The monk's widow, then, was good for something. M. Madeleine, however,
knew nothing of all this; and they were combinations of events of which
the world is fall. M. Madeleine made it a rule hardly, ever to enter
the female work-room; he had placed at its head an old maid, whom the
curé had given him, and he had entire confidence in her. She was really
a respectable, firm, equitable, and just person, fall of that charity
which consists in giving, but not possessing to the same extent the
charity which comprehends and pardons. M. Madeleine trusted to her
in everything, for the best men are often forced to delegate their
authority, and it was with this fall power, and in the conviction she
was acting rightly, that the forewoman tried, condemned, and executed
Fantine. As for the 50 francs, she had given them out of a sum M.
Madeleine had given her for alms and helping the workwomen, and which
she did not account for.
Fantine tried to get a servant's place in the town, and went from
house to house, but no one would have anything to do with her. She
could not leave the town, for the broker to whom she was in debt for
her furniture--what furniture!--said to her, "If you go away, I will
have you arrested as a thief." The landlord to whom she owed her rent,
said to her, "You are young and pretty, you can pay." She divided
the 50 francs between the landlord and the broker, gave back to the
latter three-fourths of the goods, only retaining what was absolutely
necessary, and found herself without work, without a trade, with
only a bed, and still owing about 100 francs. She set to work making
coarse shirts for the troops, and earned at this sixpence a day, her
daughter costing her fourpence. It was at this moment she began to fall
in arrears with the Thénardiers. An old woman, however, who lit her
candle for her when she came in at nights, taught her the way to live
in wretchedness. Behind living on little, there is living on nothing:
there are two chambers,--the first is obscure, the second quite dark.
Fantine learned how she could do entirely without fire in winter,
how she must get rid of a bird that cost her a halfpenny every two
days, how she could make a petticoat of her blanket and a blanket of
her petticoat, and how candle can be saved by taking your meals by
the light of the window opposite. We do not know all that certain
weak beings, who have grown old in want and honesty, can get out of a
halfpenny, and in the end it becomes a talent. Fantine acquired this
sublime talent, and regained a little courage. At this period she said
to a neighbor, "Nonsense, I say to myself; by only sleeping for five
hours and working all the others at my needle, I shall always manage
to earn bread, at any rate. And then, when you are sad, you eat less.
Well! suffering, anxiety, a little bread on one side and sorrow on the
other, all will support me."
In this distress, it would have been a strange happiness to have had
her daughter with her, and she thought of sending for her. But, what!
make her share her poverty? And then she owed money to the Thénardiers!
how was she to pay it and the travelling expenses? The old woman who
had given her lessons in what may be called indigent life, was a pious
creature, poor, and charitable to the poor and even to the rich, who
could just write her name, "Marguerite," and believed in God, which is
knowledge. There are many such virtues down here, and one day they will
be up above, for this life has a morrow.
At the beginning Fantine had been so ashamed that she did not dare go
out. When she was in the streets, she perceived that people turned
round to look at her and pointed to her. Every one stared at her, and
no one bowed to her; the cold bitter contempt of the passers-by passed
through her flesh and her mind like an east wind. In small towns an
unhappy girl seems to be naked beneath the sarcasm and curiosity of
all. In Paris, at least no one knows you, and that obscurity is a
garment. Oh! how glad she would have been to be back in Paris. She must
grow accustomed to disrespect, as she had done to poverty. Gradually
she made up her mind, and after two or three months shook off her
shame, and went as if nothing had occurred. "It is no matter to me,"
she said. She came and went, with head erect and with a bitter smile,
and felt that she was growing impudent. Madame Victurnien sometimes saw
her pass from her window; she noticed the distress of "the creature
whom she had made know her place," and congratulated herself. The
wicked have a black happiness. Excessive labor fatigued Fantine, and
the little dry cough she had grew worse. She sometimes said to her
neighbor, "Marguerite, just feel how hot my hands are!" Still, in the
morning, when she passed an old broken comb through her glorious hair,
which shone like floss silk, she had a minute of happy coquettishness.
CHAPTER X.
RESULT OF HER SUCCESS.
She had been discharged toward the end of winter; the next summer
passed away, and winter returned. Short days and less work; in winter
there is no warmth, no light, no mid-day, for the evening is joined
to the morning; there is fog, twilight, the window is gray, and you
cannot see clearly. The sky is like a dark vault, and the sun has the
look of a poor man. It is a frightful season; winter changes into stone
the water of heaven and the heart of man. Her creditors pressed her,
for Fantine was earning too little, and her debts had increased. The
Thénardiers, being irregularly paid, constantly wrote her letters,
whose contents afflicted her, and postage ruined her. One day they
wrote her that little Cosette was quite naked, that she wanted a
flannel skirt, and that the mother must send at least ten francs for
the purpose. She crumpled the letter in her hands all day, and at
nightfall went to a barber's at the corner of the street, and removed
her comb. Her splendid light hair fell down to her hips.
"What fine hair!" the barber exclaimed.
"What will you give me for it?" she asked.
"Ten francs."
"Cut it off."
She bought a skirt and sent to the Thénardiers; it made them furious,
for they wanted the money. They gave it to Éponine, and the poor lark
continued to shiver. Fantine thought, "My child is no longer cold, for
I have dressed her in my hair." She wore small round caps which hid her
shorn head, and she still looked pretty in them.
A dark change took place in Fantine's heart. When she found that she
could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate all around her. She
had long shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine: but,
through the constant iteration that he had discharged her and was the
cause of her misfortune, she grew to hate him too, and worse than the
rest. When she passed the factory she pretended to laugh and sing. An
old workwoman who once saw her doing so, said, "That's a girl who will
come to a bad end." She took a lover, the first who offered, a man she
did not love, through bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a
scoundrel, a sort of mendicant musician, an idle scamp, who beat her,
and left her, as she had chosen him, in disgust. She adored her child.
The lower she sank, the darker the gloom became around her, the more
did this sweet little angel gleam in her soul. She said: "When I am
rich, I shall have my Cosette with me;" and she laughed. She did not
get rid of her cough, and she felt a cold perspiration in her back.
One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter to the following
effect: "Cosette is ill with a complaint which is very prevalent in the
country. It is called miliary fever. She must have expensive drugs, and
that ruins us, and we cannot pay for them any longer. If you do not
send us forty francs within a week, the little one will be dead." She
burst into a loud laugh, and said to her old neighbor, "Oh, what funny
people! they want forty francs; where do they expect me to get them?
What fools those peasants are!" Still, she went to a staircase window
and read the letter again; then she went out into the street, still
laughing and singing. Some one who met her said, "What has made you so
merry?" and she answered, "It is a piece of stupidity some country folk
have written; they want forty francs of me--the asses."
As she passed across the market-place she saw a crowd surrounding
a vehicle of a strange shape, on the box of which a man dressed in
red was haranguing. He was a dentist going his rounds, who offered
the public complete sets of teeth, opiates, powders, and elixirs.
Fantine joined the crowd and began laughing like the rest at this
harangue, in which there was slang for the mob, and scientific jargon
for respectable persons. The extractor of teeth saw the pretty girl
laughing, and suddenly exclaimed,--
"You have fine teeth, my laughing beauty. If you like to sell me your
two top front teeth, I will give you a napoleon apiece for them."
"What a horrible idea!" Fantine exclaimed.
"Two napoleons!" an old toothless woman by her side grumbled; "there's
a lucky girl."
Fantine ran away and stopped her ears not to hear the hoarse voice of
the man, who shouted,--
"Think it over, my dear: two napoleons may be useful. If your heart
says Yes, come to-night to the _Tillac d'Argent_, where you will find
me."
Fantine, when she reached home, was furious, and told her good neighbor
Marguerite what had happened. "Can you understand it? Is he not an
abominable man? How can people like that be allowed to go about the
country? Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should look horrible; hair
grows again, but teeth! oh, the monster! I would sooner throw myself
head first out of a fifth-floor window on to the pavement."
"And what did he offer you?" Marguerite asked.
"Two napoleons."
"That makes forty francs."
"Yes," said Fantine, "that makes forty francs."
She became thoughtful and sat down to her work. At the end of a quarter
of an hour, she left the room and read Thénardier's letter again on the
staircase. When she returned, she said to Marguerite,--
"Do you know what a miliary fever is?"
"Yes," said the old woman, "it is an illness."
"Does it require much medicine?"
"Oh, an awful lot!"
"Does it attack children?"
"More than anybody."
"Do they die of it?"
"Plenty," said Marguerite.
Fantine went out and read the letter once again on the staircase. At
night she went out, and could be seen proceeding in the direction of
the Rue de Paris, where the inns are. The next morning, when Marguerite
entered Fantine's room before day-break, for they worked together,
and they made one candle do for them both, she found her sitting on
her bed, pale and chill. Her cap had fallen on her knees, and the
candle had been burning all night, and was nearly consumed. Marguerite
stopped in the doorway, horrified by this enormous extravagance, and
exclaimed,--
"Oh, Lord! the candle nearly burnt out! something must have happened."
Then she looked at Fantine, who turned her close-shaven head towards
her, and seemed to have grown ten years older since the previous day.
"Gracious Heaven!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you,
Fantine?"
"Nothing," the girl answered; "I am all right. My child will not die of
that frightful disease for want of assistance, and I am satisfied."
As she said this, she pointed to two napoleons that glistened on the
table.
"Oh, Lord!" said Marguerite; "why,'t is a fortune; where ever did you
get them from?"
"I had them by me," Fantine answered.
At the same time she smiled, the candle lit up her face, and it was a
fearful smile. A reddish saliva stained the corner of her lips, and
she had a black hole in her mouth; the two teeth were pulled out. She
sent the forty francs to Montfermeil. It had only been a trick of the
Thénardiers to get money, for Cosette was not ill.
Fantine threw her looking-glass out of the window; she had long before
left her cell on the second floor for a garret under the roof,--one of
those tenements in which the ceiling forms an angle with the floor,
and you knock your head at every step. The poor man can only go to the
end of his room, as to the end of his destiny, by stooping more and
more. She had no bed left; she had only a rag she called a blanket,
a mattress on the ground, and a bottomless chair; a little rose-tree
she had had withered away, forgotten in a corner. In another corner
she had a pail to hold water, which froze in winter, and in which
the different levels of the water remained marked for a long time by
rings of ice. She had lost her shame, and now lost her coquetry; the
last sign was, that she went out with dirty caps. Either through want
of time or carelessness, she no longer mended her linen, and as the
heels of her stockings wore out, she tucked them into her shoes. She
mended her worn-out gown with rags of calico, which tore away at the
slightest movement. The people to whom she owed money made "scenes,"
and allowed her no rest; she met them in the street, she met them again
on the stairs. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a settled pain
at the top of her left shoulder-blade, while she coughed frequently.
She deeply hated Father Madeleine, and sewed for seventeen hours a day;
but a speculator hired all the female prisoners, and reduced the prices
of the free workmen to nine sous a day. Seventeen hours' work for nine
sous! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever, and the broker, who
had got back nearly all her furniture, incessantly said to her, "When
are you going to pay me, you cheat?" What did they want of her, good
Heavens! She felt herself tracked, and something of the wild beast was
aroused in her. About the same time Thénardier wrote to her, that he
had decidedly waited too patiently, and that unless he received one
hundred francs at once, he would turn poor Cosette, who had scarce
recovered, out of doors into the cold, and she must do what she could
or die. "One hundred francs!" Fantine thought; "but where is the trade
in which I can earn one hundred sous a day? Well! I will sell all that
is left!"
And the unfortunate girl went on the streets.
CHAPTER XL
CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT.
What is this story of Fantine? It is society buying a slave.
Of whom? Of misery, of hunger, of cold, of loneliness, of desertion,
of destitution. Cursed bargain! A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery
offers its wares, and society accepts.
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not
yet pervade it. They say that slavery has disappeared from European
civilization. That's a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs now only
on woman, and its name is prostitution.
It weighs on woman; that is, on grace, on helplessness, on beauty, on
motherhood. This is not one of the least reproaches upon man.
At the point which we have reached in this painful drama, there is
nothing left in Fantine of her former self. She became marble when
she became mud. Whoever touches her is chilled. She is handed along,
she submits to you, but she forgets your presence. She is the type of
dishonor and rigidity. Life and social order have said to her their
last word. Everything that can happen to her, has already happened. She
has felt all, borne all, endured all, suffered all, lost all, wept for
all. She is resigned with a resignation which is as like indifference
as death is like sleep. She shuns nothing now. She fears nothing now.
