on; something attracted him. What was going on in him no one could
tell, but all will understand it,--for what man has not entered, at
least once in his life, this obscure cavern of the unknown? However,
he had settled, decided, and done nothing; not one of the acts of his
conscience had been definitive, and he was still as unsettled as at the
beginning.
Why was he going to Arras? He repeated what he had already said on
hiring the gig of Scaufflaire--that, whatever the result might be,
there would be no harm in seeing with his own eyes, and judging matters
for himself--that this was prudent; and he was bound to know what was
going on--that he could not decide anything till he had observed and
examined--that, at a distance, a man made mountains of molehills--that
after all, when he had seen this Champmathieu, his conscience would
probably be quietly relieved, and he could let the scoundrel go to the
galleys in his place: that Javert would be there and the three convicts
who had known him,--but, nonsense! they would not recognize him, for
all conjectures and suppositions were fixed on this Champmathieu, and
there is nothing so obstinate as conjectures and suppositions,--and
that hence he incurred no danger. It was doubtless a black moment,
but he would emerge from it. After all, he held his destiny, however
adverse it might try to be, in his own hands, and was master of it. He
clung wildly to the latter thought.
Although, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go
to Arras, yet he went. While reflecting he lashed the horse, which
was going at that regular and certain trot which covers two leagues
and a half in an hour; and as the gig advanced, he felt something
within him recoil. At day-break he was in the open country, and the
town of M---- was far behind him. He watched the horizon grow white;
he looked, without seeing them, at all the cold figures of a winter
dawn. Morning has its spectres like night. He did not see them, but
unconsciously, and through a sort of almost physical penetration, these
black outlines of trees and hills added something gloomy and sinister
to the violent state of his soul. Each time that he passed one of those
isolated houses which skirt high roads, he said to himself: "And yet
there are people asleep in them." The trot of the horse, the bells on
the harness, the wheels on the stones, produced a gentle and monotonous
sound, which is delightful when you are merry, and mournful when you
are sad.
It was broad daylight when he reached Hesdin, and he stopped at the inn
to let the horse breathe and give it a feed. This horse, as Scaufflaire
had said, belonged to that small Boulonnais breed, which has too large
a head, too much stomach, and not enough neck, but which also has a
wide crupper, lean, slender legs, and a solid hoof: it is an ugly
but strong and healthy breed. The capital little beast had done five
leagues in two hours, and had not turned a hair.
He did not get out of the tilbury; the ostler who brought the oats
suddenly stooped down and examined the left wheel.
"Are you going far in this state?" the man said.
He answered almost without emerging from his reverie,--
"Why do you ask?"
"Have you come any distance?" the ostler continued.
"Five leagues."
"Ah!"
"Why do you say, 'Ah'?"
The ostler bent down again, remained silent for a moment, with his eye
fixed on the wheel, and then said as he drew himself up,--
"Because this wheel, which may have gone five leagues, cannot possibly
go another mile."
He jumped out of the tilbury.
"What are you saying, my friend?"
"I say that it is a miracle you and your horse did not roll into a
ditch by the road-side. Just look."
The wheel was, in fact, seriously damaged. The blow dealt it by the
mail-cart had broken two spokes, and almost carried away the axle-tree.
"My good fellow," he said to the ostler, "is there a wheelwright here?"
"Of course, sir."
"Be good enough to go and fetch him."
"He lives close by. Hilloh, Master Bourgaillard."
Master Bourgaillard was standing in his doorway: he examined the wheel,
and made a face like a surgeon regarding a broken leg.
"Can you mend this wheel?"
"Yes, sir."
"When can I start again?"
"To-morrow: there is a good day's work. Are you in a hurry, sir?"
"In a great hurry: I must set out again in an hour at the latest."
"It is impossible, sir."
"I will pay anything you ask."
"Impossible."
"Well, in two hours?"
"It is impossible for to-day; you will not be able to go on till
to-morrow."
"My business cannot wait till to-morrow. Suppose, instead of mending
this wheel, you were to put another on?"
"How so?"
"You are a wheelwright, and have probably a wheel you can sell me, and
then I could set out again directly."
"I have no ready-made wheel to suit your gig, for wheels are sold in
pairs, and it is not easy to match one."
"In that case, sell me a pair of wheels."
"All wheels, sir, do not fit all axle-trees."
"At any rate try."
"It is useless, sir; I have only cart-wheels for sale, for ours is a
small place."
"Have you a gig I can hire?"
The wheelwright had noticed at a glance that the tilbury was a hired
vehicle; he shrugged his shoulders.
"You take such good care of gigs you hire, that if I had one I would
not let it to you."
"Well, one to sell me?"
"I have not one."
"What, not a tax-cart? I am not particular, as you see."
"This is a small place. I have certainly," the wheelwright added, "an
old calèche in my stable, which belongs to a person in the town, and
who uses it on the thirty-sixth of every month. I could certainly let
it out to you, for it is no concern of mine, but the owner must not see
it pass; and besides, it is a calèche, and will want two horses."
"I will hire post-horses."
"Where are you going to, sir?"
"To Arras."
"And you wish to arrive to-day?"
"Certainly."
"By taking post-horses?"
"Why not?"
"Does it make any difference to you if you reach Arras at four o'clock
to-morrow morning?"
"Of course it does."
"There is one thing to be said about hiring post-horses; have you your
passport, sir?"
"Yes."
"Well, if you take post-horses, you will not reach Arras before
to-morrow. We are on a cross-country road. The relays are badly served,
and the horses are out at work. This is the ploughing season, and
as strong teams are required, horses are taken anywhere, from the
post-houses like the rest. You will have to wait three or four hours,
sir, at each station, and only go at a foot-pace, for there are many
hills to ascend."
"Well, I will ride. Take the horse out. I suppose I can purchase a
saddle here?"
"Of course, but will this horse carry a saddle?"
"No, I remember now that it will not."
"In that case--"
"But surely I can hire a saddle-horse in the village?"
"What! to go to Arras without a break?"
"Yes."
"You would want a horse such as is not to be found in these parts. In
the first place, you would have to buy it, as you are a stranger, but
you would not find one to buy or hire for five hundred francs,--not for
a thousand."
"What is to be done?"
"The best thing is to let me mend the wheel and put off your journey
till to-morrow."
"To-morrow will be too late."
"Hang it!"
"Is there not the Arras mail-cart? When does that pass?"
"Not till to-night."
"What! you will take a whole day in mending that wheel?"
"An honest day."
"Suppose you employed two workmen?"
"Ay, if I had ten."
"Suppose the spokes were tied with cords?"
"What is to be done with the axle? Besides, the felloe is in a bad
state."
"Is there any one who lets out vehicles in the town?"
"No."
"Is there another wheelwright?"
The ostler and the wheelwright replied simultaneously--,
"No."
He felt an immense joy, for it was evident that Providence was
interfering. Providence had broken the tilbury wheel and stopped his
journey. He had not yielded to this species of first summons; he had
made every possible effort to continue his journey; he had loyally and
scrupulously exhausted all resources; he had not recoiled before the
season, fatigue, or expense; and he had nothing to reproach himself
with. If he did not go farther, it did not concern him; it was not his
fault, it was not the doing of his conscience, but of Providence. He
breathed freely and fully for the first time since Javert's visit. He
felt as if the iron hand which had been squeezing his heart for twenty
hours had relaxed its grasp; God now appeared to be on his side, and
declared Himself openly. He said to himself that he had done all in his
power, and at present need only return home quietly.
Had the conversation with the wheelwright taken place in an inn-room,
it would probably have not been heard by any one,--matters would have
remained in this state, and we should probably not have had to record
any of the following events; but the conversation took place in the
street. Any colloquy in the street inevitably produces a crowd, for
there are always people who only ask to be spectators. While he was
questioning the wheelwright, some passers-by stopped around, and a lad
to whom no one paid any attention, after listening for some moments,
ran off. At the instant when the traveller made up his mind to turn
back, this boy returned, accompanied by an old woman.
"Sir," the woman said, "my boy tells me that you wish to hire a
conveyance?"
This simple remark, made by an old woman led by a child, made the
perspiration pour down his back. He fancied he saw the hand which had
let him loose reappear in the shadow behind him, ready to clutch him
again. He replied,--
"Yes, my good woman, I want to hire a gig."
And he hastily added, "But there is not one in the town."
"Yes there is," said the old woman.
"Where?" the wheelwright remarked.
"At my house," the old crone answered.
He gave a start, for the fatal hand had seized him again. The poor
woman really had a sort of wicker-cart under a shed. The wheelwright
and the ostler, sorry to see the traveller escape them, interfered:--
"It was a frightful rattle-trap, and had no springs,--it is a fact
that the inside seats were hung with leathern straps--the rain got into
it--the wheels were rusty, and ready to fall to pieces--it would not go
much farther than the tilbury--the gentleman had better not get into
it,"--and so on.
All this was true; but the rattle-trap, whatever it might be, rolled
on two wheels, and could go to Arras. He paid what was asked, left
the tilbury to be repaired against his return, had the horse put into
the cart, got in, and went his way. At the moment when the cart moved
ahead, he confessed to himself that an instant before he had felt a
sort of joy at the thought that he could not continue his journey. He
examined this joy with a sort of passion, and found it absurd. Why did
he feel joy at turning back? After all, he was making this journey of
his free will, and no one forced him to do so. And assuredly nothing
could happen, except what he liked. As he was leaving Hesdin, he heard
a voice shouting to him, "Stop, stop!" He stopped the cart with a
hurried movement in which there was something feverish and convulsive
that resembled joy. It was the old woman's boy.
"Sir," he said, "it was I who got you the cart."
"Well?"
"You have given me nothing."
He who gave to all, and so easily, considered this demand exorbitant,
and almost odious.
"Oh, it's you, scamp," he said; "well, you will not have anything."
He flogged his horse, which started again at a smart trot. He had lost
much time at Hesdin, and would have liked to recover it. The little
horse was courageous, and worked for two; but it was February, it
had been raining, and the roads were bad. The cart too ran much more
heavily than the tilbury, and there were numerous ascents. He took
nearly four hours in going from Hesdin to St. Pol: four hours for
five leagues! At St. Pol he pulled up at the first inn he came to,
and had the horse put in a stable. As he had promised Scaufflaire, he
stood near the crib while it was eating, and had troubled and confused
thoughts. The landlady entered the stable.
"Do you not wish to breakfast, sir?"
"It is true," said he, "I am very hungry."
He followed the woman, who had a healthy, ruddy face; she led him to a
ground-floor room, in which were tables covered with oil-cloth.
"Make haste," he remarked, "for I am in a great hurry."
A plump Flemish servant-girl hastened to lay the cloth, and he looked
at her with a feeling of comfort.
"That was the trouble," he thought; "I had not breakfasted."
He pounced upon the bread, bit a mouthful, and then slowly laid it back
on the table, and did not touch it again. A wagoner was sitting at
another table, and he said to him,--
"Why is their bread so bitter?"
The wagoner was a German, and did not understand him; he returned to
his horse. An hour later he had left St. Pol, and was proceeding toward
Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras. What did he do during
the drive? What was he thinking of? As in the morning, he looked at
the trees, the roofs, the ploughed fields, and the diversities of a
landscape which every turn in the road changes, as he passed them. To
see a thousand different objects for the first and last time is most
melancholy! Travelling is birth and death at every moment. Perhaps
in the vaguest region of his mind he made a comparison between the
changing horizon and human existence, for everything in this life is
continually flying before us. Shadow and light are blended; after a
dazzling comes an eclipse; every event is a turn in the road, and all
at once you are old. You feel something like a shock, all is black,
you distinguish an obscure door, and the gloomy horse of life which
dragged you, stops, and you see a veiled, unknown form unharnessing it.
Twilight was setting in at the moment when the school-boys, leaving
school, saw this traveller enter Tinques. He did not halt there, but as
he left the village, a road-mender, who was laying stones, raised his
head, and said to him,--
"Your horse is very tired."
The poor brute, in fact, could not get beyond a walk.
"Are you going to Arras?" the road-mender continued.
