenances of skeletons which only

lacked death. On the first dray could be seen a negro, who had been a

slave probably, and was enabled to compare the chains. The frightful

leveller, shame, had passed over all these foreheads. At this stage of

abasement the last transformations were undergone by all in the lowest

depths; and ignorance, changed into dulness, was the equal of intellect

changed into despair. No choice was possible among these men, who

appeared to be the pick of the mud; and it was clear that the arranger

of this unclean procession had not attempted to classify them. These

beings had been bound and coupled pell-mell, probably in alphabetical

disorder, and loaded haphazard on the vehicles. Still, horrors, when

grouped, always end by disengaging a resultant. Every addition of

wretched men produces a total; a common soul issued from each chain,

and each dray-load had its physiognomy. By the side of the man who sang

was one who yelled; a third begged; another could be seen gnashing

his teeth; another threatened the passers-by; another blasphemed God,

and the last was silent as the tomb. Dante would have fancied that he

saw the seven circles of the Inferno in motion. It was the march of

the damned to the torture, performed in a sinister way, not upon the

formidable flashing car of the Apocalypse, but, more gloomy still, in

the hangman's cart.

One of the keepers, who had a hook at the end of his stick, from

time to time attempted to stir up this heap of human ordure. An old

woman in the crowd pointed them to a little boy of five years of age,

and said to him, "You scamp, that will teach you!" As the songs and

blasphemy grew louder, the man who seemed the captain of the escort

cracked his whip; and at this signal a blind, indiscriminate bastinado

fell with the sound of hail upon the seven cart-loads. Many yelled

and foamed at the lips, which redoubled the joy of the gamins who had

come up like a cloud of flies settling upon wounds. Jean Valjean's eye

had become frightful; it was no longer an eyeball, but that profound

glass bulb which takes the place of the eye in some unfortunate men,

which seems unconscious of reality, and in which the reflection of

horrors and catastrophes flashes. He was not looking at a spectacle,

but going through a vision; he had to rise, fly, escape, but could

not move his foot. At times things which you see seize you and root

you in the ground. He remained petrified and stupid, asking himself

through a confused and inexpressible agony what was the meaning of this

sepulchral persecution, and whence came this Pandemonium that pursued

him. All at once he raised his hand to his forehead,--the usual gesture

of those to whom memory suddenly returns; he remembered that this

was substantially the road, that this détour was usual to avoid any

meeting with royalty,--which was always possible on the Fontainebleau

road,--and that five-and-thirty years before he had passed through that

barrière. Cosette was not the less horrified, though in a different

way; she did not understand, her breath failed her, and what she saw

did not appear to her possible. At length she exclaimed,--

"Father! what is there in those vehicles?"

Jean Valjean answered,--

"Convicts."

"Where are they going?"

"To the galleys."

At this moment the bastinado, multiplied by a hundred hands, became

tremendous; strokes of the flat of the sabre were mingled with it, and

it resembled a tornado of whips and sticks. The galley-slaves bowed

their heads; a hideous obedience was produced by the punishment, and

all were silent, with the looks of chained wolves. Cosette, trembling

in all her limbs, continued,--

"Father, are they still men?"

"Sometimes," the miserable man replied.

It was, in fact, the Chain, which, leaving Bicêtre before daybreak,

was taking the Mans road, to avoid Fontainebleau, where the king then

was. This détour made the fearful journey last three or four days

longer; but it surely may be prolonged to save a royal personage

the sight of a punishment! Jean Valjean went home crushed; for such

encounters are blows, and the recollections they leave behind resemble

a concussion. While walking along the Rue de Babylone, Jean Valjean

did not notice that Cosette asked him other questions about what they

had just seen; perhaps he was himself too absorbed in his despondency

to notice her remarks and answer them. At night, however, when Cosette

left him to go to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as if

speaking to herself: "I feel that if I were to meet one of those men in

the street, I should die only from being so close to him."

Luckily, the next day after this tragic interlude, there were festivals

in Paris on account of some official solemnity which I have forgotten,

a review at the Champ de Mars, a quintain on the Seine, theatres

in the Champs Élysées, fireworks at the Étoile, and illuminations

everywhere. Jean Valjean, breaking through his habits, took Cosette

to these rejoicings in order to make her forget the scene of the

previous day, and efface, beneath the laughing tumult of all Paris,

the abominable thing which had passed before her. The review, which

seasoned the fête, rendered uniforms very natural; hence Jean Valjean

put on his National Guard coat, with the vague inner feeling of a man

who is seeking a refuge. However, the object of this jaunt seemed to

be attained; Cosette, who made it a law to please her father, and to

whom any festival was a novelty, accepted the distraction with the easy

and light good-will of adolescents, and did not make too disdainful a

pout at the porringer of joy which is called a public holiday. Hence

Jean Valjean might believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of

the hideous vision remained. A few days after, one morning when the sun

was shining, and both were on the garden steps,--another infraction of

the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed on himself, and

that habit of remaining in her chamber which sadness had caused Cosette

to assume,--the girl, wearing a combing jacket, was standing in that

morning négligé which adorably envelops maidens, and looks like a cloud

over a star; and with her head in the light, her cheeks pink from a

good night's rest, and gazed at softly by the old man, she was plucking

the petals of a daisy. She did not know the delicious legend of, "I

love you, a little, passionately," etc.,--for who could have taught it

to her? She handled the flower instinctively and innocently, without

suspecting that plucking a daisy to pieces is questioning a heart. If

there were a fourth Grace called Melancholy, she had the air of that

Grace when smiling. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation

of these little fingers on this flower, forgetting everything in the

radiance which surrounded the child. A red-breast was twittering in a

bush hard by; and while clouds crossed the sky so gayly that you might

have said that they had just been set at liberty, Cosette continued to

pluck her flower attentively. She seemed to be thinking of something,

but that something must be charming. All at once she turned her head on

her shoulder, with the delicate slowness of a swan, and said to Jean

Valjean, "Tell me, father, what the galleys are."

BOOK IV.

SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH.

CHAPTER I.

AN EXTERNAL WOUND AND AN INTERNAL CURE.

Their life thus gradually became overcast; only one amusement was left

them which had formerly been a happiness, and that was to carry bread

to those who were starving, and clothes to those who were cold. In

these visits to the poor, in which Cosette frequently accompanied Jean

Valjean, they found again some portion of their old expansiveness; and

at times, when the day had been good, when a good deal of distress

had been relieved, and many children warmed and re-animated, Cosette

displayed a little gayety at night. It was at this period that they

paid the visit to Jondrette's den. The day after that visit, Jean

Valjean appeared at an early hour in the pavilion, calm as usual,

but with a large wound in his left arm, which was very inflamed and

venomous, which resembled a burn, and which he accounted for in some

way or other. This wound kept him at home with a fever for more than a

month, for he would not see any medical man, and when Cosette pressed

him, he said, "Call in the dog-doctor." Cosette dressed his wound

morning and night with an air of such divine and angelic happiness at

being useful to him, that Jean Valjean felt all his old joy return, his

fears and anxieties dissipated; and he gazed at Cosette, saying, "Oh,

the excellent wound! the good hurt!"