Let the whole sky fall on her, let the whole ocean pass over her! What
does she care? She is a sponge soaked full.
At least she thinks so; but it is never safe to think that you have
drained the cup of misfortune, or that you have reached the end of
anything.
Alas! what are all these destinies driven along thus helter-skelter?
Where are they going? Why are they what they are?
He who knows this sees the whole shadow. He is one alone. His name is
God.
CHAPTER XII.
M. BAMATABOIS' IDLENESS.
There is in all small towns, and there was at M---- in particular, a
class of young men, who squander fifteen hundred francs a year in the
provinces with the same air as those of the same set in Paris devour
two hundred thousand. They are beings of the great neutral species;
geldings, parasites, nobodies, who possess a little land, a little
folly, and a little wit, who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and
believe themselves gentlemen in a pot-house. They talk about my fields,
my woods, my peasants, horses, the actresses, to prove themselves
men of taste; quarrel with the officers, to prove themselves men of
war; shoot, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play at billiards,
watch the travellers get out of the stage-coach, live at the café,
dine at the inn, have a dog that gnaws bones under the table, and a
mistress who places the dishes upon it; haggle over a son, exaggerate
the fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots,
copy London through Paris, and Paris through Pont-à-Mousson; grow
stupidly old, do not work, are of no use, and do no great harm. Had M.
Félix Tholomyès remained in his province and not seen Paris, he would
have been one of them. If they were richer, people would say they are
dandies; if poorer, they are loafers; but they are simply men without
occupation. Among them there are bores and bored, dreamers, and a few
scamps.
At that day, a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a large cravat,
a watch and seals, three waist-coats over one another, blue and red
inside, a short-waisted olive-colored coat, with a swallow tail, and a
double row of silver buttons, sewn on close together, and ascending to
the shoulders, and trousers of a lighter olive, adorned on the seams
with an undetermined but always uneven number of ribs, varying from one
to eleven, a limit which was never exceeded. Add to this, slipper-boots
with iron-capped heels, a tall, narrow-brimmed hat, hair in a tuft,
an enormous cane, and a conversation improved by Potier's puns; over
and above all these were spurs and moustachios, for at that period
moustachios indicated the civilian, and spurs the pedestrian. The
provincial dandy wore longer spurs and more ferocious moustachios. It
was the period of the struggle of the South American Republics against
the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats were
Royalist, and called Morillos, while the Liberals wore broad brims,
which were called Bolivars.
Eight or ten months after the events we have described in the previous
chapter, toward the beginning of January, and on a night when snow had
fallen, one of these dandies--a man of "right sentiments," for he wore
a Morillo, and was also warmly wrapped up in one of the large Spanish
cloaks which at that time completed the fashionable costume in cold
weather--was amusing himself by annoying a creature who was prowling
about in a low-neck balldress, and with flowers in her hair, before
the window of the officers' café. This dandy was smoking, as that was
a decided mark of fashion. Each time this woman passed him, he made
some remark to her, which he fancied witty and amusing, as: "How ugly
you are!--Why don't you go to kennel?--You have no teeth," etc., etc.
This gentleman's name was Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a sad-dressed
phantom walking backwards and forwards in the snow, made him no answer,
did not even look at him, but still continued silently and with a
gloomy regularity her walk, which, every few minutes, brought her
under his sarcasms, like the condemned soldier running the gauntlet.
The slight effect produced doubtless annoyed the idler, for taking
advantage of her back being turned, he crept up behind her, stooped to
pick up a handful of snow, and suddenly plunged it between her bare
shoulders. The girl uttered a yell, turned, leaped like a panther
on the man, and dug her nails into his face with the most frightful
language that could fall from a guard-room into the gutter. These
insults, vomited by a voice rendered hoarse by brandy, hideously issued
from a mouth in which the two front teeth were really missing. It was
Fantine.
At the noise, the officers left the café in a throng, the passers-by
stopped, and a laughing, yelling, applauding circle was made round
these two beings, in whom it was difficult to recognize a man and a
woman,--the man struggling, his hat on the ground, the woman striking
with feet and fists, bareheaded, yelling, without teeth or hair, livid
with passion, and horrible. All at once a tall man quickly broke
through the crowd, seized the woman's satin dress, which was covered
with mud, and said: "Follow me." The woman raised her hand, and her
passionate voice suddenly died out. Her eyes were glassy, she grew pale
instead of being livid, and trembled with fear. She had recognized
Javert. The dandy profited by this incident to make his escape.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE POLICE OFFICE.
Javert broke through the circle and began walking with long
strides toward the police office, which is at the other end of the
market-place, dragging the wretched girl after him. She allowed him to
do so mechanically, and neither he nor she said a word. The crowd of
spectators, in a paroxysm of delight, followed them with coarse jokes,
for supreme misery is an occasion for obscenities. On reaching the
police office, which was a low room, heated by a stove, and guarded by
a sentry, and having a barred glass door opening on the street, Javert
walked in with Fantine, and shut the door after him, to the great
disappointment of the curious, who stood on tip-toe, and stretched out
their necks in front of the dirty window trying to see. Curiosity is
gluttony, and seeing is devouring.
On entering, Fantine crouched down motionless in a corner like a
frightened dog. The sergeant on duty brought in a candle. Javert sat
down at a table, took a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and
began writing. Women of this class are by the French laws left entirely
at the discretion of the police: they do what they like with them,
punish them as they think proper, and confiscate the two sad things
which they call their trade and their liberty. Javert was stoical:
his grave face displayed no emotion, and yet he was seriously and
deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments in which he exercised
without control, but with all the scruples of a strict conscience, his
formidable discretionary power. At this instant he felt that his high
stool was a tribunal, and himself the judge. He tried and he condemned:
he summoned all the ideas he had in his mind round the great thing he
was doing. The more he examined the girl's deed, the more outraged
he felt: for it was evident that he had just seen a crime committed.
He had seen in the street, society, represented by a householder
and elector, insulted and attacked by a creature beyond the pale of
everything. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen, and he, Javert, had
witnessed it. He wrote on silently. When he had finished, he affixed
his signature, folded up the paper, and said to the sergeant as he
handed it to him: "Take these men and lead this girl to prison." Then
he turned to Fantine, "You will have six months for it."
The wretched girl started.
"Six months, six months' imprisonment!" she cried; "six months! and
only earn seven sous a day! Why, what will become of Cosette, my child,
my child! Why, I owe more than one hundred francs to Thénardier, M.
Inspector; do you know that?"
She dragged herself across the floor, dirtied by the muddy boots of all
these men, without rising, with clasped hands and taking long strides
with her knees.
"Monsieur Javert," she said, "I ask for mercy. I assure you that I was
not in the wrong; if you had seen the beginning, you would say so; I
swear by our Saviour that I was not to blame. That gentleman, who was
a stranger to me, put snow down my back. Had he any right to do that
when I was passing gently, and doing nobody a harm? It sent me wild,
for you must know I am not very well, and besides he had been abusing
me--"You are ugly, you have no teeth." I am well aware that I have lost
my teeth. I did nothing, and said to myself, "This gentleman is amusing
himself." I was civil to him, and said nothing, and it was at this
moment he put the snow down my back. My good M. Javert, is there no one
who saw it to tell you that this is the truth? I was, perhaps, wrong
to get into a passion, but at the moment, as you are aware, people are
not masters of themselves, and I am quick-tempered. And then, something
so cold put down your back, at a moment when you are least expecting
it! It was; wrong to destroy the gentleman's hat, but why has he gone
away? I would ask his pardon. Oh! I would willingly do so. Let me off
this time. M. Javert, perhaps you do not know that in prison you can
only earn seven sous a day; it is not the fault of Government, but you
only earn seven sous; and just fancy! I have one hundred francs to pay,
or my child will be turned into the street. Oh! I cannot have her with
me, for my mode of life is so bad! Oh, my Cosette, oh, my little angel,
what ever will become of you, poor darling! I must tell you that the
Thénardiers are inn-keepers, peasants, and unreasonable; they insist
on having their money. Oh, do not send me to prison! Look you, the
little thing will be turned into the streets in the middle of winter
to go where she likes, and you must take pity on that, my kind M.
Javert. If she were older she could earn her living, but at her age it
is impossible. I am not a bad woman at heart, it is not cowardice and
gluttony that have made me what I am. If I drink brandy, it is through
wretchedness; I do not like it, but it makes me reckless. In happier
times you need only have looked into my chest of drawers, and you would
have seen that I was not a disorderly woman, for I had linen, plenty of
linen. Take pity on me, M. Javert!"
She spoke thus, crushed, shaken by sobs, blinded by tears, wringing her
hands, interrupted by a sharp dry cough, and stammering softly, with
death imprinted on her voice. Great sorrow is a divine and terrible
ray which transfigures the wretched, and at this moment Fantine became
lovely again. From time to time she stopped, and tenderly kissed
the skirt of the policeman's coat. She would have melted a heart of
granite,--but a wooden heart cannot be moved.
"Well," said Javert, "I have listened to you. Have you said all? Be off
now; you have six months. The Eternal Father in person could not alter
it."
On hearing this solemn phrase, she understood that sentence was passed;
she fell all of a heap, murmuring, "Mercy!" But Javert turned his
back, and the soldiers seized her arm. Some minutes previously a man
had entered unnoticed; he had closed the door, leaned against it, and
heard Fantine's desperate entreaties. At the moment when the soldiers
laid hold of the unhappy girl, who would not rise, he emerged from the
gloom, and said,--
"Wait a minute, if you please."
Javert raised his eyes, and recognized M. Madeleine; he took off his
hat, and bowed with a sort of vexed awkwardness.
"I beg your pardon, M. le Maire--"
The words "M. le Maire" produced a strange effect on Fantine; she
sprang up like a spectre emerging from the ground, thrust back the
soldiers, walked straight up to M. Madeleine before she could be
prevented, and, looking at him wildly, she exclaimed,--
"So you are the Mayor?"
Then she burst into a laugh, and spat in his face. M. Madeleine wiped
his face, and said,--
"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."
Javert felt for a moment as if he were going mad; he experienced at
this instant the most violent emotions he had ever felt in his life,
following each other in rapid succession, and almost mingled. To see a
girl of the town spit in the Mayor's face was so monstrous a thing that
he would have regarded it as sacrilege even to believe it possible. On
the other side, he confusedly made a hideous approximation in his mind
between what this woman was and what this Mayor might be, and then he
saw with horror something perfectly simple in this prodigious assault.
But when he saw this Mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face, and
say, "Set this woman at liberty," he had a bedazzlement of stupor, so
to speak; thought and language failed him equally, for he had passed
the limits of possible amazement. He remained dumb. His sentence had
produced an equally strange effect on Fantine; she raised her bare arm,
and clung to the chimney-key of the stove like a tottering person.
She looked around, and began saying in a low voice, as if speaking to
herself,--
"At liberty! I am to be let go! I shall not be sent to prison for six
months! Who said that? It is impossible that any one said it. I must
have heard badly; it cannot be that monster of a Mayor. Was it you, my
kind M. Javert, who said that I was to be set at liberty? Well, I will
tell you all about it, and you will let me go. That monster of a Mayor,
that old villain of a Mayor, is the cause of it all. Just imagine, M.
Javert, he discharged me on account of a parcel of sluts gossiping
in the shop. Was not that horrible,--to discharge a poor girl who is
doing her work fairly! After that I did not earn enough, and all this
misfortune came. In the first place, there is an improvement which the
police gentry ought to make, and that is to prevent persons in prison
injuring poor people. I will explain this to you; you earn twelve sous
for making a shirt, but it falls to seven, and then you can no longer
live, and are obliged to do what you can. As I had my little Cosette
I was forced to become a bad woman. You can now understand how it was
that beggar of a Mayor who did all the mischief. My present offence is
that I trampled on the gentleman's hat before the officers' café, but
he had ruined my dress with snow; and our sort have only one silk dress
for night. Indeed, M. Javert, I never did any harm purposely, and I see
everywhere much worse women than myself who are much more fortunate.
Oh, Monsieur Javert, you said that I was to be set at liberty, did you
not? Make inquiries, speak to my landlord; I pay my rent now, and you
will hear that I am honest. Oh, good gracious! I ask your pardon, but
I have touched the damper of the stove without noticing it, and made a
smoke."
M. Madeleine listened to her with deep attention: while she was
talking, he took out his purse, but as he found it empty on opening it,
he returned it to his pocket. He now said to Fantine,--
"How much did you say that you owed?"