"Yes."
"If you go at that pace, you will not reach it very soon."
He stopped his horse, and asked the road-mender--,
"How far is it from here to Arras?"
"Nearly seven long leagues."
"How so? The post-book says only five and a quarter leagues."
"Ah" the road-mender continued, "you do not know that the road is under
repair; you will find it cut up about a mile farther on, and it is
impossible to pass."
"Indeed!"
"You must take the road on the left, that runs to Carency, and cross
the river; when you reach Camblin you will turn to the right, for it is
the Mont St. Eloy road that runs to Arras."
"But I shall lose my way in the dark."
"You do not belong to these parts?"
"No."
"And it is a cross-road; stay, sir," the road-mender continued; "will
you let me give you a piece of advice? Your horse is tired, so return
to Tinques, where there is a good inn; sleep there, and go to Arras
to-morrow."
"I must be there to-night."
"That is different. In that case go back to the inn all the same, and
hire a second horse. The stable boy will act as your guide across the
country."
He took the road-mender's advice, turned back, and half an hour after
passed the same spot at a sharp trot with a strong second horse. A
stable lad, who called himself a postilion, was sitting on the shafts
of the cart. Still he felt that he had lost time, for it was now dark.
They entered the cross-road, and it soon became frightful; the cart
tumbled from one rut into another, but he said to the postilion,--
"Keep on at a trot, and I will give you a double fee."
In one of the jolts the whipple-tree broke.
"The whipple-tree is broken, sir," said the postilion, "and I do not
know how to fasten my horse, and the road is very bad by night. If you
will go back and sleep at Tinques, we can get to Arras at an early hour
to-morrow."
He answered, "Have you a piece of rope and a knife?"
"Yes, sir."
He cut a branch and made a whipple-tree; it was a further loss of
twenty minutes, but they started again at a gallop. The plain was
dark, and a low, black fog was creeping over the hills. A heavy wind,
which came from the sea, made in all the corners of the horizon a
noise like that of furniture being moved. All that he could see had
an attitude of terror, for how many things shudder beneath the mighty
breath of night! The cold pierced him, for he had eaten nothing since
the previous morning. He vaguely recalled his other night-excursion, on
the great plain of D---- eight years before, and it seemed to him to
be yesterday. A clock struck from a distant steeple, and he asked the
lad,--
"What o'clock is that?"
"Seven, sir, and we shall be at Arras by eight, for we have only three
leagues to go."
At this moment he made for the first time this reflection--and
considered it strange that it had not occurred to him before--that all
the trouble he was taking was perhaps thrown away; he did not even know
the hour for the trial, and he might at least have asked about that; it
was extravagant to go on thus, without knowing if it would be of any
service. Then he made some mental calculations: usually the sittings of
assize courts began at nine o'clock; this matter would not occupy much
time, the theft of the apples would be easily proved, and then there
would be merely the identification, four or five witnesses to hear, and
little for counsel to say. He would arrive when it was all over.
The postilion flogged the horses; they had crossed the river and left
Mont St Hoy behind them; the night was growing more and more dark.
CHAPTER VI.
SISTER SIMPLICE IS SORELY TRIED.
At this very moment Fantine was joyful. She had passed a very bad
night, she had coughed fearfully, and her fever had become worse. In
the morning, when the physician paid his visit, she was raving; he felt
alarmed, and begged to be sent for so soon as M. Madeleine arrived.
All the morning she was gloomy, said little, and made folds in sheets,
while murmuring in a low voice, and calculating what seemed to be
distances. Her eyes were hollow and fixed, they seemed almost extinct,
and then, at moments, they were relit, and flashed like stars. It seems
as if, on the approach of a certain dark hour, the brightness of heaven
fills those whom the brightness of earth is quitting. Each time that
Sister Simplice asked her how she was, she invariably answered, "Well,
but I should like to see M. Madeleine."
A few months previously, at the time when Fantine lost her last
modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow of
herself: now she was the ghost. Physical suffering had completed the
work of moral suffering. This creature of five-and-twenty years of
age had a wrinkled forehead, sunken cheeks, a pinched nose, a leaden
complexion, a bony neck, projecting shoulder-blades, thin limbs, an
earthy skin, and white hairs were mingled with the auburn. Alas! how
illness improvises old age! At mid-day, the physician returned, wrote a
prescription, inquired whether M. Madeleine had been to the infirmary,
and shook his head. M. Madeleine usually came at three o'clock, and
as punctuality was kindness, he was punctual. At about half-past two
Fantine began to grow agitated, and in the next twenty minutes asked
the nun more than ten times, "What o'clock is it?"
Three o'clock struck: at the third stroke Fantine, who usually could
scarce move in her bed, sat up; she clasped her thin yellow hands in a
sort of convulsive grasp, and the nun heard one of those deep sighs,
which seem to remove a crushing weight, burst from her chest. Then
Fantine turned and looked at the door: but no one entered, and the door
was not opened. She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, with her
eyes fixed on the door, motionless, and holding her breath. The nun did
not dare speak to her, and as the clock struck the quarter, Fantine
fell back on her pillow. She said nothing, and began again making folds
in the sheet. The half-hour passed, then the hour, and no one came.
Each time the clock struck Fantine sat up, looked at the door, and then
fell back again. Her thoughts could be clearly read, but she did not
say a word, complain, or make any accusation: she merely coughed in a
sad way. It seemed as if something dark was settling down on her, for
she was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled every now and then.
When five o'clock struck, the nun heard her say very softly and
sweetly, "As I am going away to-morrow, it was wrong of him not to come
to-day." Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay.
In the mean while Fantine looked up at the top of her bed, and seemed
to be trying to remember something: all at once she began singing in
a voice faint as a sigh. It was an old cradle-song with which she had
in former times lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had not
once recurred to her during the five years she had been parted from her
child. She sang with so sad a voice and to so soft an air, that it was
enough to make any one weep, even a nun. The sister, who was accustomed
to austere things, felt a tear in her eye. The clock struck, and
Fantine did not seem to hear it: she appeared not to pay any attention
to things around her. Sister Simplice sent a servant-girl to inquire of
the portress of the factory whether M. Madeleine had returned and would
be at the infirmary soon: the girl came back in a few minutes. Fantine
was still motionless and apparently engaged with her own thoughts. The
servant told Sister Simplice in a very low voice that the Mayor had
set off before six o'clock that morning in a small tilbury; that he
had gone alone, without a driver; that no one knew what direction he
had taken, for while some said they had seen him going along the Arras
road, others declared they had met him on the Paris road. He was, as
usual, very gentle, and he had merely told his servant she need not
expect him that night.
While the two women were whispering with their backs turned to Fantine,
the sister questioning, and the servant conjecturing, Fantine, with
the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies which blend the free
movements of health with the frightful weakness of death, had knelt in
bed, with her two clenched hands supported by the pillow, and listened
with her head thrust between the curtains. All at once she cried,--
"You are talking about M. Madeleine: why do you whisper? What is he
doing, and why does he not come?"
Her voice was so loud and hoarse that the two women fancied it a man's
voice, and they turned round in alarm.
"Answer!" Fantine cried.
The servant stammered,--
"The portress told me that he could not come to-day."
"My child," the sister said, "be calm and lie down again."
Fantine, without changing her attitude, went on in a loud voice and
with an accent at once imperious and heart-rending,--
"He cannot come: why not? You know the reason. You were whispering it
to one another, and I insist on knowing."
The servant hastily whispered in the nun's ear, "Tell her that he is
engaged at the Municipal Council."
Sister Simplice blushed slightly, for it was a falsehood that the
servant proposed to her. On the other hand it seemed to her that
telling the patient the truth would doubtless deal her a terrible blow,
and this was serious in Fantine's present condition. The blush lasted
but a little while: the sister fixed her calm sad eye on Fantine, and
said,--
"The Mayor is gone on a journey."
Fantine rose and sat up on her heels, her eyes sparkled, and an
ineffable joy shone on her sad face.
"He has gone to fetch Cosette," she exclaimed.
Then she raised her hands to heaven, and her lips moved: she was
praying. When she had finished she said, "My sister, I am willing to
lie down again and do everything you wish: I was naughty just now.
I ask your pardon for having spoken so loud, for I know that it was
wrong, good sister; but, look you, I am so happy. God is good, and M.
Madeleine is good: only think, he has gone to Montfermeil to fetch my
little Cosette."
She lay down again, helped the nun to smooth her pillow, and kissed a
little silver cross she wore on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had
given her.
"My child," the sister said, "try to go to sleep now, and do not speak
any more."
"He started this morning for Paris, and indeed had no occasion to go
there; for Montfermeil is a little to the left before you get there.
You remember how he said to me yesterday when I asked him about
Cosette, "Soon, soon"? He wishes to offer me a surprise, for, do you
know, he made me sign a letter to get her back from the Thénardiers.
They cannot refuse to give up Cosette, can they? for they are paid;
the authorities would not allow a child to be kept, for now there is
nothing owing. Sister, do not make me signs that I must not speak,
for I am extremely happy: I am going on very well, I feel no pain at
all; I am going to see Cosette again, and I even feel very hungry. It
is nearly five years since I saw her: you cannot imagine how a mother
clings to her child,--and then she must be so pretty. She has such
pretty pink fingers, and she will have beautiful hands. She must be
a great girl now, for she is going on to seven. I call her Cosette,
but her real name is Euphrasie. This morning I was looking at the
dust on the mantel-piece, and I had a notion that I should soon see
Cosette again. Good Lord! how wrong it is for a mother to be so many
years without seeing her child! She ought to reflect that life is not
eternal. Oh, how kind it is of the Mayor to go! Is it true that it is
so cold? I hope he took his cloak. He will be here again to-morrow,
will he not? and we will make a holiday of it. To-morrow morning,
sister, you will remind me to put on my little cap with the lace
border. Montfermeil is a great distance, and I came from there to this
town on foot, and it took me a long time; but the stage-coaches travel
so quickly! He will be here to-morrow with Cosette. How far is it to
Montfermeil?"
The sister, who had no notion of distances, answered, "Oh, I believe he
can be here to-morrow."
"To-morrow! to-morrow!" said Fantine; "I shall see Cosette to-morrow,
my good sister! I am not ill now; I feel wild, and would dance if you
permitted me."
Any one who had seen her a quarter of an hour before would not have
understood it; she was now quite flushed, she spoke with an eager
natural voice, and her whole face was a smile. At times she laughed
while speaking to herself in a low voice. A mother's joy is almost a
childish joy.
"Well!" the nun said, "you are now happy. So obey me and do not speak
any more."
Fantine laid her head on the pillow, and said in a low voice, "Yes,
lie down, behave yourself, as you are going to have your child. Sister
Simplice is right: all in this place are right."
And then, without stirring, without moving her head, she began looking
around with widely opened eyes and a joyous air, and said nothing more.
The sister closed the curtains, hoping she would fall off to sleep. The
physician arrived between seven and eight o'clock. Hearing no sound,
he fancied Fantine asleep. He entered softly and walked up to the bed
on tip-toe. He opened the curtains, and by the light of the lamp saw
Fantine's large calm eyes fixed on him. She said to him,--
"Oh, sir, my child will be allowed to sleep in a little cot by my
bed-side?"
The physician fancied she was delirious. She added,--
"Only look; there is exactly room."
The physician took Sister Simplice on one side who explained the matter
to him: that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and being in
doubt they had not thought it right to undeceive the patient, who
fancied that he had gone to Montfermeil, and she might possibly be in
the right. The physician approved, and drew near to Fantine's bed. She
said to him,--
"In the morning, when the poor darling wakes, I will say good-day to
her, and at night I, who do not sleep, will listen to her sleeping. Her
gentle little breathing will do me good."
"Give me your hand," said the physician.
"Oh yes, you do not know that I am cured. Cosette arrives to-morrow."
The physician was surprised to find her better: the oppression was
slighter, her pulse had regained strength, and a sort of altogether
unlooked-for life reanimated the poor exhausted being.
"Doctor," she continued, "has the sister told you that M. Madeleine has
gone to fetch my darling?"