Cosette, seeing her father ill, had deserted the pavilion, and regained

her taste for the little outhouse and the back court. She spent nearly

the whole day by the side of Jean Valjean, and read to him any books

he chose, which were generally travels. Jean Valjean was regenerated.

His happiness returned with ineffable radiance; the Luxembourg, the

young unknown prowler, Cosette's coldness,--all these soul-clouds

disappeared, and he found himself saying, "I imagined all that; I am

an old fool!" His happiness was such that the frightful discovery of

the Thénardiers made in Jondrettes den, which was so unexpected, had to

some extent glided over him. He had succeeded in escaping, his trail

was lost, and what did he care for the rest? He only thought of it to

pity those wretches. They were in prison, and henceforth incapable

of mischief, he thought, but what a lamentable family in distress!

As for the hideous vision of the Barrière du Maine, Cosette had not

spoken again about it. In the convent, Sister Sainte Mechtilde had

taught Cosette music; she had a voice such as a linnet would have if

it possessed a soul; and at times she sang sad songs in the wounded

man's obscure room, which enlivened Jean Valjean. Spring arrived,

and the garden was so delicious at that season of the year, that Jean

Valjean said to Cosette, "You never go out, and I wish you to take a

stroll." "As you please, father," said Cosette. And to obey her father,

she resumed her walks in the garden, generally alone, for, as we have

mentioned, Jean Valjean, who was probably afraid of being seen from the

gate, hardly ever entered it.

Jean Valjean's wound had been a diversion; when Cosette saw that her

father suffered less, and was recovering and seemed happy, she felt a

satisfaction which she did not even notice, for it came so softly and

naturally. Then, too, it was the month of March; the days were drawing

out, winter was departing, and it always takes with it some portion of

our sorrow; then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as every

dawn, and gay like all childhoods, and somewhat tearful at times like

the new-born babe it is. Nature in that month has charming beams which

pass from the sky, the clouds, the trees, the fields, and the flowers

into the human heart. Cosette was still too young for this April joy,

which resembled her, not to penetrate her; insensibly, and without

suspecting it, the dark cloud departed from her mind. In spring there

is light in sad souls, as there is at midday in cellars. Cosette was no

longer so very sad; it was so, but she did not attempt to account for

it. In the morning, after breakfast, when she succeeded in drawing her

father into the garden for a quarter of an hour, and walked him up and

down while supporting his bad arm, she did not notice that she laughed

every moment and was happy. Jean Valjean was delighted to see her

become ruddy-cheeked and fresh once more.

"Oh, the famous wound!" he repeated to himself, in a low voice.

And he was grateful to the Thénardiers. So soon as his wound was cured

he recommenced his solitary night-rambles; and it would be a mistake to

suppose that a man can walk about alone in the uninhabited regions of

Paris without meeting with some adventure.

CHAPTER II.

MOTHER PLUTARCH ACCOUNTS FOR A PHENOMENON.

One evening little Gavroche had eaten nothing; he remembered that

he had not dined either on the previous day, and that was becoming

ridiculous; so he formed the resolution to try and sup. He went

prowling about at the deserted spots beyond the Salpêtrière, for there

are good windfalls there; where there is nobody, something may be

found. He thus reached a suburb which seemed to him to be the village

of Austerlitz. In one of his previous strolls he had noticed there

an old garden frequented by an old man and an old woman, and in this

garden a passable apple-tree. By the side of this tree was a sort of

badly closed fruit-loft, whence an apple might be obtained. An apple is

a supper, an apple is life; and what ruined Adam might save Gavroche.

The garden skirted a solitary unpaved lane, bordered by shrubs while

waiting for houses, and a hedge separated it from the lane. Gavroche

proceeded to the garden. He found the lane again, he recognized the

apple-tree, and examined the hedge; a hedge is but a stride. Day was

declining; there was not a cat in the lane, and the hour was good.

Gavroche was preparing to clamber over the hedge, when he stopped

short,--some people were talking in the garden. Gavroche looked through

one of the interstices in the hedge. Two paces from him, at the foot

of the hedge on the other side, at precisely the point where the hole

he had intended to make would have opened, lay a stone which formed

a species of bench; and on this bench the old man of the garden was

seated with the old woman standing in front of him. The old woman was

grumbling, and Gavroche, who was not troubled with too much discretion,

listened.

"Monsieur Mabœuf!" the old woman said.

"Mabœuf!" Gavroche thought, "that's a rum name."

The old man thus addressed did not stir, and the old woman repeated,--

"Monsieur Mabœuf!"

The old man, without taking his eyes off the ground, decided to

answer,--

"Well, Mother Plutarch!"

"Mother Plutarch!" Gavroche thought, "that's another rum name."

Mother Plutarch continued, and the old gentleman was compelled to

submit to the conversation.

"The landlord is not satisfied."

"Why so?"

"There are three quarters owing."

"In three months more we shall owe four."

"He says that he will turn you out."

"I will go."

"The green-grocer wants to be paid, or she will supply no more fagots.

How shall we warm ourselves this winter if we have no wood?"

"There is the sun."

"The butcher has stopped our credit, and will not supply any more meat."

"That is lucky, for I cannot digest meat; it is heavy."

"But what shall we have for dinner?"

"Bread."

"The baker insists on receiving something on account; no money, no

bread, he says."

"Very good."

"What will you eat?"

"We have apples."

"But, really, sir, we cannot live in that way without money."

"I have none."

The old woman went away, and left the old gentleman alone. He began

thinking, and Gavroche thought too; it was almost night. The first

result of Gavroche's reflection was, that instead of climbing over

the hedge, he lay down under it. The branches parted a little at the

bottom. "Hilloh," said Gavroche to himself, "it's an alcove," and he

crept into it. His back was almost against the octogenarian's bench,

and he could hear him breathe. Then, in lieu of dining, Gavroche tried

to sleep, but it was the sleep of a cat, with one eye open. While

dozing, Gavroche watched. The whiteness of the twilight sky lit up

the ground, and the lane formed a livid line between two rows of dark

streets. All at once two figures appeared on this white stripe; one was

in front and the other a little distance behind.

"Here are two coves," Gavroche growled.