Fantine, who was looking at Javert, turned round to him,--
"Am I speaking to you?"
Then she said to the soldiers,--
"Tell me, men, did you see how I spat in his face? Ah, you old villain
of a Mayor! you have come here to frighten me, but I am not afraid of
you; I am only afraid of M. Javert, my kind Monsieur Javert."
While saying this, she turned again to the Inspector,--
"After all, people should be just. I can understand that you are a
just man, M. Javert; in fact, it is quite simple; a man who played at
putting snow down a woman's back, made the officers laugh; they must
have some amusement, and we girls are sent into the world for them to
make fun of. And then you came up: you are compelled to restore order;
you remove the woman who was in the wrong, but, on reflection, as you
are kind-hearted, you order me to be set at liberty, for the sake of my
little girl, for six months' imprisonment would prevent my supporting
her. Only don't come here again, fagot! Oh, I will not come here again,
M. Javert; they can do what they like to me in future, and I will not
stir. Still I cried out to-night because it hurt me; I did not at all
expect that gentleman's snow; and then besides, as I told you; I am not
very well,--I cough, I have something like a ball in my stomach which
burns, and the doctor says: "Take care of yourself." Here, feel, give
me your hand; do not be frightened."
She no longer cried, her voice was caressing; she laid Javert's large
coarse hand on her white, delicate throat, and looked up at him
smilingly. All at once she hurriedly repaired the disorder in her
clothes, let the folds of her dress fall, which had been almost dragged
up to her knee, and walked toward the door, saying to the soldiers with
a friendly nod,--
"My lads, M. Javert says I may go, so I will be off."
She laid her hand on the hasp; one step further, and she would be in
the street. Up to this moment Javert had stood motionless, with his
eyes fixed on the ground, appearing in the centre of this scene like
a statue waiting to be put up in its proper place. The sound of the
hasp aroused him: he raised his head with an expression of sovereign
authority,--an expression the more frightful, the lower the man in
power stands; it is ferocity in the wild beast, atrocity in the nobody.
"Sergeant," he shouted, "do you not see that the wench is bolting? Who
told you to let her go?"
"I did," said Madeleine.
Fantine, at the sound of Javert's voice, trembled, and let go the hasp,
as a detected thief lets fall the stolen article. At Madeleine's voice
she turned, and from this moment, without uttering a word, without even
daring to breathe freely, her eye wandered from Madeleine to Javert,
and from Javert to Madeleine, according as each spoke. It was evident
that Javert must have been "lifted off the hinges," as people say, when
he ventured to address the sergeant as he had done, after the Mayor's
request that Fantine should be set at liberty. Had he gone so far as to
forget the Mayor's presence? Did he eventually declare to himself that
it was impossible for "an authority" to have given such an order, and
that the Mayor must certainly have said one thing for another without
meaning it? Or was it that, in the presence of all the enormities
he had witnessed during the last two hours, he said to himself that
he must have recourse to a supreme resolution, that the little must
become great, the detective be transformed into the magistrate, and
that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government,
and society were personified in him, Javert? However this may be,
when M. Madeleine said "I did," the Inspector of Police could be seen
to turn to the Mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, with a desperate
glance, and an imperceptible tremor all over him, and--extraordinary
circumstance!--to say to him, with downcast eye, but in a fierce
voice,--
"Monsieur le Maire, that cannot be."
"Why so?"
"This creature has insulted a gentleman."
"Inspector Javert," M. Madeleine replied with a conciliating and
calm accent, "listen to me. You are an honest man, and I shall have
no difficulty in coming to an explanation with you. The truth is as
follows: I was crossing the market-place at the time you were leading
this girl away; a crowd was still assembled; I inquired, and know all.
The man was in the wrong, and, in common justice, ought to have been
arrested instead of her."
Javert objected,--
"The wretched creature has just insulted M. le Maire."
"That concerns myself," M. Madeleine said; "my insult is, perhaps, my
own, and I can do what I like with it."
"I ask your pardon, sir; the insult does not belong to you, but to the
Judicial Court."
"Inspector Javert," Madeleine replied, "conscience is the highest of
all courts. I have heard the woman, and know what I am doing."
"And I, Monsieur le Maire, do not know what I am seeing."
"In that case, be content with obeying."
"I obey my duty; my duty orders that this woman should go to prison for
six months."
M. Madeleine answered gently,--
"Listen to this carefully; she will not go for a single day."
On hearing these decided words, Javert ventured to look fixedly at the
Mayor, and said to him, though still with a respectful accent,--
"I bitterly regret being compelled to resist you. Monsieur le Maire, it
is the first time in my life, but you will deign to let me observe that
I am within the limits of my authority. As you wish it, sir, I will
confine myself to the affair with the gentleman. I was present; this
girl attacked M. Bamatabois, who is an elector and owner of that fine
three-storied house, built of hewn stone, which forms the corner of the
Esplanade. Well, there are things in this world! However this may be,
M. le Maire, this is a matter of the street police which concerns me,
and I intend to punish the woman Fantine."
M. Madeleine upon this folded his arms, and said in a stern voice,
which no one in the town had ever heard before,--
"The affair to which you allude belongs to the Borough police; and
by the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the
Criminal Code, I try it. I order that this woman be set at liberty."
Javert tried a final effort.
"But, Monsieur le Maire--"
"I call your attention to article eighty-one of the law of Dec. 13th,
1799, upon arbitrary detention."
"Permit me, sir--"
"Not a word!"
"Still--"
"Leave the room!" said M. Madeleine.
Javert received the blow right in his chest like a Russian soldier; he
bowed down to the ground to the Mayor, and went out. Fantine stood up
against the door, and watched him pass by her in stupor. She too was
suffering from a strange perturbation: for she had seen herself, so
to speak, contended for by two opposite powers. She had seen two men
struggling in her presence, who held in their hands her liberty, her
life, her soul, her child. One of these men dragged her towards the
gloom, the other restored her to the light. In this struggle, which she
gazed at through the exaggeration of terror, the two men seemed to her
giants,--one spoke like a demon, the other like her good angel. The
angel had vanquished the demon, and the thing which made her shudder
from head to foot was that this angel, this liberator, was the very
man whom she abhorred, the Mayor whom she had so long regarded as the
cause of all her woes; and at the very moment when she had insulted
him in such a hideous way, he saved her. Could she be mistaken? Must
she change her whole soul? She did not know, but she trembled; she
listened wildly, she looked on with terror, and at every word that M.
Madeleine said, she felt the darkness of hatred fade away in her heart,
and something glowing and ineffable spring up in its place, which was
composed of joy, confidence, and love. When Javert had left the room,
M. Madeleine turned to her, and said in a slow voice, like a serious
man who is making an effort to restrain his tears,--
"I have heard your story. I knew nothing about what you have said, but
I believe, I feel, that it is true. I was even ignorant that you had
left the factory, but why did you not apply to me? This is what I will
do for you; I will pay your debts and send for your child, or you can
go to it. You can live here, in Paris, or wherever you please, and I
will provide for your child and yourself. I will give you all the money
you require, and you will become respectable again in becoming happy;
and I will say more than that: if all be as you say, and I do not doubt
it, you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God!
Poor woman!"
This was more than poor Fantine could endure. To have her Cosette! to
leave this infamous life! to live free, rich, happy, and respectable
with Cosette! to see all these realities of Paradise suddenly burst
into flower, in the midst of her wretchedness! She looked as if stunned
at the person who was speaking, and could only sob two or three times:
"Oh, oh, oh!" Her legs gave way, she fell on her knees before M.
Madeleine, and before he could prevent it, he felt her seize his hand
and press her lips to it.
Then she fainted.
BOOK VI.
JAVERT.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMMENCEMENT OF REPOSE.
M. Madeleine had Fantine conveyed to the infirmary he had established
in his own house, and intrusted her to the sisters, who put her to bed.
A violent fever had broken out; she spent a part of the night in raving
and talking aloud, but at length fell asleep. On the morrow, at about
mid-day, Fantine woke, and hearing a breathing close to her bed, she
drew the curtain aside, and noticed M. Madeleine gazing at something
above her head. His glance was full of pity and agony, and supplicated:
she followed its direction, and saw that it was fixed on a crucifix
nailed to the wall. M. Madeleine was now transfigured in Fantine's
eyes, and seemed to her surrounded by light. He was absorbed in a
species of prayer, and she looked at him for some time without daring
to interrupt him, but at length said, timidly,--
"What are you doing there?"
M. Madeleine had been standing at this spot for an hour, waiting till
Fantine should wake. He took her hand, felt her pulse, and answered,--
"How are you?"
"Very comfortable; I have slept, and fancy I am better. It will be
nothing."
He continued answering the question she had asked him first, and as if
he had only just heard it,--
"I was praying to the martyr up there;" and he mentally added, "for the
martyr down here."
M. Madeleine had spent the night and morning in making inquiries, and
had learned everything; he knew all the poignant details of Fantine's
history. He continued,--
"You have suffered deeply, poor mother. Oh! do not complain, for you
have at present the dowry of the elect: it is in this way that human
beings become angels. It is not their fault; they do not know what to
do otherwise. The hell you have now left is the ante-room to heaven,
and you were obliged to begin with that."
He breathed a deep sigh, but she smiled upon him with the sublime smile
in which two teeth were wanting. Javert had written a letter during the
past night, and posted it himself the next morning. It was for Paris,
and the address was: "Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary to the Prefect of
Police." As a rumor had spread about the affair in the police office,
the lady-manager of the post, and some other persons who saw the letter
before it was sent off and recognized Javert's handwriting, supposed
that he was sending in his resignation. M. Madeleine hastened to write
to the Thénardiers. Fantine owed them over 120 francs, and he sent
them 300, bidding them pay themselves out of the amount, and bring
the child at once to M----, where a sick mother was awaiting it. This
dazzled Thénardier. "Hang it all!" he said to his wife, "we must not
let the brat go, for the lark will become a milch cow for us. I see it
all; some fellow has fallen in love with the mother." He replied by
sending a bill for 500 and odd francs very well drawn up. In this bill
two undeniable amounts figure, one from a physician, the other from
an apothecary, who had attended Éponine and Azelma in a long illness.
Cosette, as we said, had not been ill, and hence it was merely a little
substitution of names. At the bottom of the bill Thénardier gave credit
for 300 francs received on account. M. Madeleine at once sent 300
francs more, and wrote, "Make haste and bring Cosette."
"Christi!" said Thénardier, "we must not let the child go."
In the mean while Fantine did not recover, and still remained in the
infirmary. The sisters had at first received and nursed "this girl"
with some repugnance; any one who has seen the bas-relief at Rheims
will remember the pouting lower lip of the wise virgins looking at
the foolish virgins. This ancient contempt of Vestals for Ambubaïæ is
one of the deepest instincts of the feminine dignity, and the sisters
had experienced it, with the increased dislike which religion adds.
But in a few days Fantine disarmed them; she had all sorts of humble
and gentle words, and the mother within her was touching. One day the
sisters heard her say in the paroxysm of fever, "I have been a sinner,
but when I have my child by my side, that will show that God has
forgiven me. While I was living badly, I should not have liked to have
Cosette with me, for I could not have endured her sad and astonished
eyes. And yet it was for her sake that I did wrong, and for that reason
God pardons me. I shall feel the blessing of Heaven when Cosette is
here; I shall look at her, and it will do me good to see the innocent
creature. She knows nothing, as she is an angel. My sisters, at her age
the wings have not yet dropped off."
M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and every time she asked him,
"Shall I see my Cosette soon?"
He would answer,--
"To-morrow, perhaps; she may arrive at any moment, for I am expecting
her."
And the mother's pale face would grow radiant.
"Oh!" she said, "how happy I shall be!"
We have said that she did not improve; on the contrary, her condition
seemed to grow worse week by week. The handful of snow placed between
her naked shoulder-blades produced a sudden check of perspiration,
which caused the illness that had smouldered in her for years suddenly
to break out. Larmier's fine method for studying and healing diseases
of the lungs was just beginning to be employed; the physician placed
the stethoscope to Fantine's chest, and shook his head. M. Madeleine
said to him,--
"Well?"
"Has she not a child that she wishes to see?" asked the doctor.
"Yes."
"Well, make haste to send for her."
Madeleine gave a start, and Fantine asked him,--
"What did the doctor say to you?"
M. Madeleine forced a smile.
"He said that your child must come at once, for that would cure you."
"Oh," she replied, "he is right; but what do those Thénardiers mean by
keeping my Cosette? Oh, she will come, and then I shall see happiness
close to me."