The physician recommended silence, and that any painful emotion should
be avoided: he prescribed a dose of quinine, and if the fever returned
in the night, a sedative; and as he went away, he said to the sister:
"She is better. If the Mayor were to arrive with the child to-morrow, I
do not know what would happen: there are such astounding crises; great
joy has been known to check diseases; and though hers is an organic
malady, and in an advanced stage, it is all a mystery;--we might
perchance save her."
CHAPTER VII
THE TRAVELLER TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR RETURNING.
It was nearly eight in the evening when the cart we left on the road
drove under the archway of the post-house at Arras. The man whom we
have followed up to this moment got out, discharged the second horse,
and himself led the white pony to the stables; then he pushed open the
door of a billiard room on the ground-floor, sat down, and rested his
elbows on the table. He had taken fourteen hours in a journey for which
he had allowed himself six. He did himself the justice that it was no
fault of his, but in his heart he was not sorry at it. The landlady
came in.
"Will you sleep here, sir?"
He nodded in the negative.
"The ostler says that your horse is extremely tired."
"Will it not be able to start again to-morrow morning?"
"Oh dear, no, sir; it requires at least two days' rest."
"Is not the postoffice in this house?"
"Yes, sir."
The landlady led him to the office, where he showed his passport,
and inquired whether he could return to M---- the same night by the
mail-cart. Only one seat was vacant, and he took it and paid for
it. "Do not fail, sir," said the clerk, "to be here at one o'clock
precisely."
This done, he left the hotel, and began walking about the streets. He
was not acquainted with Arras, the streets were dark, and he walked
about hap-hazard, but he seemed obstinately determined not to ask his
way of passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found
himself in a labyrinth of narrow lanes, in which he lost his way. A
citizen came toward him with a lantern, whom, after some hesitation, he
resolved to address, though not till he had looked before and behind
him, as if afraid lest anybody should overhear the question he was
about to ask.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me the way to the courts of justice,
sir?" he said.
"You do not belong to the town, sir?" replied the man, who was rather
old; "well, follow me, I am going in the direction of the courts,
that is to say, of the Prefecture, for the courts are under repair at
present, and the sittings take place temporarily at the Prefecture."
"Are the assizes held there?" he asked.
"Of course, sir: you must know that what is now the Prefecture was the
Bishop's palace before the Revolution. Monsieur de Conzié, who was
Bishop in '92, had a large hall built there, and the trials take place
in this hall."
On the road, the citizen said to him,--
"If you wish to witness a trial you are rather late, for the court
usually closes at six o'clock."
However, when they arrived in the great square the old man showed him
four lofty lighted windows in a vast gloomy building.
"On my word, sir," he said, "you have arrived in time, and are in
luck's way. Do you see those four windows? They belong to the assize
courts. As there are lights, it is not closed yet: there must have
been a long trial, and they are having an evening session. Are you
interested in the trial? Is it a criminal offence, or are you a
witness?"
He answered,--
"I have not come for any trial: I only wish to speak to a solicitor."
"That is different. That is the door, sir, where the sentry is
standing, and you have only to go up the large staircase."
He followed the old man's instructions, and a few minutes later was in
a large hall, in which there were a good many people, and groups of
robed barristers were gossiping together. It is always a thing that
contracts the heart, to see these assemblies of men dressed in black,
conversing in a low voice on the threshold of a court of justice. It
is rare for charity and pity to be noticed in their remarks, for they
generally express condemnations settled before trial. All such groups
appear to the thoughtful observer so many gloomy hives, in which
buzzing minds build in community all sorts of dark edifices. This hall,
which was large and only lighted by one lamp, served as a waiting-room:
and folding-doors, at this moment closed, separated it from the grand
chamber in which the assizes were being held. The obscurity was so
great, that he was not afraid of addressing the first barrister he came
across.
"How is it going, sir?" he said.
"It is finished."
"Finished!" This word was repeated with such an accent, that the
barrister turned round.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you are a relative?"
"No, I know no one here. Was a verdict of guilty brought in?"
"Of course; it could not possibly be otherwise."
"The galleys?"
"For life."
He continued in a voice so faint that it was scarce audible,--
"Then, the identity was proved?"
"What identity?" the barrister retorted. "Nothing of the sort was
required; the affair was simple,--the woman had killed her child, the
infanticide was proved, the jury recommended her to mercy, and she was
sentenced to imprisonment for life."
"You are alluding to a woman, then?"
"Why, of course; a girl of the name of Limosin. To whom were you
referring, pray?"
"To nobody; but as the trial is over, how is it that the court is still
lighted?"
"It is for the other trial, which began about two hours back."
"What other trial?"
"Oh, it is clear too; he is a sort of beggar, a relapsed galley slave,
who has been robbing. I forget his name, but he has a regular bandit
face, on the strength of which I would send him to the galleys if for
nothing else."
"Is there any way of entering the court, sir?" he asked.
"I do not think so, for it is very full. Still, the trial is suspended,
and some persons have gone out. When the court resumes, you can try."
"Which is the way in?"
"By that large door."
The barrister left him; in a few minutes he had experienced almost
simultaneously, and confusedly blended, every emotion possible. The
words of this indifferent person had by turns pierced his heart like
needles of ice and like red-hot sword-blades. When he found that the
trial was not over, he breathed again; but he could not have said
whether what he felt were satisfaction or pain. He walked up to several
groups and listened to what they were saying; as the trial list was
very heavy, the President had selected for this day two simple and
short cases. They had begun with the infanticide, and were now engaged
with the relapsed convict, the "return horse." This man had stolen
apples, but it was proved that he had already been at the Toulon
galleys. It was this that made his case bad. His examination and the
deposition of the witnesses were over; but there were still the speech
for the defence and the summing up, and hence it would not be finished
till midnight. The man would probably be condemned, for the public
prosecutor was sharp, and did not let his accused escape; he was a
witty fellow who wrote verses. An usher was standing near the door
communicating with the court, and he asked him,--
"Will this door be opened soon?"
"It will not be opened," said the usher.
"Will it not be opened when the court resumes its sitting?"
"It has resumed," the usher replied, "but the door will not be opened."
"Why not?"
"Because the hall is full."
"What! is there no room?"
"For not a soul more. The door is closed, and no one can go in."
The usher added after a pause,--"There are certainly two or three seats
behind the President, but he only admits public officials to them."
After saying this, the usher turned his back on him. He withdrew with
hanging head, crossed the waiting-room, and slowly went down the
stairs, hesitating at every step. He was probably holding counsel with
himself; the violent combat which had been going on in him since the
previous day was not finished, and every moment he entered some new
phase. On reaching the landing he leaned against the banisters and
folded his arms; but all at once he took his pocket-book, tore a leaf
from it, wrote in pencil upon it, "M. Madeleine, Mayor of M. sur M.;"
then he hurried up the stairs, cleft the crowd, walked up to the usher,
handed him the paper, and said to him with an air of authority,--"Hand
this to the President." The usher took the paper, glanced at it, and
obeyed.
CHAPTER VIII.
INSIDE THE COURT.
Without suspecting the fact, the Mayor of M---- enjoyed a species of
celebrity. During the seven years that his reputation for virtue had
filled the whole of the Bas Boulonnais, it had gradually crossed the
border line into two or three adjoining departments. In addition to
the considerable service he had done the chief town, by restoring
the glass-bead trade, there was not one of the one hundred and forty
parishes in the bailiwick of M---- which was not indebted to him for
some kindness. He had ever assisted and promoted, when necessary, the
trades of other departments: thus he had supported with his credit and
funds, the tulle factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning machine at
Nivers, and the hydraulic manufacture of canvas at Bourbus sur Cauche.
The name of M. Madeleine was everywhere pronounced with veneration, and
Arras and Douai envied the fortunate little town of M---- its Mayor.
The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who presided at the present
Arras assizes, like every one else, was acquainted with this deeply and
universally honored name. When the usher discreetly opened the door of
the judges' robing room, leaned over the President's chair, and handed
him the paper, adding, "This gentleman wishes to hear the trial," the
President made a deferential movement, took up a pen, wrote a few words
at the foot of the paper, and returned it to the usher, saying,--"Show
him in."
The unhappy man whose history we are recording had remained near the
door of the court at the same spot and in the same attitude as when
the usher left him. He heard through his reverie some one say to him,
"Will you do me the honor of following me, sir?" It was the same usher
who had turned his back on him just before, and who now bowed to the
ground. At the same time the usher handed him the paper; he unfolded
it, and as he happened to be near the lamps he was able to read, "The
President of the Assize Court presents his respects to M. Madeleine."
He crumpled the paper in his hands, as if the words had a strange and
bitter after-taste for him. He followed the usher, and a few minutes
later found himself alone in a room of severe appearance, lighted by
two wax candles standing on a green-baize covered table. He still had
in his ears the last words of the usher, who had just left him,--
"You are in the judges' chamber; you have only to turn the handle of
that door, and you will find yourself in court behind the President's
chair." These words were mingled in his thoughts with a confused
recollection of narrow passages and dark staircases, which he had just
passed through. The usher had left him alone; the supreme moment had
arrived. He tried to collect himself, but could not succeed; for it is
especially in the hours when men have the most need of thought that
all the threads are broken in the brain. He was at the actual spot
where the judges deliberate and pass sentence. He gazed with stupid
tranquillity at this peaceful and yet formidable room, in which so
many existences had been broken, where his name would be echoed ere
long, and which his destiny was traversing at this moment. He looked
at the walls and then at himself, astonished that it was this room
and that it was he. He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours,
he was exhausted by the jolting of the cart, but he did not feel it;
it seemed to him that he did not feel anything. He walked up to a
black frame hanging on the wall, and which contained under glass an
autograph letter of Jean Nicolas Pache, Mayor of Paris, and Minister,
dated, doubtless in error, Juin 9 an II., and in which Pache sent
to the commune a list of the ministers and deputies under arrest at
their own houses. Any who saw him at this moment would doubtless have
imagined that this letter appeared to him very curious, for he did not
remove his eyes from it, and read it two or three times. But he read it
without paying attention; and unconsciously he was thinking of Fantine
and Cosette.
While thinking, he turned, and his eyes met the brass handle of the
door that separated him from the assize court. He had almost forgotten
this door, but his eye, at first calm, rested on it, then became wild
and fixed, and was gradually filled with terror. Drops of perspiration
started out from his hair and streamed down his temples. At one
moment he made with a species of authority blended with rebellion
that indescribable gesture which means and says so well,--"By heaven,
who forces me?" Then he turned hurriedly, saw before him the door by
which he had entered, walked up, opened it, and went out. He was no
longer in that room, but in a passage, a long narrow passage, cut up by
steps and wickets, making all sorts of turns, lit up here and there by
reflectors like the night-lamps for the sick,--the passage by which he
had come. He breathed, he listened, not a sound behind him, not a sound
before him, and he began to fly as if he were pursued. When he had
passed several turnings, he listened again,--there was still the same
silence and the same gloom around him. He panted, tottered, and leaned
against the wall; the stone was cold, the perspiration was chilled on
his forehead, and he drew himself up with a shudder. Then standing
there alone, trembling from cold, and perhaps from something else, he
thought. He had thought all night, he had thought all day; but he only
heard within him a voice that said, Alas!
A quarter of an hour passed thus; at length he inclined his head,
sighed with agony, let his arms droop, and turned back. He walked
slowly and as if stunned; it looked as if he had been caught up in his
flight, and was being brought back. He entered the judges chamber, and
the first thing he saw was the handle of the door. This handle, which
was round and made of polished brass, shone for him like a terrific
star; he looked at it as a sheep would look at the eye of a tiger. His
eyes would not leave it, and from time to time he took a step which
brought him nearer to the door. Had he listened he would have heard,
like a species of confused murmur, the noise in the adjoining court;
but he did not listen and did not hear. All at once, and without
knowing how, he found himself close to the door; he convulsively seized
the handle, and the door opened. He was in the assize court.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TRIAL.
