WHAT HE THOUGHT.
One last word.
As these details might, especially at the present day, and to employ an
expression which is now fashionable, give the Bishop of D---- a certain
"Pantheistic" physiognomy, and cause it to be believed, either to his
praise or blame, that he had in him one of those personal philosophies
peculiar to our age, which germinate sometimes in solitary minds, and
grow until they take the place of religion, we must lay stress on the
fact that not one of the persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome believed
himself authorized in thinking anything of the sort. What enlightened
this man was his heart, and his wisdom was the product of the light
which emanates from it.
He had no systems, but abundance of deeds. Abstruse speculations
contain vertigo, and nothing indicates that he ventured his mind amid
the Apocalypses. The apostle may be bold, but the bishop must be
timid. He probably refrained from going too deep into certain problems
reserved to some extent for great and terrible minds. There is a sacred
horror beneath the portals of the enigma; the dark chasms gape before
you, but something tells you that you must not enter: woe to him who
penetrates. Geniuses, in the profundities of abstraction and pure
speculation, being situated, so to speak, above dogmas, propose their
ideas to God; their prayer audaciously offers a discussion, and their
adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, full of anxiety and
responsibility for the man who attempts to carry the escarpment by
storm.
Human meditation has no limits; at its own risk and peril it analyzes
and produces its own bedazzlement; we might almost say that, through a
species of splendid reaction, it dazzles nature with it. The mysterious
world around us gives back what it receives, and it is probable that
the contemplators are contemplated. However this may be, there are in
the world men--are they men?--who distinctly perceive on the horizon of
dreamland the heights of the Absolute, and have the terrible vision of
the mountain of the Infinite. Monseigneur Welcome was not one of these
men, for he was not a genius. He would have feared these sublimities,
on which even very great men, like Swedenborg and Pascal, fell in their
insanity. Assuredly, such powerful reveries have their utility, and
by these arduous routes ideal perfection is approached, but he took a
short-cut,--the Gospel. He did not attempt to convert his chasuble into
Elijah's cloak, he cast no beam of the future over the gloomy heaving
of events; there was nothing of the prophet or the Magus about him.
This humble soul loved, that was all.
It is probable that he expanded prayer into a superhuman aspiration;
but a man can no more pray too much than he can love too much, and
if it were a heresy to pray further than the text, St Theresa and St
Jérôme would be heretics. He bent down over all that groaned and all
that expiated; the universe appeared to him an immense malady; he felt
a fever everywhere; he heard the panting of suffering all around him,
and without trying to solve the enigma, he sought to heal the wound.
The formidable spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him;
he was solely engaged in finding for himself and arousing in others the
best way of pitying and relieving. Existence was to this good and rare
priest a permanent subject of sorrow seeking for consolation.
There are some men who toil to extract gold, but he labored to extract
pity; the universal wretchedness was his mine. Sorrow all around was
only an opportunity for constant kindness. "Love one another" he
declared to be complete; he wished for nothing more, and that was
his entire doctrine. One day the Senator, who believed himself a
"philosopher," said to the Bishop: "Just look at the spectacle of the
world; all are fighting, and the strongest man is the cleverest. Your
'love one another' is nonsense." "Well," Monseigneur Welcome replied,
without discussion, "if it be nonsense, the soul must shut itself up
in it like the pearl in the oyster." He consequently shut himself
up in it, lived in it, was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving
on one side those prodigious questions which attract and terrify,
the unfathomable perspectives of the abstract, the precipices of
metaphysics, all those depths which for the apostle converge in God,
for the atheist in nothingness: destiny, good, and evil, the war of
being against being, human consciousness, the pensive somnambulism
of the animal, transformation through death, the recapitulation of
existences which the grave contains, the incomprehensible grafting of
successive loves on the enduring Me, essence, substance, the Nil and
Ens nature, liberty, necessity; in a word, he avoided all the gloomy
precipices over which the gigantic archangels of the human mind bend,
the formidable abysses which Lucretius, Manou, St. Paul, and Dante
contemplate with that flashing eye which seems, in regarding Infinity,
to make stars sparkle in it.
Monseigneur Welcome was simply a man who accepted mysterious questions
without scrutinizing, disturbing them, or troubling his own mind, and
who had in his soul a grave respect for the shadow.
BOOK II.
THE FALL.
CHAPTER I.
THE CLOSE OF A DAY'S MARCH.
At the beginning of October, 1815, and about an hour before sunset,
a man travelling on foot entered the little town of D----. The few
inhabitants, who were at the moment at their windows or doors, regarded
this traveller with a species of inquietude. It would be difficult to
meet a wayfarer of more wretched appearance; he was a man of middle
height, muscular and robust, and in the full vigor of life. He might be
forty-six to forty-eight years of age. A cap with a leather peak partly
concealed his sunburnt face, down which the perspiration streamed. His
shirt of coarse yellow calico, fastened at the neck by a small silver
anchor, allowed his hairy chest to be seen; he had on a neck-cloth
twisted like a rope, trousers of blue ticking worn and threadbare,
white at one knee and torn at the other; an old gray ragged blouse
patched at one elbow with a rag of green cloth; on his back a large
new well-filled and well-buckled knapsack, and a large knotty stick in
his hand. His stockingless feet were thrust into iron-shod shoes, his
hair was clipped, and his beard long. Perspiration, heat, travelling on
foot, and the dust, added something sordid to his wretched appearance.
His hair was cut close and yet was bristling, for it was beginning to
grow a little, and did not seem to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him; he was evidently passing through the town. Where
did he come from? The South perhaps, the sea-board, for he made his
entrance into D---- by the same road Napoleon had driven along seven
months previously when going from Cannes to Paris. The man must have
been walking all day, for he seemed very tired. Some women in the
old suburb at the lower part of the town had seen him halt under the
trees on the Gassendi Boulevard, and drink from the fountain at the
end of the walk. He must have been very thirsty, for the children
that followed him saw him stop and drink again at the fountain on the
Market-place. On reaching the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned
to the left and proceeded to the Mayor's office. He went in and came
out again a quarter of an hour after. A gendarme was sitting on the
stone bench near the door, on which General Drouot had mounted on March
4th, to read to the startled town-folk of D---- the proclamation of the
gulf of Juan. The man doffed his cap and bowed humbly to the gendarme;
the latter, without returning his salute, looked at him attentively,
and then entered the office.
There was at that time at D---- a capital inn, with the sign of the
Cross of Colbas. This inn was kept by a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man
highly respected in the town for his relationship to another Labarre,
who kept the Three Dolphins at Grenoble, and had served in the Guides.
When the Emperor landed, many rumors were current in the country
about the Three Dolphins; it was said that General Bertrand, in the
disguise of a wagoner, had stopped there several times in the month of
January, and distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers, and handsful
of napoleons to the towns-people. The fact was that the Emperor on
entering Grenoble refused to take up his quarters at the Prefecture; he
thanked the Mayor, and said, "I am going to a worthy man whom I know,"
and he went to the Three Dolphins. The glory of the Grenoble Labarre
was reflected for a distance of five-and-twenty leagues on the Labarre
of the Cross of Colbas. The towns-people said of him, "He is cousin to
the one at Grenoble."
The man proceeded to this inn, which was the best in the town, and
entered the kitchen, the door of which opened on the street. All the
ovens were heated, and a large fire blazed cheerily in the chimney.
The host, who was at the same time head-cook, went from the hearth
to the stew-pans, very busy in attending to a dinner intended for
the carriers, who could be heard singing and talking noisily in an
adjoining room. Any one who has travelled knows that no people feed so
well as carriers. A fat marmot, flanked by white-legged partridges and
grouse, was turning on a long spit before the fire; while two large
carp from Lake Lauzet and an Alloz trout were baking in the ovens. The
landlord, on hearing the door open and a stranger enter, said, without
raising his eyes from his stew-pans,--
"What do you want, sir?"
"Supper and a bed," the man replied.
"Nothing easier," said mine host. At this moment he looked up, took in
the stranger's appearance at a glance, and added, "On paying."
The man drew a heavy leathern purse from the pocket of his blouse, and
replied,--
"I have money."
"In that case I am at your service," said the host.
The man returned the purse to his pocket, took off his knapsack, placed
it on the ground near the door, kept his stick in his hand, and sat
down on a low stool near the fire. D---- is in the mountains, and the
evenings there are cold in October. While going backwards and forwards
the landlord still inspected his guest.
"Will supper be ready soon?" the man asked.
"Directly."
While the new-comer had his back turned to warm himself, the worthy
landlord took a pencil from his pocket, and then tore off the corner
of an old newspaper which lay on a small table near the window. On the
white margin he wrote a line or two, folded up the paper, and handed it
to a lad who seemed to serve both as turnspit and page. The landlord
whispered a word in the boy's ear, and he ran off in the direction of
the Mayor's house. The traveller had seen nothing of all this, and he
asked again whether supper would be ready soon. The boy came back with
the paper in his hand, and the landlord eagerly unfolded it, like a
man who is expecting an answer. He read it carefully, then shook his
head, and remained thoughtful for a moment. At last he walked up to the
traveller, who seemed plunged in anything but a pleasant reverie.
"I cannot make room for you, sir," he said.
The man half turned on his stool.
"What do you mean? Are you afraid I shall bilk you? Do you want me to
pay you in advance? I have money, I tell you."
"It is not that"
"What is it, then?"
"You have money."
"Yes," said the man.
"But I have not a spare bed-room."
The man continued quietly: "Put me in the stables."
"I cannot."
"Why?"
"The horses take up all the room."
"Well," the man continued, "a corner in the loft and a truss of straw:
we will see to that after supper."
"I cannot give you any supper."
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, seemed to the
stranger serious. He rose.
"Nonsense, I am dying of hunger. I have been on my legs since sunrise,
and have walked twelve leagues. I can pay, and demand food."
"I have none," said the landlord.
The man burst into a laugh, and turned to the chimney and the oven.
"Nothing! Why, what is all this?"
"All this is ordered."
"By whom?"
"By the carriers."
"How many are there of them?"
"Twelve."
"There is enough food here for twenty."
The man sat down again, and said without raising his voice,--
"I am at an inn, I am hungry, and so shall remain."
The landlord then stooped down, and whispered with an accent which made
him start, "Be off with you!"
The stranger at this moment was thrusting some logs into the fire with
the ferule of his stick, but he turned quickly, and as he was opening
his mouth to reply, the landlord continued in the same low voice:
"Come, enough of this. Do you wish me to tell you your name? It is Jean
Valjean. Now, do you wish me to tell you who you are? On seeing you
come in I suspected something, so I sent to the police office, and this
is the answer I received. Can you read?"
While saying this, he handed the stranger the paper which had travelled
from the inn to the office and back again. The man took a glance at it,
and mine host continued after a moment's silence,--
"I am accustomed to be polite with everybody. Be off."
The man stooped, picked up his knapsack, and went off. He walked along
the high street hap-hazard, keeping close to the houses like a sad and
humiliated man. He did not look back once; had he done so he would have
seen the landlord of the Cross of Colbas in his doorway surrounded by
all his guests and the passers-by, talking eagerly and pointing to
him: and judging from the looks of suspicion and terror, he might have
guessed that ere long his arrival would be the event of the whole town.
He saw nothing of all this, for men who are oppressed do not look back,
as they know only too well that an evil destiny is following them.
He walked on thus for a long time, turning down streets he did not
know, and forgetting his fatigue, as happens in sorrow. All at once he
was sharply assailed by hunger: night was approaching, and he looked
round to see whether he could not discover a shelter. The best inn
was closed against him, and he sought some very humble pot-house,
some wretched den. At this moment a lamp was lit at the end of the
street, and a fir-branch hanging from an iron bar stood out on the
white twilight sky. He went towards it: it was really a pot-house. The
stranger stopped for a moment and looked through the window into the
low tap-room, which was lighted up by a small lamp on the table and a
large fire on the hearth. Some men were drinking, and the landlord was
warming himself; over the flames bubbled a caldron hanging from an iron
hook. This pot-house, which is also a sort of inn, has two entrances,
one on the street, the other opening on a small yard full of manure.
The traveller did not dare enter by the street door: he slipped into
the yard, stopped once again, and then timidly raised the latch and
opened the door.