Thénardier, however, would not let the child go, and alleged a hundred
poor excuses. Cosette was ailing, and it would be dangerous for her to
travel in winter; and then there were some small debts still to pay,
which he was collecting, &c.
"I will send some one to fetch Cosette," said Father Madeleine; "if
necessary, I will go myself."
He wrote to Fantine's dictation the following letter, which she signed.
"M. THÉNARDIER,--" You will hand over Cosette to the bearer, who will
pay up all little matters. "Yours, FANTINE."
About this time a great incident happened. However cleverly we may have
carved the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein
of destiny ever reappears in it.
CHAPTER II.
HOW "JEAN" MAY BECOME "CHAMP."
One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, engaged in settling some
pressing mayoralty matters, in case he decided on the journey to
Montfermeil, when he was told that Inspector Javert wished to speak
with him. On hearing this name pronounced, M. Madeleine could not
refrain from a disagreeable impression. Since the guard-room adventure
Javert had avoided him more than ever, and M. Madeleine had not seen
him again.
"Show him in," he said.
Javert entered. M. Madeleine remained at his table near the fire-place
with a pen in his hand and his eyes fixed on a bundle of papers,
which he ran through and annotated. He did not put himself out of
the way for Javert, for he could not refrain from thinking of poor
Fantine. Javert bowed respectfully to the Mayor, who had his back
turned to him; the Mayor did not look at him, but continued to make
his notes. Javert walked a little way into the study, and then halted
without a word. A physiognomist familiar with Javert's nature, and
who had studied for any length of time this savage in the service of
civilization,--this strange composite of the Roman, the Spartan, the
monk, and the corporal, this spy incapable of falsehood, this virgin
detective,--a physiognomist aware of his secret and old aversion to M.
Madeleine, and his conflict with him about Fantine, and who regarded
Javert at this moment, would have asked himself, What has happened? It
was evident to any one who knew this upright, clear, sincere, honest,
austere, and ferocious conscience, that Javert had just emerged from
some great internal struggle. Javert had nothing in his mind which
he did not also have in his face, and, like all violent men, he was
subject to sudden changes. Never had his face been stranger or more
surprising. On entering, he bowed to M. Madeleine with a look in which
there was neither rancor, anger, nor suspicion; he had halted a few
yards behind the Mayor's chair, and was now standing there in an almost
military attitude, with the simple cold rudeness of a man who has never
been gentle and has ever been patient. He was waiting, without saying
a word, without making a movement, in a true humility and tranquil
resignation, till the Mayor might think proper to turn round,--calm,
serious, hat in hand, and with an expression which was half-way between
the private before his officer and the culprit before the judge. All
the feelings as well as all the resolutions he might be supposed to
possess had disappeared: there was nothing but a gloomy sadness on
this face, which was impenetrable and simple as granite. His whole
person displayed humiliation and firmness, and a sort of courageous
despondency. At length the Mayor laid down his pen and half turned
round.
"Well, what is the matter, Javert?"
Javert remained silent for a moment, as if reflecting, and then raised
his voice with a sad solemnity, which, however, did not exclude
simplicity.
"A culpable deed has been committed, sir."
"What deed?"
"An inferior agent of authority has failed in his respect to a
magistrate in the gravest matter. I have come, as is my duty, to bring
the fact to your knowledge."
"Who is this agent?" M. Madeleine asked
"Myself."
"And who is the magistrate who has cause to complain of the agent?"
"You, Monsieur le Maire."
M. Madeleine sat up, and Javert continued with a stern air and still
looking down,--
"Monsieur le Maire, I have come to request that you will procure my
dismissal from the service."
M. Madeleine in his stupefaction opened his mouth, but Javert
interrupted him,--
"You will say that I could have sent in my resignation, but that is not
enough. Such a course is honorable, but I have done wrong, and deserve
punishment. I must be dismissed."
And after a pause he added,--
"Monsieur le Maire, you were severe to me the other day unjustly, be so
to-day justly."
"What is the meaning of all this nonsense?" M. Madeleine exclaimed.
"What is the culpable act you have committed? What have you done to me?
You accuse yourself, you wish to be removed--"
"Dismissed," said Javert.
"Very good, dismissed. I do not understand it."
"You shall do so, sir."
Javert heaved a deep sigh, and continued still coldly and sadly,--
"Six weeks ago, M. le Maire, after the scene about that girl, I was
furious, and denounced you."
"Denounced me?"
"To the Prefect of Police at Paris."
M. Madeleine, who did not laugh much oftener than Javert, burst into a
laugh.
"As a Mayor who had encroached on the police?"
"As an ex-galley slave."
The Mayor turned livid, but Javert, who had not raised his eyes,
continued,--
"I thought you were so, and have had these notions for a long time. A
resemblance, information you sought at Faverolles, the strength of your
loins, the adventures with old Fauchelevent, your skill in firing, your
leg which halts a little--and so on. It was very absurd, but I took you
for a man of the name of Jean Valjean."
"What name did you say?"
"Jean Valjean; he is a convict I saw twenty years ago when I was
assistant keeper at the Toulon bagne. On leaving the galley, this
Valjean, as it appears, robbed a bishop, and then committed a highway
robbery on a little Savoyard. For eight years he has been out of the
way and could not be found, and I imagined--in a word, I did as I said.
Passion decided me, and I denounced you to the Prefect."
M. Madeleine, who had taken up the charge-book again, said with a
careless accent,--
"And what was the answer you received?"
"That I was mad!"
"Well?"
"They were right."
"It is fortunate that you allow it."
"I must do so, for the real Jean Valjean has been found."
The book M. Madeleine was holding fell from his grasp, he raised his
head, looked searchingly at Javert, said with an indescribable accent,--
"Ah!"
Javert continued,--
"The facts are these, M. le Maire. It seems that there was over
at Ailly le Haut Clocher, an old fellow who was called Father
Champmathieu. He was very wretched, and no attention was paid to him,
for no one knows how such people live. This autumn Father Champmathieu
was arrested for stealing cider apples: there was a robbery, a wall
climbed over, and branches broken. This Champmathieu was arrested with
the branch still in his hand, and was locked up. Up to this point it is
only a matter for a police court, but here Providence interposes. As
the lock-up was under repair, the magistrates ordered that Champmathieu
should be taken to the departmental prison at Arras. In this prison
there is an ex-convict of the name of Brevet, under imprisonment for
some offence, and he has been made room-turnkey for his good behavior.
Champmathieu no sooner arrived than Brevet cries out, "Why, I know
this man: he is an ex-convict. Look at me, old fellow: you are Jean
Valjean." "What do you mean?" says Champmathieu, affecting surprise.
"Don't play the humbug with me," says Brevet; "you are Jean Valjean.
You were at the Toulon bagne twenty years ago, and I was there too."
Champmathieu denied identity, and, as you may suppose, the affair was
thoroughly investigated, with the following result. This Champmathieu
about thirty years ago was a journeyman wood-cutter at several places,
especially at Faverolles, where his trail is lost. A long time after
he is found again in Auvergne, and then in Paris, where he says he was
a blacksmith, and had a daughter a washer-woman,--though there is no
evidence of this,--and lastly, he turned up in these parts. Now, before
being sent to the galleys, what was Jean Valjean? A wood-cutter. Where?
At Faverolles. And here is another fact: this Valjean's Christian name
was Jean, and his mother's family name Mathieu. What is more natural
to suppose than that on leaving the bagne he assumed his mother's name
as a disguise, and called himself Jean Mathieu? He went to Auvergne,
where Jean is pronounced Chan, and thus he was transformed into
Champmathieu. You are following me, I suppose? Inquiries have been made
at Faverolles, but Jean Valjean's family is no longer there, and no one
knows where it has gone. As you are aware, in those places families
frequently disappear in such a way; these people, if they are not mud,
are dust. And then, again, as the beginning of this story dates back
thirty years, there is no one in Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean: and
beside Brevet, there are only two convicts who remember him. These
two were brought from the bagne and confronted with the pretended
Champmathieu, and they did not hesitate for a moment. The same age,--
fifty-four,--the same height, the same look, the same man, in short. It
was at this very moment that I sent my denunciation to Paris, and the
answer I received was that I had lost my senses, for Jean Valjean was
in the hands of justice at Arras. You can conceive that this surprised
me, as I fancied that I held my Jean Valjean here. I wrote to the
magistrates, who sent for me, and Champmathieu was brought in."
"Well?" M. Madeleine interrupted him.
Javert answered with his incorruptible and sad face,--
"Monsieur le Maire, truth is truth: I am sorry, but that man is Jean
Valjean: I recognized him too."
M. Madeleine said in a very low voice,--
"Are you sure?"
Javert burst into that sorrowful laugh which escapes from a profound
conviction,--
"Oh! certain."
He stood for a moment pensive, mechanically taking pinches of saw-dust
out of the sprinkler in the inkstand, and added,--
"And now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I cannot understand
how I could have believed anything else. I ask your pardon, M. le
Maire."
While addressing these supplicating words to the person who six weeks
previously had humiliated him so deeply and bidden him leave the room,
this haughty man was unconsciously full of dignity and simplicity. M.
Madeleine merely answered his entreaty with the hurried question,--
"And what does this man say?"
"Well, Monsieur le Maire, it is an ugly business, for if he is Jean
Valjean, he is an escaped convict. Scaling a wall, breaking a branch,
and stealing apples is a peccadillo with a child, an offence in a man,
but a crime in a convict. It is no longer a matter for the police
courts, but for the assizes; it is no longer imprisonment for a few
days, but the galleys for life. And there is the matter with the
Savoyard, which, I trust, will be brought up again. There is enough to
settle a man, is there not? But Jean Valjean is artful, and in that I
recognize him too. Any other man would find it warm; he would struggle,
cry out, refuse to be Jean Valjean, and so on. He pretends though not
to understand, and says, "I am Champmathieu, and I shall stick to it."
He has a look of amazement, and plays the brute-beast, which is better.
Oh! he is a clever scoundrel! But no matter, the proofs are ready to
hand; he has been recognized by four persons, and the old scoundrel
will be found guilty. He is to be tried at Arras assizes, and I have
been summoned as a witness."
M. Madeleine had turned round to his desk again, taken up his papers,
and was quietly turning over the leaves, and busily reading and writing
in turn. He now said to the Inspector,--
"Enough, Javert; after all, these details interest me but very
slightly; we are losing our time, and have a deal of work before us.
Javert, you will go at one to Mother Busaupied, who sells vegetables at
the corner of the Rue St. Saulve, and tell her to take out a summons
against Pierre the carter; he is a brutal fellow, who almost drove over
this woman and her child, and he must be punished. You will then go to
M. Charcillay in the Rue Champigny; he complains that there is a gutter
next door which leaks, and is shaking the foundation of his house. But
I am giving you a deal to do, and I think you said you were going away.
Did you not state you were going to Arras on this matter in a week or
ten days?"
"Sooner than that, sir."
"On what day, then?"
"I fancied I told you that the trial comes off to-morrow, and that I
should start by to-night's coach."
"And how long will the trial last?"
"A day at the most, and sentence will be passed to-morrow night at the
latest. But I shall not wait for that, but return so soon as I have
given my evidence."
"Very good," said M. Madeleine; and he dismissed Javert with a wave of
his hand. But he did not go.
"I beg your pardon, M. le Maire," he said.
"What's the matter now?" M. Madeleine asked.
"I have one thing to remind you of, sir."
"What is it?"
"That I must be discharged."
M. Madeleine rose.
"Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you; you exaggerate your
fault, and besides, it is another insult which concerns me. Javert, you
are worthy of rising, not of sinking, and I insist on your keeping your
situation."
Javert looked at M. Madeleine with his bright eyes, in which it seemed
as if his unenlightened but rigid and chaste conscience could be seen,
and he said quietly,--
"M. le Maire, I cannot allow it."
"I repeat," M. Madeleine replied, "that the affair concerns myself."
But Javert, only attending to his own thoughts, continued,--
"As for exaggerating, I am not doing so, for this is how I reason. I
suspected you unjustly; that is nothing: it is the duty of men like
myself to suspect, though there is an abuse in suspecting those above
us. But, without proofs, in a moment of passion and for the purpose of
revenge, I denounced you, a respectable man, a mayor and a magistrate;
this is serious, very serious,--I, an agent of the authority, insulted
that authority in your person. Had any of my subordinates done what
I have done, I should have declared him unworthy of the service and
discharged him. Stay, Monsieur le Maire, one word more. I have often
been severe in my life to others, for it was just, and I was doing my
duty, and if I were not severe to myself now, all the justice I have
done would become injustice. Ought I to spare myself more than others?