The first figure seemed to be some old bowed citizen, more than simply

attired, who walked slowly, owing to his age, and was strolling

about in the starlight. The second was straight, firm, and slim. He

regulated his steps by those of the man in front; but suppleness and

agility could be detected in his voluntary slowness. This figure had

something ferocious and alarming about it, and the appearance of what

was called a dandy in those days; the hat was of a good shape, and

the coat was black, well cut, probably of fine cloth, and tight at

the waist. He held his head up with a sort of robust grace; and under

the hat a glimpse could be caught of a pale youthful profile in the

twilight. This profile had a rose in its mouth, and was familiar to

Gavroche, for it was Montparnasse; as for the other, there was nothing

to be said save that he was a respectable old man. Gavroche at once

began observing, for it was evident that one of these men had projects

upon the other. Gavroche was well situated to see the finale; and the

alcove had opportunely become a hiding-place. Montparnasse, hunting

at such an hour in such a spot,--that was menacing. Gavroche felt his

gamin entrails moved with pity for the old gentleman. What should he

do,--interfere? One weakness helping another! Montparnasse would have

laughed at it; for Gavroche did not conceal from himself that the old

man first, and then the boy, would be only two mouthfuls for this

formidable bandit of eighteen. While Gavroche was deliberating, the

attack--a sudden and hideous attack--took place; it was the attack of

a tiger on an onager, of a spider on a fly. Montparnasse threw away

the rose, leaped upon the old man, grappled him and clung to him; and

Gavroche had difficulty in repressing a cry. A moment after, one of

these men was beneath the other, crushed, gasping, and struggling with

a knee of marble on his chest. But it was not exactly what Gavroche had

anticipated; the man on the ground was Montparnasse, the one at the top

the citizen. All this took place a few yards from Gavroche. The old man

received the shock, and repaid it so terribly that in an instant the

assailant and the assailed changed parts.

"That's a tough invalid," Gavroche thought. And he could not refrain

from clapping his hands, but it was thrown away; it was not heard by

the two combatants, who deafened one another, and mingled their breath

in the struggle. At length there was a silence, and Montparnasse ceased

writhing. Gavroche muttered this aside, "Is he dead?" The worthy man

had not uttered a word or given a cry; he rose, and Gavroche heard him

say to Montparnasse, "Get up."

Montparnasse did so, but the citizen still held him. Montparnasse

had the humiliated and furious attitude of a wolf snapped at by a

sheep. Gavroche looked and listened, making an effort to double his

eyes with his ears; he was enormously amused. He was rewarded for his

conscientious anxiety, for he was able to catch the following dialogue,

which borrowed from the darkness a sort of tragic accent. The gentleman

questioned, and Montparnasse answered,--

"What is your age?"

"Nineteen."

"You are strong and healthy, why do you not work?"

"It is a bore."

"What is your trade?"

"Idler."

"Speak seriously. Can anything be done for you? What do you wish to be?"

"A robber."

There was a silence, and the old gentleman seemed in profound thought;

but he did not loose his hold of Montparnasse. Every now and then

the young bandit, who was vigorous and active, gave starts like a

wild beast caught in a snare; he shook himself, attempted a trip,

wildly writhed his limbs, and tried to escape. The old gentleman did

not appear to notice it, and held the ruffian's two arms in one hand

with the sovereign indifference of absolute strength. The old man's

reverie lasted some time; then, gazing fixedly at Montparnasse, he

mildly raised his voice and addressed to him, in the darkness where

they stood, a sort of solemn appeal, of which Gavroche did not lose a

syllable.

"My boy, you are entering by sloth into the most laborious of

existences. Ah! you declare yourself an idler, then prepare yourself

for labor. Have you ever seen a formidable machine which is called a

rolling-mill? You must be on your guard against it; for it is a crafty

and ferocious thing, and if it catch you by the skirt of the coat it

drags you under it entirely. Such a machine is indolence. Stop while

there is yet time, and save yourself, otherwise it is all over with

you, and ere long you will be among the cog-wheels. Once caught, hope

for nothing more. You will be forced to fatigue yourself, idler; and

no rest will be allowed you, for the iron hand of implacable toil has

seized you. You refuse to earn your livelihood, have a calling, and

accomplish a duty. It bores you to be like the rest; well, you will be

different. Labor is the law, and whoever repulses it as a bore must

have it as a punishment. You do not wish to be a laborer, and you will

be a slave. Toil only lets you loose on one side to seize you again

on the other; you do not wish to be its friend, and you will be its

negro. Ah, you did not care for the honest fatigue of men, and you

are about to know the sweat of the damned; while others sing you will

groan. You will see other men working in the distance, and they will

seem to you to be resting. The laborer, the reaper, the sailor, the

blacksmith, will appear to you in the light like the blessed inmates of

a paradise. What a radiance there is in the anvil! What joy it is to

guide the plough, and tie up the sheaf! What a holiday to fly before

the wind in a boat! But you, idler, will have to dig and drag, and

roll and walk. Pull at your halter, for you are a beast of burden in

the service of hell! So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you will

not have a week, a day, an hour without feeling crushed. You will not

be able to lift anything without agony, and every passing minute will

make your muscles crack. What is a feather for others will be a rock

for you, and the most simple things will become steep. Life will

become a monster around you, and coming, going, breathing, will be so

many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will produce in you the effect

of a hundred-pound weight; and going there sooner than here will be a

problem to solve. Any man who wishes to go out, merely opens his door

and finds himself in the street; but if you wish to go out you must

pierce through your wall. What do honest men do to reach the street?

They go downstairs; but you will tear up your sheets, make a cord of

them fibre by fibre, then pass through your window and hang by this

thread over an abyss. And it will take place at night, in the storm,

the rain, or the hurricane; and if the cord be too short you will have

but one way of descending, by falling--falling haphazard into the

gulf, and from any height, and on what? On some unknown thing beneath.

Or you will climb up a chimney at the risk of burning yourself; or

crawl through a sewer at the risk of drowning. I will say nothing of

the holes which must be masked; of the stones which you will have to

remove and put back twenty times a day, or of the plaster you must hide

under your mattress. A lock presents itself, and the citizen has in his

pocket the key for it, made by the locksmith; but you, if you wish to

go out, are condemned to make a terrible masterpiece. You will take a

double sou and cut it asunder. With what tools? You will invent them;

that is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of the

two parts, being careful not to injure the outside, and form a thread

all round the edge, so that the two parts may fit closely like a box

and its cover. When they are screwed together there will be nothing

suspicious to the watchers,--for you will be watched. It will be a

double sou, but for yourself a box. What will you place in this box?