He advanced a step, closed the door mechanically after him, and gazed
at the scene before him. It was a dimly-lighted large hall, at one
moment full of sounds, and at another of silence, in which all the
machinery of a criminal trial was displayed, with its paltry and
lugubrious gravity, in the midst of a crowd. At one of the ends of
the hall, the one where he was, judges with a vacant look, in shabby
gowns, biting their nails or shutting their eye-lids; barristers in
all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with honest harsh faces; old stained
wainscoting, a dirty ceiling; tables covered with baize, which was
rather yellow than green; doors blackened by hands; pot-house sconces
that produced more smoke than light, hanging from nails driven into
the wall; upon the tables brass candlesticks,--all was obscurity,
ugliness, and sadness. But all this yet produced an austere and august
impression, for the grand human thing called law, and the great divine
thing called justice, could be felt in it.
No one in this crowd paid any attention to him, for all eyes converged
on a single point,--a wooden bench placed against a little door,
along the wall on the left of the President; on this bench, which
was illumined by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.
This man was the man; he did not seek him, he saw him; his eyes went
there naturally, as if they had known beforehand where that face was.
He fancied he saw himself, aged, not absolutely alike in face, but
exactly similar in attitude and appearance, with his bristling hair,
with his savage restless eyeballs, and the blouse, just as he was on
the day when he entered D----, full of hatred, and concealing in his
mind that hideous treasure of frightful thoughts which he had spent
nineteen years in collecting on the pavement of the bagne. He said to
himself with a shudder, "My God! shall I become again like that?" This
being appeared to be at least sixty years of age; he had something
about him rough, stupid, and startled. On hearing the sound of the
door, persons made way for the new comer, the President had turned his
head, and guessing that the gentleman who had just entered was the
Mayor of M----, he bowed to him. The public prosecutor who had seen
M. Madeleine at M----, whither his duties had more than once called
him, recognized him and also bowed. He scarce noticed it, for he was
under a species of hallucination; he was looking at a judge, a clerk,
gendarmes, a number of cruelly curious faces,--he had seen all this
once, formerly, seven-and-twenty years ago. These mournful things he
found again,--they were there, stirring, existing; it was no longer an
effort of his memory, a mirage of his mind; they were real gendarmes,
real judges, a real crowd, and real men in flesh and bone. He saw all
the monstrous aspect of his past reappear, and live again around him,
with all the terror that reality possesses. All this was yawning before
him; he felt terrified, closed his eyes, and exclaimed in the depths
of his mind. Never! And by a tragic sport of fate which made all his
ideas terrible and rendered him nearly mad, it was another himself who
was there. This man who was being tried everybody called Jean Valjean.
He had before him an unheard-of vision, a species of representation of
the most horrible moment of his life played by his phantom. All was
there,--it was the same machinery, the same hour of the night, almost
the same faces of judges, soldiers, and spectators. The only difference
was that there was a crucifix over the President's head, which had been
removed from the courts at the time of his condemnation. When he was
tried God was absent. There was a chair behind him, into which he fell,
terrified by the idea that people could see him. When he was seated he
took advantage of a pile of paste-board cases on the judges' desk to
hide his face from the spectators. He could now see without being seen:
he fully regained the feeling of the real, and gradually recovered. He
attained that phase of calmness in which a man can listen. Monsieur
Bamatabois was serving on the jury. He looked for Javert, but could not
see him, for the witnesses' bench was hidden by the clerk's table, and
then, as we have said, the court was hardly lighted.
At the moment when he came in, the counsel for the defence was ending
his speech. The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; for
three hours they had seen a man, a stranger, a species of miserable
being, deeply stupid or deeply clever, being gradually crushed by the
weight of a terrible resemblance. This man, as we know already, was a
vagabond who was found in a field, carrying a branch covered with ripe
apples, which had been broken off a tree in a neighboring orchard. Who
was this man? Inquiries had been made, and witnesses heard; they were
unanimous, and light had flashed all through the trial. The accusation
said,--"We have got hold not only of a fruit-stealer, a marauder,
but we hold under our hand a bandit, a man who has broken his ban,
an ex-convict, a most dangerous villain, a malefactor of the name of
Jean Valjean, whom justice has been seeking for a long time, and who,
eight years ago, on leaving Toulon, committed a highway robbery with
violence on a Savoyard lad, called Little Gervais, a crime provided
for by Article 383 of the penal code, for which we intend to prosecute
him hereafter, when the identity has been judicially proved. He has
just committed a fresh robbery, and that is a case of relapse. Find him
guilty of the new offence, and he will be tried at a later date for
the old one." The prisoner seemed highly amazed at this accusation and
the unanimity of the witnesses; he made gestures and signs intended to
deny, or else looked at the ceiling. He spoke with difficulty, answered
with embarrassment, but from head to foot his whole person denied.
He was like an idiot in the presence of all these intellects ranged
in battle-array round him, and like a stranger in the midst of this
society which seized him. Still, a most menacing future was hanging
over him; the probability of his being Jean Valjean increased with each
moment, and the entire crowd regarded with greater anxiety than himself
the sentence full of calamity which was gradually settling down on him.
An eventuality even offered a glimpse of a death-penalty, should the
identity be proved, and he was hereafter found guilty of the attack on
Little Gervais. Who was this man? Of what nature was his apathy? Was it
imbecility or cunning? Did he understand too much, or did he understand
nothing at all? These questions divided the crowd, and the jury seemed
to share their opinion. There was in this trial something terrific and
something puzzling; the drama was not only gloomy, but it was obscure.
The counsel for the defence had argued rather cleverly, in that
provincial language which for a long time constituted the eloquence
of the bar, and which all barristers formerly employed, not only at
Paris but at Romorantin or Montbrison, and which at the present day,
having become classical, is only spoken by public prosecutors, whom
it suits through its serious sonorousness and majestic movements. It
is the language in which a husband is called a "consort;" a wife,
a "spouse;" Paris, "the centre of the arts and of civilization;"
the king, "the Monarch;" the bishop, a "holy Pontiff;" the public
prosecutor, the "eloquent interpreter of the majesty of the law;"
the pleadings, the "accents which we have just heard;" the age of
Louis XIV., "the great age;" a theatre, the "temple of Melpomene;"
the reigning family, the "august blood of our kings;" a concert, "a
musical solemnity;" the general commanding in the department, "the
illustrious warrior who, etc.;" the pupils of the seminary, "those
tender Levites;" the mistakes imputed to the newspapers, "the imposture
which distils its venom in the columns of these organs," etc., etc.
The barrister had, consequently, begun by explaining away the robbery
of the apples,--rather a difficult thing in this grand style; but
Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a fowl in the midst
of a formal speech, and got out of the difficulty with glory. The
barrister had established the fact that the apple robbery was not
materially proved,--his client, whom, in his quality as defender, he
persistently called Champmathieu, had not been seen by any one scaling
a wall or breaking the branch; he had been arrested with the branch
in his possession, but he declared that he found it on the ground
and picked it up. Where was the proof of the contrary? This branch
had been broken off and then thrown away by the frightened robber,
for doubtless there was one. But where was the evidence that this
Champmathieu was a robber? Only one thing, his being an ex-convict.
The counsel did not deny that this fact seemed unluckily proved. The
prisoner had lived at Faverolles; he had been a wood-cutter; the name
of Champmathieu might possibly be derived from Jean Mathieu; lastly,
four witnesses unhesitatingly recognized Champmathieu as the galley
slave, Jean Valjean. To these indications, to this testimony, the
counsel could only oppose his client's denial, which was certainly
interested: but, even supposing that he was the convict Jean Mathieu,
did that prove he was the apple-stealer? It was a presumption at the
most, but not a proof. The accused, it was true,--and his counsel was
obliged "in his good faith" to allow it,--had adopted a bad system of
defence; he insisted in denying everything,--not merely the robbery,
but his quality as convict. A confession on the latter point would have
doubtless been better, and gained him the indulgence of his judges;
the counsel had advised him to do so, but the prisoner had obstinately
refused, probably in the belief that he would save everything by
confessing nothing. This was wrong, but should not his scanty intellect
be taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid: a long misery
at the galleys, a long wretchedness out of them, had brutalized him,
etc., etc.; his defence was bad, but was that a reason to find him
guilty? As for the offence on Little Gervais, the counsel need not
argue that, as it was not included in the indictment. The counsel wound
up by imploring the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean
appeared to them proved, to punish him as a criminal who had broken his
ban, and not apply the fearful chastisement which falls on the relapsed
convict.
The public prosecutor replied. He was violent and flowery, as public
prosecutors usually are. He congratulated the counsel for the defence
on his "fairness," and cleverly took advantage of it; he attacked
the prisoner with all the concessions which his counsel had made. He
appeared to allow that the prisoner was Jean Valjean, and he therefore
was so. This was so much gained for the prosecution, and could not be
contested; and here, reverting cleverly to the sources and causes of
criminality, the public prosecutor thundered against the immorality
of the romantic school, at that time in its dawn under the name of
the "Satanic school," which the critics of the _Quotidienne_ and the
_Oriflamme_ had given it; and he attributed, not without some show of
reason, the crime of Champmathieu, or to speak more correctly, of Jean
Valjean, to this perverse literature. These reflections exhausted,
he passed to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Here
came a description of Jean Valjean, a monster in human form, etc. The
model of this sort of description will be found in the recitation of
Théramène, which is not only useful to tragedy but daily renders great
services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury "quivered,"
and when the description was ended, the public prosecutor went on, with
an oratorical outburst intended to excite to the highest pitch the
enthusiasm of the country papers which would appear the next morning.
"And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., a vagabond, a beggar, having
no means of existence, etc., etc., etc., accustomed through his past
life to culpable actions, and but little corrected by confinement in
the bagne, as is proved by the crime committed on little Gervais, etc.,
etc., etc.,--it is such a man, who, found on the high road with the
proof of robbery in his hand, and a few paces from the wall he had
climbed over, denies the fact, the robbery, denies everything, even to
his name and his identity. In addition to a hundred proofs to which we
will not revert, four witnesses recognize him,--Javert, the upright
Inspector of Police, and three of his old comrades in ignominy, the
convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. And what does he oppose
to this crushing unanimity? He denies. What hardness of heart! But you
will do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc., etc."
While the public prosecutor was speaking, the prisoner listened with
open mouth, and with a sort of amazement in which there was certainly
some admiration. He was evidently surprised that a man could speak
like this. From time to time, at the most energetic apostrophes, when
eloquence, unable to restrain itself, overflows in a flux of branding
epithets, and envelopes the prisoner in a tempest, he slowly moved his
head from right to left, and from left to right, in a sort of dumb and
melancholy protest, with which he had contented himself ever since
the beginning of the trial. Twice or thrice the spectators standing
nearest to him heard him say in a low voice: "All this comes from not
asking Monsieur Baloup." The public prosecutor drew the attention of
the jury to this dull attitude, which was evidently calculated, and
which denoted, not imbecility, but skill, cunning, and the habit of
deceiving justice, and which brought out in full light the "profound
perverseness" of this man. He concluded by reserving the affair of
Little Gervais, and by demanding a severe sentence. The counsel for
the defence rose, began by complimenting the public prosecutor on his
"admirable speech," and then replied as well as he could, but feebly;
it was plain that the ground was giving way under him.
CHAPTER X.
THE SYSTEM OF DENIAL.
The moment for closing the trial had arrived: the President ordered
the prisoner to stand up, and asked him the usual question: "Have you
anything to add to your defence?" The man, who was rolling in his
hands his hideous cap, made no reply, and the President repeated his
question. This time the man heard, and seemed to understand; he moved
like a person who is waking up, looked around him, at the public, the
gendarmes, his counsel, the jury, and the court, laid his monstrous
fist on the wood-work in front of his bench, and, suddenly fixing his
eyes on the public prosecutor, began to speak. It was an eruption;
from the way in which the words escaped from his lips, incoherent,
impetuous, and pell-mell, it seemed as if they were all striving to get
out at the same time. He said:
"I have this to say: That I was a wheelwright in Paris, and worked for
Master Baloup. It is a hard trade, is a wheelwright's; you always work
in the open air, in yards, under sheds when you have a good master, but
never in a room, because you want space, look you. In winter you are
so cold that you swing your arms to warm you, but the masters don't
like when there is ice between the stones, is rough work; it soon uses
a man up. You are old when quite young in that trade. At forty a man
is finished. I was fifty-three, and had hard lines of it. And then the
workmen are so unkind. When a man is not so young as he was, they call
him an old fool, an old brute! I only earned thirty sous a day, for the
masters took advantage of my age, and paid me as little as they could.