No. What! I have been only good to punish others and not myself? Why,
I should be a scoundrel, and the people who call me that rogue of a
Javert, would be in the right! M. le Maire, I do not wish you to treat
me with kindness, for your kindness caused me sufficient ill-blood when
dealt to others, and I want none for myself. The kindness that consists
in defending the street-walker against the gentleman, the police agent
against the Mayor, the lower classes against the higher, is what I call
bad kindness, and it is such kindness that disorganizes society. Good
Lord! it is easy enough to be good, but the difficulty is to be just.
Come! if you had been what I believed you, I should not have been kind
to you, as you would have seen. M. le Maire, I am bound to treat myself
as I would treat another man; when I repressed malefactors, when I was
severe with scamps, I often said to myself, "If you ever catch yourself
tripping, look out," I have tripped, I have committed a fault, and
all the worse for me. I have strong arms and will turn laborer. M. le
Maire, the good of the service requires an example. I simply demand the
discharge of Inspector Javert."
All this was said with a humble, proud, despairing, and convinced
accent, which gave a peculiar grandeur to this strangely honest man.
"We will see," said M. Madeleine, and he offered him his hand; but
Javert fell back, and said sternly,--
"Pardon me, sir, but that must not be; a mayor ought not to give his
hand to a spy."
He added between his teeth,--
"Yes, a spy; from the moment when I misused my authority, I have been
only a spy."
Then he bowed deeply and walked to the door. When he reached it he
turned round and said, with eyes still bent on the ground,--
"M. le Maire, I will continue on duty till my place is filled up."
He went out. M. Madeleine thoughtfully listened to his firm, sure step
as he walked along the paved passage.
BOOK VII
THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR.
CHAPTER I.
SISTER SIMPLICE.
The incidents we are about to record were only partially known at
M----, but the few which were known left such a memory in that town,
that it would be a serious gap in this book if we did not tell them in
their smallest details. In these details the reader will notice two or
three improbable circumstances, which we retain through respect for
truth. In the afternoon that followed Javert's visit, M. Madeleine went
to see Fantine as usual; but before going to her, he asked for Sister
Simplice. The two nuns who managed the infirmary, who were Lazarets,
like all sisters of charity, were known by the names of Sisters
Perpetua and Simplice. Sister Perpetua was an ordinary village girl, a
clumsy sister of charity, who had entered the service of Heaven just
as she would have taken a cook's place. This type is not rare, for the
monastic orders gladly accept this clumsy peasant clay, which can be
easily fashioned into a Capuchin friar or an Ursuline nun; and these
rusticities are employed in the heavy work of devotion. The transition
from a drover to a Carmelite is no hard task; the common substratum
of village and cloister ignorance is a ready-made preparation, and at
once places the countryman on a level with the monk. Widen the blouse a
little and you have a gown. Sister Perpetua was a strong nun belonging
to Marnies near Pantoise, who talked with a country accent, sang psalms
to match, sugared the _tisane_ according to the bigotry or hypocrisy of
the patient, was rough with the sick, and harsh with the dying, almost
throwing God in their faces, and storming their last moments with angry
prayer. Withal she was bold, honest, and red-faced.
Sister Simplice was pale, and looked like a wax taper by the side of
Sister Perpetua, who was a tallow candle in comparison. St. Vincent de
Paul has divinely described the sister of charity in those admirable
words in which so much liberty is blended with slavery: "They will have
no other convent but the hospital, no other cell but a hired room, no
chapel but the parish church, no cloister beyond the streets or the
hospital wards, no walls but obedience, no grating but the fear of
God, and no veil but modesty." Sister Simplice was the living ideal of
this: no one could have told her age, for she had never been young,
and seemed as if she would never grow old. She was a gentle, austere,
well-nurtured, cold person--we dare not say a woman--who had never told
a falsehood; she was so gentle that she appeared fragile, but she was
more solid than granite. She touched the wretched with her delicate and
pure fingers. There was, so to speak, silence in her language; she only
said what was necessary, and possessed an intonation of voice which
would at once have edified a confessional and delighted a drawing-room.
This delicacy harmonized with the rough gown, for it formed in this
rough contact a continual reminder of heaven. Let us dwell on one
detail; never to have told a falsehood, never to have said, for any
advantage or even indifferently, a thing which was not the truth, the
holy truth, was the characteristic feature of Sister Simplice. She was
almost celebrated in the congregation for this imperturbable veracity,
and the Abbé Suard alludes to Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf,
mute Massieu. However sincere and pure we may be, we have all the brand
of a little white lie on our candor, but she had not. Can there be
such a thing as a white lie, an innocent lie? Lying is the absolute of
evil. Lying a little is not possible; the man who lies tells the whole
lie; lying is the face of the fiend, and Satan has two names,--he is
called Satan and Lying. That is what she thought, and she practised as
she thought. The result was the whiteness to which we have alluded, a
whiteness which even covered with its radiance her lips and eyes, for
her smile was white, her glance was white. There was not a spider's web
nor a grain of dust on the window of this conscience; on entering the
obedience of St. Vincent de Paul she took the name of Simplice through
special choice. Simplice of Sicily, our readers will remember, is the
saint who sooner let her bosom be plucked out than say she was a native
of Segeste, as she was born at Syracuse, though the falsehood would
have saved her. Such a patron saint suited this soul.
Simplice on entering the order had two faults, of which she had
gradually corrected herself; she had a taste for dainties and was fond
of receiving letters. Now she never read anything but a Prayer-book in
large type and in Latin; though she did not understand the language,
she understood the book. This pious woman felt an affection for
Fantine, as she probably noticed the latent virtue in her, and nearly
entirely devoted herself to nursing her. M. Madeleine took Sister
Simplice on one side and recommended Fantine to her with a singular
accent, which the sister remembered afterwards. On leaving the sister
he went to Fantine. The patient daily awaited the appearance of M.
Madeleine, as if he brought her warmth and light; she said to the
sisters, "I only live when M. le Maire is here." This day she was very
feverish, and so soon as she saw M. Madeleine she asked him,--
"Where is Cosette?"
He replied with a smile, "She will be here soon."
M. Madeleine behaved to Fantine as usual, except that he remained
with her an hour instead of half an hour, to her great delight. He
pressed everybody not to allow the patient to want for anything, and
it was noticed at one moment that his face became very dark, but this
was explained when it was learned that the physician had bent down
to his ear and said, "She is rapidly sinking." Then he returned to
the Mayoralty, and the office clerk saw him attentively examining a
road-map of France which hung in his room, and write a few figures in
pencil on a piece of paper.
CHAPTER II
SCAUFFLAIRE'S PERSPICACITY.
From the Mayoralty M. Madeleine proceeded to the end of the town, to a
Fleming called Master Scaufflaer, gallicized into Scaufflaire, who let
out horses and gigs by the day. To reach his yard the nearest way was
through an unfrequented street, in which stood the house of the parish
priest. The Curé was said to be a worthy and respectable man, who gave
good advice. At the moment when M. Madeleine came in front of his house
there was only one person in the street, and he noticed the following
circumstances: M. le Maire, after passing the house, stopped for a
moment, then turned back and walked up to the Curé's door, which had
an iron knocker. He quickly seized the knocker and lifted it; then he
stopped again as if in deep thought, and, after a few seconds, instead
of knocking, he softly let the knocker fall back in its place and
continued his way with a haste which he had not displayed before.
M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home and engaged in mending a
set of harness.
"Master Scaufflaire", he inquired, "have you a good horse?"
"M. le Maire," the Fleming replied, "all my horses are good. What do
you mean by a good horse?"
"I mean a horse that can cover twenty leagues of ground in a day."
"Harnessed in a gig?"
"Yes."
"And how long will it rest after the journey?"
"It must be in a condition to start again the next morning if
necessary."
"To return the same distance?"
"Yes."
"Hang it all! and it is twenty leagues?"
M. Madeleine took from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled
the figures; they were "5, 6, 8 1/2."
"You see," he said, "total, nineteen and a half, or call them twenty
leagues."
"M. le Maire," the Fleming continued, "I can suit you. My little
white horse--you may have seen it pass sometimes--is an animal from
the Bas Boulonnais, and full of fire. They tried at first to make a
saddle-horse of it, but it reared and threw everybody that got on its
back. It was supposed to be vicious, and they did not know what to do
with it; I bought it and put it in a gig. That was just what it wanted;
it is as gentle as a maid and goes like the wind. But you must not
try to get on its back, for it has no notion of being a saddle-horse.
Everybody has his ambition, and it appears as if the horse had said to
itself,--Draw, yes; carry, no."
"And it will go the distance?"
"At a trot, and under eight hours, but on certain conditions."
"What are they?"
"In the first place, you will let it breathe for an hour half way; it
will feed, and you must be present while it is doing so, to prevent the
ostler stealing the oats, for I have noticed that at inns oats are more
frequently drunk by the stable-boys than eaten by the horses."
"I will be there."
"In the next place, is the gig for yourself, sir?"
"Yes."
"Do you know how to drive?"
"Yes."
"Well, you must travel alone and without luggage, in order not to
overweight the horse."
"Agreed."
"I shall expect thirty francs a day, and the days of rest paid for as
well,--not a farthing less; and you will pay for the horse's keep."
M. Madeleine took three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the
table.
"There are two days in advance."
"In the fourth place, a cabriolet would be too heavy for such a
journey, and tire the horse. You must oblige me by travelling in a
little tilbury I have."
"I consent."
"It is light, but it is open."
"I do not care."
"Have you thought, sir, that it is now winter?"
M. Madeleine made no answer, and the Fleming continued,--
"That it is very cold?"
Monsieur Madeleine was still silent.
"That it may rain?"
The Mayor raised his head and said,--
"The tilbury and the horse will be before my door at half-past four
to-morrow morning."
"Very good, sir," Scaufflaire answered; then scratching with his
thumb-nail a stain in the wood of his table, he continued, with that
careless air with which the Flemings so cleverly conceal their craft,--
"Good gracious! I have not thought of asking where you are going? Be
kind enough to tell me, sir."
He had thought of nothing else since the beginning of the conversation,
but somehow he had not dared to ask the question.
"Has your horse good legs?" said M. Madeleine.
"Yes, M. le Maire; you will hold it up a little in going down-hill. Are
there many hills between here and the place you are going to?"
"Do not forget to be at my door at half-past four exactly," M.
Madeleine answered, and went away.
The Fleming stood "like a fool," as he said himself a little while
after. M. le Maire had been gone some two or three minutes when the
door opened again; it was M. le Maire. He still wore the same impassive
and preoccupied air.
"M. Scaufflaire," he said, "at how much do you value the tilbury and
horse you are going to let me, one with the other?"
"Do you wish to buy them of me, sir?"
"No, but I should like to guarantee them against any accident, and when
I come back you can return me the amount. What is the estimated value?"
"Five hundred francs, M. le Maire."
"Here they are."
M. Madeleine laid a bank note on the table, then went out, and this
time did not come back. Master Scaufflaire regretted frightfully that
he had not said a thousand francs, though tilbury and horse, at a fair
valuation, were worth just three hundred. The Fleming called his wife
and told her what had occurred. "Where the deuce can the Mayor be
going?" They held a council. "He is going to Paris," said the wife. "I
don't believe it," said the husband. M. Madeleine had left on the table
the paper on which he had written the figures; the Fleming took it up
and examined it. "'5, 6, 8 1/2;' why, that must mean post stations." He
turned to his wife: "I have found it out." "How?" "It is five leagues
from here to Hesdin, six from there to St. Pol, and eight and a half
from St. Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras."
In the mean while the Mayor had returned home, and had taken the
longest road, as if the gate of the priest's house were a temptation
to him which he wished to avoid. He went up to his bed-room and locked
himself in, which was not unusual, for he was fond of going to bed at
an early hour. Still the factory portress, who was at the same time M.