A small piece of steel, a watch-spring in which you have made teeth,

and which will be a saw. With this saw, about the length of a pin, you

will be obliged to cut through the bolt of the lock, the padlock of

your chain, the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This

masterpiece done, this prodigy accomplished, all the miracles of art,

skill, cleverness, and patience executed, what will be your reward if

you are detected? A dungeon. Such is the future. What precipices are

sloth and pleasure! To do nothing is a melancholy resolution, are you

aware of that? To live in indolence on the social substance; to be

useless, that is to say, injurious,--this leads straight to the bottom

of misery. Woe to the man who wishes to be a parasite, for he will

be vermin! Ah! it does not please you to work. Ah! you have only one

thought, to drink well, eat well, and sleep well. You will drink water;

you will eat black bread; you will sleep on a plank, with fetters

riveted to your limbs, and feel their coldness at night in your flesh!

You will break these fetters and fly; very good. You will drag yourself

on your stomach into the shrubs and eat grass like the beasts of the

field; and you will be re-captured, and then you will pass years in a

dungeon, chained to the wall, groping in the dark for your water-jug,

biting at frightful black bread which dogs would refuse, and eating

beans which maggots have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse

in a cellar. Ah, ah! take pity on yourself, wretched boy, still so

young, who were at your nurse's breast not twenty years ago, and have

doubtless a mother still! I implore you to listen to me. You want fine

black cloth, polished shoes, to scent your head with fragrant oil, to

please bad women, and be a pretty fellow; you will have your hair close

shaven, and wear a red jacket and wooden shoes. You want a ring on your

finger; and will wear a collar on your neck, and if you look at a woman

you will be beaten. And you will go in there at twenty and come out at

fifty years of age. You will go in young, red-cheeked, healthy, with

your sparkling eyes and all your white teeth, and your curly locks; and

you will come out again broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible,

and gray-headed! Ah, my poor boy, you are on the wrong road, and

indolence is a bad adviser; for robbery is the hardest of labors. Take

my advice, and do not undertake the laborious task of being an idler.

To become a rogue is inconvenient, and it is not nearly so hard to be

an honest man. Now go, and think over what I have said to you. By the

bye, what did you want of me? My purse? Here it is."

And the old man, releasing Montparnasse, placed his purse in his hand,

which Montparnasse weighed for a moment; after which, with the same

mechanical precaution as if he had stolen it, Montparnasse let it glide

gently into the back-pocket of his coat. All this said and done, the

old gentleman turned his back and quietly resumed his walk.

"Old humbug!" Montparnasse muttered. Who was the old gentleman? The

reader has doubtless guessed. Montparnasse, in his stupefaction,

watched him till he disappeared in the gloom, and this contemplation

was fatal for him. While the old gentleman retired, Gavroche advanced.

He had assured himself by a glance that Father Mabœuf was still

seated on his bench, and was probably asleep; then the gamin left

the bushes, and began crawling in the shadow behind the motionless

Montparnasse. He thus got up to the young bandit unnoticed, gently

insinuated his hand into the back-pocket of the fine black cloth coat,

seized the purse, withdrew his hand, and crawled back again into the

shadow like a lizard. Montparnasse, who had no reason to be on his

guard, and who was thinking for the first time in his life, perceived

nothing; and Gavroche, when he had returned to the spot where Father

Mabœuf was sitting, threw the purse over the hedge and ran off

at full speed. The purse fell on Father Mabœuf's foot and awoke

him. He stooped down and picked up the purse, which he opened without

comprehending anything. It was a purse, with two compartments; in one

was some change, in the other were six napoleons. M. Mabœuf, greatly

startled, carried the thing to his housekeeper.

"It has fallen from heaven," said Mother Plutarch.

BOOK V.

IN WHICH THE END DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING.

CHAPTER I.

SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED.

Cosette's sorrow, so poignant and so sharp four or five months

previously, had without her knowledge attained the convalescent stage.

Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the flowers

and birds filtered gradually, day by day and drop by drop, something

that almost resembled oblivion into her virginal and young soul. Was

the fire entirely extinguished; or were layers of ashes merely formed?

The fact is, that she hardly felt now the painful and burning point.

One day she suddenly thought of Marius; "Why," she said, "I had almost

forgotten him." This same week she noticed, while passing the garden

gate, a very handsome officer in the Lancers, with a wasp-like waist,

a delightful uniform, the cheeks of a girl, a sabre under his arm,

waxed mustaches, and lacquered schapska. In other respects, he had

light hair, blue eyes flush with his head, a round, vain, insolent, and

pretty face; he was exactly the contrary of Marius. He had a cigar

in his mouth, and Cosette supposed that he belonged to the regiment

quartered in the barracks of the Rue de Babylone. The next day she saw

him pass again, and remarked the hour. From this moment--was it an

accident?--she saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comrades

perceived that there was in this badly kept garden, and behind this

poor, old-fashioned railing, a very pretty creature who was nearly

always there when the handsome lieutenant passed, who is no stranger to

the reader, as his name was Théodule Gillenormand.

"Hilloh!" they said to him, "there's a little girl making eyes at you,

just look at her."

"Have I the time," the Lancer replied, "to look at all the girls who

look at me?"

It was at this identical time that Marius was slowly descending to the

abyss, and said, "If I could only see her again before I die!" If his

wish had been realized, if he had at that moment seen Cosette looking

at a Lancer, he would have been unable to utter a word, but expired of

grief. Whose fault would it have been? Nobody's. Marius possessed one

of those temperaments which bury themselves in chagrin and abide in it:

Cosette was one of those who plunge into it and again emerge. Cosette,

however, was passing through that dangerous moment,--the fatal phase

of feminine reverie left to itself, in which the heart of an isolated

maiden resembles those vine tendrils which cling, according to chance,

to the capital of a marble column or to the sign-post of an inn. It

is a rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, whether

she be poor or rich; for wealth does not prevent a bad choice, and

misalliances take place in very high society. But the true misalliance

is that of souls; and in the same way as many an unknown young man,

without name, birth, or fortune, is a marble capital supporting a

temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so a man of the world,

satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if

we look not at the exterior but at the interior,--that is to say, what

is reserved for the wife,--is nought but a stupid log obscurely haunted

by violent, unclean, and drunken passions,--the inn sign-post.

What was there in Cosette's soul? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep,

love in a floating state; something which was limpid and brilliant,

perturbed at a certain depth, and sombre lower still. The image of

the handsome officer was reflected on the surface, but was there any

reminiscence at the bottom, quite at the bottom? Perhaps so, but

Cosette did not know.

A singular incident occurred.

CHAPTER II.

COSETTE'S FEARS.