"Who's there?" the landlord asked.
"Some one who wants a supper and bed."
"Very good. They are to be had here."
He went in, and all the topers turned to look at him; they examined him
for some time while he was taking off his knapsack. Said the landlord
to him, "Here is a fire; supper is boiling in the pot: come and warm
yourself, comrade."
He sat down in the ingle and stretched out his feet, which were swollen
with fatigue. A pleasant smell issued from the caldron. All that
could be distinguished of his face under his cap-peak assumed a vague
appearance of comfort blended with the other wretched appearance which
the habit of suffering produces. It was, moreover, a firm, energetic,
and sad profile; the face was strangely composed, for it began by
appearing humble and ended by becoming severe. His eyes gleamed under
his brows, like a fire under brushwood. One of the men seated at the
table was a fishmonger, who, before entering the pot-house, had gone
to put up his horse in Labarre's stables. Accident willed it, that
on the same morning he had met this ill-looking stranger walking
between Bras d'Asse and--(I have forgotten the name, but I fancy it is
Escoublon). Now, on meeting him, the man, who appeared very fatigued,
had asked the fishmonger to give him a lift, which had only made him
go the faster. This fishmonger had been half an hour previously one
of the party surrounding Jacquin Labarre, and had told his unpleasant
encounter in the morning to the people at the Cross of Colbas. He made
an imperceptible sign to the landlord from his seat, and the latter
went up to him, and they exchanged a few whispered words. The man had
fallen back into his reverie.
The landlord went up to the chimney, laid his hand sharply on the man's
shoulder, and said to him,--
"You must be off from here."
The stranger turned and replied gently, "Ah, you know?"
"Yes."
"I was turned out of the other inn."
"And so you will be out of this."
"Where would you have me go?"
"Somewhere else."
The man took his knapsack and stick and went away. As he stepped out,
some boys who had followed him from the Cross of Colbas, and seemed to
have been waiting for him, threw stones at him. He turned savagely,
and threatened them with his stick, and the boys dispersed like a
flock of birds. He passed in front of the prison, and pulled the iron
bell-handle; a wicket was opened.
"Mr. Jailer," he said, as he humbly doffed his cap, "would you be kind
enough to open the door and give me a nights lodging?"
A voice answered, "A prison is not an inn; get yourself arrested, and
then I will open the door."
The man entered a small street, in which there are numerous gardens,
some of them being merely enclosed with hedges, which enliven the
street. Among these gardens and hedges he saw a single-storeyed house,
whose window was illuminated, and he looked through the panes as he had
done at the pot-house. It was a large white-washed room, with a bed
with printed chintz curtains, and a cradle in a corner, a few chairs,
and a double-barrelled gun hanging on the wall. A table was laid for
supper in the middle of the room; a copper lamp lit up the coarse white
cloth, the tin mug glistening like silver and full of wine, and the
brown smoking soup-tureen. At this table was seated a man of about
forty years of age, with a hearty, open face, who was riding a child on
his knee. By his side a woman, still young, was suckling another child.
The father was laughing, the children were laughing, and the mother
was smiling. The stranger stood for a moment pensively before this
gentle and calming spectacle; what was going on within him? It would be
impossible to say, but it is probable that he thought that this joyous
house would prove hospitable, and that where he saw so much happiness
he might find a little pity. He tapped very slightly on a window pane,
but was not heard; he tapped a second time, and he heard the woman say,
"Husband, I fancy I can hear some one knocking."
"No," the husband answered.
He tapped a third time. The husband rose, took the lamp, and walked
to the front door. He was a tall man, half peasant, half artisan; he
wore a huge, leathern apron, which came up to his left shoulder, and on
which he carried a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-flask, and all
sorts of things, which his belt held like a pocket. As he threw back
his head, his turned-down shirt-collar displayed his full neck, white
and bare. He had thick eye-brows, enormous black whiskers, eyes flush
with his head, a bull-dog lower jaw, and over all this that air of
being at home, which is inexpressible.
"I beg your pardon, sir," the traveller said, "but would you, for
payment, give me a plateful of soup and a corner to sleep in in your
garden outhouse?"
"Who are you?" the owner of the cottage asked.
The man answered, "I have come from Puy Moisson, I have walked the
whole day. Could you do it,--for payment of course?"
"I would not refuse," the peasant answered, "to lodge any respectable
person who paid. But why do you not go to the inn?"
"There is no room there."
"Nonsense! that is impossible; it is neither market nor fair day. Have
you been to Labarre's?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
The traveller continued, with some hesitation, "I do not know why, but
he refused to take me in."
"Have you been to what is his name, in the Rue de Chauffaut?"
The stranger's embarrassment increased; he stammered, "He would not
take me in either."
The peasant's face assumed a suspicious look, he surveyed the new comer
from head to foot, and all at once exclaimed with a sort of shudder,--
"Can you be the man?..."
He took another look at the stranger, placed the lamp on the table, and
took down his gun. On hearing the peasant say "Can you be the man?"
his wife had risen, taken her two children in her arms, and hurriedly
sought refuge behind her husband, and looked in horror at the stranger
as she muttered, "The villain!" All this took place in less time than
is needed to imagine it. After examining the man for some minutes as
if he had been a viper, the peasant returned to the door and said: "Be
off!"
"For mercy's sake," the man continued,--"a glass of water."
"A charge of shot!" the peasant said.
Then he violently closed the door, and the stranger heard two bolts
fastened. A moment after the window shutters were closed, and the
sound of the iron bar being put in reached his ear. Night was coming
on apace: the cold wind of the Alps was blowing. By the light of the
expiring day the stranger noticed in one of the gardens a sort of hut
which seemed to him to be made of sods of turf. He boldly clambered
over a railing and found himself in the garden; he approached the hut,
which had as entrance a narrow, extremely low door, and resembled the
tenements which road-menders construct by the side of the highway. He
doubtless thought it was such: he was suffering from cold and hunger,
and though he had made up his mind to starve, it was at any rate a
shelter against the cold. As this sort of residence is not usually
occupied at night, he lay down on his stomach and crawled into the hut:
it was warm, and he found a rather good straw litter in it. He lay for
a moment motionless on this bed as his fatigue was so great: but as his
knapsack hurt his back and was a ready-made pillow, he began unbuckling
one of the thongs. At this moment a hoarse growl was audible: he raised
his eyes, and the head of an enormous mastiff stood out in the shadow
at the opening of the hut, which was its kennel. The dog itself was
strong and formidable, hence he raised his stick, employed his knapsack
as a shield, and left the kennel as he best could, though not without
enlarging the rents in his rags.
He also left the garden, but backwards, and compelled to twirl his
stick in order to keep the dog at a respectful distance. When he, not
without difficulty, had leaped the fence again, and found himself
once more in the street, alone, without a bed, roof, or shelter, and
expelled even from the bed of straw and the kennel, he fell rather than
sat on a stone, and a passer-by heard him exclaim, "I am not even a
dog." He soon rose and recommenced his walk. He left the town hoping to
find some tree or mill in the fields which would afford him shelter. He
walked on thus for some time with hanging head; when he found himself
far from all human habitations, he raised his eyes and looked around
him. He was in a field, and had in front of him one of those low hills
with close-cut stubble, which after harvest resemble cropped heads. The
horizon was perfectly black, but it was not solely the gloom of night,
but low clouds, which seemed to be resting on the hill itself, rose and
filled the whole sky. Still, as the moon was about to rise shortly, and
a remnant of twilight still hovered in the zenith, these clouds formed
a species of whitish vault whence a gleam of light was thrown on the
earth.
The ground was therefore more illumined than the sky, which produces
a peculiarly sinister effect, and the hill with its paltry outlines
stood out vaguely and dully on the gloomy horizon. The whole scene was
hideous, mean, mournful, and confined; there was nothing in the field
or on the hill but a stunted tree, which writhed and trembled a few
yards from the traveller. This man was evidently far from possessing
those delicate habits of mind which render persons sensible of the
mysterious aspects of things, still there was in the sky, this hill,
this plain, and this tree, something so profoundly desolate, that after
standing motionless and thoughtful for a while he suddenly turned back.
There are instants in which nature seems to be hostile.
He went back and found the gates of the town closed. D----, which
sustained sieges in the religious wars, was still begirt in 1815 by
old walls flanked by square towers, which have since been demolished.
He passed through a breach, and re-entered the town. It might be about
eight o'clock in the evening, and as he did not know the streets he
wandered about without purpose. He thus reached the prefecture and then
the seminary; on passing through the Cathedral Square he shook his fist
at the church. There is at the corner of this Square a printing-office,
where the proclamations of the Emperor and the Imperial Guard to the
army, brought from Elba, and drawn up by Napoleon himself, were first
printed. Worn out with fatigue, and hopeless, he sat down on the stone
bench at the door of this printing-office. An old lady who was leaving
the church at the moment saw the man stretched out in the darkness.
"What are you doing there, my friend?" she said.
He answered, harshly and savagely, "You can see, my good woman, that I
am going to sleep."
The good woman, who was really worthy of the name, was the Marchioness
de R----.
"On that bench?" she continued.
"I have had for nineteen years a wooden mattress," the man said, "and
now I have a stone one."
"Have you been a soldier?"
"Yes, my good woman."
"Why do you not go to the inn?"
"Because I have no money."
"Alas!" said Madame de R----, "I have only two-pence in my purse."
"You can give them to me all the same."
The man took the money, and Madame de R---- continued, "You cannot
lodge at an inn for so small a sum, still you should make the attempt,
for you cannot possibly spend the night here. Doubtless you are cold
and hungry, and some one might take you in for charity."
"I have knocked at every door."
"Well?"
"And was turned away at all."
The "good woman" touched the man's arm and pointed to a small house
next to the Bishop's Palace.
"You have," she continued, "knocked at every door. Have you done so
there?"
"No."
"Then do it."
CHAPTER II
PRUDENCE RECOMMENDED TO WISDOM.
On this evening, the Bishop of D----, after his walk in the town, had
remained in his bed-room till a late hour. He was engaged on a heavy
work on the "duties," which he unfortunately has left incomplete.
He was still working at eight o'clock, writing rather uncomfortably
on small squares of paper, with a large book open on his knees,
when Madame Magloire came in as usual to fetch the plate from the
wall-cupboard near the bed. A moment after, the Bishop, feeling that
supper was ready, and that his sister might be waiting, closed his
book, rose from the table, and walked into the dining-room. It was an
oblong apartment, as we have said, with a door opening on the street,
and a window looking on the garden. Madame Magloire had laid the table,
and while attending to her duties, was chatting with Mademoiselle
Baptistine. A lamp was on the table, which was close to the chimney, in
which a tolerable fire was lighted.
We can easily figure to ourselves the two females, who had both
passed their sixtieth year: Madame Magloire, short, stout, and quick:
Mademoiselle Baptistine, gentle, thin, and frail, somewhat taller than
her brother, dressed in a puce-colored silk gown, the fashionable
color in 1806, which she had bought in Paris in that year and which
still held out. Madame Magloire wore a white cap, on her neck a gold
_jeannette,_ the only piece of feminine jewelry in the house, a very
white handkerchief emerging from a black stuff gown with wide and short
sleeves, a calico red and puce checked apron, fastened round the waist
with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the same stuff fastened with
two pins at the top corners, heavy shoes and yellow stockings, like
the Marseilles women. Mademoiselle Baptistine's gown was cut after the
fashion of 1806, short-waisted, with epaulettes on the sleeves, flaps
and buttons, and she concealed her gray hair by a curling front called
_à l'enfant_. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, quick, and kindly
air, though the unevenly raised corners of her mouth and the upper lip,
thicker than the lower, gave her a somewhat rough and imperious air. So
long as Monseigneur was silent, she spoke to him boldly with a mingled
respect and liberty, but so soon as he spoke she passively obeyed, like
Mademoiselle, who no longer replied, but restricted herself to obeying
and enduring. Even when she was young the latter was not pretty; she
had large blue eyes, flush with her head, and a long peaked nose;
but all her face, all her person, as we said at the outset, breathed
ineffable kindness. She had always been predestined to gentleness, but
faith, hope, and charity, those three virtues that softly warm the
soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanctity. Nature had
only made her a lamb, and religion had made her an angel. Poor holy
woman! sweet departed recollection!