Madeleine's only servant, remarked that his candle was extinguished at
a quarter-past eight, and mentioned the fact to the cashier when he
came in, adding,--
"Can master be ill? I thought he looked very strange to-day." The
cashier occupied a room exactly under M. Madeleine's; he paid no
attention to the remarks of the portress, but went to bed and fell
asleep. About midnight he woke with a start, for he heard in his
sleep a noise above his head. He listened; it was a footfall coming
and going, as if some one were walking about the room above him. He
listened more attentively, and recognized M. Madeleine's step; and this
seemed to him strange, for usually no sound could be heard from the
Mayor's room till he rose. A moment later the cashier heard something
like a wardrobe open and shut; a piece of furniture was moved, there
was a silence, and the walking began again. The cashier sat up in
bed, wide awake, looked out, and through his window noticed on a wall
opposite, the red reflection of a lighted window; from the direction
of the rays it could only be the window of M. Madeleine's bed-room. The
reflection flickered as if it came from a fire rather than a candle,
while the shadow of the framework could not be traced, which proved
that the window was wide open, and this was a curious fact, considering
the cold. The cashier fell asleep and woke again some two hours after;
the same slow and regular footfall was still audible above his head.
The reflection was still cast on the wall, but was now pale and quiet,
as if it came from a lamp or a candle. The window was still open. This
is what was occurring in M. Madeleine's bed-room.
CHAPTER III.
A TEMPEST IN A BRAIN.
The reader has, of course, guessed that M. Madeleine is Jean Valjean.
We have already looked into the depths of this conscience, and the
moment has arrived to look into them again. We do not do this without
emotion or tremor, for there is nothing more terrifying than this
species of contemplation. The mental eye can nowhere find greater
brilliancy or greater darkness than within man; it cannot dwell
on anything which is more formidable, complicated, mysterious, or
infinite. There is a spectacle grander than the sea, and that is the
sky; there is a spectacle grander than the sky, and it is the interior
of the soul. To write the poem of the human conscience, were the
subject only one man, and he the lowest of men, would be to resolve
all epic poems into one supreme and final epic. Conscience is the
chaos of chimeras, envies, and attempts, the furnace of dreams, the
lurking-place of ideas we are ashamed of; it is the pandemonium of
sophistry, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours look
through the livid face of a reflecting man, look into his soul, peer
into the darkness. Beneath the external silence, combats of giants are
going on there, such as we read of in Homer; _mêlées_ of dragons and
hydras and clouds of phantoms, such as we find in Milton; and visionary
spirals, as in Dante. A sombre thing is the infinitude which every man
bears within him, and by which he desperately measures the volitions
of his brain and the actions of his life. Alighieri one day came to a
gloomy gate, before which he hesitated; we have one before us, on the
threshold of which we also hesitate, but we will enter.
We have but little to add to what the reader already knows as having
happened to Jean Valjean since his adventure with Little Gervais.
From this moment, as we have seen, he became another man, and he
made himself what the Bishop wished to make him. It was more than a
transformation, it was a transfiguration. He succeeded in disappearing,
sold the Bishop's plate, only keeping the candlesticks as a souvenir,
passed through France, reached M----, had the idea we have described,
accomplished what we have narrated, managed to make himself unseizable
and inaccessible, and henceforth settled at M----, happy at feeling his
conscience saddened by the past, and the first half of his existence
contradicted by the last half; he lived peacefully, reassured and
trusting, and having but two thoughts,--to hide his name and sanctify
his life; escape from men and return to God. These two thoughts were so
closely blended in his mind, that they only formed one; they were both
equally absorbing and imperious, and governed his slightest actions.
Usually they agreed to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned
him toward the shadow; they rendered him beneficent and simple, and
they counselled him the same things. At times, however, there was a
conflict between them, and in such cases the man whom the whole town
of M---- called Monsieur Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the
first to the second,--his security to his virtue. Hence, despite all
his caution and prudence, he had kept the Bishop's candlesticks, worn
mourning for him, questioned all the little Savoyards who passed
through the town, inquired after the family at Faverolles, and saved
the life of old Fauchelevent, in spite of the alarming insinuations of
Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked, that he thought, after
the example of all those who have been wise, holy, and just, that his
first duty was not toward himself.
Still, we are bound to say, nothing like the present had before
occurred; never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose
sufferings we are describing, entered upon so serious a struggle. He
comprehended confusedly, but deeply, from the first words which Javert
uttered on entering his study. At the moment when the name which he
had buried so deeply was so strangely pronounced, he was struck with
stupor, and, as it were, intoxicated by the sinister peculiarity of his
destiny. And through this stupor he felt that quivering which precedes
great storms; he bowed like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a
soldier before a coming assault. He felt the shadows full of thunder
and lightning collecting over his head: while listening to Javert he
had a thought of running off, denouncing himself, taking Champmathieu
out of prison, and taking his place. This was painful, like an incision
in the flesh; but it passed away, and he said to himself, "We will
see!" he repressed this first generous movement, and recoiled before
his heroism.
It would doubtless be grand if, after the Bishop's holy remarks,
after so many years of repentance and self-denial, in the midst of a
penitence so admirably commenced, this man, even in the presence of
such a terrible conjuncture, had not failed for a moment, but continued
to march at the same pace toward this open abyss, at the bottom of
which heaven was: this would be grand, but it did not take place. We
are bound to describe all the things that took place in this mind, and
cannot say that this was one of them. What carried him away first was
the instinct of self-preservation. He hastily collected his ideas,
stifled his emotion, deferred any resolution with the firmness of
terror, deadened himself against what he had to do, and resumed his
calmness as a gladiator puts up his buckler. For the remainder of the
day he was in the same state,--a hurricane within, a deep tranquillity
outside,--and he only took what may be called "conservative measures."
All was still confused and jumbled in his brain; the trouble in it was
so great that he did not see distinctly the outline of any idea, and
he could have said nothing about himself, save that he had received a
heavy blow. He went as usual to Fantine's bed of pain, and prolonged
his visit, with a kindly instinct, saying to himself that he must
act thus, and recommend her to the sisters in the event of his being
obliged to go away. He felt vaguely that he must perhaps go to Arras;
and, though not the least in the world decided about the journey,
he said to himself that, safe from suspicion as he was, there would
be no harm in being witness of what might take place, and he hired
Scaufflaire's tilbury, in order to be ready for any event.
He dined with considerable appetite, and, on returning to his bed-room,
reflected. He examined his situation, and found it extraordinary,--so
extraordinary that, in the midst of his reverie, through some almost
inexplicable impulse of anxiety, he rose from his chair and bolted
his door. He was afraid lest something might enter, and he barricaded
himself against the possible. A moment after, he blew out his light,
for it annoyed him, and he fancied that he might be overseen. By whom?
Alas! what he wanted to keep out had entered; what he wished to blind
was looking at him. It was his conscience, that is to say, God. Still,
at the first moment, he deceived himself; he had a feeling of security
and solitude. When he put in the bolt, he thought himself impregnable;
when the candle was out, he felt himself invisible. He then regained
his self-possession; and he put his elbows on the table, leaned his
head on his hand, and began dreaming in the darkness.
"Where am I? Am I not dreaming? What was I told? Is it really true
that I saw that Javert, and that he spoke to me so? Who can this
Champmathieu be? It seems he resembles me. Is it possible? When I think
that I was so tranquil yesterday, and so far from suspecting anything!
What was I doing yesterday at this hour? What will be the result of
this event? What am I to do?"
Such was the trouble he was in that his brain had not the strength to
retain ideas. They passed like waves, and he clutched his forehead with
both hands to stop them. From this tumult which overthrew his wits and
reason, and from which he sought to draw an evidence and a resolution,
nothing issued but agony. His head was burning; and he went by the
window and threw it wide open. There were no stars in the heavens, and
he went back to the table and sat down by it. The first hour passed
away thus, but gradually vague features began to shape themselves, and
become fixed in his thoughts, and he could observe with the precision
of reality some details of the situation, if not its entirety. He began
by noticing that however critical and extraordinary his situation might
be, he was utterly the master of it, and his stupor was only augmented.
Independently of the stern and religious object he proposed to himself
in his actions, all that he had done up to this day was only a hole
he dug in which to bury his name. What he had always most feared, in
his hours of reflection as in his sleepless nights, was ever to hear
_that_ name pronounced. He said to himself that this would be to him
the end of everything; that on the day when that name re-appeared, it
would cause his new life to fade away, and possibly the new soul he had
within him. He shuddered at the mere thought that this could happen.
Assuredly if any one had told him at such moments that the hour would
arrive in which this name would echo in his ear, when the hideous
name of Jean Valjean would suddenly emerge from the night and rise
before him, when this formidable light which dissipated the mystery
with which he surrounded himself would suddenly shine above his head,
and that the name would no longer menace him; that the light would
produce only a denser gloom; that this rent veil would increase the
mystery; that the earthquake would consolidate his edifice; that this
prodigious incident would have no other result, if he thought proper,
but to render his existence clearer and yet more impenetrable, and that
from his confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and
worthy M. Madeleine would come forth more honored, more peaceful, and
more respected than ever,--if any one had told him this, he would have
shaken his head, and considered such talk insane. And yet all this
had really happened, and this heap of impossibilities was a fact, and
Heaven had permitted all these wild things to become real.
His reverie continued to grow clearer, and each moment he comprehended
his position better. It seemed to him that he had just awakened from
a dream, and that he was descending an incline in the middle of the
night, shuddering and recoiling in vain from the brink of an abyss.
He distinctly saw in the shadows an unknown man, a stranger, whom
destiny took for him, and thrust into the gulf in his place. In order
that the gulf should close, either he or another must fall in. He had
no necessity to do anything, the clearness became complete, and he
confessed to himself--that his place was vacant at the galleys; that,
whatever he might do, it constantly expected him, that the robbery
of Little Gervais led him back to it, that this vacant place would
wait for him and attract him until he filled it, and that this was
inevitable and fatal. And then he said to himself that at this moment
he had a substitute,--that it seemed a man of the name of Champmathieu
had this ill-luck; and that, in future, himself at the bagne in the
person of this Champmathieu, and present in society under the name of
M. Madeleine, would have nothing more to fear, provided that he did
not prevent justice from laying over the head of this Champmathieu the
stone of infamy which, like the tombstone, falls once and is never
raised again.
All this was so violent and so strange, that he suddenly felt within
him that species of indescribable movement which no man experiences
more than twice or thrice in his life,--a sort of convulsion of the
conscience, which disturbs everything doubtful in the heart, which
is composed of irony, joy, and despair, and what might be called an
internal burst of laughter. He suddenly relit his candle.
"Well, what am I afraid of?" he said to himself; "what reason have
I to have such thoughts? I am saved, and all is settled. There was
only one open door through which my past could burst in upon my life:
and that door is now walled up forever. That Javert, who has so long
annoyed me, the formidable instinct which seemed to have scented me,
and by Heavens! had scented me, the frightful dog ever making a point
at me, is routed, engaged elsewhere, and absolutely thrown out! He is
henceforth satisfied, he will leave me at peace, for he has got his
Jean Valjean! It is possible that he may wish to leave the town too.
And all this has taken place without my interference, and so, what is
there so unlucky in it all? On my word, any people who saw me would
believe that a catastrophe had befallen me. After all, if some people
are rendered unhappy, it is no fault of mine. Providence has done it
all, and apparently decrees it. Have I the right to derange what He
arranges? What is it that I am going to interfere in? It does not
concern me. What! I am not satisfied? Why! what else can I want? I have
attained the object to which I have been aspiring for so many years,
the dream of my nights, the matter of my prayers,--security. It is
Heaven that wills it, and I have done nothing contrary to God's desire.
And why has Heaven decreed it? That I may continue what I have begun;
that I may do good; that I may one day be a grand and encouraging
example; that it may be said that there is after all a little happiness
attaching to the penance I have undergone. I really cannot understand
why I was so afraid just now about visiting that worthy Curé, telling
all to him as to a confessor, and asking his advice, for this is
certainly what he would have advised me. It is settled; I will let
matters take their course, and leave the decision to Heaven."
He spoke this in the depths of his conscience, while leaning over what
might be called his own abyss. He got up from his chair and walked
about the room. "Come," he said, "I will think no more of it; I have
made up my mind;" but he felt no joy. It is no more possible to prevent
thought from reverting to an idea than the sea from returning to the
shore. With the sailor this is called the tide, with the culprit it
is called remorse; God heaves the soul like the ocean. After a few
moments, whatever he might do, he resumed the gloomy dialogue in which
it was he who spoke and he who listened, saying what he wished to be
silent about, listening to what he did not desire to hear, and yielding
to that mysterious power which said to him "Think," as it did, two
thousand years ago, to another condemned man, "Go on."
