“The one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I’m sure that I know him.”

“Ah!”

“I’m willing that they should cut my throat, and I’m ready to swear

that I never said either you, thou, or I, in my life, if I don’t know

that Parisian.” [_pantinois_.]

“Paris in Pantin to-day.”

“Can you see the bride if you stoop down?”

“No.”

“And the bridegroom?”

“There’s no bridegroom in that trap.”

“Bah!”

“Unless it’s the old fellow.”

“Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low.”

“I can’t.”

“Never mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his paw I

know, and that I’m positive.”

“And what good does it do to know him?”

“No one can tell. Sometimes it does!”

“I don’t care a hang for old fellows, that I don’t!”

“I know him.”

“Know him, if you want to.”

“How the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party?”

“We are in it, too.”

“Where does that wedding come from?”

“How should I know?”

“Listen.”

“Well, what?”

“There’s one thing you ought to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Get off of our trap and spin that wedding.”

“What for?”

“To find out where it goes, and what it is. Hurry up and jump down,

trot, my girl, your legs are young.”

“I can’t quit the vehicle.”

“Why not?”

“I’m hired.”

“Ah, the devil!”

“I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture.”

“That’s true.”

“If I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me will

arrest me. You know that well enough.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m bought by the government for to-day.”

“All the same, that old fellow bothers me.”

“Do the old fellows bother you? But you’re not a young girl.”

“He’s in the first carriage.”

“Well?”

“In the bride’s trap.”

“What then?”

“So he is the father.”

“What concern is that of mine?”

“I tell you that he’s the father.”

“As if he were the only father.”

“Listen.”

“What?”

“I can’t go out otherwise than masked. Here I’m concealed, no one knows

that I’m here. But to-morrow, there will be no more maskers. It’s Ash

Wednesday. I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back into my

hole. But you are free.”

“Not particularly.”

“More than I am, at any rate.”

“Well, what of that?”

“You must try to find out where that wedding party went to.”

“Where it went?”

“Yes.”

“I know.”

“Where is it going then?”

“To the Cadran-Bleu.”

“In the first place, it’s not in that direction.”

“Well! to la Rapée.”

“Or elsewhere.”

“It’s free. Wedding parties are at liberty.”

“That’s not the point at all. I tell you that you must try to learn for

me what that wedding is, who that old cove belongs to, and where that

wedding pair lives.”

“I like that! that would be queer. It’s so easy to find out a wedding

party that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday, a week

afterwards. A pin in a hay-mow! It ain’t possible!”

“That don’t matter. You must try. You understand me, Azelma.”

The two files resumed their movement on both sides of the boulevard, in

opposite directions, and the carriage of the maskers lost sight of the

“trap” of the bride.

CHAPTER II—JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING

To realize one’s dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be

elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to

ourselves; the angels vote. Cosette and Marius had been elected.

Cosette, both at the mayor’s office and at church, was dazzling and

touching. Toussaint, assisted by Nicolette, had dressed her.

Cosette wore over a petticoat of white taffeta, her robe of Binche

guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, a wreath

of orange flowers; all this was white, and, from the midst of that

whiteness she beamed forth. It was an exquisite candor expanding and

becoming transfigured in the light. One would have pronounced her a

virgin on the point of turning into a goddess.

Marius’ handsome hair was lustrous and perfumed; here and there,

beneath the thick curls, pale lines—the scars of the barricade—were

visible.

The grandfather, haughty, with head held high, amalgamating more than

ever in his toilet and his manners all the elegances of the epoch of

Barras, escorted Cosette. He took the place of Jean Valjean, who, on

account of his arm being still in a sling, could not give his hand to

the bride.

Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile.

“Monsieur Fauchelevent,” said the grandfather to him, “this is a fine

day. I vote for the end of afflictions and sorrows. Henceforth, there

must be no sadness anywhere. Pardieu, I decree joy! Evil has no right

to exist. That there should be any unhappy men is, in sooth, a disgrace

to the azure of the sky. Evil does not come from man, who is good at

bottom. All human miseries have for their capital and central

government hell, otherwise, known as the Devil’s Tuileries. Good, here

I am uttering demagogical words! As far as I am concerned, I have no

longer any political opinions; let all men be rich, that is to say,

mirthful, and I confine myself to that.”