Mademoiselle afterwards narrated so many times what took place at the
Bishopric on this evening that several persons still living remember
the slightest details. At the moment when the Bishop entered Madame
Magloire was talking with some vivacity; she was conversing with
Mademoiselle on a subject that was familiar to her, and to which the
Bishop was accustomed--it was the matter of the frontdoor latch. It
appears that while going to purchase something for supper, Madame
Magloire had heard things spoken of in certain quarters; people were
talking of an ill-looking prowler, that a suspicious vagabond had
arrived, who must be somewhere in the town, and that it would possibly
be an unpleasant thing for any one out late to meet him. The police
were very badly managed because the Prefect and the Mayor were not
friendly, and tried to injure each other by allowing things to happen.
Hence wise people would be their own police, and be careful to close
their houses _and lock their doors._
Madame Magloire italicized the last sentence, but the Bishop had come
from his room where it was rather cold, and was warming himself at
the fire while thinking of other matters; in fact, he did not pick up
the words which Madame Magloire had just let drop. She repeated them,
and then Mademoiselle, who wished to satisfy Madame Magloire without
displeasing her brother, ventured to say timidly,--
"Brother, do you hear what Madame Magloire is saying?"
"I vaguely heard something," the Bishop answered; then he half turned
his chair, placed his hand on his knees, and looked up at the old
servant with his cordial and easily-pleased face, which the fire
illumined from below: "Well, what is it? what is it? are we in any
great danger?"
Then Madame Magloire told her story over again, while exaggerating it
slightly, though unsuspicious of the fact. It would seem that a gypsy,
a barefooted fellow, a sort of dangerous beggar, was in the town at the
moment. He had tried to get a lodging at Jacquin Labarre's, who had
refused to take him in. He had been seen prowling about the streets at
nightfall, and was evidently a gallows bird, with his frightful face.
"Is he really?" said the Bishop.
This cross-questioning encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed to
indicate that the Bishop was beginning to grow alarmed, and hence she
continued triumphantly,--
"Yes, Monseigneur, it is so, and some misfortune will occur in the town
this night: everybody says so, and then the police are so badly managed
[useful repetition]. Fancy living in a mountain town, and not even
having lanterns in the streets at nights! You go out and find yourself
in pitch darkness. I say, Monseigneur, and Mademoiselle says--"
"I," the sister interrupted, "say nothing; whatever my brother does is
right."
Madame Magloire continued, as if no protest had been made,--
"We say that this house is not at all safe, and that if Monseigneur
permits I will go to Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, and tell him to
put the old bolts on the door again; I have them by me, and it will not
take a minute; and I say, Monseigneur, that we ought to have bolts if
it were only for this night, for I say that a door which can be opened
from the outside by the first passer-by is most terrible: besides,
Monseigneur is always accustomed to say "Come in," and in the middle of
the night, oh, my gracious! there is no occasion to ask for permission."
At this moment there was a rather loud rap at the front door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
CHAPTER III.
THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
The door was thrown open wide, as if some one were pushing it
energetically and resolutely. A man entered whom we already know; it
was the traveller whom we saw just now wandering about in search of a
shelter. He entered and stopped, leaving the door open behind him. He
had his knapsack on his shoulder, his stick in his hand, and a rough,
bold, wearied, and violent expression in his eyes. The fire-light fell
on him; he was hideous; it was a sinister apparition.
Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry, she shivered
and stood with widely-open mouth. Mademoiselle Baptistine turned,
perceived the man who entered, and half started up in terror; then,
gradually turning her head to the chimney, she began looking at her
brother, and her face became again calm and serene. The Bishop fixed
a quiet eye on the man, as he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the
new-comer what he wanted. The man leaned both his hands on his stick,
looked in turn at the two aged females and the old man, and, not
waiting for the Bishop to speak, said in a loud voice,--
"Look here! My name is Jean Valjean. I am a galley-slave, and have
spent nineteen years in the bagne. I was liberated four days ago, and
started for Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have been walking
for four days since I left Toulon, and to-day I have marched twelve
leagues. This evening on coming into the town I went to the inn, but
was sent away in consequence of my yellow passport, which I had shown
at the police office. I went to another inn, and the landlord said to
me, "Be off!" It was the same everywhere, and no one would have any
dealings with me. I went to the prison, but the jailer would not take
me in. I got into a dogs kennel, but the dog bit me and drove me off,
as if it had been a man; it seemed to know who I was. I went into the
fields to sleep in the star-light, but there were no stars. I thought
it would rain, and as there was no God to prevent it from raining, I
came back to the town to sleep in a doorway. I was lying down on a
stone in the square, when a good woman pointed to your house, and said,
"Go and knock there." What sort of a house is this? Do you keep an
inn? I have money, 109 francs 15 sous, which I earned at the bagne by
my nineteen years' toil. I will pay, for what do I care for that, as
I have money! I am very tired and frightfully hungry; will you let me
stay here?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will lay another knife and
fork."
The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the
table. "Wait a minute," he continued, as if he had not comprehended,
"that will not do. Did you not hear me say that I was a galley-slave, a
convict, and have just come from the bagne?" He took from his pocket a
large yellow paper, which he unfolded. "Here is my passport, yellow as
you see, which turns me out wherever I go. Will you read it? I can read
it, for I learned to do so at the bagne, where there is a school for
those who like to attend it. This is what is written in my passport:
'Jean Valjean, a liberated convict, native of'--but that does not
concern you--'has remained nineteen years at the galleys. Five years
for robbery with house-breaking, fourteen years for having tried to
escape four times. The man is very dangerous.' All the world has turned
me out, and are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you
give me some food and a bed? Have you a stable?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put clean sheets on the
bed in the alcove."
We have already explained of what nature was the obedience of the two
females. Madame Magloire left the room to carry out the orders. The
Bishop turned to the man.
"Sit down and warm yourself, sir. We shall sup directly, and your bed
will be got ready while we are supping."
The man understood this at once. The expression of his face, which had
hitherto been gloomy and harsh, was marked with stupefaction, joy,
doubt, and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a lunatic.
"Is it true? what? You will let me stay, you will not turn me out, a
convict? You call me _Sir,_ you do not 'thou' me. 'Get out, dog!' that
is what is always said to me; I really believed that you would turn me
out, and hence told you at once who I am. Oh! what a worthy woman she
was who sent me here! I shall have supper, a bed with mattresses and
sheets, like everybody else. For nineteen years I have not slept in a
bed! You really mean that I am to stay. You are worthy people; besides,
I have money, and will pay handsomely. By the way, what is your name,
Mr. Landlord? I will pay anything you please, for you are a worthy man.
You keep an inn, do you not?"
"I am," said the Bishop, "a priest living in this house."
"A priest!" the man continued. "Oh! what a worthy priest! I suppose you
will not ask me for money. The Curé, I suppose,--the Curé of that big
church? Oh yes, what an ass I am! I did not notice your cassock."
While speaking he deposited his knapsack and stick in a corner,
returned his passport to his pocket, and sat down. While Mademoiselle
Baptistine regarded him gently, he went on,--
"You are humane, sir, and do not feel contempt. A good priest is very
good. Then you do not want me to pay?"
"No," said the Bishop, "keep your money. How long did you take in
earning these 109 francs?"
"Nineteen years."
"Nineteen years!" The Bishop gave a deep sigh.
The man went on: "I have all my money still; in four days I have only
spent 25 sous, which I earned by helping to unload carts at Grasse. As
you are an abbé I will tell you: we had a chaplain at the bagne, and
one day I saw a bishop, Monseigneur, as they call him. He is the curé
over the curés, you know. Pardon, I express it badly; but it is so far
above me, a poor convict, you see. He said mass in the middle of the
bagne at an altar, and had a pointed gold thing on his head, which
glistened in the bright sunshine; we were drawn up on three sides of a
square, with guns and lighted matches facing us. He spoke, but was too
far off, and we did not hear him. That is what a bishop is."
While he was speaking the Bishop had gone to close the door, which had
been left open. Madame Magloire came in, bringing a silver spoon and
fork, which she placed on the table.
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "lay them as near as you can to the
fire;" and turning to his guest, he said, "The night breeze is sharp on
the Alps, and you must be cold, sir."
Each time he said the word _Sir_ with his gentle grave voice the man's
face was illumined. _Sir_ to a convict is the glass of water to the
shipwrecked sailor of the Méduse. Ignominy thirsts for respect.
"This lamp gives a very bad light," the Bishop continued. Madame
Magloire understood, and fetched from the chimney of Monseigneur's
bed-room the two silver candlesticks, which she placed on the table
ready lighted.
"Monsieur le Curé," said the man, "you are good, and do not despise me.
You receive me as a friend and light your wax candles for me, and yet
I have not hidden from you whence I come, and that I am an unfortunate
fellow."
The Bishop, who was seated by his side, gently touched his hand. "You
need not have told me who you were; this is not my house, but the
house of Christ. This door does not ask a man who enters whether he
has a name, but if he has a sorrow; you are suffering, you are hungry
and thirsty, and so be welcome. And do not thank me, or say that I am
receiving you in my house, for no one is at home here excepting the man
who has need of an asylum. I tell you, who are a passer-by, that you
are more at home here than I am myself, and all there is here is yours.
Why do I want to know your name? besides, before you told it to me you
had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in amazement.
"Is that true? you know my name?"
"Yes," the Bishop answered, "you are my brother."
"Monsieur le Curé," the man exclaimed, "I was very hungry when I came
in, but you are so kind that I do not know at present what I feel; it
has passed over."
The Bishop looked at him and said,--
"You have suffered greatly?"
"Oh! the red jacket, the cannon ball on your foot, a plank to sleep on,
heat, cold, labor, the set of men, the blows, the double chain for a
nothing, a dungeon for a word, even when you are ill in bed, and the
chain-gang. The very dogs are happier. Nineteen years! and now I am
forty-six; and at present, the yellow passport! There it is!"
"Yes," said the Bishop, "you have come from a place of sorrow. Listen
to me; there will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a
repentant sinner than over the white robes of one hundred just men. If
you leave that mournful place with thoughts of hatred and anger against
your fellow-men you are worthy of pity; if you leave it with thoughts
of kindliness, gentleness, and peace, you are worth more than any of
us."
In the meanwhile Madame Magloire had served the soup: it was made of
water, oil, bread, and salt, and a little bacon, and the rest of the
supper consisted of a piece of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a loaf
of rye bread. She had herself added a bottle of old Mauves wine. The
Bishop's face suddenly assumed the expression of gayety peculiar to
hospitable natures. "To table," he said eagerly, as he was wont to do
when any stranger supped with him; and he bade the man sit down on his
right hand, while Mlle. Baptistine, perfectly peaceful and natural,
took her seat on his left. The Bishop said grace, and then served the
soup himself, according to his wont. The man began eating greedily. All
at once the Bishop said,--
"It strikes me that there is something wanting on the table."
Madame Magloire, truth to tell, had only laid the absolutely necessary
silver. Now it was the custom in this house, when the Bishop had any
one to supper, to arrange the whole stock of plate on the table, as
an innocent display. This graceful semblance of luxury was a species
of childishness full of charm in this gentle and strict house, which
elevated poverty to dignity. Madame Magloire took the hint, went out
without a word, and a moment after the remaining spoons and forks
glittered on the cloth, symmetrically arranged before each of the
guests.
CHAPTER IV.
CHEESEMAKING AT PONTARLIER.
And now, in order to give an idea of what took place at table, we
cannot do better than transcribe a passage of a letter written
by Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame Boischevron, in which the
conversation between the convict and the Bishop is recorded with simple
minuteness.
* * * * *
"The man paid no attention to any one; he ate with frightful voracity,
but after supper he said,--
"Monsieur le Curé, all this is much too good for me; but I am bound to
say that the carriers who would not let me sup with them have better
cheer than you."
"Between ourselves, this remark slightly offended me, but my brother
answered,--
"They are harder worked than I am."
"No," the man continued, "they have more money. You are poor, as I can
plainly see; perhaps you are not even curé. Ah, if Heaven were just you
ought to be a curé."