Before going further, and in order to be fully understood, let us dwell
on a necessary observation. It is certain that men talk to themselves;
and there is not a thinking being who has not realized the fact. It is
only in this sense that the words frequently employed in this chapter,
_he said, he exclaimed,_ must be understood; men talk to themselves,
speak to themselves, cry out within themselves, but the external
silence is not interrupted. There is a grand tumult; everything speaks
to us, excepting the mouth. The realities of the soul, for all that
they are not visible and palpable, are not the less realities. He asked
himself then, what he had arrived at, and cross-questioned himself
about the resolution he had formed. He confessed to himself that all he
had arranged in his mind was monstrous, and that leaving "God to act"
was simply horrible. To allow this mistake of destiny and of men to be
accomplished, not to prevent it, to lend himself to it, do nothing,
in short, was to do everything; it was the last stage of hypocritical
indignity! It was a low, cowardly, cunning, abject, hideous crime. For
the first time during eight years this hapless man had the taste of a
bad thought and a bad action, and he spat it out in disgust.
He continued to cross-question himself. He asked himself what he had
meant by the words, "my object is attained"? He allowed that his life
had an object, but what was its nature?--Conceal his name! deceive
the police. Was it for so paltry a thing that he had done all that he
had effected? Had he not another object which was the great and true
one,--to save not his person, but his soul; to become once again honest
and good? To be a just man! was it not that he craved solely, and that
the Bishop had ordered him? Close the door on his past? But, great
Heaven, he opened it again by committing an infamous action. He was
becoming a robber once more, and the most odious of robbers! He was
robbing another man of his existence, his livelihood, his peace, and
his place in the sunshine. He was becoming an assassin, he was killing,
morally killing, a wretched man; he was inflicting on him the frightful
living death, the open-air death, which is called the galleys. On the
other hand, if he gave himself up, freed this man who was suffering
from so grievous an error, resumed his name, became through duty the
convict Jean Valjean, that would be really completing his resurrection,
and eternally closing the hell from which he was emerging! Falling
back into it apparently would be leaving it in reality! He must do
this: he would have done nothing unless he did this; all his life
would be useless, all his penitence wasted. He felt that the Bishop
was here, that he was the more present because he was dead, that the
Bishop was steadfastly looking at him, and that henceforth Madeleine
the Mayor would be an abomination to him, and Jean Valjean the convict
admirable and pure in his sight. Men saw his mask, but the Bishop saw
his face; men saw his life, but the Bishop saw his conscience. He must
consequently go to Arras, deliver the false Jean Valjean, and denounce
the true one. Alas! this was the greatest of sacrifices, the most
poignant of victories, the last step to take; but he must take it.
Frightful destiny his! he could not obtain sanctity in the sight of
Heaven unless he returned to infamy in the sight of man.
"Well," he said, "I will make up my mind to this. I will do my duty and
save this man."
He uttered those words aloud without noticing he had raised his voice.
He fetched his books, verified and put them in order. He threw into the
fire a number of claims he had upon embarrassed tradesmen, and wrote
a letter, which he addressed "To M. Lafitte, banker, Rue d'Artois,
Paris." He then took from his desk a pocket-book, which contained a
few bank-notes and the passport he had employed just previously to go
to the elections. Any one who had seen him while he was accomplishing
these various acts, with which such grave meditation was mingled,
would not have suspected what was taking place in him. At moments his
lips moved, at others he raised his head and looked at a part of the
wall, as if there were something there which he desired to clear up or
question.
When the letter to M. Lafitte was finished, he put it into his
portfolio, and began his walk once more. His reverie had not deviated;
he continued to see his duty clearly written in luminous letters
which flashed before his eyes, and moved about with his glance, Name
yourself, denounce yourself! He could also see the two ideas which
had hitherto been the double rule of his life--to hide his name and
sanctify his life--moving before him as it were in a tangible shape.
For the first time they seemed to him absolutely distinct, and he saw
the difference that separated them. He recognized that one of these
ideas was necessarily good, while the other might become bad; that the
former was self-sacrifice, the latter selfishness; that one said, "My
neighbor," the other "Myself;" that one came from the light and the
other from darkness. They strove with each other, and he could see them
doing so. While he was thinking, they had grown before his mental eye,
and they had now colossal forms, and he fancied he could see a god and
a giant wrestling within him, in the infinitude to which we just now
alluded, and in the midst of obscurity and flashes of light. It was a
horrible sight, but it seemed to him as if the good thought gained the
victory. He felt that he was approaching the second decisive moment of
his life; that the Bishop marked the first phase of his new life, and
that this Champmathieu marked the second; after the great crisis came
the great trial.
The fever, appeased for a moment, gradually returned, however. A
thousand thoughts crossed his mind, but they continued to strengthen
him in his resolution. At one moment he said to himself that he
perhaps regarded the matter too seriously; that, after all, this
Champmathieu did not concern him, and in any case was a thief. He
answered himself: If this man has really stolen apples, he will have
a month's imprisonment, but that is a long way from the galleys. And
then, again, is it proved that he has committed a robbery? The name of
Jean Valjean is crushing him, and seems to dispense with proofs. Do not
public prosecutors habitually act in this way? A man is believed to be
a thief because he is known to be a convict. At another moment the idea
occurred to him that, when he had denounced himself, the heroism of his
deed might perhaps be taken into consideration, as well as his life of
honesty during the last seven years, and the good he had done the town,
and that he would be pardoned. But this supposition soon vanished,
and he smiled bitterly at the thought that the robbery of the 40 sous
from Gervais rendered him a relapsed convict; that this affair would
certainly be brought forward, and, by the precise terms of the law,
sentence him to the galleys for life.
He turned away from all illusions, detached himself more and more
from earth, and sought consolation and strength elsewhere. He said to
himself that he must do his duty: that, perhaps, he would not be more
wretched after doing it than he would have been had he eluded it: that,
if he let matters take their course and remained at M----, his good
name, good deeds, charity, wealth, popularity, and virtue would be
tainted by a crime; and what flavor would all these sacred things have,
when attached to this hideous thought; while, if he accomplished his
sacrifice, he would mingle a heavenly idea with the galleys, the chain,
the green cap, the unrelaxing toil, and the pitiless shame. At last
he said to himself that it was a necessity, that his destiny was thus
shaped, that he had no power to derange the arrangements of Heaven, and
that in any case he must choose either external virtue and internal
abomination, or holiness within and infamy outside him. His courage
did not fail him in revolving so many mournful ideas, but his brain
grew weary. He began thinking involuntarily of other and indifferent
matters. His arteries beat violently in his temples, and he was still
walking up and down; midnight struck, first from the parish church,
and then from the Town Hall: he counted the twelve strokes of the two
clocks, and compared the sound of the two bells. They reminded him that
a few days before he had seen an old bell at a marine store, on which
was engraved the name Antoine Albier, Romainville.
As he felt cold, he lit a fire, but did not dream of closing the
window. Then he fell back into his stupor, obliged to make a mighty
effort to remember what he had been thinking of before midnight struck.
At last he succeeded.
"Ah, yes," he said to himself, "I had formed the resolution to denounce
myself."
And then he suddenly began thinking of Fantine.
"Stay," he said; "and that poor woman!"
Here a fresh crisis broke out: Fantine, suddenly appearing in the midst
of his reverie, was like a ray of unexpected light. He fancied that all
changed around him, and exclaimed,--
"Wait a minute! Hitherto, I have thought of myself and consulted my own
convenience. Whether it suits me to be silent or denounce myself--hide
my person or save my soul--be a contemptible and respected Magistrate,
or an infamous and venerable convict--it is always self, nought but
self. Good heavens! all this is egotism; under different shapes, 't is
true, but still egotism. Suppose I were to think a little about others!
It is the first duty of a Christian to think of his neighbor. Well, let
me examine: when I am effaced and forgotten, what will become of all
this? If I denounce myself, that Champmathieu will be set at liberty.
I shall be sent back to the galleys, and what then? What will occur
here? Here are a town, factories, a trade, work-people, men, women,
old grandfathers, children, and poor people: I have created all this.
I keep it all alive: wherever there is a chimney smoking, I placed
the brand in the fire and the meat in the pot: I have produced easy
circumstances, circulation, and credit. Before I came there was nothing
of all this; I revived, animated, fertilized, stimulated, and enriched
the whole district. When I am gone the soul will be gone; if I withdraw
all will die; and then, this woman, who has suffered so greatly, who
has so much merit in her fall, and whose misfortune I unwittingly
caused, and the child which I intended to go and fetch, and restore to
the mother--Do not I also owe something to this woman in reparation of
the wrong which I have done her? If I disappear, what will happen? The
mother dies, and the child will become what it can. This will happen if
I denounce myself. If I do not denounce myself? Come, let me see."
After asking himself this question, he hesitated, and trembled
slightly; but this emotion lasted but a short time, and he answered
himself calmly:--
"Well, this man will go to the galleys, it is true, but, hang it all!
he has stolen. Although I may say to myself that he has not stolen, he
has done so! I remain here and continue my operations: in ten years
I shall have gained ten millions. I spread them over the country.
I keep nothing for myself; but what do I care? I am not doing this
for myself. The prosperity of all is increased; trades are revived,
factories and forges are multiplied, and thousands of families are
happy; the district is populated; villages spring up where there are
only farms, and farms where there is nothing; wretchedness disappears,
and with it debauchery, prostitution, robbery, murder, all the vices,
all the crimes--and this poor mother brings up her child. Why, I was
mad, absurd, when I talked about denouncing myself, and I must guard
against precipitation. What! because it pleases me to play the grand
and the generous--it is pure melodrama after all--because I only
thought of myself, and in order to save from a perhaps exaggerated
though substantially just punishment a stranger, a thief, and an
apparent scoundrel--a whole department must perish, a poor woman die
in the hospital, and a poor child starve in the streets, like dogs!
Why, it is abominable! without the mother seeing her child again, or
the child knowing her mother! and all this on behalf of an old scamp of
an apple-stealer, who has assuredly deserved the galleys for something
else, if not for that. These are fine scruples that save a culprit
and sacrifice the innocent; that save an old vagabond who has not
many years to live, and will not be more unhappy at the galleys than
in his hovel, and destroy an entire population,--mothers, wives, and
children. That poor little Cosette, who has only me in the world, and
is doubtless at this moment shivering with cold in the den of those
Thénardiers. There is another pair of wretches. And I would fail in
my duties to all these poor creatures, and commit such a folly as to
denounce myself! Let us put things at the worst: suppose that I am
committing a bad action in this, and that my conscience reproaches me
with it some day; there will be devotion and virtue in accepting, for
the good of my neighbor, these reproaches, which only weigh on me, and
this bad action, which only compromises my own soul."
He got up and began walking up and down again: this time he seemed to
be satisfied with himself. Diamonds are only found in the darkness of
the earth; truths are only found in the depths of thought. It seemed
to him that after descending into these depths, after groping for
some time in the densest of this darkness, he had found one of these
diamonds, one of these truths, which he held in his hand and which
dazzled his eyes when he looked at it.
"Yes," he thought, "I am on the right track and hold the solution
of the problem. A man must in the end hold on to something, and my
mind is made up. I will let matters take their course, so no more
vacillation or backsliding. It is for the interest of all, not of
myself. I am Madeleine, and remain Madeleine, and woe to the man who
is Jean Valjean. I am no longer he. I do not know that man, and if any
one happen to be Jean Valjean at this moment, he must look out for
himself, for it does not concern me. It is a fatal name that floats in
the night, and if it stop and settle on a head, all the worse for that
head."
He looked into the small looking-glass over the mantel-piece, and said
to himself,--
"How greatly has forming a resolution relieved me! I am quite a
different man at present."
He walked a little way and then stopped short. "Come," he said, "I must
not hesitate before any of the consequences of the resolution I have
formed. There are threads which still attach me to Jean Valjean which
must be broken. There are in this very room objects which would accuse
me,--dumb things which would serve as witnesses, and they must all
disappear."
He took his purse from his pocket, and drew a small key out of it.