With that I had my daughter, who was a washer-woman in the river. She
earned a little for her part, and the pair of us managed to live. She
was bothered too. All day in a tub up to your waist, in the snow and
rain, and with the wind that cuts your face. When it freezes, it is
all the same, for you must wash; there are persons who have not much
linen, and expect it home; if a woman did not wash, she would lose her
customers. The planks are badly joined, and drops of water fall on
you everywhere. Her petticoats were wet through, over and under. That
penetrates. She also worked at the wash-house of the Enfants Rouges,
where the water is got from taps. You are no longer in the tub; you
wash at the tap before you, and rinse in the basin behind you. As it
is shut up, you don't feel so cold. But there is a steam of hot water
which ruins your sight. She came home at seven in the evening, and went
to bed directly, for she was so tired. Her husband used to beat her. He
is dead. We were not very happy. She was a good girl, who did not go to
balls, and was very quiet. I remember a Mardi-gras, on which she went
to bed at eight o'clock. I am telling the truth. You need only inquire.
Oh yes, inquire! What an ass I am! Paris is a gulf. Who is there that
knows Father Champmathieu? And yet, I tell you, Monsieur Baloup. Ask
him. After all, I do not know what you want of me."
The man ceased speaking and remained standing; he had said all this
in a loud, quick, hoarse, hard voice, with a sort of wretched and
savage energy. Once he broke off to bow to somebody in the crowd. The
affirmations which he seemed to throw out hap-hazard came from him in
gasps, and he accompanied each by the gesture of a man who is chopping
wood. When he had finished, his hearers burst into a laugh; he looked
at the public, seeing they were laughing, and understanding nothing,
he began to laugh himself. That did him mischief. The President, a
grave and kind man, began speaking. He reminded the "gentlemen of the
jury" that "Monsieur Baloup, formerly a wheelwright in whose service
the accused declared that he had been, was a bankrupt, and had not
been found when an attempt was made to serve him with a subpoena."
Then, turning to the prisoner, he requested him to listen to what he
was about to say, and added: "You are in a situation which should cause
you to reflect. The heaviest presumptions are weighing upon you, and
may entail capital punishment. Prisoner, I ask you for the last time
to explain yourself clearly on the two following facts: In the first
place, did you, yes or no, climb over the wall, break a branch, and
steal apples, that is to say, commit a robbery with escalade? Secondly,
yes or no, are you the liberated convict, Jean Valjean?"
The prisoner shook his head with a confident air, like a man who
understands and knows what answer he is going to make. He opened his
mouth, turned to the President, and said,--
"In the first place--"
Then he looked at his cap, looked at the ceiling, and held his tongue.
"Prisoner," the public prosecutor said in a stern voice, "pay
attention. You make no answer to the questions that are asked you,
and your confusion condemns you. It is evident that your name is not
Champmathieu, but Jean Valjean, at first concealed under the name of
Jean Mathieu, your mother's name; that you went to Auvergne; that
your birth-place is Faverolles, and that you are a wood-cutter. It is
evident that you stole ripe apples by clambering over a wall, and the
gentlemen of the jury will appreciate the fact."
The prisoner had sat down again, but he hurriedly rose when the public
prosecutor had finished, and exclaimed,--
"You are a wicked man. This is what I wanted to say, but I could not
think of it at first. I have stolen nothing. I am a man who does not
eat every day. I was coming from Ailly, and walking after a flood,
which had made the whole country yellow; the very ponds had overflowed,
and nothing grew in the sand except a few little blades of grass by
the road-side. I found a branch with apples lying on the ground, and
picked it up, little thinking that it would bring me into trouble. I
have been in prison and bullied for three months, and after that people
talk against me, I don't know why, and say to me, Answer. The gendarme,
who is a good-hearted fellow, nudges me with his elbow, and says, Why
don't you answer? I cannot explain myself, for I am no scholar, but
only a poor man, and you are wrong not to see it. I have not stolen, I
only picked up things lying on the ground. You talk about Jean Valjean
and Jean Mathieu. I do not know these persons, they are countrymen. I
used to work for Monsieur Baloup, Boulevard de l'Hôpital, and my name
is Champmathieu. You are a very clever fellow to tell me where I was
born, for I don't know. It is not everybody who has a house to come
into the world in. That would be too comfortable. I believe that my
father and mother were folks who went about on the roads, but I do not
know it after all. When I was a boy I was called little, and now I am
called old. Those are my Christian names, and you can take them as you
please. I have been in Auvergne. I have been at Faverolles. Well, hang
it! may not a man have been at those two places without having been to
the galleys? I tell you that I have not stolen, and that my name is
Champmathieu. I worked for M. Baloup, and kept house. You tire me with
your foolishness. Why is everybody so spiteful against me?"
The public prosecutor, who had not sat down, here addressed the
President.
"In the presence of these confused but very clear denials on the part
of the prisoner, who would like to pass for an idiot, but will not
succeed,--we warn him,--we request that it may please you, sir, and the
court to recall the prisoners Brevet, Cochepaille, and Chenildieu, and
Police Inspector Javert, and examine them again as to the identity of
the prisoner with Jean Valjean."
"I must remark," said the President, "that Inspector Javert, having
been recalled to his duties at a neighboring town, left the hall and
the town immediately after giving his evidence; we authorized him to do
so with the consent of the public prosecutor and the counsel for the
defence."
"Perfectly correct, sir," the public prosecutor continued. "In the
absence of Inspector Javert, I believe it my duty to remind the
gentlemen of the jury of the statement he made here a few hours ago.
Javert is a worthy man, who honors by his rigorous and strict probity
inferior but important functions. His evidence is as follows: "I do
not require moral presumptions and material proof to contradict the
prisoner's assertions, for I recognize him perfectly. This man's name
is not Champmathieu, he is Jean Valjean, an ex-convict of a very
violent and formidable character. It was with great reluctance that
he was liberated when he completed his time. He had nineteen years'
hard labor for qualified robbery, and made five or six attempts to
escape. In addition to the little Gervais robbery and the larceny of
the apples, I also suspect him of a robbery committed in the house
of his Grandeur the late Bishop of D----. I frequently saw him when
I was assistant jailer at Toulon, and I repeat that I recognize him
perfectly."
Such a precise declaration seemed to produce a lively effect on the
audience and the jury, and the public prosecutor wound up by requesting
that the other three witnesses should be brought in and reexamined. The
President gave an order to an usher, and a moment after the door of
the witness-room opened. The usher, accompanied by a gendarme, brought
in the prisoner Brevet. The audience were all in suspense, and their
chests heaved as if they had but one soul among them. The ex-convict
Brevet wore the black and gray jacket of the central prisons; he was a
man of about sixty years of age, who had the face of a business man and
the look of a rogue,--these are sometimes seen together. He had become
a sort of jailer in the prison to which new offences had brought him,
and was a man of whom the officials said, "He tries to make himself
useful." The chaplains bore good testimony to his religious habits,
and it must not be forgotten that this trial took place under the
Restoration.
"Brevet," said the President, "as you have undergone a degrading
punishment, you cannot be sworn."
Brevet looked down humbly.
"Still," the President continued, "there may remain, by the permission
of Heaven, a feeling of honor and equity even in the man whom the law
has degraded, and it is to that feeling I appeal in this decisive
hour. If it still exist in you, as I hope, reflect before answering
me; consider, on one hand, this man whom a word from you may ruin, on
the other, the justice which a word from you may enlighten. The moment
is a solemn one, and there is still time for you to retract, if you
believe that you are mistaken. Prisoner, stand up. Brevet, look at the
prisoner. Think over your past recollections, and tell us on your soul
and conscience whether you still persist in recognizing this man as
your old mate at the galleys, Jean Valjean."
Brevet looked at the prisoner, and then turned to the court.
"Yes, sir, I was the first who recognized him, and I adhere to it. This
man is Jean Valjean, who came to Toulon in 1796 and left in 1815. I
came out a year later. He looks like a brute now, but in that case age
has brutalized him, for he was cunning at the hulks. I recognize him
positively."
"Go and sit down," said the President. "Prisoner, remain standing."
Chenildieu was next brought in, a convict for life, as was shown by his
red jacket and green cap. He was serving his time at Toulon, whence he
had been fetched for this trial. He was a little man of about fifty
years of age, quick, wrinkled, thin, yellow, bold, and feverish, who
had in all his limbs and his whole person a sort of sickly weakness,
and immense strength in his look. His mates at the galleys had surnamed
him Je-nie-Dieu. The President addressed him much as he had done
Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him that his degradation robbed
him of the right of taking an oath, Chenildieu raised his head and
looked boldly at the crowd. The President begged him to reflect, and
asked him if he still persisted in recognizing the prisoner. Chenildieu
burst into a laugh:--
"I should think I do! Why, we were fastened to the same chain for five
years! So you are sulky, old fellow?"
"Go and sit down," said the President.
The usher brought in Cochepaille. This second convict for life,
who had been fetched from the galleys and was dressed in red like
Chenildieu, was a peasant of Lourdes and a half-bear of the Pyrenees.
He had guarded sheep in the mountains, and had gradually drifted into
brigandage. Cochepaille was no less savage, and appeared even more
stupid, than the prisoner; he was one of those wretched men whom nature
has outlined as wild beasts and whom society finishes as galley-slaves.
The President tried to move him by a few grave and pathetic words, and
asked him, like the two others, whether he still persisted, without any
hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man standing before him.
"It is Jean Valjean," said Cochepaille. "He was nicknamed Jean the
Jack, because he was so strong."
Each of the affirmations of these three men, evidently sincere and
made in good faith, had aroused in the audience a murmur of evil omen
for the prisoner,--a murmur which grew louder and more prolonged
each time that a new declaration was added to the preceding one.
The prisoner himself listened to them with that amazed face which,
according to the indictment, was his principal means of defence. At
the first the gendarmes heard him mutter between his teeth, "Well,
there's one!" after the second he said rather louder, and with an air
of satisfaction, "Good!" at the third he exclaimed, "Famous!" The
President addressed him,--
"You have heard the evidence, prisoner; have you any answer to make?"
He answered,--
"I say--famous!"
A laugh broke out in the audience and almost affected the jury. It was
plain that the man was lost.
"Ushers," said the President, "produce silence in the court: I am about
to sum up."
At this moment there was a movement by the President's side: and a
voice could be heard exclaiming,--
"Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille, look this way." All those who
heard the voice felt chilled to the heart, for it was so lamentable and
terrible. All eyes were turned in the direction whence it came: a man
seated among the privileged audience behind the court had risen, pushed
open the gate that separated the judges' bench from the public court,
and stepped down. The President, the public prosecutor, M. Bamatabois,
twenty persons, recognized him, and exclaimed simultaneously, "Monsieur
Madeleine."
CHAPTER XI
CHAMPMATHIEU IS ASTOUNDED.
It was he in truth; the clerk's lamp lit up his face; he held his hat
in his hand, there was no disorder in his attire, and his coat was
carefully buttoned. He was very pale and trembled slightly; and his
hair, which had been gray when he arrived at Arras, was now perfectly
white; it had turned so during the hour he had passed in the court.
Every head was raised, the sensation was indescribable, and there was
a momentary hesitation among the spectators. The voice had been so
poignant, the man standing there seemed so calm, that at first they
did not understand, and asked each other who it was that had spoken.
They could not believe that this tranquil man could have uttered
that terrific cry. This indecision lasted but a few moments. Before
the President and the public prosecutor could say a word, before the
gendarmes and ushers could make a move, the man, whom all still called
at this moment M. Madeleine, had walked up to the witnesses, Brevet,
Chenildieu, and Cochepaille.