"Heaven is more than just," said my brother. A moment after he added,--
"Monsieur Jean Valjean, I think you said you were going to Pontarlier?"
"I am compelled to go there." Then he continued, "I must be off by
sunrise to-morrow morning; it is a tough journey, for if the nights are
cold the days are hot."
"You are going to an excellent part of the country," my brother
resumed. "When the Revolution ruined my family I sought shelter first
in Franche Comté, and lived there for some time by the labor of my
arms. I had a good will, and found plenty to do, as I need only choose.
There are paper-mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil-mills, wholesale
manufactories of clocks, steel works, copper works, and at least twenty
iron foundries, of which the four at Lods, Chatillon, Audincourt, and
Beure are very large."
"I am pretty sure I am not mistaken, and that they are the names my
brother mentioned; then he broke off and addressed me.
"My dear sister, have we not some relatives in those parts?"
"My answer was, 'We used to have some; among others Monsieur de
Lucinet, who was Captain of the gates at Pontarlier, under the ancient
régime."
"Yes," my brother continued, "but in '93 people had no relatives, but
only their arms, and so I worked. In the country to which you are
going, Monsieur Valjean, there is a truly patriarchal and pleasing
trade. My dear sister, I mean their cheese manufactures, which they
call _fruitières_."
"Then my brother, while pressing this man to eat, explained in their
fullest details the _fruitières_ of Pontarlier, which were divided into
two classes--the large farms which belong to the rich, and where there
are forty or fifty cows, which produce seven to eight thousand cheeses
in the summer, and the partnership _fruitières_, which belong to the
poor. The peasants of the central mountain district keep their cows in
common and divide the produce. They have a cheese-maker, who is called
the _grurin_; he receives the milk from the partners thrice a day, and
enters the quantities in a book. The cheese-making begins about the
middle of April, and the dairy farmers lead their cows to the mountains
toward midsummer.
"The man grew animated while eating, and my brother made him drink that
excellent Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself because he says
that it is expensive. My brother gave him all these details with that
easy gayety of his which you know, mingling his remarks with graceful
appeals to myself. He dwelt a good deal on the comfortable position of
the _grurin_, as if wishful that this man should understand, without
advising him directly and harshly, that it would be a refuge for him.
One thing struck me: the man was as I have described him to you; well,
my brother, during the whole of supper, and indeed of the evening, did
not utter a word which could remind this man of what he was, or tell
him who my brother was. It was apparently a good opportunity to give
him a little lecture, and let the Bishop produce a permanent effect
on the galley-slave. It might have seemed to any one else that having
this wretched man in hand it would be right to feed his mind at the
same time as his body, and address to him some reproaches seasoned
with morality and advice, or at any rate a little commiseration, with
an exhortation to behave better in future. My brother did not even ask
him where he came from, or his history, for his fault is contained
in his history, and my brother appeared to avoid everything which
might call it to his mind. This was carried to such a point that at a
certain moment, when my brother was talking about the mountaineers of
Pontarlier, 'who had a pleasant task near heaven,' and who, he added,
'are happy because they are innocent,' he stopped short, fearing lest
there might be in the remark something which might unpleasantly affect
this man. After considerable reflection, I believe I can understand
what was going on in my brother's heart: he doubtless thought that this
Jean Valjean had his misery ever present to his mind, that the best
thing was to distract his attention, and make him believe, were it only
momentarily, that he was a man like the rest, by behaving to him as he
would to others. Was not this really charity? Is there not, my dear
lady, something truly evangelical in this delicacy, which abstains from
all lecturing and allusions, and is it not the best pity, when a man
has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It seemed to me that this
might be my brother's innermost thought: in any case, what I can safely
say is, that if he had all these ideas, he did not let any of them be
visible, even to me; he was from beginning to end the same man he is
every night, and he supped with Jean Valjean with the same air and in
the same way as if he had been supping with M. Gedeon le Prevost, or
with the parish curate.
"Toward the end, when we had come to the figs, there was a knock at
the door. It was Mother Gerbaud with her little baby in her arms. My
brother kissed the child's forehead, and borrowed from me 15 sous which
I happened to have about me, to give them to the mother. The man,
while this was going on, did not seem to pay great attention: he said
nothing, and seemed very tired. When poor old Mother Gerbaud left, my
brother said grace, and then said to this man: 'You must need your
bed.' Madame Magloire hastily removed the plate. I understood that we
must retire in order to let this traveller sleep, and we both went
up-stairs. I, however, sent Madame Magloire to lay on the man's bed a
roebuck's hide from the Black Forest, which was in my room, for the
nights are very cold, and that keeps you wann. It is a pity that this
skin is old and the hair is wearing off. My brother bought it when he
was in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the source of the Danube, as well
as the small ivory-handled knife which I use at meals.
"Madame Magloire came up again almost immediately. We said our prayers
in the room where the clothes are hung up to dry, and then retired to
our bed-rooms without saying a word to each other."
CHAPTER V.
TRANQUILLITY.
After bidding his sister good-night, Monseigneur Welcome took up one of
the silver candlesticks, handed the other to his guest, and said,--
"I will lead you to your room, sir."
The man followed him. The reader will remember, from our description,
that the rooms were so arranged that in order to reach the oratory
where the alcove was it was necessary to pass through the Bishop's
bed-room. At the moment when he went through this room Madame Magloire
was putting away the plate in the cupboard over the bed-head: it was
the last job she did every night before retiring. The Bishop led his
guest to the alcove, where a clean bed was prepared for him; the man
placed the branched candlestick on a small table.
"I trust you will pass a good night," said the Bishop. "To-morrow
morning, before starting, you will drink a glass of milk fresh from our
cows."
"Thank you, Monsieur l'Abbé," the man said. He had hardly uttered these
peaceful words when, suddenly and without any transition, he had a
strange emotion, which would have frightened the two old females to
death had they witnessed it. Even at the present day it is difficult
to account for what urged him at the moment. Did he wish to warn or to
threaten? was he simply obeying a species of instinctive impulse which
was obscure to himself? He suddenly turned to the old gentleman, folded
his arms, and, fixing on him a savage glance, he exclaimed hoarsely,--
"What! you really lodge me so close to you as that?" He broke off and
added with a laugh, in which there was something monstrous,--
"Have you reflected fully? who tells you that I have not committed a
murder?"
The Bishop answered: "That concerns God."
Then gravely moving his lips, like a man who is praying and speaking to
himself, he stretched out two fingers of his right hand and blessed the
man, who did not bow his head, and returned to his bed-room, without
turning his head or looking behind him. When the alcove was occupied, a
large serge curtain drawn right across the oratory concealed the altar.
The Bishop knelt down as he passed before this curtain, and offered up
a short prayer; a moment after he was in his garden, walking, dreaming,
contemplating, his soul and thoughts entirely occupied by those grand
mysteries which God displays at night to eyes that remain open.
As for the man, he was really so wearied that he did not even take
advantage of the nice white sheets. He blew out the candle with his
nostrils, after the fashion of convicts, and threw himself in his
clothes upon the bed, where he at once fell into a deep sleep. Midnight
was striking as the Bishop returned from the garden to his room, and a
few minutes later everybody was asleep in the small house.
CHAPTER VI.
JEAN VALJEAN.
Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean awoke. He belonged to
a poor peasant family of La Brie. In his childhood he had not been
taught to read, and when he was of man's age he was a wood-lopper at
Faverolles. His mother's name was Jeanne Mathieu, his father's Jean
Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet and a contraction of _Voilà
Jean._ Jean Valjean possessed a pensive but not melancholy character,
which is peculiar to affectionate natures; but altogether he was a
dull, insignificant fellow, at least apparently. He had lost father and
mother when still very young: the latter died of a badly-managed milk
fever; the former, a pruner like himself, was killed by a fall from a
tree. All that was left Jean Valjean was a sister older than himself,
a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister brought Jean
Valjean up, and so long as her husband was alive she supported her
brother. When the husband died, the oldest of the seven children was
eight years of age, the youngest, one, while Jean Valjean had just
reached his twenty-fifth year; he took the place of the father, and in
his turn supported the sister who had reared him. This was done simply
as a duty, and even rather roughly by Jean Valjean; and his youth was
thus expended in hard and ill-paid toil. He was never known to have had
a sweetheart, for he had no time for love-making.
At night he came home tired, and ate his soup without saying a word.
His sister, mother Jeanne, while he was eating, often took out of his
porringer the best part of his meal, the piece of meat, the slice of
bacon, or the heart of the cabbage, to give it to one of her children;
he, still eating, bent over the table with his head almost in the soup,
and his long hair falling round his porringer and hiding his eyes,
pretended not to see it, and let her do as she pleased. There was at
Faverolles, not far from the Valjeans' cottage, on the other side of
the lane, a farmer's wife called Marie Claude. The young Valjeans,
who were habitually starving, would go at times and borrow in their
mother's name a pint of milk from Marie Claude, which they drank behind
a hedge or in some corner, tearing the vessel from each other so
eagerly that the little girls spilt the milk over their aprons. Their
mother, had she been aware of this fraud, would have severely corrected
the delinquents, but Jean Valjean, coarse and rough though he was, paid
Marie Claude for the milk behind his sister's back, and the children
were not punished.
He earned in the pruning season eighteen sous a day, and besides hired
himself out as reaper, laborer, neat-herd, and odd man. He did what
he could; his sister worked too, but what could she do with seven
children? It was a sad group, which wretchedness gradually enveloped
and choked. One winter was hard, and Jean had no work to do, and the
family had no bread. No bread, literally none, and seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker in the church square at
Faverolles, was just going to bed when he heard a violent blow dealt
the grating in front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm
passed through a hole made by a fist through the grating and window
pane; the arm seized a loaf, and carried it off. Isabeau ran out
hastily; the thief ran away at his hardest, but the baker caught him
and stopped him. The thief had thrown away the loaf, but his arm was
still bleeding; it was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the courts of
the day, charged "with burglary committed with violence at night, in
an inhabited house." He had a gun, was a splendid shot, and a bit of a
poacher, and this injured him. There is a legitimate prejudice against
poachers, for, like smugglers, they trench very closely on brigandage.
Still we must remark that there is an abyss between these classes and
the hideous assassins of our cities: the poacher lives in the forest;
the smuggler in the mountains and on the sea. Cities produce ferocious
men, because they produce corrupted men; the forest, the mountain, and
the sea produce savage men, but while they develop their ferocious
side, they do not always destroy their human part. Jean Valjean was
found guilty, and the terms of the code were precise. There are in our
civilization formidable hours; they are those moments in which penal
justice pronounces a shipwreck. What a mournful minute is that in which
society withdraws and consummates the irreparable abandonment of a
thinking being! Jean Valjean was sentenced to five years at the galleys.
On April 22d, 1796, men were crying in the streets of Paris the
victory of Montenotte, gained by the General-in-chief of the army of
Italy, whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the
2 Floréal, year IV., calls Buona-Parte; and on the same day a heavy
gang was put in chains at Bicetre, and Jean Valjean formed part of the
chain. An ex-jailer of the prison, who is now nearly ninety years of
age, perfectly remembers the wretched man, who was chained at the end
of the fourth cordon, in the north angle of the court-yard. He was
seated on the ground like the rest, and seemed not at all to understand
his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he also
saw something excessive through the vague ideas of an utterly ignorant
man. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted with heavy
hammer-blows behind his head, he wept, tears choked him, and prevented
him from speaking, and he could only manage to say from time to time:
"I was a wood-cutter at Faverolles." Then, while still continuing to
sob, he raised his right hand, and lowered it gradually seven times, as
if touching seven uneven heads in turn, and from this gesture it could
be guessed that whatever the crime he had committed, he had done it to
feed and clothe seven children.
He started for Toulon, and arrived there after a journey of
twenty-seven days in a cart, with the chain on his neck. At Toulon he
was dressed in the red jacket. All that had hitherto been his life,
even to his name, was effaced. He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No.
24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children?
Who troubles himself about that? What becomes of the spray of leaves
when the stem of the young tree has been cut at the foot? It is always
the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God,
henceforth without support, guide, or shelter, went off hap-hazard,
and gradually buried themselves in that cold fog in which solitary
destinies are swallowed up, that mournful gloom in which so many
unfortunates disappear during the sullen progress of the human race.