In the first fortnight of April Jean Valjean went on a journey; this,

as we know, occurred from time to time at very lengthened intervals,

and he remained away one or two days at the most. Where did he go?

No one knew, not even Cosette; once only she had accompanied him in

a hackney coach, upon the occasion of one of these absences, to the

corner of a little lane which was called, "Impasse de la Planchette."

He got out there, and the coach carried Cosette back to the Rue de

Babylone. It was generally when money ran short in the house that Jean

Valjean took these trips. Jean Valjean, then, was absent; and he had

said, "I shall be back in three days." At night Cosette was alone in

the drawing-room, and in order to while away the time, she opened her

piano and began singing to her own accompaniment the song of Euryanthe,

"Hunters wandering in the wood," which is probably the finest thing

we possess in the shape of music. When she had finished she remained

passive. Suddenly she fancied she heard some one walking in the garden.

It could not be her father, for he was away; and it could not be

Toussaint, as she was in bed, for it was ten o'clock at night. Cosette

was near the drawing-room shutters, which were closed, and put her ear

to them; and it seemed to her that it was the footfall of a man who was

walking very gently. She hurried up to her room on the first floor,

opened a Venetian frame in her shutter, and looked out into the garden.

The moon was shining bright as day, and there was nobody in it. She

opened her window; the garden was perfectly calm, and all that could be

seen of the street was as deserted as usual.

Cosette thought that she was mistaken, and she had supposed that she

heard the noise. It was an hallucination produced by Weber's gloomy

and wonderful chorus, which opens before the mind bewildering depths;

which trembles before the eye like a dizzy forest in which we hear the

cracking of the dead branches under the restless feet of the hunters,

of whom we catch a glimpse in the obscurity. She thought no more of

it. Moreover, Cosette was not naturally very timid: she had in her

veins some of the blood of the gypsy, and the adventurer who goes about

barefooted. As we may remember, she was rather a lark than a dove, and

she had a stern and brave temper.

The next evening, at nightfall, she was walking about the garden. In

the midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her mind, she fancied

she could distinguish now and then a noise like that of the previous

night, as if some one were walking in the gloom under the trees not

far from her; but she said to herself that nothing so resembles the

sound of a footfall on grass as the grating of two branches together,

and she took no heed of it,--besides, she saw nothing. She left the

"thicket," and had a small grass-plat to cross ere she reached the

house. The moon, which had just risen behind her, projected Cosette's

shadow, as she left the clump of bushes, upon the grass in front of

her, and she stopped in terror. By the side of her shadow the moon

distinctly traced on the grass another singularly startling and

terrible shadow,--a shadow with a hat on its head. It was like the

shadow of a man standing at the edge of the clump a few paces behind

Cosette. For a moment she was unable to speak or cry, or call out, or

stir, or turn her head; but at last she collected all her courage and

boldly turned round. There was nobody; she looked on the ground and the

shadow had disappeared. She went back into the shrubs, bravely searched

in every corner, went as far as the railings, and discovered nothing.

She felt really chilled. Was it again an hallucination? What! two days

in succession? One hallucination might pass, but two! The alarming

point was, that the shadow was most certainly not a ghost, for ghosts

never wear round hats.

The next day Jean Valjean returned, and Cosette told him what she

fancied she had seen and heard. She expected to be reassured, and that

her father would shrug his shoulders and say, "You are a little goose;"

but Jean Valjean became anxious.

"Perhaps it is nothing," he said to her. He left her with some excuse,

and went into the garden, where she saw him examine the railings with

considerable attention. In the night she woke up. This time she was

certain, and she distinctly heard some one walking just under her

windows. She walked to her shutter and opened it. There was in the

garden really a man holding a large stick in his hand. At the moment

when she was going to cry out, the moon lit up the man's face,--it

was her father. She went to bed again saying, "He seems really very

anxious!" Jean Valjean passed that and the two following nights in

the garden, and Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter. On

the third night the moon was beginning to rise later, and it might

have been about one in the morning when she beard a hearty burst of

laughter, and her father's voice calling her:--

"Cosette!"

She leaped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and opened her window;

her father was standing on the grass-plat below.

"I have woke you up to reassure you," he said; "look at this,--here's

your shadow in the round hat."

And he showed her on the grass a shadow which the moon designed, and

which really looked rather like the spectre of a man wearing a round

hat. It was an outline produced by a zinc chimney-pot with a cowl,

which rose above an adjoining roof. Cosette also began laughing,

all her mournful suppositions fell away, and the next morning at

breakfast she jested at the ill-omened garden, haunted by the ghost of

chimney-pots. Jean Valjean quite regained his ease; as for Cosette,

she did not notice particularly whether the chimney-pot were really in

the direction of the shadow which she had seen or fancied she saw,

and whether the moon were in the same part of the heavens. She did not

cross-question herself as to the singularity of a chimney-pot which

is afraid of being caught in the act, and retires when its shadow is

looked at; for the shadow did retire when Cosette turned round, and

she fancied herself quite certain of that fact. Cosette became quite

reassured, for the demonstration seemed to her perfect, and the thought

left her brain that there could have been any one walking about the

garden by night. A few days after, however, a fresh incident occurred.

CHAPTER III.

ENRICHED WITH THE COMMENTS OF TOUSSAINT.

In the garden, near the railings looking out on the street, there was a

stone bench, protected from the gaze of passers-by by a hedge, but it

would have been an easy task to reach it by thrusting an arm through

the railings and the hedge. One evening in this same month of April,

Jean Valjean had gone out, and Cosette, after sunset, was seated on

this bench. The wind was freshening in the trees, and Cosette was

reflecting; an objectless sorrow was gradually gaining on her, the

invincible sorrow which night produces, and which comes perhaps--for

who knows?--from the mystery of the tomb which is yawning at the

moment. Possibly Fantine was in that shadow.

Cosette rose, and slowly went round the garden, walking on the

dew-laden grass and saying to herself through the sort of melancholy

somnambulism in which she was plunged: "I ought to have wooden shoes

to walk in the garden at this hour; I shall catch cold." She returned

to the bench; but at the moment when she was going to sit down, she

noticed at the place she had left a rather large stone, which had

evidently not been there a moment before. Cosette looked at the stone,

asking herself what it meant. All at once the idea that the stone had

not reached the bench of itself, that some one had placed it there, and

that an arm had been passed through the grating, occurred to her and

frightened her. This time it was a real fear, for there was the stone.

No doubt was possible. She did not touch it, but fled without daring

to look behind her, sought refuge in the house, and at once shuttered,

barred, and bolted the French window opening on the steps. Then she

asked Toussaint,--

"Has my father come in?"

"No, Miss."