When, at the conclusion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced

before the mayor and before the priest all possible “yesses,” after

having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy,

after having exchanged their rings, after having knelt side by side

under the pall of white moire in the smoke of the censer, they arrived,

hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Marius in black, she in white,

preceded by the suisse, with the epaulets of a colonel, tapping the

pavement with his halberd, between two rows of astonished spectators,

at the portals of the church, both leaves of which were thrown wide

open, ready to enter their carriage again, and all being finished,

Cosette still could not believe that it was real. She looked at Marius,

she looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky: it seemed as though she

feared that she should wake up from her dream. Her amazed and uneasy

air added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty. They

entered the same carriage to return home, Marius beside Cosette; M.

Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat opposite them; Aunt Gillenormand had

withdrawn one degree, and was in the second vehicle.

“My children,” said the grandfather, “here you are, Monsieur le Baron

and Madame la Baronne, with an income of thirty thousand livres.”

And Cosette, nestling close to Marius, caressed his ear with an angelic

whisper: “So it is true. My name is Marius. I am Madame Thou.”

These two creatures were resplendent. They had reached that irrevocable

and irrecoverable moment, at the dazzling intersection of all youth and

all joy. They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire; they were forty

years old taken together. It was marriage sublimated; these two

children were two lilies. They did not see each other, they did not

contemplate each other. Cosette perceived Marius in the midst of a

glory; Marius perceived Cosette on an altar. And on that altar, and in

that glory, the two apotheoses mingling, in the background, one knows

not how, behind a cloud for Cosette, in a flash for Marius, there was

the ideal thing, the real thing, the meeting of the kiss and the dream,

the nuptial pillow. All the torments through which they had passed came

back to them in intoxication. It seemed to them that their sorrows,

their sleepless nights, their tears, their anguish, their terrors,

their despair, converted into caresses and rays of light, rendered

still more charming the charming hour which was approaching; and that

their griefs were but so many handmaidens who were preparing the toilet

of joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their unhappiness formed a

halo round their happiness. The long agony of their love was

terminating in an ascension.

It was the same enchantment in two souls, tinged with voluptuousness in

Marius, and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in low

tones: “We will go back to take a look at our little garden in the Rue

Plumet.” The folds of Cosette’s gown lay across Marius.

Such a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of reality. One

possesses and one supposes. One still has time before one to divine.

The emotion on that day, of being at midday and of dreaming of midnight

is indescribable. The delights of these two hearts overflowed upon the

crowd, and inspired the passers-by with cheerfulness.

People halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine, in front of Saint-Paul, to gaze

through the windows of the carriage at the orange-flowers quivering on

Cosette’s head.

Then they returned home to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Marius,

triumphant and radiant, mounted side by side with Cosette the staircase

up which he had been borne in a dying condition. The poor, who had

trooped to the door, and who shared their purses, blessed them. There

were flowers everywhere. The house was no less fragrant than the

church; after the incense, roses. They thought they heard voices

carolling in the infinite; they had God in their hearts; destiny

appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; above their heads they beheld

the light of a rising sun. All at once, the clock struck. Marius

glanced at Cosette’s charming bare arm, and at the rosy things which

were vaguely visible through the lace of her bodice, and Cosette,

intercepting Marius’ glance, blushed to her very hair.

Quite a number of old family friends of the Gillenormand family had

been invited; they pressed about Cosette. Each one vied with the rest

in saluting her as Madame la Baronne.

The officer, Théodule Gillenormand, now a captain, had come from

Chartres, where he was stationed in garrison, to be present at the

wedding of his cousin Pontmercy. Cosette did not recognize him.

He, on his side, habituated as he was to have women consider him

handsome, retained no more recollection of Cosette than of any other

woman.

“How right I was not to believe in that story about the lancer!” said

Father Gillenormand, to himself.