They left their country; what had once been their steeple forgot them;
what had once been their hedge-row forgot them; and after a few years'
stay in the bagne, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart
where there had once been a wound there was now a scar: that was all.
He only heard about his sister once during the whole time he spent at
Toulon; it was, I believe, toward the end of the fourth year of his
captivity, though I have forgotten in what way the information reached
him. She was in Paris, living in the Rue du Geindre, a poor street,
near St. Sulpice, and had only one child with her, the youngest, a
boy. Where were the other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Every
morning she went to a printing-office, No. 3, Rue du Sabot, where
she was a folder and stitcher; she had to be there at six in the
morning, long before daylight in winter. In the same house as the
printing-office there was a day-school, to which she took the little
boy, who was seven years of age, but as she went to work at six and the
school did not open till seven o'clock, the boy was compelled to wait
in the yard for an hour, in winter,--an hour of night in the open air.
The boy was not allowed to enter the printing-office, because it was
said that he would be in the way. The workmen as they passed in the
morning saw the poor little fellow seated on the pavement, and often
sleeping in the darkness, with his head on his satchel. When it rained,
an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she invited him into her
den, where there were only a bed, a spinning-wheel, and two chairs,
when the little fellow fell asleep in a corner, clinging to the cat, to
keep him warm. This is what Jean Valjean was told; it was a momentary
flash, as it were a window suddenly opened in the destiny of the beings
he had loved, and then all was closed again; he never heard about them
more. Nothing reached him from them; he never saw them again, never
met them, and we shall not come across them in the course of this
melancholy narrative.
Toward the end of this fourth year, Jean Valjean's turn to escape
arrived, and his comrades aided him as they always do in this
sorrowful place. He escaped and wandered about the fields at liberty
for two days: if it is liberty to be hunted down; to turn ones head
at every moment; to start at the slightest sound; to be afraid of
everything,--of a chimney that smokes, a man who passes, a barking dog,
a galloping horse, the striking of the hour, of day because people
see, of night because they do not see, of the highway, the path, the
thicket, and even sleep. On the evening of the second day he was
recaptured; he had not eaten or slept for six-and-thirty hours. The
maritime tribunal added three years to his sentence for his crime,
which made it eight years. In the sixth year, it was again his turn to
escape; he tried, but could not succeed. He was missing at roll-call,
the gun was fired, and at night the watchman found him hidden under the
keel of a ship that was building, and he resisted the _garde chiourme_,
who seized him. Escape and rebellion: this fact, foreseen by the
special code, was punished by an addition of five years, of which two
would be spent in double chains. Thirteen years. In his tenth year his
turn came again, and he took advantage of it, but succeeded no better:
three years for this new attempt, or sixteen years in all. Finally, I
think it was during his thirteenth year that he made a last attempt,
and only succeeded so far as to be recaptured in four hours: three
years for these four hours, and a total of nineteen years. In October,
1815, he was liberated; he had gone in in 1796 for breaking a window
and stealing a loaf.
Let us make room for a short parenthesis. This is the second time that,
during his essays on the penal question and condemnation by the law,
the author of this book has come across a loaf as the starting point of
the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gueux stole a loaf, and so did Jean
Valjean, and English statistics prove that in London four robberies out
of five have hunger as their immediate cause. Jean Valjean entered the
bagne sobbing and shuddering: he left it stoically. He entered it in
despair: he came out of it gloomy. What had taken place in this soul?
CHAPTER VII.
A DESPERATE MAN'S HEART.
Society must necessarily look at these things, because they are created
by it. He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not
weak-minded. The natural light was kindled within him, and misfortune,
which also has its brightness, increased the little daylight there
was in this mind. Under the stick and the chain in the dungeon, when
at work, beneath the torrid sun of the bagne, or when lying on the
convict's plank, he reflected. He constituted himself a court, and
began by trying himself. He recognized that he was not an innocent
man unjustly punished; he confessed to himself that he had committed
an extreme and blamable action; that the loaf would probably not have
been refused him had he asked for it; that in any case it would have
been better to wait for it, either from pity or from labor, and that
it was not a thoroughly unanswerable argument to say, "Can a man wait
when he is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for a
man to die literally of hunger; next, that, unhappily or happily, man
is so made that he can suffer for a long time and severely, morally
and physically, without dying; that hence he should have been patient;
that it would have been better for the poor little children; that it
was an act of madness for him, a wretched weak man, violently to collar
society and to imagine that a man can escape from wretchedness by
theft; that in any case the door by which a man enters infamy is a bad
one by which to escape from wretchedness; and, in short, that he had
been in the wrong.
Then he asked himself if he were the only person who had been in
the wrong in his fatal history? whether, in the first place, it was
not a serious thing that he, a workman, should want for work; that
he, laborious as he was, should want for bread? whether, next, when
the fault was committed and confessed, the punishment had not been
ferocious and excessive, and whether there were not more abuse on
the side of the law in the penalty than there was on the side of the
culprit in the crime? whether there had not been an excessive weight in
one of the scales, that one in which expiation lies? whether the excess
of punishment were not the effacement of the crime, and led to the
result of making a victim of the culprit, a creditor of the debtor, and
definitively placing the right on the side of the man who had violated
it? whether this penalty, complicated by excessive aggravations for
attempted escapes, did not eventually become a sort of attack made
by the stronger on the weaker, a crime of society committed on the
individual, a crime which was renewed every day, and had lasted for
nineteen years? He asked himself if human society could have the right
to make its members equally undergo, on one side, its unreasonable
improvidence, on the other its pitiless foresight, and to hold a man
eternally between a want and an excess, want of work and excess of
punishment? whether it were not exorbitant that society should treat
thus its members who were worst endowed in that division of property
which is made by chance, and consequently the most worthy of indulgence?
These questions asked and solved, he passed sentence on society and
condemned it--to his hatred. He made it responsible for the fate he
underwent, and said to himself that he would not hesitate to call it
to account some day. He declared that there was no equilibrium between
the damage he had caused and the damage caused him; and he came to the
conclusion that his punishment was not an injustice, but most assuredly
an iniquity. Wrath may be wild and absurd; a man may be wrongly
irritated; but he is only indignant when he has some show of reason
somewhere. Jean Valjean felt indignant. And then, again, human society
had never done him aught but harm, he had only seen its wrathful face,
which is called its justice, and shows itself to those whom it strikes.
Men had only laid hands on him to injure him, and any contact with them
had been a blow to him. Never, since his infancy, since his mother
and his sister, had he heard a kind word or met a friendly look. From
suffering after suffering, he gradually attained the conviction that
life was war, and that in this war he was the vanquished. As he had no
other weapon but his hatred, he resolved to sharpen it in the bagne and
take it with him when he left.
There was at Toulon a school for the chain-gang, kept by the Ignorantin
Brethren, who imparted elementary instruction to those wretches who
were willing to learn. He was one of the number, and went to school at
the age of forty, where he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic;
he felt that strengthening his mind was strengthening his hatred. In
certain cases, instruction and education may serve as allies to evil.
It is sad to say, that after trying society which had caused his
misfortunes, he tried Providence, who had made society, and condemned
it also. Hence, during these nineteen years of torture and slavery,
this soul ascended and descended at the same time; light entered on
one side and darkness on the other. As we have seen, Jean Valjean was
not naturally bad, he was still good when he arrived at the bagne.
He condemned society then, and felt that he was growing wicked; he
condemned Providence, and felt that he was growing impious.
Here it is difficult not to meditate for a moment. Is human nature
thus utterly transformed? Can man, who is created good by God, be made
bad by man? Can the soul be entirely remade by destiny, and become
evil if the destiny be evil? Can the heart be deformed, and contract
incurable ugliness and infirmity under the pressure of disproportionate
misfortune, like the spine beneath too low a vault? Is there not in
every human soul, was there not in that of Jean Valjean especially,
a primary spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, and
immortal for the other, which good can develop, illumine, and cause to
glisten splendidly, and which evil can never entirely extinguish?
These are grave and obscure questions, the last of which every
physiologist would unhesitatingly have answered in the negative,
had he seen at Toulon, in those hours of repose which were for
Jean Valjean hours of reverie, this gloomy, stern, silent, and
pensive galley-slave--the pariah of the law which regarded men
passionately--the condemned of civilization, who regarded Heaven with
severity--seated with folded arms on a capstan bar, with the end of his
chain thrust into his pocket to prevent it from dragging. We assuredly
do not deny that the physiological observer would have seen there an
irremediable misery; he would probably have pitied this patient of the
law, but he would not have even attempted a cure: he would have turned
away from the caverns he noticed in this soul, and, like Dante at the
gates of the Inferno, he would have effaced from this existence that
word which GOD, however, has written on the brow of every man: _hope!_
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as
perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it to our
readers? Did Jean Valjean see after their formation, and had he seen
distinctly as they were formed, all the elements of which his moral
wretchedness was composed? Had this rude and unlettered man clearly
comprehended the succession of ideas by which he had step by step
ascended and descended to the gloomy views which had for so many years
been the inner horizon of his mind? Was he really conscious of all that
had taken place in him and all that was stirring in him? This we should
not like to assert, and, indeed, we are not inclined to believe it.
There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean for a considerable amount
of vagueness not to remain, even after so much misfortune; at times
he did not even know exactly what he experienced. Jean Valjean was in
darkness; he suffered in darkness, and he hated in darkness. He lived
habitually in this shadow, groping like a blind man and a dreamer;
at times he was attacked, both internally and externally, by a shock
of passion, a surcharge of suffering, a pale and rapid flash which
illumined his whole soul, and suddenly made him see all around, both
before and behind him, in the glare of a frightful light, the hideous
precipices and gloomy perspective of his destiny. When the flash had
passed, night encompassed him again, and where was he? He no longer
knew.
The peculiarity of punishments of this nature, in which nought but what
is pitiless, that is to say brutalizing, prevails, is gradually, and
by a species of stupid transfiguration, to transform a man into a wild
beast, at times a ferocious beast. Jean Valjean's attempted escapes,
successive and obstinate, would be sufficient to prove the strange work
carried on by the law upon a human soul; he would have renewed these
attempts, so utterly useless and mad, as many times as the opportunity
offered itself, without dreaming for a moment of the result, or the
experiments already made. He escaped impetuously like the wolf that
finds its cage open. Instinct said to him, "Run away;" reasoning
would have said to him, "Remain;" but in the presence of so violent a
temptation, reason disappeared and instinct alone was left. The brute
alone acted, and when he was recaptured the new severities inflicted on
him only served to render him more wild.
One fact we must not omit mentioning is that he possessed a physical
strength with which no one in the bagne could compete. In turning a
capstan, Jean Valjean was equal to four men; he frequently raised and
held on his back enormous weights, and took the place at times of that
instrument which is called a jack, and was formerly called _orgueil_,
from which, by the way, the Rue Montorgueil derived its name. His
comrades surnamed him Jean the Jack. Once when the balcony of the Town
Hall at Toulon was being repaired, one of those admirable caryatides of
Puget's which support the balcony, became loose and almost fell. Jean
Valjean, who was on the spot, supported the statue with his shoulder,
and thus gave the workmen time to come up.
His suppleness even exceeded his vigor. Some convicts, who perpetually
dream of escaping, eventually make a real science of combined skill
and strength; it is the science of the muscles. A full course of
mysterious statics is daily practised by the prisoners, those eternal
enviers of flies and birds. Swarming up a perpendicular, and finding
a resting-place where a projection is scarcely visible, was child's
play for Jean Valjean. Given a corner of a wall, with the tension of
his back and hams, with his elbows and heels clinging to the rough
stone, he would hoist himself as if by magic to a third story, and at
times would ascend to the very roof of the bagne. He spoke little and
never laughed; it needed some extreme emotion to draw from him, once
or twice a year, that mournful convict laugh, which is, as it were,
the echo of fiendish laughter. To look at him, he seemed engaged in
continually gazing at something terrible. He was, in fact, absorbed.