(We have indicated once for all Toussaint's stammering, and we ask

leave no longer to accentuate it, as we feel a musical notation of an

infirmity to be repulsive.)

Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and stroller by night, often did not

return till a late hour.

"Toussaint," Cosette continued, "be careful to put up the bars to the

shutters looking on the garden, and to place the little iron things in

the rings that close them."

"Oh, I am sure I will, Miss."

Toussaint did not fail, and Cosette was well aware of the fact, but she

could not refrain from adding,--

"For it is so desolate here."

"Well, that's true," said Toussaint; "we might be murdered before we

had the time to say, Ouf! and then, too, master does not sleep in the

house. But don't be frightened, Miss. I fasten up the windows like

Bastilles. Lone women! I should think that is enough to make a body

shudder. Only think! to see men coming into your bedroom and hear them

say, 'Be quiet, you!' and then they begin to cut your throat. It is not

so much the dying, for everybody dies, and we know that we must do so;

but it is the abomination of feeling those fellows touch you; and then

their knives are not sharp, perhaps; oh, Lord!"

"Hold your tongue," said Cosette, "and fasten up everything securely."

Cosette, terrified by the drama improvised by Toussaint, and perhaps

too by the apparitions of the last week, which returned to her mind,

did not even dare to say to her, "Just go and look at the stone laid

on the bench;" for fear of having to open the garden gate again, and

the men might walk in. She had all the doors and windows carefully

closed, made Toussaint examine the whole house from cellar to attic,

locked herself in her bedroom, looked under the bed, and slept badly.

The whole night through, she saw the stone as large as a mountain and

full of caverns. At sunrise--the peculiarity of sunrise is to make

us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laughter is always

proportioned to the fear we have felt--at sunrise, Cosette, on waking,

saw her terror like a nightmare, and said to herself: "What could I be

thinking about! It was like the steps which I fancied I heard last week

in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot. Am I

going to turn coward now?" The sun, which poured through the crevices

of her shutters and made the damask curtains one mass of purple,

re-assured her so fully that all faded away in her mind, even to the

stone.

"There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round

hat in the garden. I dreamed of the stone like the rest."

She dressed herself, went down into the garden, and felt a cold

perspiration all over her,--the stone was there. But this only lasted

for a moment, for what is terror by night is curiosity by day.

"Nonsense!" she said, "I'll see."

She raised the stone, which was of some size, and there was something

under it that resembled a letter; it was an envelope of white paper.

Cosette seized it; there was no address on it, and it was not sealed

up. Still, the envelope, though open, was not empty, for papers could

be seen inside. Cosette no longer suffered from terror, nor was it

curiosity; it was a commencement of anxiety. Cosette took out a small

quire of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore several lines

written in a very nice and delicate hand, so Cosette thought. She

looked for a name, but there was none; for a signature, but there was

none either. For whom was the packet intended? Probably for herself, as

a hand had laid it on the bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible

fascination seized upon her; she tried to turn her eyes away from

these pages, which trembled in her hand. She looked at the sky, the

street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons circling round an

adjoining roof, and then her eye settled on the manuscript, and she

said to herself that she must know what was inside it. This is what she

read.

CHAPTER IV.

A HEART UNDER A STONE.

The reduction of the Universe to a single being, the expansion of a

single being as far as God,--such is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad the soul is when it is sad through love! What a void is the

absence of the being who of her own self fills the world! Oh, how true

it is that the beloved being becomes God! We might understand how God

might be jealous, had not the Father of all evidently made creation for

the soul, and the soul for love.

The soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to

enter the palace of dreams.

God is behind everything, but everything conceals God. Things are

black and creatures are opaque, but to love a being is to render her

transparent.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when the soul is

kneeling, no matter what the attitude of the body may be.

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand chimerical things, which,

however, have their reality. They are prevented seeing each other,

and they cannot write, but they find a number of mysterious ways to

correspond. They send to each other the song of birds, the light of

the sun, the sighs of the breeze, the rays of the stars, and the whole

of creation; and why should they not? All the works of God are made to

serve love. Love is sufficiently powerful to interest all nature with

its messages.

Oh, Spring, thou art a letter which I write to her.

The future belongs even more to hearts than to minds. Loving is the

only thing which can occupy and fill the immensity, for the infinite

needs the inexhaustible.

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and is of the same nature as

it. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible,

indivisible, and imperishable. It is a point of fire within us,

which is immortal and infinite; which nothing can limit, and nothing

extinguish. We feel it burning even in the marrow of our bones, and see

its flashing in the depths of the heavens.

Oh, love! adoration! voluptuousness of two minds which comprehend each

other, of two hearts which are exchanged, of two glances that penetrate

one another! You will come to me, oh happiness, will you not? Walks

with her in the solitudes, blest and radiant days! I have dreamed that

from time to time hours were detached from the lives of the angels,

and came down here to traverse the destinies of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except giving

them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is in

truth an augmentation; but it is impossible even for God to increase in

its intensity the ineffable felicity which love gives to the soul in

this world. God is the fulness of heaven, love is the fulness of man.

You gaze at a star for two motives, because it is luminous and because

it is impenetrable. You have by your side a sweeter radiance and

greater mystery,--woman.

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. If they fail

us, air fails us, and we stifle and die. Dying through want of love is

frightful, for it is the asphyxia of the soul.

When love has blended and moulded two beings in an angelic and sacred

union, they have found the secret of life; henceforth they are only the

two terms of the same destiny, the two wings of one mind. Love and soar!

On the day when a woman who passes before you emits light as she walks,

you are lost, for you love. You have from that moment but one thing to

do; think of her so intently that she will be compelled to think of

you.

What love begins can only be completed by God.

True love is in despair, or enchanted by a lost glove or a found

handkerchief, and it requires eternity for its devotion and its hopes.

It is composed at once of the infinitely great and the infinitely

little.

If you are a stone, be a magnet; if you are a plant, be sensitive; if

you are a man, be love.

Nothing is sufficient for love. You have happiness and you wish for

Paradise. You have Paradise, and you crave for heaven. Oh, ye who

love each other, all this is in love, contrive to find it there.

Love has, equally with heaven, contemplation, and more than heaven,

voluptuousness.

Does she still go to the Luxembourg? No, sir.--Does she attend mass in

that church? She does not go there any longer.--Does she still live in

this house? She has removed.--Where has she gone to live? She did not

leave her address.

What a gloomy thing it is not to know where to find one's soul.

Love has its childishness, and other passions have their littleness.

Shame on the passions that makes a man little! Honor to the one which

makes him a child!

It is a strange thing, are you aware of it? I am in the night. There is

a being who vanished and took heaven with her.