He put this key in a lock, the hole of which could scarcely be seen,
for it was hidden in the darkest part of the design on the paper that
covered the walls. A sort of false cupboard made between the corner of
the wall and the mantel-piece was visible. In this hiding-place there
were only a few rags,--a blue blouse, worn trousers, an old knapsack,
and a large thorn-stick shod with iron at both ends. Any one who saw
Jean Valjean pass through D---- in October, 1815, would easily have
recognized all these wretched articles. He had preserved them, as he
had done the candlesticks, that they might constantly remind him of his
starting-point; still he hid what came from the galleys, and displayed
the candlesticks which came from the Bishop. He took a furtive glance
at the door, as if afraid that it might open in spite of the bolt; and
then with a rapid movement he made but one armful of the things he had
so religiously and perilously kept for so many years, and threw them
all--rags, stick, and knapsack--into the fire. He closed the cupboard,
and, redoubling his precautions, which were now useless since it was
empty, dragged a heavy piece of furniture in front of it. In a few
seconds, the room and opposite wall were lit up with a large red and
flickering glow; all was burning, and the thorn-stick crackled and
threw out sparks into the middle of the room. From the knapsack, as it
burned with all the rags it contained, fell something that glistened in
the ashes. On stooping it could be easily recognized as a coin; it was
doubtless the little Savoyard's two-franc piece. He did not look at the
fire, and continued his walk backwards and forwards. All at once his
eye fell on the two candlesticks which the fire-light caused to shine
vaguely on the mantel-piece.
"Stay," he thought, "all Jean Valjean is in them, and they must be
destroyed too."
He seized the candlesticks--there was a fire large enough to destroy
their shape, and convert them into unrecognizable ingots. He leaned
over the hearth and wanned his hands for a moment; it was a great
comfort to him.
He stirred up the ashes with one of the candlesticks, and in a moment
they were both in the fire. All at once he fancied he heard a voice cry
within him, "Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!" His hair stood erect, and he
became like a man who is listening to a terrible thing.
"Yes, that is right; finish!" the voice said: "complete what you are
about; destroy those candlesticks, annihilate that reminiscence! forget
the Bishop! forget everything! rain that Champmathieu; that is right.
Applaud yourself; come, all is settled and resolved on. This old man,
who does not know what they want with him, who is perhaps innocent,
whose whole misfortune your name causes, on whom your name weighs like
a crime, is going to be taken for you, sentenced, and will end his
days in abjectness and horror. That is excellent! Be an honest man
yourself; remain Mayor, honorable and honored, enrich the town, assist
the indigent, bring up orphans, live happy, virtuous, and applauded;
and during this time, while you are here in joy and light, there will
be somebody who wears your red jacket, bears your name in ignominy,
and drags along your chain at the galleys. Yes, that is excellently
arranged. Oh, you scoundrel!"
The perspiration beaded on his forehead, and he fixed his haggard eye
upon the candlesticks. The voice within him, however, had not ended yet.
"Jean Valjean! there will be around you many voices making a great
noise, speaking very loud and blessing you, and one which no one will
hear, and which will curse you in the darkness. Well, listen, infamous
man! all these blessings will fall back on the ground before reaching
Heaven, and the curse alone will ascend to God!"
This voice, at first very faint, and which spoke from the obscurest
nook of his conscience, had gradually become sonorous and formidable,
and he now heard it in his ear. He fancied that it was not his own
voice, and he seemed to hear the last words so distinctly that he
looked round the room with a species of terror.
"Is there any one here?" he asked, in a loud voice and wildly.
Then he continued with a laugh, which seemed almost idiotic,--
"What a fool I am! there can be nobody."
There was somebody, but not of those whom the human eye can see. He
placed the candlesticks on the mantel-piece, and then resumed that
melancholy, mournful walk, which aroused the sleeper underneath him.
This walking relieved him, and at the same time intoxicated him. It
appears sometimes as if on supreme occasions people move about to
ask advice of everything they pass. At the end of a few moments he
no longer knew what result to arrive at. He now recoiled with equal
horror from the two resolutions he had formed in turn; the two ideas
that counselled him seemed each as desperate as the other. What a
fatality that this Champmathieu should be taken for him! He was hurled
down precisely by the means which Providence at first seemed to have
employed to strengthen his position.
There was a moment during which he regarded his future. Denounce
himself! great Heavens! give himself up! He thought with immense
despair of all that he must give up, of all that he must resume. He
would be forced to bid adieu to this good, pure, radiant life,--to the
respect of all classes,--to honor, to liberty! He would no longer walk
about the fields, he would no longer hear the birds sing in May, or
give alms to the little children! He would no longer feel the sweetness
of glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him! He would leave this
little house, which he had built, and his little bed-room. All appeared
charming to him at this moment. He would no longer read those books or
write at the little deal table; his old servant would no longer bring
up his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of all this, there
would be the gang, the red jacket, the chain on his foot, fatigue, the
dungeon, the camp-bed, and all the horrors he knew! At his age, after
all he had borne! It would be different were he still young. But to be
old, coarsely addressed by anybody, searched by the jailer, and receive
blows from the keeper's stick! to thrust his naked feet into iron-shod
shoes! to offer his leg morning and night to the man who examines the
fetters! to endure the curiosity of strangers who would be told, "That
is the famous Jean Valjean, who was Mayor of M----!" at night, when
pouring with perspiration, and crushed by fatigue, with a green cap
on his head, to go up two by two, under the sergeants whip, the side
ladder of the hulks! Oh, what misery! Destiny, then, can be as wicked
as an intelligent being and prove as monstrous as the human heart!
And whatever he might do, he ever fell back into this crushing dilemma,
which was the basis of his reverie,--remain in paradise, and become
a demon there; or re-enter hell, and become an angel? What should
he do? Great God! what should he do? The trouble, from which he had
escaped with such difficulty, was again let loose on him, and his
thoughts became composed once more. They assumed something stupefied
and mechanical, which is peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville
incessantly returned to his mind, with two lines of a song which he
had formerly heard. He remembered that Romainville is a little wood,
near Paris, where lovers go to pick lilac in April. He tottered both
externally and internally; he walked like a little child allowed to
go alone. At certain moments, he struggled against his lassitude,
and tried to recapture his intelligence; he tried to set himself,
for the last time, the problem over which he had fallen in a state
of exhaustion,--must he denounce himself, or must he be silent? He
could not succeed in seeing anything distinct, the vague outlines of
all the reasonings sketched in by his reverie were dissipated in turn
like smoke. Still, he felt that, however he resolved, and without any
possibility of escape, something belonging to him was about to die;
that he entered a sepulchre, whether on his right hand or his left, and
that either his happiness or his virtue would be borne to the grave.
Alas! all his irresolution had seized him again, and he was no further
advanced than at the beginning. Thus the wretched soul writhed in
agony! Eighteen hundred years before this unhappy man, the mysterious
being in whom are embodied all the sanctities and sufferings of
humanity had also, while the olive-trees shuddered in the fierce wind
of the infinite, long put away with his hand the awful cup which
appeared to him, dripping with shadow and overflowing with darkness in
the starry depths.
CHAPTER IV.
SUFFERINGS IN SLEEP.
Three A.M. had struck, and he had been walking about in this way
for five hours without a break, when he fell into his chair. He fell
asleep, and had a dream. This dream, like most dreams, was only
connected with his situation by something poignant and mournful, but it
made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so much that he
wrote it down at a later date, and we think we are bound to transcribe
it verbatim; for whatever the history of this man may be, it would be
incomplete if we omitted it. Here it is then; on the envelope we notice
the line,--_The dream I had on that night._
"I was upon a plain, a large mournful plain, on which no
grass grew. It did not seem to me to be day, but it was
not night. I was walking with my brother, the brother of
my boyish years, of whom I am bound to say I never think,
and whom I scarce remember. We were talking, and met
travellers. We spoke about a woman, formerly a neighbor of
ours, who had always worked with her window open, since
she had occupied a front room. While talking, we felt cold
on account of this open window. There were no trees on the
plain. We saw a man pass close by us; he was a perfectly
naked man, of the color of ashes, mounted on a horse of an
earthen color. The man had no hair, and I could see his
skull, and the veins on his skull. He held in his hand a
wand, which was supple as a vine-twig and heavy as lead.
This horseman passed and said nothing to us.
"My brother said to me: 'Let us turn into the hollow way.'
"It was a hollow way in which not a bramble or even a
patch of moss could be seen; all was earth-colored, even
the sky. After going a few yards, I received no answer
when I spoke, and I noticed that my brother was no longer
with me. I entered a village that I saw, and I fancied
that it must be Romainville. The first street I entered
was deserted; I entered a second street, and behind the
angle formed by the two streets a man was standing against
the wall. I asked this man, "What is this place? where am
I?" but he gave me no answer. I saw the door of a house
open, and walked in.
"The first room was deserted, and I entered a second.
Behind the door of this room there was a man leaning
against the wall. I asked him, "To whom does this house
belong? where am I?" but the man gave me no answer. I went
out into the garden of the house, and it was deserted.
Behind the first tree I found a man standing; I said to
the man, "Whose is this garden? where am I?" but he made
me no answer.
"I wandered about this village and fancied that it was a
town. All the streets were deserted, all the doors open.
Not a living soul passed along the street, moved in the
rooms, or walked in the gardens. But there was behind
every corner, every door, and every tree, a man standing
silently. I never saw more than one at a time, and these
men looked at me as I passed.
"I left the village and began walking about the fields.
At the end of some time I turned back and saw a great
crowd coming after me. I recognized all the men whom I had
seen in the town, and they had strange heads. They did
not appear to be in a hurry, and yet they walked faster
than I, and made no noise in walking. In an instant this
crowd joined me and surrounded me. The faces of these men
were earth-colored. Then the man I had seen first and
questioned when I entered the town said to me, "Where are
you going? do you not know that you have been dead for a
long time?" I opened my mouth to answer, and I perceived
that there was no one near me."
He woke up, chilled to the marrow, for a wind, cold as the morning
breeze, was shaking the open window. The fire had died away, the
candle was nearly burned out, and it was still black night. He rose
and went to the window; there were still no stars in the sky. From his
window he could see the yard and his street, and a dry sharp sound on
the ground below him induced him to look out. He saw two red stars
whose rays lengthened and shortened curiously in the gloom. As his
mind was half submerged in the mist of dreams, he thought, "There are
no stars in the sky: they are on the earth now." A second sound like
the first completely woke him, and he perceived that those two stars
were carriage lamps, and by the light which they projected he could
distinguish the shape of the vehicle; it was a tilbury, in which a
small white horse was harnessed. The sound he had heard was the pawing
of the horse's hoof on the ground.
"What's the meaning of this conveyance?" he said to himself. "Who can
have come at so early an hour?"
At this moment there was a gentle tap at his bed-room door; he
shuddered from head to foot, and shouted in a terrible voice, "Who's
there?"
Some one replied, "I, sir," and he recognized his old servant's voice.
"Well," he continued, "what is it?"
"It is getting on for four o'clock, sir."
"What has that to do with me?"
"The tilbury has come, sir."
"What tilbury?"
"Did you not order one?"
"No," he said.
"The ostler says that he has come to fetch M. le Maire."
"What ostler?"
"M. Scaufflaire's."
This name made him start as if a flash of lightning had passed before
his eyes.
"Ah, yes," he repeated, "M. Scaufflaire."
Could the old woman have seen him at this moment, she would have been
horrified. There was a lengthened silence, during which he stupidly
examined the candle flame and rolled up some of the wax in his fingers.
The old woman, who was waiting, at length mustered up courage to raise
her voice again.
"M. le Maire, what answer am I to give?"
"Say it is quite right, and that I shall be down directly."
CHAPTER V.
OBSTACLES.
The letter-bags between Arras and M---- were still carried in small
mail-carts, dating from the Empire. They were two-wheeled vehicles,
lined with tawny leather, hung on springs, and having only two seats,
one for the driver, and another for a passenger. The wheels were armed
with those long offensive axle-trees, which kept other carriages at
a distance, and may still be seen on German roads. The compartment
for the bags was an immense oblong box at the back; it was painted
black, and the front part was yellow. These vehicles, like which we
have nothing at the present day, had something ugly and humpbacked
about them, and when you saw them pass at a distance or creeping up a
hill on the horizon, they resembled those insects called, we think,
termites, and which with a small body drag a heavy burden after them.
They went very fast, however, and the mail which left Arras at one in
the morning, after the Paris mail had arrived, reached M---- a little
before five A.M.
On this morning, the mail-cart, just as it entered M----, and while
turning a corner, ran into a tilbury drawn by a white horse, coming in
the opposite direction, and in which there was only one sitter, a man
wrapped in a cloak. The wheel of the tilbury received a rather heavy
blow, and though the driver of the mail-cart shouted to the man to
stop, he did not listen, but went on at a smart trot.
"The man is in a deuce of a hurry," said the courier.
The man in this hurry was he whom we have just seen struggling in
convulsions, assuredly deserving of pity. Where was he going? He could
not have told. Why was he hurrying? He did not know. He was going
onwards unthinkingly. Where to? Doubtless to Arras; but he might also
be going elsewhere.