Through the sickly perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed
intellect, he saw confusedly that a monstrous thing was hanging over
him. In this obscure and dull gloom through which he crawled, wherever
he turned his head and essayed to raise his eye, he saw, with a terror
blended with rage, built up above him, with frightfully scarped sides,
a species of terrific pile of things, laws, prejudices, men, and facts,
whose outline escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was
nothing else but that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization.
He distinguished here and there in this heaving and shapeless
conglomeration--at one moment close to him, at another on distant and
inaccessible plateaux--some highly illumined group;--here the jailer
and his stick, there the gendarme and his sabre, down below the mitred
archbishop, and on the summit, in a species of sun, the crowned and
dazzling Emperor. It seemed to him as if this distant splendor, far
from dissipating his night, only rendered it more gloomy and black. All
these laws, prejudices, facts, men, and things, came and went above
him, in accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement which
God imprints on civilization, marching over him, and crushing him with
something painful in its cruelty and inexorable in its indifférence.
Souls which have fallen into the abyss of possible misfortune, hapless
men lost in the depths of those limbos into which people no longer
look, and the reprobates of the law, feel on their heads the whole
weight of the human society which is so formidable for those outside
it, so terrific for those beneath it.
In this situation, Jean Valjean thought, and what could be the nature
of his reverie? If the grain of corn had its thoughts, when ground by
the mill-stone, it would doubtless think as did Jean Valjean. All these
things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagorias full of reality,
ended by creating for him a sort of internal condition which is almost
inexpressible. At times, in the midst of his galley-slave toil, he
stopped and began thinking; his reason, at once riper and more troubled
than of yore, revolted. All that had happened appeared to him absurd;
all that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said to himself
that it was a dream; he looked at the overseer standing a few yards
from him, and he appeared to him a phantom, until the phantom suddenly
dealt him a blow with a stick. Visible nature scarce existed for him;
we might almost say with truth, that for Jean Valjean there was no
sun, no glorious summer-day, no brilliant sky, no fresh April dawn; we
cannot describe the gloomy light which illumined his soul.
In conclusion, to sum up all that can be summed up in what we have
indicated, we will confine ourselves to establishing the fact that
in nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive wood-cutter of
Faverolles, and the formidable galley-slave of Toulon, had become,
thanks to the manner in which the bagne had fashioned him, capable
of two sorts of bad actions: first, a rapid, unreflecting bad deed,
entirely instinctive, and a species of reprisal for the evil he had
suffered; and, secondly, of a grave, serious evil deed, discussed
conscientiously and meditated with the false ideas which such a
misfortune can produce. His premeditations passed through the three
successive phases which natures of a certain temperament can alone
undergo,--reasoning, will, and obstinacy. He had for his motives
habitual indignation, bitterness of soul, the profound feeling of
iniquities endured, and reaction even against the good, the innocent,
and the just, if such exist. The starting-point, like the goal, of all
his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred, which, if it be
not arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomes
within a given time a hatred of society, then a hatred of the human
race, next a hatred of creation, and which is expressed by a vague,
incessant, and brutal desire to injure some one, no matter whom. As we
see, it was not unfairly that the passport described Jean Valjean as a
highly dangerous man. Year by year this soul had become more and more
withered, slowly but fatally. A dry soul must have a dry eye, and on
leaving the bagne, nineteen years had elapsed since he had shed a tear.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WAVE AND THE DARKNESS.
Man overboard!
What of it? The ship does not stop. The wind is blowing, and this dark
ship has a course which she must keep. She goes right on.
The man disappears, then appears again. He goes down and again comes up
to the surface; he shouts, he holds up his arms, but they do not hear
him. The ship, shivering under the storm, has all she can do to take
care of herself. The sailors and the passengers can no longer even see
the drowning man; his luckless head is only a speck in the vastness of
the waves.
His cries of despair sound through the depths. What a phantom that
is,--that sail, fast disappearing from view! He gazes after it; his
eyes are fixed upon it with frenzy. It is disappearing, it is fading
from sight, it is growing smaller and smaller. Only just now he was
there; he was one of the crew; he was going and coming on the deck with
the rest; he had his share of air and sun; he was a living man. What,
then, has happened? He has slipped, he has fallen; it is all over with
him.
He is in the huge waves. There is nothing now under his feet but
death and sinking. The fearful waves, torn and frayed by the wind,
surround him; the swells of the abyss sweep him along; all the crests
of the waves are blown about his head; a crowd of waves spit upon him;
uncertain gulfs half swallow him; every time he plunges down he catches
a glimpse of precipices black as night; frightful, unknown seaweeds
seize him, tie his feet, drag him down to them. He feels that he is
becoming a part of the abyss, of the foam; the waves throw him from
one to another; he tastes the bitterness; the cowardly ocean has given
itself up to drowning him; the vastness sports with his agony. All this
water seems to be hate.
Still he struggles.
He tries to save himself, to keep himself up; he strikes out, he swims.
He, this pitiful force, at once exhausted, is matched against the
inexhaustible.
Where is the ship now? Way down there, barely visible in the pale
obscurity of the horizon. The squalls hum about him, the wave-crests
wash over him. He raises his eyes, and sees only the lividness of the
clouds. In his death struggle he takes part in the madness of the
sea. He is tortured by this madness. He hears sounds, strange to man,
which seem to come from beyond the earth, and from some terrible world
outside.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human
griefs, but what can they do for him? There is one, flying, singing,
and hovering, while he has the death-rattle in his throat.
He feels himself buried at the same time by these two Infinites, the
ocean and the heavens; the one a tomb, the other a shroud.
Night falls; he has been swimming now for hours; his strength has
reached its end; this ship, this far-off thing where there were men, is
blotted from his sight; he is alone in the fearful gulf of twilight;
he sinks, he braces himself, he writhes, he feels below him the roving
monsters of the invisible. He cries aloud.
"There are no longer any men here." "Where is God?"
He calls "Somebody!" "Somebody!" He keeps on calling.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.
He implores the waste of waters, the wave, the seaweed, the rock; it is
deaf. He supplicates the tempest; the pitiless tempest obeys only the
Infinite.
Around him is darkness, mist, solitude, the stormy and unreasoning
tumult, the boundless rolling of the wild waters. In him is horror and
weariness. Under him the abyss. There is nothing to rest on. He thinks
of what will happen to his body in the boundless shades. The infinite
cold benumbs him. His hands shrivel; they clutch and find nothing.
Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, puffs, useless stars. What is he to do? In
despair, he gives up. Worn out as he is, he makes up his mind to die,
he abandons himself, he lets himself go, he relaxes himself, and there
he is rolling forever into the dismal depths in which he is swallowed
up.
Oh, implacable course of human society! What a loss of men and of souls
on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets fall. Wicked
vanishing of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the pitiless social night into which the penal law thrusts
its condemned; the sea is boundless wretchedness.
The soul, swept with the stream into this gulf, may be drowned. Who
will bring it to life again?
CHAPTER IX.
NEW WRONGS.
When the hour for quitting the bagne arrived, when Jean Valjean heard
in his ear the unfamiliar words "You are free," the moment seemed
improbable and extraordinary, and a ray of bright light, of the
light of the living, penetrated to him; but it soon grew pale. Jean
Valjean had been dazzled by the idea of liberty, and had believed in
a new life, but he soon saw that it is a liberty to which a yellow
passport is granted. And around this there was much bitterness; he had
calculated that his earnings, during his stay at the bagne, should
have amounted to 171 francs. We are bound to add that he had omitted
to take into his calculations the forced rest of Sundays and holidays,
which, during nineteen years, entailed a diminution of about 24 francs.
However this might be, the sum was reduced, through various local
stoppages, to 109 francs, 15 sous, which were paid to him when he left
the bagne. He did not understand it all, and fancied that he had been
robbed.
On the day after his liberation, he saw at Grasse men in front of a
distillery of orange-flower water,--men unloading bales; he offered
his services, and as the work was of a pressing nature, they were
accepted. He set to work; he was intelligent, powerful, and skilful,
and his master appeared satisfied. While he was at work a gendarme
passed, noticed him, asked for his paper, and he was compelled to
show his yellow pass. This done, Jean Valjean resumed his toil. A
little while previously he had asked one of the workmen what he earned
for his day's work, and the answer was 30 sous. At night, as he was
compelled to start again the next morning, he went to the master of
the distillery and asked for payment; the master did not say a word,
but gave him 15 sous, and when he protested, the answer was, "That is
enough for you." He became pressing, the master looked him in the face
and said, "Mind you don't get into prison."
Here again he regarded himself as robbed; society, the state, by
diminishing his earnings, had robbed him wholesale; now it was the
turn of the individual to commit retail robbery. Liberation is not
deliverance; a man may leave the bagne, but not condemnation. We have
seen what happened to him at Grasse, and we know how he was treated at
D----.
CHAPTER X.
THE MAN AWAKE.
As two o'clock pealed from the cathedral bell, Jean Valjean awoke. What
aroused him was that the bed was too comfortable, for close on twenty
years he had not slept in a bed, and though he had not undressed, the
sensation was too novel not to disturb his sleep. He had been asleep
for more than four hours, and his weariness had worn off; and he was
accustomed not to grant many hours to repose. He opened his eyes and
looked into the surrounding darkness, and then he closed them again
to go to sleep once more. When many diverse sensations have agitated
a day, and when matters preoccupy the mind, a man may sleep, but he
cannot go to sleep again. Sleep comes more easily than it returns, and
this happened to Jean Valjean. As he could not go to sleep again, he
began thinking.
It was one of those moments in which the ideas that occupy the mind are
troubled, and there was a species of obscure oscillation in his brain.
His old recollections and immediate recollections crossed each other,
and floated confusedly, losing their shape, growing enormously, and
then disappearing suddenly, as if in troubled and muddy water. Many
thoughts occurred to him, but there was one which constantly reverted
and expelled all the rest. This thought we will at once describe; he
had noticed the six silver forks and spoons and the great ladle which
Madame Magloire put on the table. This plate overwhelmed him; it was
there, a few yards from him. When he crossed the adjoining room to
reach the one in which he now was, the old servant was putting it
in a small cupboard at the bed-head,--he had carefully noticed this
cupboard; it was on the right as you came in from the dining-room. The
plate was heavy and old, the big soup-ladle was worth at least 200
francs, or double what he had earned in nineteen years, though it was
true that he would have earned more had not the officials robbed him.
His mind oscillated for a good hour, in these fluctuations with which
a struggle was most assuredly blended. When three o'clock struck he
opened his eyes, suddenly sat up, stretched out his arms, and felt for
his knapsack which he had thrown into a corner of the alcove, then let
his legs hang, and felt himself seated on the bed-side almost without
knowing how. He remained for a while thoughtfully in this attitude,
which would have had something sinister about it, for any one who had
seen him, the only wakeful person in the house. All at once he stooped,
took off his shoes, then resumed his thoughtful posture, and remained
motionless. In the midst of this hideous meditation, the ideas which
we have indicated incessantly crossed his brain, entered, went out,
returned, and weighed upon him; and then he thought, without knowing
why, and with the mechanical obstinacy of reverie, of a convict he had
known at the bagne, of the name of Brevet, whose trousers were only
held up by a single knitted brace. The draught-board design of that
brace incessantly returned to his mind. He remained in this situation,
and would have probably remained so till sunrise, had not the clock
struck the quarter or the half-hour. It seemed as if this stroke said
to him, To work! He rose, hesitated for a moment and listened; all was
silent in the house, and he went on tip-toe to the window, through
which he peered. The night was not very dark; there was a full moon,
across which heavy clouds were chased by the wind. This produced
alternations of light and shade, and a species of twilight in the room;
this twilight, sufficient to guide him, but intermittent in consequence
of the clouds, resembled that livid hue produced by the grating of
a cellar over which people are continually passing. On reaching the
window, Jean Valjean examined it; it was without bars, looked on the
garden, and was only closed, according to the fashion of the country,
by a small peg. He opened it, but as a cold sharp breeze suddenly
entered the room, he closed it again directly. He gazed into the garden
with that attentive glance which studies rather than looks, and found
that it was enclosed by a white-washed wall, easy to climb over. Beyond
it he noticed the tops of trees standing at regular distances, which
proved that this wall separated the garden from a public walk.