Oh! to lie side by side in the same tomb, hand in hand, and to gently

caress a finger from time to time in the darkness, would suffice for my

eternity.

You who suffer because you love, love more than ever. To die of love is

to live through it.

Love, a gloomy starry transfiguration, is mingled with this punishment,

and there is ecstasy in the agony.

Oh, joy of birds! they sing because they have the nest.

Love is the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of Paradise.

Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long

trial, an unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny. This

destiny, the true one, begins for man with the first step in the

interior of the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins

to distinguish the definite. The definite, reflect on that word. The

living see the infinite, but the definite only shows itself to the

dead. In the mean while, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe,

alas, to the man who has only loved bodies, shapes, and appearances!

Death will strip him of all that. Try to love souls, and you will meet

them again.

I have met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat

was old, his coat worn, the elbows in holes; the water passed through

his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a grander thing still to

love! The heart becomes heroic by the might of passion. Henceforth it

is composed of nought but what is pure, and is only supported by what

is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it

than a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and serene soul, inaccessible

to emotions and vulgar passions, soaring above the clouds and

shadows of the world,--follies, falsehoods, hatreds, vanities, and

miseries,--dwells in the azure of the sky, and henceforth only feels

the profound and subterranean heavings of destiny as the summit of the

mountains feels earthquakes.

If there were nobody who loved, the sun would be extinguished.

CHAPTER V.

COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER.

While reading these lines Cosette gradually fell into a reverie,

and at the moment when she raised her eyes from the last page the

handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate; for it was

his hour. Cosette found him hideous. She began gazing at the roll of

paper again; it was in an exquisite hand-writing, Cosette thought, all

written by the same hand, but with different inks, some very black,

others pale, as when ink is put in the stand, and consequently on

different days. It was, therefore, a thought expanded on the paper,

sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without

purpose, accidentally. Cosette had never read anything like it; this

manuscript, in which she saw more light than obscurity, produced on her

the effect of the door of a shrine left ajar. Each of these mysterious

lines flashed in her eyes, and flooded her heart with a strange light.

The education which she had received had always spoken to her of the

soul, and not of love, much as if a person were to speak of the burning

log and say nothing about the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages

suddenly and gently revealed to her the whole of love, sorrow, destiny,

life, eternity, the beginning and the end. It was like a hand which

opened and threw upon her a galaxy of beams. She felt in these lines

an impassioned, ardent, generous, and honest nature, a sacred will, an

immense grief and an immense hope, a contracted heart, and an expanded

ecstasy. What was the manuscript? A letter. A letter without address,

name, or signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed

of truths, a love-message fit to be borne by an angel and read by a

virgin; a rendezvous appointed off the world, a sweet love-letter

written by a phantom to a shadow. It was a tranquil and crushed absent

man, who seemed ready to seek a refuge in death, and who sent to his

absent love the secret of destiny, the key of life. It had been written

with one foot in the grave and the hand in heaven, and these lines,

which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called

drops of the soul.

And now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have written

them? Cosette did not hesitate for a moment,--only from one man, from

_him!_ Daylight had returned to her mind and everything reappeared. She

experienced an extraordinary joy and a profound agony. It was he! He

who wrote to her; he had been there; his arm had been passed through

the railings! While she was forgetting him he had found her again!

But had she forgotten him? No, never! she was mad to have thought

so for a moment; for she had ever loved, ever adored him. The fire

was covered, and had smouldered for a while, but, as she now plainly

saw, it had spread its ravages, and again burst into a flame which

entirely kindled her. This letter was like a spark that had fallen

from the other soul into hers; she felt the fire begin again, and she

was penetrated by every word of the manuscript. "Oh, yes," she said to

herself, "how well I recognize all this! I had read it all already in

his eyes."

As she finished reading it for the third time, Lieutenant Théodule

returned past the railings, and clanked his spurs on the pavement.

Cosette was obliged to raise her eyes, and she found him insipid,

silly, stupid, useless, fatuous, displeasing, impertinent, and very

ugly. The officer thought himself bound to smile, and she turned away

ashamed and indignant; she would have gladly thrown something at his

head. She ran away, re-entered the house, and locked herself in her

bedroom, to re-read the letter, learn it by heart, and dream. When

she had read it thoroughly, she kissed it and hid it in her bosom.

It was all over. Cosette had fallen back into the profound seraphic

love; the Paradisaic abyss had opened again. The whole day through,

Cosette was in a state of bewilderment; she hardly thought, and her

ideas were confused in her brain; she could not succeed in forming any

conjectures, and she hoped through a tremor, what? Vague things. She

did not dare promise herself anything, and she would not refuse herself

anything. A pallor passed over her face, and a quiver over her limbs;

and she fancied at moments that it was all a chimera, and said to

herself, "Is it real?" Then she felt the well-beloved paper under her

dress, pressed it to her heart, felt the corners against her flesh, and

if Jean Valjean had seen her at that moment he would have shuddered at

the luminous and strange joy which overflowed from her eyelids. "Oh,

yes," she thought, "it is certainly his! This comes from him for me!"

And she said to herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial

accident, had restored him to her. Oh, transfiguration of love! oh,

dreams! this celestial accident, this intervention of angels, was the

ball of bread cast by one robber to another from the Charlemagne yard

to the Lions' den, over the buildings of La Force.

CHAPTER VI.

THE OLD PEOPLE ARE OPPORTUNELY OBLIGED TO GO OUT.

When night came Jean Valjean went out, and Cosette dressed herself. She

arranged her hair in the way that best became her, and put on a dress

whose body, being cut a little too low, displayed the whole of the

neck, and was therefore, as girls say, "rather indecent." It was not

the least in the world indecent, but it was prettier than the former

fashion. She dressed herself in this way without knowing why. Was she

going out? No. Did she expect a visitor? No. She went down into the

garden as it grew dark; Toussaint was engaged in her kitchen, which

looked out on the back-yard. Cosette began walking under the branches,

removing them from time to time with her hand, as some were very low,

and thus reached the bench. The stone was still there, and she sat down

and laid her beautiful white hand on the stone, as if to caress and

thank it. All at once she had that indescribable feeling which people

experience even without seeing, when some one is standing behind them.