Cosette had never been more tender with Jean Valjean. She was in unison

with Father Gillenormand; while he erected joy into aphorisms and

maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. Happiness desires that all

the world should be happy.

She regained, for the purpose of addressing Jean Valjean, inflections

of voice belonging to the time when she was a little girl. She caressed

him with her smile.

A banquet had been spread in the dining-room.

Illumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning of

a great joy. Mist and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. They do

not consent to be black. The night, yes; the shadows, no. If there is

no sun, one must be made.

The dining-room was full of gay things. In the centre, above the white

and glittering table, was a Venetian lustre with flat plates, with all

sorts of colored birds, blue, violet, red, and green, perched amid the

candles; around the chandelier, girandoles, on the walls, sconces with

triple and quintuple branches; mirrors, silverware, glassware, plate,

porcelain, faïence, pottery, gold and silversmith’s work, all was

sparkling and gay. The empty spaces between the candelabra were filled

in with bouquets, so that where there was not a light, there was a

flower.

In the antechamber, three violins and a flute softly played quartettes

by Haydn.

Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room, behind

the door, the leaf of which folded back upon him in such a manner as to

nearly conceal him. A few moments before they sat down to table,

Cosette came, as though inspired by a sudden whim, and made him a deep

courtesy, spreading out her bridal toilet with both hands, and with a

tenderly roguish glance, she asked him:

“Father, are you satisfied?”

“Yes,” said Jean Valjean, “I am content!”

“Well, then, laugh.”

Jean Valjean began to laugh.

A few moments later, Basque announced that dinner was served.

The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand with Cosette on his arm,

entered the dining-room, and arranged themselves in the proper order

around the table.

Two large armchairs figured on the right and left of the bride, the

first for M. Gillenormand, the other for Jean Valjean. M. Gillenormand

took his seat. The other armchair remained empty.

They looked about for M. Fauchelevent.

He was no longer there.

M. Gillenormand questioned Basque.

“Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?”

“Sir,” replied Basque, “I do, precisely. M. Fauchelevent told me to say

to you, sir, that he was suffering, his injured hand was paining him

somewhat, and that he could not dine with Monsieur le Baron and Madame

la Baronne. That he begged to be excused, that he would come to-morrow.

He has just taken his departure.”

That empty armchair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a

moment. But, if M. Fauchelevent was absent, M. Gillenormand was

present, and the grandfather beamed for two. He affirmed that M.

Fauchelevent had done well to retire early, if he were suffering, but

that it was only a slight ailment. This declaration sufficed. Moreover,

what is an obscure corner in such a submersion of joy? Cosette and

Marius were passing through one of those egotistical and blessed

moments when no other faculty is left to a person than that of

receiving happiness. And then, an idea occurred to M.

Gillenormand.—“Pardieu, this armchair is empty. Come hither, Marius.

Your aunt will permit it, although she has a right to you. This

armchair is for you. That is legal and delightful. Fortunatus beside

Fortunata.”—Applause from the whole table. Marius took Jean Valjean’s

place beside Cosette, and things fell out so that Cosette, who had, at

first, been saddened by Jean Valjean’s absence, ended by being

satisfied with it. From the moment when Marius took his place, and was

the substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God himself. She set

her sweet little foot, shod in white satin, on Marius’ foot.

The armchair being occupied, M. Fauchelevent was obliterated; and

nothing was lacking.

And, five minutes afterward, the whole table from one end to the other,

was laughing with all the animation of forgetfulness.

At dessert, M. Gillenormand, rising to his feet, with a glass of

champagne in his hand—only half full so that the palsy of his eighty

years might not cause an overflow,—proposed the health of the married

pair.

“You shall not escape two sermons,” he exclaimed. “This morning you had

one from the curé, this evening you shall have one from your

grandfather. Listen to me; I will give you a bit of advice: Adore each

other. I do not make a pack of gyrations, I go straight to the mark, be

happy. In all creation, only the turtledoves are wise. Philosophers

say: ‘Moderate your joys.’ I say: ‘Give rein to your joys.’ Be as much

smitten with each other as fiends. Be in a rage about it. The

philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. I should like to stuff their

philosophy down their gullets again. Can there be too many perfumes,

too many open rose-buds, too many nightingales singing, too many green

leaves, too much aurora in life? can people love each other too much?

can people please each other too much? Take care, Estelle, thou art too

pretty! Have a care, Nemorin, thou art too handsome! Fine stupidity, in

sooth! Can people enchant each other too much, cajole each other too

much, charm each other too much? Can one be too much alive, too happy?