"Do you not recognize me?" he asked them.
All three stood amazed, and gave a nod to show that they did not know
him, and Cochepaille, who was intimidated, gave a military salute.
M. Madeleine turned to the jury and the court, and said in a gentle
voice,--
"Gentlemen of the jury, acquit the prisoner. Monsieur le President,
have me arrested. The man you are seeking is not he, for--I am Jean
Valjean."
Not a breath was drawn,--the first commotion of astonishment had
been succeeded by a sepulchral silence; all felt that species of
religious terror which seizes on a crowd when something grand is being
accomplished. The President's face, however, displayed sympathy and
sorrow; he exchanged a rapid look with the public prosecutor, and a few
words in a low voice with the assistant judges. He then turned to the
spectators, and asked with an accent which all understood,--
"Is there a medical man present?"
The public prosecutor then said,--
"Gentlemen of the jury, the strange and unexpected incident which has
disturbed the trial inspires us, as it does yourselves, with a feeling
which we need not express. You all know, at least by reputation, the
worthy M. Madeleine, Mayor of M----.
If there be a medical man here, we join with the President in begging
him to attend to M. Madeleine and remove him to his house."
M. Madeleine did not allow the public prosecutor to conclude, but
interrupted him with an accent full of gentleness and authority. These
are the words he spoke; we produce them literally as they were written
down by one of the witnesses of this scene, and as they still live in
the ears of those who heard them just forty years ago:--
"I thank you, sir, but I am not mad, as you will soon see. You were on
the point of committing a great error; set that man at liberty: I am
accomplishing a duty, for I am the hapless convict. I am the only man
who sees clearly here, and I am telling you the truth. What I am doing
at this moment God above is looking at, and that is sufficient for me.
You can seize me, for here I am; and yet I did my best. I hid myself
under a name, I became rich, I became Mayor, and I wished to get back
among honest men, but it seems that this is impossible. There are many
things I cannot tell you, as I am not going to describe my life to you,
for one day it will be known. It is true that I robbed the Bishop; also
true that I robbed Little Gervais, and they were right in telling you
that Jean Valjean was a dangerous villain,--though, perhaps, all the
fault did not lie with him. Listen, gentlemen of the court. A man so
debased as myself cannot remonstrate with Providence, or give advice to
society; but I will say that the infamy from which I sought to emerge
is an injurious thing, and the galleys make the convict. Be good enough
to bear that fact in mind. Before I went to Toulon I was a poor peasant
with but little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys changed me:
I was stupid, and I became wicked; I was a log, and I became a brand.
At a later date indulgence and goodness saved me, in the same way as
severity had destroyed me. But, forgive me, you cannot understand what
I am saying. At my house the two-franc piece I stole seven years ago
from Little Gervais will be found among the ashes in the fire-place. I
have nothing more to add. Apprehend me. My God! the public prosecutor
shakes his head. You say M. Madeleine has gone mad, and do not believe
me. This is afflicting; at least do not condemn this man. What! these
three do not recognize me! Oh, I wish that Javert were here, for he
would recognize me!"
No pen could render the benevolent and sombre melancholy of the accent
which accompanied these words. He then turned to the three convicts,--
"Well, I recognize you. Brevet, do you not remember me?" He broke off,
hesitated for a moment, and said,--
"Can you call to mind the checkered braces you used to wear at the
galleys?"
Brevet gave a start of surprise and looked at him from head to foot in
terror. He continued,--
"Chenildieu, who named yourself Je-nie-Dieu, you have a deep burn in
your right shoulder, because you placed it one day in a pan of charcoal
in order to efface the three letters, T. F. P., which, however, are
still visible. Answer me--is it so?"
"It is true," said Chenildieu.
"Cochepaille, you have near the hollow of your left arm a date made in
blue letters with burnt gun-powder; the date is that of the Emperor's
landing at Cannes, March I, 1815. Turn up your sleeve."
Cochepaille did so, and every eye was turned to his bare arm; a
gendarme brought up a lamp, and the date was there. The unhappy man
turned to the audience and the judges, with a smile which to this day
affects those who saw it. It was the smile of triumph, but it was also
the smile of despair.
"You see plainly," he said, "that I am Jean Valjean."
In the hall there were now neither judges, accusers, nor gendarmes;
there were only fixed eyes and heaving hearts. No one thought of the
part he might be called on to perform,--the public prosecutor that
he was there to prove a charge, the President to pass sentence, and
the prisoner's counsel to defend. It was a striking thing that no
question was asked, no authority interfered. It is the property of
sublime spectacles to seize on all minds and make spectators of all
the witnesses. No one perhaps accounted for his feelings, no one said
to himself that he saw a great light shining, but all felt dazzled in
their hearts. It was evident that they had Jean Valjean before them.
The appearance, of this man had been sufficient to throw a bright light
on an affair which was so obscure a moment previously: without needing
any explanation, the entire crowd understood, as if through a sort of
electric revelation, at once and at a glance the simple and magnificent
story of a man who denounced himself in order that another man might
not be condemned in his place. Details, hesitation, any possible
resistance, were lost in this vast luminous fact. It was an impression
which quickly passed away, but at the moment was irresistible.
"I will not occupy the time of the court longer," Jean Valjean
continued; "I shall go away, as I am not arrested, for I have several
things to do. The public prosecutor knows who I am, he knows where I am
going, and he will order me to be arrested when he thinks proper."
He walked towards the door, and not a voice was raised, not an arm
stretched forth to prevent him. All fell back, for there was something
divine in this incident, which causes the multitude to recoil and make
way for a single man. He slowly walked on; it was never known who
opened the door, but it is certain that he found it opened when he
reached it. When there, he turned and said,--
"I am at your orders, sir."
Then he addressed the audience.
"I presume that all of you consider me worthy of pity? Great God! when
I think of what I was on the point of doing, I consider myself worthy
of envy. Still, I should have preferred that all this had not taken
place."
He went out, and the door was closed as it had been opened, for men
who do certain superior deeds are always sure of being served by some
one in the crowd. Less than an hour after, the verdict of the jury
acquitted Champmathieu, and Champmathieu, who was at once set at
liberty, went away in stupefaction, believing all the men mad, and not
at all comprehending this vision.
BOOK VIII.
THE COUNTERSTROKE.
CHAPTER I.
M. MADELEINE LOOKS AT HIS HAIR.
Day was beginning to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless and feverish
night, though full of bright visions, and towards morning fell asleep.
Sister Simplice, who was watching, took advantage of this slumber to go
and prepare a fresh dose of bark. The worthy sister had been for some
time in the surgery, stooping over her drugs and bottles, and looking
carefully at them on account of the mist which dawn spreads over
objects. All at once she turned her head and gave a slight shriek. M.
Madeleine had entered silently, and was standing before her.
"Is it you, sir?" she exclaimed.
He answered in a low voice,--
"How is the poor creature?"
"Not so bad just at present, but she has frightened us terribly."
She explained to him what had occurred, how Fantine had been very ill
the previous day, but was now better, because she believed that he
had gone to Montfermeil to fetch her child. The sister did not dare
question him, but she could see from his looks that he had not been
there.
"All that is well," he said. "You did right in not undeceiving her."
"Yes," the sister continued; "but now that she is going to see you,
sir, and does not see her child, what are we to tell her?"
He remained thoughtful for a moment.
"God will inspire us," he said.
"Still, it is impossible to tell a falsehood," the sister murmured in a
low voice.
It was now bright day in the room, and it lit up M. Madeleine's face.
The sister raised her eyes by chance.
"Good gracious, sir!" she exclaimed; "what can have happened to you?
Your hair is quite white."
"What!" he said.
Sister Simplice had no mirror, but she took from a drawer a small
looking-glass which the infirmary doctor employed to make sure that a
patient was dead. M. Madeleine took this glass, looked at his hair, and
said, "So it is." He said it carelessly and as if thinking of something
else, and the sister felt chilled by some unknown terror of which she
caught a glimpse in all this. He asked,--
"Can I see her?"
"Will you not recover her child for her, sir?" the sister said, hardly
daring to ask the question.
"Of course; but it will take at least two or three days."
"If she were not to see you till then, sir," the sister continued
timidly, "she would not know that you had returned; it would be easy to
keep her quiet, and when her child arrived, she would naturally think
that you had returned with it. That would not be telling a falsehood."
M. Madeleine appeared to reflect for a few moments, and then said with
his calm gravity,--
"No, sister, I must see her, for I am possibly pressed for time."
The nun did not seem to notice the word "possibly," which gave an
obscure and singular meaning to the Mayor's remark. She answered in a
low voice,--
"In that case you can go in, sir, though she is asleep."
He made a few remarks about a door that closed badly and whose creaking
might awake the patient, then entered Fantine's room, went up to
the bed, and opened the curtains. She was asleep; her breath issued
from her chest with that tragic sound peculiar to these diseases,
which crushes poor mothers, who sit up at nights by the side of their
sleeping child for whom there is no hope. But this painful breathing
scarce disturbed an ineffable serenity spread over her face, which
transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her
cheeks were carnations. Her long, fair eyelashes, the sole beauty that
remained of her virginity and youth, quivered, though remaining closed.
Her whole person trembled as if she had wings which were on the point
of expanding and bearing her away. To see her thus, no one could have
believed that she was in an almost hopeless state, for she resembled
rather a woman who is about to fly away than one who is going to die.
The branch, when the hand approaches to pluck the flowers, quivers and
seems at once to retire and advance. The human body undergoes something
like this quiver when the moment arrives for the mysterious fingers of
death to pluck the soul.
M. Madeleine stood for some time motionless near this bed, looking
first at the patient and then at the crucifix, as he had done two
months previously, on the day when he came for the first time to
see her in this asylum. They were both in the same attitude,--she
sleeping, he praying; but in those two months her hair had turned gray,
and his white. The sister had not come in with him: he was standing by
the bed-side, finger on lip, as if there were some one in the room whom
he was bidding to be silent. She opened her eyes, saw him, and said
calmly and with a smile,--
"And Cosette?"
CHAPTER II.
FANTINE IS HAPPY.
She gave no start of surprise, no start of joy, for she was joy itself.
The simple question--"And Cosette?" was asked in such profound faith,
with so much certainty, with such an utter absence of anxiety and
doubt, that he could not find a word to say. She continued,--
"I knew you were there, for though I was asleep, I saw. I have seen you
for a long time, and have been following you with my eyes all night;
you were in a glory, and had around you all sorts of heavenly faces."
She looked up to the crucifix.
"But," she continued, "tell me where Cosette is? Why was she not laid
in my bed so that I could see her directly I woke?"
He answered something mechanically which he could never remember.
Luckily the physician, who had been sent for, came to M. Madeleine's
assistance.
"My dear girl," said the physician, "calm yourself; your child is here."
Fantine's eyes sparkled, and covered her whole face with brightness;
she clasped her hands with an expression which contained all the
violence and all the gentleness a prayer can have simultaneously.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "bring her to me!"
Touching maternal illusion! Cosette was still to her the little child
who must be carried.
"Not yet," the physician continued,--"not at this moment; you have
a little fever hanging about you; the sight of your own child would
agitate you and do you harm. You must get well first."
She impetuously interrupted him,--
"But I am well! I tell you I am well! What a donkey this doctor is! I
insist on seeing my child."
"There, you see," the physician said, "how violent you are! So long as
you are like that, I will prevent your having your child. It is not
enough to see her, but you must live for her. When you grow reasonable,
I will bring her myself."
The poor mother hung her head.
"Doctor, I ask your pardon; I sincerely ask your pardon. In former
times I should not have spoken as I did just now, but I have gone
through so much unhappiness that I do not know at times what I am
saying. I understand; you are afraid of the excitement; I will wait as
long as you like, but I swear to you that it would not do me any harm
to see my child. Is it not very natural that I should want to see my
child, who has been fetched from Montfermeil expressly for me? I am
not angry, for I know very well that I am going to be happy. The whole
night I have seen white things and smiling faces. The doctor will bring
me Cosette when he likes; I have no fever now, because I am cured; I
feel that there is nothing the matter with me, but I will behave as if
I were ill, and not stir, so as to please these ladies. When you see
that I am quite calm, you will say, We must give her her child."