After taking this glance, he walked boldly to the alcove, opened his
knapsack, took out something which he laid on the bed, put his shoes
in one of the pouches, placed the knapsack on his shoulders, put on
his cap, the peak of which he pulled over his eyes, groped for his
stick, which he placed in the window nook, and then returned to the
bed, and took up the object he had laid on it. It resembled a short
iron bar, sharpened at one of its ends. It would have been difficult
to distinguish in the darkness for what purpose this piece of iron
had been fashioned; perhaps it was a lever, perhaps it was a club.
By daylight it could have been seen that it was nothing but a miners
candlestick. The convicts at that day were sometimes employed in
extracting rock from the lofty hills that surround Toulon, and it was
not infrequent for them to have mining tools at their disposal. The
miner's candlesticks are made of massive steel, and have a point at
the lower end, by which they are dug into the rock. He took the bar in
his right hand, and holding his breath and deadening his footsteps he
walked towards the door of the adjoining room, the Bishop's as we know.
On reaching this door he found it ajar--the Bishop had not shut it.
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT HE DID.
Jean Valjean listened, but there was not a sound; he pushed the door
with the tip of his finger lightly, and with the furtive restless
gentleness of a cat that wants to get in. The door yielded to the
pressure, and made an almost imperceptible and silent movement, which
slightly widened the opening. He waited for a moment, and then pushed
the door again more boldly. It continued to yield silently, and the
opening was soon large enough for him to pass through. But there was
near the door a small table which formed an awkward angle with it, and
barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean noticed the difficulty: the opening must be increased at
all hazards. He made up his mind, and pushed the door a third time,
more energetically still. This time there was a badly-oiled hinge,
which suddenly uttered a hoarse prolonged cry in the darkness. Jean
Valjean started; the sound of the hinge smote his ear startlingly and
formidably, as if it had been the trumpet of the day of judgment. In
the fantastic exaggerations of the first minute, he almost imagined
that this hinge had become animated, and suddenly obtained a terrible
vitality and barked like a dog to warn and awaken the sleepers. He
stopped, shuddering and dismayed, and fell back from tip-toes on his
heels. He felt the arteries in his temples beat like two forge hammers,
and it seemed to him that his breath issued from his lungs with the
noise of the wind roaring out of a cavern. He fancied that the horrible
clamor of this irritated hinge must have startled the whole house like
the shock of an earthquake; the door he opened had been alarmed and
cried for help; the old man would rise, the two aged females would
shriek, and assistance would arrive within a quarter of an hour, the
town would be astir, and the gendarmerie turned out. For a moment he
believed himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the pillar of salt, and not
daring to make a movement. A few minutes passed, during which the door
remained wide open. He ventured to look into the room, and found that
nothing had stirred. He listened; no one was moving in the house, the
creaking of the rusty hinge had not awakened any one. The first danger
had passed, but still there was fearful tumult within him. But he did
not recoil, he had not done so even when he thought himself lost; he
only thought of finishing the job as speedily as possible, and entered
the bed-room. The room was in a state of perfect calmness; here and
there might be distinguished confused and vague forms, which by day
were papers scattered over the table, open folios, books piled on a
sofa, an easy-chair covered with clothes, and a priedieu, all of which
were at this moment only dark nooks and patches of white. Jean Valjean
advanced cautiously and carefully, and avoided coming into collision
with the furniture. He heard from the end of the room the calm and
regular breathing of the sleeping Bishop. Suddenly he stopped, for he
was close to the bed; he had reached it sooner than he anticipated.
Nature at times blends her effects and scenes with our actions, with
a species of gloomy and intelligent design, as if wishing to make us
reflect. For nearly half an hour a heavy cloud had covered the sky,
but at the moment when Jean Valjean stopped at the foot of the bed,
this cloud was rent asunder as if expressly, and a moonbeam passing
through the tall window suddenly illumined the Bishop's pale face.
He was sleeping peacefully, and was wrapped up in a long garment of
brown wool, which covered his arms down to the wrists. His head was
thrown back on the pillow in the easy attitude of repose, and his hand,
adorned with the pastoral ring, and which had done so many good deeds,
hung out of bed. His entire face was lit up by a vague expression of
satisfaction, hope, and beatitude--it was more than a smile and almost
a radiance. He had on his forehead the inexpressible reflection of an
invisible light, for the soul of a just man contemplates a mysterious
heaven during sleep. A reflection of this heaven was cast over the
Bishop, but it was at the same time a luminous transparency, for the
heaven was within him, and was conscience.
At the moment when the moonbeam was cast over this internal light,
the sleeping Bishop seemed to be surrounded by a glory, which was
veiled, however, by an ineffable semi-light. The moon in the heavens,
the slumbering landscape, the quiet house, the hour, the silence,
the moment, added something solemn and indescribable to this man's
venerable repose, and cast a majestic and serene halo round his white
hair and closed eyes, his face in which all was hope and confidence,
his aged head, and his infantine slumbers. There was almost a divinity
in this unconsciously august man. Jean Valjean was standing in the
shadow with his crow-bar in his hand, motionless and terrified by this
luminous old man. He had never seen anything like this before, and such
confidence horrified him. The moral world has no greater spectacle
than this,--a troubled, restless conscience, which is on the point of
committing a bad action, contemplating the sleep of a just man.
This sleep in such isolation, and with a neighbor like himself,
possessed a species of sublimity which he felt vaguely, but
imperiously. No one could have said what was going on within him, not
even himself. In order to form any idea of it we must imagine what is
the most violent in the presence of what is gentlest. Even in his face
nothing could have been distinguished with certainty, for it displayed
a sort of haggard astonishment. He looked at the Bishop, that was all,
but what his thoughts were it would be impossible to divine; what was
evident was, that he was moved and shaken, but of what nature was this
emotion? His eye was not once removed from the old man, and the only
thing clearly revealed by his attitude and countenance was a strange
indecision. It seemed as if he were hesitating between two abysses,
the one that saves and the one that destroys; he was ready to dash
out the Bishop's brains or kiss his hand. At the expiration of a few
minutes his left arm slowly rose to his cap, which he took off; then
his arm fell again with the same slowness, and Jean Valjean recommenced
his contemplation, with his cap in his left hand, his crow-bar in his
right, and his hair standing erect on his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep peacefully beneath this terrific glance.
A moonbeam rendered the crucifix over the mantel-piece dimly visible,
which seemed to open its arms for both, with a blessing for one and a
pardon for the other. All at once Jean Valjean put on his cap again,
then walked rapidly along the bed, without looking at the Bishop, and
went straight to the cupboard. He raised his crow-bar to force the
lock, but as the key was in it, he opened it, and the first thing he
saw was the plate-basket, which he seized. He hurried across the room,
not caring for the noise he made, re-entered the oratory, opened the
window, seized his stick, put the silver in his pocket, threw away the
basket, leaped into the garden, bounded over the wall like a tiger, and
fled.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BISHOP AT WORK.
The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Welcome was walking about the
garden, when Madame Magloire came running toward him in a state of
great alarm.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she screamed, "does your Grandeur know
where the plate-basket is?"
"Yes," said the Bishop.
"The Lord be praised," she continued; "I did not know what had become
of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed, and now
handed it to Madame Magloire. "Here it is," he said.
"Well!" she said, "there is nothing in it; where is the plate?"
"Ah!" the Bishop replied, "it is the plate that troubles your mind.
Well, I do not know where that is."
"Good Lord! it is stolen, and that man who came last night is the
robber."
In a twinkling Madame Magloire had run to the oratory, entered the
alcove, and returned to the Bishop. He was stooping down and looking
sorrowfully at a cochlearia, whose stem the basket had broken. He
raised himself on hearing Madame Magloire scream,--
"Monseigneur, the man has gone! the plate is stolen!"
While uttering this exclamation her eyes fell on a corner of the
garden, where there were signs of climbing; the coping of the wall had
been torn away.
"That is the way he went! He leaped into Cochefilet lane. Oh, what an
outrage! He has stolen our plate."
The Bishop remained silent for a moment, then raised his earnest eyes,
and said gently to Madame Magloire,--
"By the way, was that plate ours?"
Madame Magloire was speechless; there was another interval of silence,
after which the Bishop continued,--
"Madame Magloire, I had wrongfully held back this silver, which
belonged to the poor. Who was this person? Evidently a poor man."
"Good gracious!" Madame Magloire continued; "I do not care for it,
nor does Mademoiselle, but we feel for Monseigneur. With what will
Monseigneur eat now?"
The Bishop looked at her in amazement. "Why, are there not pewter forks
to be had?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders. "Pewter smells!"
"Then iron!"
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace. "Iron tastes."
"Well, then," said the Bishop, "wood!"
A few minutes later he was breakfasting at the same table at which Jean
Valjean sat on the previous evening. While breakfasting Monseigneur
Welcome gayly remarked to his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame
Magloire, who growled in a low voice, that spoon and fork, even of
wood, are not required to dip a piece of bread in a cup of milk.
"What an idea!" Madame Magloire said, as she went backwards and
forwards, "to receive a man like that, and lodge him by one's side. And
what a blessing it is that he only stole! Oh, Lord! the mere thought
makes a body shudder."
As the brother and sister were leaving the table there was a knock at
the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened, and a strange and violent group appeared on the
threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men
were gendarmes, the fourth was Jean Valjean. A corporal, who apparently
commanded the party, came in and walked up to the Bishop with a
military salute.
"Monseigneur," he said.
At this word Jean Valjean, who was gloomy and crushed, raised his head
with a stupefied air.
"'Monseigneur,'" he muttered; "then he is not the Curé."
"Silence!" said a gendarme. "This gentleman is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the mean while Monseigneur Welcome had advanced as rapidly as his
great age permitted.
"Ah! there you are," he said, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to
see you. Why, I gave you the candlesticks too, which are also silver,
and will fetch you 200 francs. Why did you not take them away with the
rest of the plate?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes, and looked at the Bishop with an
expression which no human language could render.
"Monseigneur," the corporal said; "what this man told us was true then?
We met him, and as he looked as if he were running away, we arrested
him. He had this plate--"
"And he told you," the Bishop interrupted, with a smile, "that it was
given to him by an old priest at whose house he passed the night? I see
it all. And you brought him back here? That is a mistake."
"In that case," the corporal continued, "we can let him go?"
"Of course," the Bishop answered.
The gendarmes loosed their hold of Jean Valjean, who tottered back.
"Is it true that I am at liberty?" he said, in an almost inarticulate
voice, and as if speaking in his sleep.
"Yes, you are let go; don't you understand?" said a gendarme.
"My friend," the Bishop continued, "before you go take your
candlesticks."
He went to the mantel-piece, fetched the two candlesticks, and handed
them to Jean Valjean. The two females watched him do so without a
word, without a sign, without a look that could disturb the Bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in all his limbs; he took the candlesticks
mechanically, and with wandering looks.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the bye, when you return,
my friend, it is unnecessary to pass through the garden, for you can
always enter, day and night, by the front door, which is only latched."
Then, turning to the gendarmes, he said,--
"Gentlemen, you can retire."
They did so. Jean Valjean looked as if he were on the point of
fainting; the Bishop walked up to him, and said in a low voice,--
"Never forget that you have promised me to employ this money in
becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of having promised anything,
stood silent. The Bishop, who had laid a stress on these words,
continued solemnly,--
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. I
have bought your soul of you. I withdraw it from black thoughts and the
spirit of perdition, and give it to God."
CHAPTER XIII.
LITTLE GERVAIS.
Jean Valjean left the town as if running away; he walked hastily
across the fields, taking the roads and paths that offered themselves,
without perceiving that he was going round and round. He wandered thus
the entire morning, and though he had eaten nothing, he did not feel
hungry. He was attacked by a multitude of novel sensations; he felt a
sort of passion, but he did not know with whom. He could not have said
whether he was affected or humiliated; at times a strange softening
came over him, against which he strove, and to which he opposed the
hardening of the last twenty years. This condition offended him, and
he saw with alarm that the species of frightful calmness, which the
injustice of his misfortune had produced, was shaken within him.
He asked himself what would take its place; at times he would have
preferred being in prison and with the gendarmes, and that things had
not happened thus; for that would have agitated him less. Although the
season was advanced, there were still here and there in the hedges a
few laggard flowers, whose smell recalled childhood's memories as he
passed them. These recollections were almost unendurable, for it was so
long since they had recurred to him.