Moderate your joys. Ah, indeed! Down with the philosophers! Wisdom

consists in jubilation. Make merry, let us make merry. Are we happy

because we are good, or are we good because we are happy? Is the Sancy

diamond called the Sancy because it belonged to Harley de Sancy, or

because it weighs six hundred carats? I know nothing about it, life is

full of such problems; the important point is to possess the Sancy and

happiness. Let us be happy without quibbling and quirking. Let us obey

the sun blindly. What is the sun? It is love. He who says love, says

woman. Ah! ah! behold omnipotence—women. Ask that demagogue of a Marius

if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a Cosette. And of his

own free will, too, the coward! Woman! There is no Robespierre who

keeps his place but woman reigns. I am no longer Royalist except

towards that royalty. What is Adam? The kingdom of Eve. No ’89 for Eve.

There has been the royal sceptre surmounted by a fleur-de-lys, there

has been the imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe, there has been the

sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron, there has been the sceptre

of Louis the Great, which was of gold,—the revolution twisted them

between its thumb and forefinger, ha’penny straws; it is done with, it

is broken, it lies on the earth, there is no longer any sceptre, but

make me a revolution against that little embroidered handkerchief,

which smells of patchouli! I should like to see you do it. Try. Why is

it so solid? Because it is a gewgaw. Ah! you are the nineteenth

century? Well, what then? And we have been as foolish as you. Do not

imagine that you have effected much change in the universe, because

your trip-gallant is called the cholera-morbus, and because your

_pourrée_ is called the cachuca. In fact, the women must always be

loved. I defy you to escape from that. These friends are our angels.

Yes, love, woman, the kiss forms a circle from which I defy you to

escape; and, for my own part, I should be only too happy to re-enter

it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss,

the Célimène of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming all here

below? The ocean is a rough Alcestis. Well, grumble as he will, when

Venus appears he is forced to smile. That brute beast submits. We are

all made so. Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder, foam to the very

ceiling. A woman enters on the scene, a planet rises; flat on your

face! Marius was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married. That is

well. Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are in the right. Exist boldly for

each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the same,

idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades of

felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest for life.

Pardi, to love, to be loved, what a fine miracle when one is young!

Don’t imagine that you have invented that. I, too, have had my dream,

I, too, have meditated, I, too, have sighed; I, too, have had a

moonlight soul. Love is a child six thousand years old. Love has the

right to a long white beard. Methusalem is a street arab beside Cupid.

For sixty centuries men and women have got out of their scrape by

loving. The devil, who is cunning, took to hating man; man, who is

still more cunning, took to loving woman. In this way he does more good

than the devil does him harm. This craft was discovered in the days of

the terrestrial paradise. The invention is old, my friends, but it is

perfectly new. Profit by it. Be Daphnis and Chloe, while waiting to

become Philemon and Baucis. Manage so that, when you are with each

other, nothing shall be lacking to you, and that Cosette may be the sun

for Marius, and that Marius may be the universe to Cosette. Cosette,

let your fine weather be the smile of your husband; Marius, let your

rain be your wife’s tears. And let it never rain in your household. You

have filched the winning number in the lottery; you have gained the

great prize, guard it well, keep it under lock and key, do not squander

it, adore each other and snap your fingers at all the rest. Believe

what I say to you. It is good sense. And good sense cannot lie. Be a

religion to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God.