M. Madeleine had seated himself in a chair by the bed-side; she turned
to him, visibly making an effort to appear calm and "very good," as
she said in that weakness of illness which resembles childhood, in
order that, on seeing her so peaceful, there might be no difficulty in
bringing Cosette to her. Still, while checking herself, she could not
refrain from asking M. Madeleine a thousand questions.
"Have you had a pleasant journey, sir? Oh, how kind it was of you to
go and fetch her for me! Only tell me how she is. Did she stand the
journey well? Alas! she will not recognize, she will have forgotten
me in all this time, poor darling! Children have no memory. They are
like the birds; to-day they see one thing and another to-morrow, and
do not think about anything. Had she got clean underclothing? Did
those Thénardiers keep her clean? What food did they give her? Oh, if
you only knew how I suffered when I asked myself all these questions
during the period of my wretchedness! But now it is all passed away
and I am happy. Oh, how I should like to see her! Did you not find her
very pretty, sir? You must have been very cold in the stage-coach? Can
she not be brought here if only for a moment? She could be taken away
again directly afterwards. You could do it if you liked, as you are the
Mayor."
He took her hand and said: "Cosette is lovely, she is well, you will
see her soon; but calm yourself. You speak too eagerly and put your
arms out of bed, which will make you cough."
In fact, a fit of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word.
She did not object; she feared lest she had injured the confidence she
had wished to inspire, by some too impassioned entreaties, and she
began talking of indifferent matters.
"Montfermeil is a rather pretty place, is it not? In summer, pleasure
parties go there. Have those Thénardiers a good trade? Not many people
pass through the village, and theirs is a sort of pot-house."
M. Madeleine still held her hand, and was looking at her anxiously;
it was evident that he had come to tell her something at which he now
hesitated.
The physician had left, and Sister Simplice alone remained near them.
"I can hear her, I can hear her!" She held out her arms to command
silence, held her breath, and began listening with ravishment. A child
was playing in the yard, and probably belonged to one of the workmen.
It was one of those accidents which constantly occur, and seem to form
part of the mysterious _mise-en-scène_ of mournful events. The child,
a little girl, was running about to warm herself, laughing and singing
loudly. Alas! what is there in which children's games are not mingled?
"Oh," Fantine continued, "'t is my Cosette! I recognize her voice."
The child went away again. Her voice died away. Fantine listened for
some time, and then her face was clouded, and M. Madeleine could hear
her murmuring, "How unkind that doctor is not to let me see my child!
That man has a bad face."
Still, her merry ideas returned to her, and she continued to talk to
herself, with her head on the pillow. "How happy we are going to be!
We will have a small garden, for M. Madeleine has promised me that. My
child will play in the garden. She must know her alphabet by this time,
and I will teach her to spell. She will chase butterflies, and I shall
look at her. Then, she will take her first communion; let me see when
that will be."
She began counting on her fingers,--
"One, two, three, four,--she is now seven years old; in five years,
then, she will wear a white open-work veil, and look like a little
lady. Oh, my good sister, you cannot think how foolish I am, for I am
thinking of my daughter's first communion."
And she began laughing. He had let go Fantine's hand, and listened to
these words, as one listens to the soughing breeze, with his eyes fixed
on the ground, and his mind plunged into unfathomable reflections.
All at once she ceased speaking, and this made him raise his head
mechanically. Fantine had become frightful to look at. She no longer
spoke, she no longer breathed; she was half sitting up, and her thin
shoulder projected from her nightgown; her face, radiant a moment
previously, was hard, and she seemed to be fixing her eyes, dilated by
terror, upon something formidable that stood at the other end of the
room.
"Great Heaven!" he exclaimed; "what is the matter with you, Fantine?"
She did not answer, she did not remove her eyes from the object,
whatever it might be, which she fancied she saw; but she touched his
arm with one hand, and with the other made him a sign to look behind
him. He turned back and saw Javert.
CHAPTER III.
JAVERT IS SATISFIED.
This is what had occurred. Half-past twelve was striking when M.
Madeleine left the assize court of Arras; and he returned to the
hotel just in time to start by the mail-cart in which he had booked
his place. A little before six A.M. he reached M----, and his first
care was to post the letter for M. Lafitte, and then proceed to the
infirmary and see Fantine. Still, he had scarce quitted the court ere
the public prosecutor, recovering from his stupor, rose on his legs,
deplored the act of mania on the part of the honorable Mayor of M----,
declared that his convictions were in no way modified by this strange
incident, which would be cleared up at a later date, and demanded, in
the interim, the conviction of this Champmathieu, evidently the true
Jean Valjean. The persistency of the public prosecutor was visibly in
contradiction with the feelings of all,--the public, the court, and
the jury. The counsel for the defence had little difficulty in refuting
his arguments, and establishing that through the revelations of M.
Madeleine, that is to say, the real Jean Valjean, circumstances were
entirely altered, and the jury had an innocent man before them. The
barrister deduced a few arguments, unfortunately rather stale, about
judicial errors, etc., the President in his summing-up supported the
defence, and the jury in a few moments acquitted Champmathieu. Still,
the public prosecutor wanted a Jean Valjean; and, as he no longer had
Champmathieu, he took Madeleine. Immediately after Champmathieu was
acquitted, he had a conference with the President as to the necessity
of seizing the person of the Mayor of M----, and after the first
emotion had passed, the President raised but few objections. Justice
must take its course; and then, to tell the whole truth, although the
President was a kind and rather sensible man, he was at the same time
a very ardent Royalist, and had been offended by the way in which
the Mayor of M----, in alluding to the landing at Cannes, employed
the words "the Emperor" and not "Buonaparte." The order of arrest
was consequently made out, and the prosecutor at once sent it off by
express to M----, addressed to Inspector Javert, who, as we know,
returned home immediately after he had given his evidence.
Javert was getting up at the moment when the messenger handed him
the order of arrest and the warrant. This messenger was himself a
very skilful policeman, who informed Javert in two words of what
had occurred at Arras. The order of arrest, signed by the public
prosecutor, was thus conceived: "Inspector Javert will apprehend
Monsieur Madeleine, Mayor of M----, who in this day's session was
recognized as the liberated convict, Jean Valjean." Any one who did
not know Javert and had seen him at the moment when he entered the
infirmary ante-room, could not have guessed what was taking place, but
would have considered him to be as usual. He was cold, calm, serious,
his gray hair was smoothed down on his temples, and he went up the
stairs with his usual slowness. But any one who was well acquainted
with him, and examined him closely, would have shuddered; the buckle
of his leathern stock, instead of sitting in the nape of his neck, was
under his left ear. This revealed an extraordinary agitation. Javert
was a complete character, without a crease in his duty or in his
uniform: methodical with criminals, and rigid with his coat-buttons.
For him to have his stock out of order, it was necessary for him to be
suffering from one of those emotions which might be called internal
earthquakes. He had merely fetched a corporal and four men from the
guardhouse close by, left them in the yard, and had Fantine's room
pointed out to him by the unsuspecting portress, who was accustomed to
see policemen ask for the Mayor.
On reaching Fantine's door, Javert turned the key, pushed the door with
the gentleness either of a sick-nurse or a spy, and entered. Correctly
speaking, he did not enter: he stood in the half-opened door with
his hat on his head, and his left hand thrust into the breast of his
great-coat, which was buttoned to the chin. Under his elbow could be
seen the leaden knob of his enormous cane, which was concealed behind
his back. He remained thus for many a minute, no one perceiving his
presence. All at once Fantine raised her eyes, saw him, and made M.
Madeleine turn. At the moment when Madeleine's glance met Javert's,
the latter, without stirring or drawing near, became fearful. No human
feeling can succeed in being so horrible as joy. It was the face of a
fiend who has just found a condemned soul again. The certainty of at
length holding Jean Valjean caused all he had in his soul to appear
on his countenance, and the stirred-up sediment rose to the surface.
The humiliation of having lost the trail for a while and having been
mistaken with regard to Champmathieu was effaced by his pride at having
guessed so correctly at the beginning, and having a right instinct
for such a length of time. Javert's satisfaction was displayed in his
sovereign attitude, and the deformity of triumph was spread over his
narrow forehead.
Javert at this moment was in heaven: without distinctly comprehending
the fact, but still with a confused intuition of his necessity and his
success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their
celestial function of crushing evil. He had behind him, around him, at
an infinite depth, authority, reason, the legal conscience, the public
vindication, all the stars: he protected order, he drew the lightning
from the law, he avenged society, he rendered assistance to the
absolute. There was in his victory a remnant of defiance and contest:
upright, haughty, and dazzling, he displayed the superhuman bestiality
of a ferocious archangel in the bright azure of heaven. The formidable
shadow of the deed he was doing rendered visible to his clutching fist
the flashing social sword. Happy and indignant, he held beneath his
heel, crime, vice, perdition, rebellion, and hell: he was radiant, he
exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in
this monstrous St. Michael. Javert, though terrifying, was not ignoble.
Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, and the idea of duty, are
things which, by deceiving themselves, may become hideous, but which,
even if hideous, remain grand; their majesty, peculiar to the human
conscience, persists in horror; they are virtues which have but one
vice, error. The pitiless honest joy of a fanatic, in the midst of his
atrocity, retains a mournfully venerable radiance. Without suspecting
it, Javert, in his formidable happiness, was worthy of pity, like every
ignorant man who triumphs; nothing could be so poignant and terrible as
this face, in which was displayed all that may be called the wickedness
of good.
CHAPTER IV.
AUTHORITY RESUMES ITS RIGHTS.
Fantine had not seen Javert since the day when the Mayor tore her out
of his clutches, and her sickly brain could form no other thought but
that he had come to fetch her. She could not endure his frightful face:
she felt herself dying. She buried her face in her hands, and cried
with agony,--
"Monsieur Madeleine, save me!"
Jean Valjean--we will not call him otherwise in future--had risen, and
said to Fantine in his gentlest, calmest voice,--
"Do not be alarmed: he has not come for you."
Then he turned to Javert and said,--
"I know what you want."
And Javert answered,--
"Come, make haste--"
There was something savage and frenzied in the accent that accompanied
these words; no orthographer could write it down, for it was no longer
human speech, but a roar. He did not behave as usual, he did not enter
into the matter or display his warrant. To him Jean Valjean was a
sort of mysterious combatant, a dark wrestler with whom he had been
struggling for five years, and had been unable to throw. This arrest
was not a beginning but an end, and he confined himself to saying,
"Come, make haste." While speaking thus, he did not advance: he merely
darted at Jean Valjean the look which he threw out as a grapple, and
with which he violently drew wretches to him. It was this look which
Fantine had felt pierce to her marrow two months before. On hearing
Javert's roar, Fantine opened her eyes again; but the Mayor was
present, so what had she to fear? Javert walked into the middle of the
room and cried,--
"Well, are you coming?"
The unhappy girl looked around her. No one was present but the nun and
the Mayor; to whom, then, could this humiliating remark be addressed?
Only to herself. She shuddered. Then she saw an extraordinary
thing,--so extraordinary that nothing like it had ever appeared in the
darkest delirium of fever. She saw the policeman Javert seize the Mayor
by the collar, and she saw the Mayor bow his head. It seemed to her as
if the end of the world had arrived.
"Monsieur le Maire!" Fantine screamed.
Javert burst into a laugh,--that frightful laugh which showed all his
teeth.
"There is no Monsieur le Maire here."
Jean Valjean did not attempt to remove the hand that grasped his
collar; he said,--
"Javert--"
Javert interrupted him: "Call me Monsieur the Inspector."
"I should like to say a word to you in private, sir," Jean Valjean
continued.
"Speak up," Javert answered; "people talk aloud to me."
Jean Valjean went on in a low voice,--
"It is a request I have to make of you."
"I tell you to speak up."
"But it must only be heard by yourself--"
"What do I care for that? I am not listening!"
Jean Valjean turned to him and said rapidly, and in a very low voice,--
"Grant me three days,--three days to go and fetch this unhappy woman's
child! I will pay whatever you ask, and you can accompany me if you
like."