Indescribable thoughts were thus congregated within him the whole day
through. When the sun was setting, and lengthening on the ground the
shadow of the smallest pebble, Jean Valjean was sitting behind a bush
in a large tawny and utterly-deserted plain. There were only the Alps
on the horizon, there was not even the steeple of a distant village.
Jean Valjean might be about three leagues from D----, and a path that
crossed the plain ran a few paces from the bushes. In the midst of this
meditation, which would have contributed no little in rendering his
rags startling to any one who saw him, he heard a sound of mirth. He
turned his head and saw a little Savoyard about ten years of age coming
along the path, with his hurdy-gurdy at his side and his dormouse-box
on his back. He was one of those gentle, merry lads who go about from
place to place, displaying their knees through the holes in their
trousers.
While singing the lad stopped every now and then to play at pitch
and toss with some coins he held in his hand, which were probably
his entire fortune. Among these coins was a two-franc piece. The lad
stopped by the side of the bushes without seeing Jean Valjean, and
threw up the handful of sous, all of which he had hitherto always
caught on the back of his hand. This time the two-franc piece fell, and
rolled up to Jean Valjean, who placed his foot upon it. But the boy had
looked after the coin, and seen him do it; he did not seem surprised,
but walked straight up to the man. It was an utterly deserted spot;
as far as eye could extend there was no one on the plain or the path.
Nothing was audible, save the faint cries of a swarm of birds of
passage passing through the sky, at an immense height. The boy had his
back turned to the sun, which wove golden threads in his hair, and
suffused Jean Valjean's face with a purpled, blood-red hue.
"Sir," the little Savoyard said, with that childish confidence which is
composed of ignorance and innocence, "my coin?"
"What is your name?" Jean Valjean said.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Be off," said Jean Valjean.
"Give me my coin, if you please, sir."
Jean Valjean hung his head, but said nothing.
The boy began again,--
"My two-franc piece, sir."
Jean Valjean's eye remained fixed on the ground.
"My coin," the boy cried, "my silver piece, my money."
It seemed as if Jean Valjean did not hear him, for the boy seized the
collar of his blouse and shook him, and at the same time made an effort
to remove the iron-shod shoe placed on his coin.
"I want my money, my forty-sous piece."
The boy began crying, and Jean Valjean raised his head. He was still
sitting on the ground, and his eyes were misty. He looked at the lad
with a sort of amazement, then stretched forth his hand to his stick,
and shouted in a terrible voice, "Who is there?"
"I, sir," the boy replied. "Little Gervais; give me back my two francs,
if you please. Take away your foot, sir, if you please." Then he grew
irritated, though so little, and almost threatening.
"Come, will you lift your foot? Lift it, I say!"
"Ah, it is you still," said Jean Valjean, and springing up, with his
foot still held on the coin, he added, "Will you be off or not?"
The startled boy looked at him, then began trembling from head to foot,
and after a few moments of stupor ran off at full speed, without daring
to look back or utter a cry. Still, when he had got a certain distance,
want of breath forced him to stop, and Jean Valjean could hear him
sobbing. In a few minutes the boy had disappeared. The sun had set, and
darkness collected around Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothing all day,
and was probably in a fever. He had remained standing and not changed
his attitude since the boy ran off. His breath heaved his chest at long
and unequal intervals, his eye, fixed ten or twelve yards ahead, seemed
to be studying with profound attention the shape of an old fragment of
blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. Suddenly he started,
for he felt the night chill; he pulled his cap over his forehead,
mechanically tried to cross and button his blouse, made a step, and
stooped to pick up his stick.
At this moment he perceived the two-franc piece, which his foot had
half buried in the turf, and which glistened among the pebbles. It had
the effect of a galvanic shock upon him. "What is this?" he muttered.
He fell back three paces, then stopped, unable to take his eye from the
spot his foot had trodden a moment before, as if the thing glistening
there in the darkness had an open eye fixed upon him. In a few moments
he dashed convulsively at the coin, picked it up, and began looking out
into the plain, while shuddering like a straying wild beast which is
seeking shelter.
He saw nothing, night was falling, the plain was cold and indistinct,
and heavy purple mists rose in the twilight. He set out rapidly in a
certain direction, the one in which the lad had gone. After going some
thirty yards he stopped, looked and saw nothing; then he shouted with
all his strength, "little Gervais, Little Gervais!" He was silent, and
waited, but there was no response. The country was deserted and gloomy,
and he was surrounded by space. There was nothing but a gloom in which
his gaze was lost, and a stillness in which his voice was lost. An icy
breeze was blowing, and imparted to things around a sort of mournful
life. The bushes shook their little thin arms with incredible fury;
they seemed to be threatening and pursuing some one.
He walked onwards and then began running, but from time to time he
stopped, and shouted in the solitude with a voice the most formidable
and agonizing that can be imagined: "Little Gervais, Little Gervais!"
Assuredly, if the boy had heard him, he would have felt frightened, and
not have shown himself; but the lad was doubtless a long way off by
this time. The convict met a priest on horseback, to whom he went up
and said,--
"Monsieur le Curé, have you seen a lad pass?"
"No," the priest replied.
"A lad of the name of 'Little Gervais?'"
"I have seen nobody."
The convict took two five-franc pieces from his pouch and handed them
to the Priest.
"Monsieur le Curé, this is for your poor. He was a boy of about ten
years of age, with a dormouse, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy,--a Savoyard,
you know."
"I did not see him."
"Can you tell me if there is any one of the name of Little Gervais in
the villages about here?"
"If it is as you say, my good fellow, the lad is a stranger. Many of
them pass this way."
Jean Valjean violently took out two other five-franc pieces, which he
gave the priest.
"For your poor," he said; then added wildly, "Monsieur l'Abbé, have me
arrested: I am a robber."
The priest urged on his horse, and rode away in great alarm, while
Jean Valjean set off running in the direction he had first taken. He
went on for a long distance, looking, calling, and shouting, but he
met no one else. Twice or thrice he ran across the plain to something
that appeared to him to be a person lying or sitting down; but he only
found heather, or rocks level with the ground. At last he stopped at
a spot where three paths met; the moon had risen; he gazed afar, and
called out for the last time, "Little Gervais, Little Gervais, Little
Gervais!" His shout died away in the mist, without even awakening
an echo. He muttered again, "Little Gervais," in a weak and almost
inarticulate voice, but it was his last effort. His knees suddenly gave
way under him as if an invisible power were crushing him beneath the
weight of a bad conscience. He fell exhausted on a large stone, with
his hand tearing his hair, his face between his knees, and shrieked: "I
am a scoundrel!" Then his heart melted, and he began to weep; it was
the first time for nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean quitted the Bishop's house he was lifted out of his
former thoughts, and could not account for what was going on within
him. He stiffened himself against the angelic deeds and gentle words of
the old man: "You have promised me to become an honest man. I purchase
your soul; I withdraw it from the spirit of perverseness and give it
to God." This incessantly recurred to him, and he opposed to this
celestial indulgence that pride which is within us as the fortress
of evil. He felt indistinctly that this priest's forgiveness was the
greatest and most formidable assault by which he had yet been shaken;
that his hardening would be permanent if he resisted this clemency;
that if he yielded he must renounce that hatred with which the actions
of other men had filled his soul during so many years, and which
pleased him; that this time he must either conquer or be vanquished,
and that the struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had begun between
his wickedness and that man's goodness.
In the presence of all these gleams he walked on like a drunken man.
While he went on thus with haggard eye, had he any distinct perception
of what the result of his adventure at D---- might be? Did he hear all
that mysterious buzzing which warns or disturbs the mind at certain
moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just gone
through the solemn hour of his destiny, that no middle way was now left
him, and that if he were not henceforth the best of men he would be the
worst; that he must now ascend higher than the bishop, or sink lower
than the galley-slave; that if he wished to be good he must become an
angel, and if he wished to remain wicked that he must become a monster?
Here we must ask again the question we previously asked, Did he
confusedly receive any shadow of all this into his mind? Assuredly,
as we said, misfortune educates the intellect, still it is doubtful
whether Jean Valjean was in a state to draw the conclusions we have
formed. If these ideas reached him, he had a glimpse of them rather
than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into an
indescribable and almost painful trouble. On leaving that shapeless
black thing which is called the bagne the Bishop had hurt his soul,
in the same way as a too brilliant light would have hurt his eyes on
coming out of darkness. The future life, the possible life, which
presented itself to him, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremor
and anxiety, and he really no longer knew how matters were. Like an owl
that suddenly witnessed a sunrise the convict had been dazzled and, as
it were, blinded by virtue.
One thing which he did not suspect is certain, however, that he was no
longer the same man; all was changed in him, and it was no longer in
his power to get rid of the fact that the Bishop had spoken to him and
taken his hand. While in this mental condition he met Little Gervais,
and robbed him of his two francs: why did he so? Assuredly he could not
explain it. Was it a final, and as it were supreme, effort of the evil
thought he had brought from the bagne, a remainder of impulse, a result
of what is called in Statics "acquired force"? It was so, and was
perhaps also even less than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he
who robbed, it was not the man, but the brute beast that through habit
and instinct stupidly placed its foot on the coin, while the intellect
was struggling with such novel and extraordinary sensations. When the
intellect woke again and saw this brutish action, Jean Valjean recoiled
with agony and uttered a cry of horror. It was a curious phenomenon,
and one only possible in his situation, that, in robbing the boy of
that money, he committed a deed of which he was no longer capable.
However this may be, this last bad action had a decisive effect upon
him: it suddenly darted through the chaos which filled his mind and
dissipated it, placed on one side the dark mists, on the other the
light, and acted on his soul, in its present condition, as certain
chemical re-agents act upon a troubled mixture, by precipitating
one element and clarifying another. At first, before even examining
himself or reflecting, he wildly strove to find the boy again and
return him his money; then, when he perceived that this was useless and
impossible, he stopped in despair. At the moment when he exclaimed, "I
am a scoundrel!" he had seen himself as he really was, and was already
so separated from himself that he fancied himself merely a phantom, and
that he had there before him, in flesh and blood, his blouse fastened
round his hips, his knapsack full of stolen objects on his back, with
his resolute and gloomy face and his mind full of hideous schemes, the
frightful galley-slave, Jean Valjean.
As we have remarked, excessive misfortune had made him to some extent
a visionary, and this therefore was a species of vision. He really saw
that Jean Valjean with his sinister face before him, and almost asked
himself who this man who so horrified him was. His brain was in that
violent and yet frightfully calm stage when the reverie is so deep that
it absorbs reality. He contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face,
and at the same time he saw through this hallucination a species of
light which he at first took for a torch. On looking more attentively
at this light which appeared to his conscience, he perceived that it
had a human shape and was the Bishop. His conscience examined in turn
the two men standing before him, the Bishop and Jean Valjean. By one
of those singular effects peculiar to an ecstasy of this nature, the
more his reverie was prolonged, the taller and more brilliant the
Bishop appeared, while Jean Valjean grew less and faded out of sight.
At length he disappeared and the Bishop alone remained, who filled the
wretched man's soul with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time, and sobbed with more weakness than a
woman, more terror than a child. While he wept the light grew brighter
in his brain,--an extraordinary light, at once ravishing and terrible.
His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external
brutalization, his internal hardening, his liberation, accompanied by
so many plans of vengeance, what had happened at the Bishop's, the last
thing he had done, the robbery of the boy, a crime the more cowardly
and monstrous because it took place after the Bishop's forgiveness,
--all this recurred to him, but in a light which he had never before
seen. He looked at his life, and it appeared to him horrible; at his
soul, and it appeared to him frightful. Still a soft light was shed
over both, and he fancied that he saw Satan by the light of Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? what did he do afterwards? whither
did he go? No one ever knew. It was stated, however, that on this very
night the mail carrier from Grenoble, who arrived at D---- at about
three o'clock in the morning, while passing through the street where
the Bishop's Palace stood, saw a man kneeling on the pavement in the
attitude of prayer in front of Monseigneur Welcome's door.
BOOK III
IN THE YEAR 1817.
CHAPTER I.
THE YEAR 1817.