She turned her head and rose,--it was he. He was bareheaded, and seemed

pale and thin, and his black clothes could be scarce distinguished. The

twilight rendered his glorious forehead livid, and covered his eyes

with darkness; and he had, beneath a veil of incomparable gentleness,

something belonging to death and night. His face was lit up by the

flush of departing day, and by the thoughts of an expiring soul. He

seemed as if he were not yet a spectre, but was no longer a man. His

hat was thrown among the shrubs a few paces from him. Cosette, though

ready to faint, did not utter a cry; she slowly recoiled, as she felt

herself attracted, but he did not stir. Through the ineffable sadness

that enveloped him she felt the glance of the eyes which she could not

see. Cosette, in recoiling, came to a tree, and leaned against it;

had it not been for this tree she would have fallen. Then she heard

his voice, that voice which she had really never heard before, scarce

louder than the rustling of the foliage, as he murmured,--

"Pardon me for being here; my heart is swollen. I could not live as I

was, and I have come. Have you read what I placed on that bench? Do you

recognize me at all? Do not be frightened at me. Do you remember that

day when you looked at me, now so long ago? It was in the Luxembourg

garden near the Gladiator, and the days on which you passed before

me were June 16 and July 2; it is nearly a year ago. I have not seen

you again for a very long time. I inquired of the woman who lets out

chairs, and she said that you no longer came there. You lived in the

Rue de l'Ouest on the third-floor front of a new house. You see that I

know. I followed you, what else could I do? And then you disappeared.

I fancied that I saw you pass once as I was reading the papers under

the Odéon Arcade, and ran after you, but no, it was a person wearing

a bonnet like yours. At night I come here--fear nothing, no one sees

me. I come to gaze and be near your windows, and I walk very softly

that you may not hear me, for you might be alarmed. The other evening

I was behind you; you turned round, and I fled. Once I heard you sing;

I was happy. Does it harm you that I should listen to you through the

shutters while singing? No, it cannot harm you. You see, you are my

angel, so let me come now and then. I believe that I am going to die.

If you only knew how I adore you! Forgive me for speaking to you. I

know not what I am saying, perhaps I offend you--do I offend you?--"

"Oh, my mother!" said she.

And she sank down as if she were dying. He seized her in his arms and

pressed her to his heart, not knowing what he did. He supported her

while himself tottering. He felt as if his head were full of smoke;

flashes passed between his eye-lashes. His ideas left him; and it

seemed to him as if he were accomplishing a religious act, and yet

committing a profanation. However, he had not the least desire for

this ravishing creature, whose form he felt against his bosom; he was

distractedly in love. She took his hand, and laid it on her heart; he

felt the paper there, and stammered,--

"You love me, then?"

She answered in so low a voice that it was almost an inaudible breath,--

"Silence! you know I do."

And she hid her blushing face in the bosom of the proud and intoxicated

young man. He fell on to the bench, and she by his side. They no longer

found words, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. How came it that

their lips met? How comes it that the bird sings, the snow melts, the

rose opens, May bursts into life, and the dawn grows white behind the

black trees on the rustling tops of the hills? One kiss, and that

was all. Both trembled and gazed at each other in the darkness with

flashing eyes. They neither felt the fresh night nor the cold stone,

nor the damp grass, nor the moist soil,--they looked at each other, and

their hearts were full of thought. Their hands were clasped without

their cognizance. She did not ask him, did not even think of it, how he

had managed to enter the garden; for it seemed to her so simple that

he should be there. From time to time Marius's knee touched Cosette's

knee, and both quivered. At intervals Cosette stammered a word; her

soul trembled on her lips like the dewdrop on a flower.

Gradually they conversed, and expansiveness succeeded the silence which

is plenitude. The night was serene and splendid above their heads, and

these two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything,--their

dreams, their intoxication, their ecstasy, their chimeras, their

depressions, how they had adored and longed for each other at a

distance, and their mutual despair when they ceased to meet. They

confided to each other in an ideal intimacy which nothing henceforth

could increase all their most hidden and mysterious thoughts. They

told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that

love, youth, and the remnant of childhood which they still had, brought

to their minds. Their two hearts were poured into each other; so that

at the end of an hour the young man had the maiden's soul and the

maiden his. They were mutually penetrated, enchanted, and dazzled. When

they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid

her head on his shoulder and asked him,--

"What is your name?"

"Marius," he said; "and yours?"

"Mine is Cosette."

BOOK VI.

LITTLE GAVROCHE.

CHAPTER I.

A MALICIOUS TRICK OF THE WIND.

Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking and

gradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in

the sewer of small debts, the Thénardiers had had two more children,

both male. These made five, two daughters and three boys, and they were

a good many. The mother had got rid of the latter while still babies

by a singular piece of good luck. Got rid of, that is exactly the

term, for in this woman there was only a fragment of nature; it is a

phenomenon, however, of which there is more than one instance. Like the

Maréchale de Lamothe-Houdancourt, the Thénardier was only a mother as

far as her daughters, and her maternity ended there. Her hatred of the

human race began with her boys; on the side of her sons her cruelty was

perpendicular, and her heart had in this respect a dismal steepness.

As we have seen, she detested the eldest, and execrated the two

others. Why? Because she did. The most terrible of motives and most

indisputable of answers is, Because. "I do not want a pack of squalling

brats," this mother said.

Let us now explain how the Thénardiers managed to dispose of their last

two children, and even make a profit of them. That Magnon, to whom we

referred a few pages back, was the same who continued to get an annuity

out of old Gillenormand for the two children she had. She lived on the

Quai des Célestins, at the corner of that ancient Rue du Petit-Musc,

which has done all it could to change its bad reputation into a good

odor. Our readers will remember the great croup epidemic, which,

thirty-five years ago, desolated the banks of the Seine in Paris, and

of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as

to the efficacy of inhaling alum, for which the external application of

tincture of iodine has been so usefully substituted in our day. In this

epidemic Magnon lost her two boys, still very young, on the same day,

one in the morning, the other in the evening. It was a blow, for these

children were precious to their mother, as they represented eighty

francs a month. These eighty francs were very punctually paid by the

receiver of M. Gillenormand's rents, a M. Barge, a retired bailiff who

lived in the Rue de Sicile. When the children were dead the annuity was

buried, and so Magnon sought an expedient. In the dark free-masonry

of evil of which she formed part everything is known, secrets are

kept, and people help each other. Magnon wanted two children, and

Madame Thénardier had two of the same size and age; it was a good

arrangement for one, and an excellent investment for the other. The

little Thénardiers became the little Magnons, and Magnon left the Quai

des Célestins, and went to live in the Rue Cloche-Perce. In Paris the

identity which attaches an individual to himself is broken by moving

from one street to the others. The authorities, not being warned by

anything, made no objections, and the substitution was effected in the

simplest way in the world. Thénardier, however, demanded for this loan

of children ten francs a month, which Magnon promised, and even paid.

We need not say that M. Gillenormand continued to sacrifice himself,

and went every six months to see the children. He did not notice the

change. "Oh, sir," Magnon would say to him, "how like you they are, to

be sure."