"You must be joking," Javert cried. "Why, I did not think you such a
fool! You ask three days of me that you may bolt! You say that it is to
fetch this girl's brat! Ah, ah, that is rich, very rich!"
Fantine had a tremor.
"My child!" she exclaimed,--"to go and fetch my child? Then she is not
here! Sister, answer me,--where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur
Madeleine, M. le Maire!"
Javert stamped his foot.
"There's the other beginning now; will you be quiet, wench? A devil's
own country, where galley-slaves are magistrates, and street-walkers
are nursed like countesses. Well, well, it will be altered now, and
it's time for it."
He looked fixedly at Fantine, and added, as he took a fresh hold of
Jean Valjean's cravat, shirt, and coat-collar,--
"I tell you there is no M. Madeleine and no Monsieur le Maire; but
there is a robber, a brigand, a convict of the name of Jean Valjean,
and I've got him,--that's what there is!"
Fantine rose, supporting herself on her stiffened arms and hands; she
looked at Jean Valjean; she looked at Javert; she looked at the nun;
she opened her mouth as if to speak, but there was a rattle in her
throat, her teeth chattered, she stretched out her arms, convulsively
opening her hands, clutching like a drowning man, and then suddenly
fell back on the pillow. Her head struck against the bed-head, and fell
back on her breast with gaping mouth and open eyes. She was dead. Jean
Valjean laid his hand on that one of Javert's which held him, opened it
as if it had been a child's hand, and then said to Javert,--
"You have killed this woman."
"Enough of this!" Javert shouted furiously. "I am not here to listen
to abuse, so you can save your breath. There is a guard down below, so
come quickly, or I shall handcuff you."
There was in the corner of the room an old iron bedstead in a bad
condition, which the sisters used as a sofa when they were sitting up
at night. Jean Valjean went to this bed, tore off in a twinkling the
head piece,--an easy thing for muscles like his,--seized the supporting
bar, and looked at Javert. Javert recoiled to the door. Jean Valjean,
with the iron bar in his hand, walked slowly up to Fantine's bed; when
he reached it, he turned and said to Javert in a scarcely audible
voice,--
"I would advise you not to disturb me just at present."
One thing is certain,--Javert trembled. He thought of going to fetch
the guard, but Jean Valjean might take advantage of the moment to
escape. He therefore remained, clutched his stick by the small end, and
leaned against the door-post, without taking his eyes off Jean Valjean.
The latter rested his elbow on the bedstead, and his forehead on his
hand, and began contemplating Fantine, who lay motionless before him.
He remained thus, absorbed and silent, and evidently not thinking of
anything else in the world. On his face and in his attitude there was
only an indescribable pity. After a few minutes passed in this reverie,
he stooped over Fantine and spoke to her in a low voice. What did he
say to her? What could this outcast man say to this dead woman? No one
on earth heard the words, but did that dead woman hear them? There are
touching illusions, which are perhaps sublime realities. One thing is
indubitable, that Sister Simplice, the sole witness of what took place,
has frequently declared that at the moment when Jean Valjean whispered
in Fantine's ear, she distinctly saw an ineffable smile playing round
her pale lips and in her vague eyeballs, which were full of the
amazement of the tomb. Jean Valjean took Fantine's head in his hands,
and laid it on the pillow, as a mother might have done to a child.
Then he tied the strings of her nightgown, and thrust her hair under
her cap. When this was done, he closed her eyes. Fantine's face at
this moment seemed strangely illumined, for death is the entrance into
brilliant light. Fantine's hand was hanging out of bed; Jean Valjean
knelt down by this hand, gently raised and kissed it. Then he rose and
turned to Javert,--
"Now I am at your service."
CHAPTER V.
A VERY PROPER TOMB.
Javert placed Jean Valjean in the town jail. The arrest of M. Madeleine
produced an extraordinary commotion in M----, but it is sad to have
to say that nearly everybody abandoned him on hearing that he was a
galley-slave. In less than two hours all the good he had done was
forgotten, and he was only a galley-slave. It is but fair to say,
though, that they did not yet know the details of the affair at Arras.
The whole day through, conversations like the following could be heard
in all parts of the town:--
"Don't you know? he is a liberated convict.--Who is?--The
Mayor.--Nonsense. M. Madeleine?--Yes.--Really?--His name is not
Madeleine, but some hideous thing like Béjean, Bojean, Boujean.--Oh,
my goodness--he has been arrested, and will remain in the town jail
till he is removed.--Removed! where to?--He will be tried at the
assizes for a highway robbery which he formerly committed.--Well,
do you know, I always suspected that man, for he was too kind, too
perfect, too devout. He refused the cross, and gave sous to all the
little scamps he met. I always thought that there was some black story
behind."
The "drawing-rooms" greatly improved the occasion. An old lady, who
subscribed to the _Drapeau Blanc_, made this remark, whose depth it is
almost impossible to fathom,--
"Well, I do not feel sorry at it, for it will be a lesson to the
Buonapartists."
It is thus that the phantom which called itself M. Madeleine faded
away at M----; only three or four persons in the whole town remained
faithful to his memory, and his old servant was one of them. On the
evening of the same day this worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge,
still greatly startled and indulging in sad thoughts. The factory
had been closed all day, the gates were bolted, and the street was
deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, who were
watching by Fantine's body. Toward the hour when M. Madeleine was wont
to come in, the worthy portress rose mechanically, took the key of
M. Madeleine's bed-room from a drawer, and the candlestick which he
used at night to go up-stairs; then she hung the key on the nail from
which he usually took it, and placed the candlestick by its side, as
if she expected him. Then she sat down again and began thinking. The
poor old woman had done all this unconsciously. She did not break off
her reverie for two or three hours, and then exclaimed: "Only think of
that! I have hung his key on the nail!"
At this moment the window of the lodge was opened, a hand was passed
through the opening, which seized the key and lit the candle by hers.
The portress raised her eyes, and stood with gaping mouth, but she
repressed the cry which was in her throat; for she recognized this
hand, this arm, this coat-sleeve, as belonging to M. Madeleine. It was
some minutes ere she could speak, for she "was struck," as she said
afterwards when describing the adventure.
"Good gracious, M. le Maire!" she at length exclaimed, "I fancied--"
She stopped, for the end of the sentence would have been disrespectful
to the first part. Jean Valjean was still Monsieur le Maire with her.
He completed her thought.
"That I was in prison?" he said. "I was so, but I pulled out a bar,
leaped out, and here I am. I am going up to my room; go and fetch
Sister Simplice, who doubtless is by the side of that poor woman."
The old servant hastened to obey; he said nothing further to her,
for he was quite sure that she would guard him better than he could
himself. It was never known how he managed to get into the yard without
having the gate opened. He always carried about him a master-key, which
opened a little side door, but he must have been searched and this key
taken from him. This point was not cleared up. He went up the stairs
that led to his room, and on reaching the landing, left the candle
on the top stair, closed his window and shutters, and then entered
the room with the candle. This precaution was useful, for it will be
remembered that his window could be noticed from the street. He took a
glance around him, at his table, his chair, his bed, which had not been
slept in for three nights. No trace of that night's disorder remained,
for the portress "had done his room;" but she had picked out of the
ashes and laid neatly on the table the two iron ends of the stick and
the forty-sous piece, which was blackened by the fire. He took a sheet
of paper, on which he wrote, "This is the two-franc piece stolen from
Little Gervais to which I alluded in court," and he laid the coin on
the paper, so that it should be the first thing seen on entering the
room. He took from a drawer an old shirt which he tore up, and wrapped
the two candlesticks in the rags. Still, he displayed no haste or
agitation, and while wrapping up the candlesticks he ate a piece of
black bread,--probably the prison bread which he took with him on his
escape. This fact was proved by the crumbs found on the boards when
the authorities made an investigation at a later date. There were two
gentle taps at the door. "Come in," he said.
It was Sister Simplice; she was pale, her eyes were red, and the
candle she held shook in her hand. Violent events of destiny have this
peculiarity, that however perfect or cold we may be, they draw human
nature out of our entrails and compel it to reappear on the surface. In
the emotions of this day the nun had become a woman again; she had wept
and was trembling. Jean Valjean had just finished writing some lines
on a piece of paper, which he handed to the sister, with the remark,
"Sister, you will deliver this to the Curé?"
As the paper was open, she turned her eyes on it. "You may read it," he
said.
She read, "I request the Curé to take charge of all that I leave here.
He will be good enough to defray out of it the costs of my trial and
the interment of the woman who died this morning. The rest will be for
the poor."
The sister attempted to speak, but could only produce a few
inarticulate sounds: at length she managed to say,--
"Do you not wish to see the poor unhappy girl for the last time, sir?"
"No," he said; "I am pursued, and if I were to be arrested in her room
it would disturb her."
He had scarce said this, ere a great noise broke out on the staircase:
they heard a tumult of ascending steps, and the old servant cry in her
loudest and most piercing voice,--
"My good sir, I can take my oath that no one has come in here all day
or all the evening, and I have not left my lodge once."
A man answered,--
"But there is a light in that room."
They recognized Javert's voice. The room was so built that the door,
on being thrown open, concealed a nook in the right-hand wall: Jean
Valjean blew out the light and crept into the nook. Sister Simplice
fell on her knees by the table, as the door opened and Javert entered.
The voices of several men and the protestations of the old portress
could be heard. The nun did not raise her eyes: she was praying. Her
candle was on the chimney and gave but little light, and on noticing
the nun, Javert halted in great confusion. It will be remembered
that the very basis of Javert, his element, the air he breathed, was
reverence for all authority: he was all of one piece, and allowed no
objection or limitation. With him, of course, ecclesiastical authority
was the highest of all: he was religious, superficial, and correct on
this point as on all. In his eyes, a priest was a spirit that does not
deceive, a nun a creature who does not sin. Theirs were souls walled
up against the world with only one door, which never opened except to
let truth pass out. On noticing the sister, his first movement was to
withdraw, but he had another duty too, which imperiously urged him in
an opposite direction. His second impulse was to remain, and at least
venture one question. Sister Simplice had never told a falsehood in her
life: Javert was aware of this, and especially revered her for it.
"Sister," he asked, "are you alone in the room?"
There was a terrible moment, during which the old servant felt as if
she were going to faint: the sister raised her eyes and said, "Yes."
"In that case," Javert continued, "I beg your pardon for pressing you,
but it is my duty,--you have not seen this evening a person, a man
who has escaped and we are seeking,--that fellow of the name of Jean
Valjean. Have you seen him?"
The sister answered "No."
She had told two falsehoods, one upon the other, without hesitation,
rapidly, as if devoting herself.
"I beg your pardon," said Javert; and he withdrew with a deep bow.
Oh, holy woman! it is many years since you were on this earth; you have
rejoined in the light your sisters the virgins and your brothers the
angels; may this falsehood be placed to your credit in Paradise!
The sister's assertion was so decisive for Javert that he did not
notice the singular fact of the candle just blown out, and which was
still smoking on the table. An hour later a man, making his way through
the fog, was hurrying away from M---- in the direction of Paris. This
man was Jean Valjean; and it was proved, by the testimony of two or
three carriers who met him, that he was carrying a bundle and was
dressed in a blouse. Where did he procure this blouse from? It was
never known; but a few days before, an old workman had died in the
infirmary of the sailors, leaving only a blouse. It might have been
that one.
One last word about Fantine. We have all one mother, the earth, and
Fantine was given back to that mother. The Curé thought he was doing
his duty, and perhaps did it, in keeping as much money for the poor as
he possibly could out of what Jean Valjean left him. After all, who
were the people interested? A convict and a street-walker: hence he
simplified Fantine's interment, and reduced it to what is called the
"public grave." Fantine was therefore interred in the free corner of
the cemetery, which belongs to everybody and to nobody, and where the
poor are lost. Fortunately God knows where to look for a soul. Fantine
was laid in the darkness among a pile of promiscuous bones in the
public grave. Her tomb resembled her bed.
END OF PART FIRST.