Saperlotte! the best way to adore God is to love one’s wife. _I love

thee!_ that’s my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri

IV. places sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness.

Ventre-saint-gris! I don’t belong to the religion of that oath. Woman

is forgotten in it. This astonishes me on the part of Henri IV. My

friends, long live women! I am old, they say; it’s astonishing how much

I feel in the mood to be young. I should like to go and listen to the

bagpipes in the woods. Children who contrive to be beautiful and

contented,—that intoxicates me. I would like greatly to get married, if

any one would have me. It is impossible to imagine that God could have

made us for anything but this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves,

to be dove-like, to be dainty, to bill and coo our loves from morn to

night, to gaze at one’s image in one’s little wife, to be proud, to be

triumphant, to plume oneself; that is the aim of life. There, let not

that displease you which we used to think in our day, when we were

young folks. Ah! vertu-bamboche! what charming women there were in

those days, and what pretty little faces and what lovely lasses! I

committed my ravages among them. Then love each other. If people did

not love each other, I really do not see what use there would be in

having any springtime; and for my own part, I should pray the good God

to shut up all the beautiful things that he shows us, and to take away

from us and put back in his box, the flowers, the birds, and the pretty

maidens. My children, receive an old man’s blessing.”

The evening was gay, lively and agreeable. The grandfather’s sovereign

good humor gave the key-note to the whole feast, and each person

regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. They

danced a little, they laughed a great deal; it was an amiable wedding.

Goodman Days of Yore might have been invited to it. However, he was

present in the person of Father Gillenormand.

There was a tumult, then silence.

The married pair disappeared.

A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple.

Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling

angel with his finger on his lips.

The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the

celebration of love takes place.

There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which

they contain ought to make its escape through the stones of the walls

in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom. It is impossible that

this sacred and fatal festival should not give off a celestial radiance

to the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the

man and the woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the

being final, the human trinity proceeds from it. This birth of two

souls into one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The lover is the

priest; the ravished virgin is terrified. Something of that joy ascends

to God. Where true marriage is, that is to say, where there is love,

the ideal enters in. A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the

shadows. If it were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the

formidable and charming visions of the upper life, it is probable that

we should behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue

passers of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around

the luminous house, satisfied, showering benedictions, pointing out to

each other the virgin wife gently alarmed, sweetly terrified, and

bearing the reflection of human bliss upon their divine countenances.

If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair, dazzled with voluptuousness

and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in

their chamber a confused rustling of wings. Perfect happiness implies a

mutual understanding with the angels. That dark little chamber has all

heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered sacred by love,

approach to create, it is impossible that there should not be, above

that ineffable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of

stars.

These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these

joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.

To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is

no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a

fulfilment.

CHAPTER III—THE INSEPARABLE

What had become of Jean Valjean?

Immediately after having laughed, at Cosette’s graceful command, when

no one was paying any heed to him, Jean Valjean had risen and had

gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight

months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder,

bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. The old wainscoting was

garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the

sofa on which they had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat,

knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was arranging roses

round all of the dishes that were to be served. Jean Valjean pointed to

his arm in its sling, charged Basque to explain his absence, and went

away.

The long windows of the dining-room opened on the street. Jean Valjean

stood for several minutes, erect and motionless in the darkness,

beneath those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the

banquet reached his ear. He heard the loud, commanding tones of the

grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates, the bursts of

laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he distinguished Cosette’s

sweet and joyous voice.

He quitted the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and returned to the Rue de

l’Homme Armé.

In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue

Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little

longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months,

he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de

l’Homme Armé to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order to avoid the

obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple.

This road, through which Cosette had passed, excluded for him all

possibility of any other itinerary.

Jean Valjean entered his lodgings. He lighted his candle and mounted

the stairs. The apartment was empty. Even Toussaint was no longer

there. Jean Valjean’s step made more noise than usual in the chambers.

All the cupboards stood open. He penetrated to Cosette’s bedroom. There

were no sheets on the bed. The pillow, covered with ticking, and

without a case or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot

of the mattress, whose covering was visible, and on which no one was

ever to sleep again. All the little feminine objects which Cosette was

attached to had been carried away; nothing remained except the heavy

furniture and the four walls. Toussaint’s bed was despoiled in like

manner. One bed only was made up, and seemed to be waiting some one,

and this was Jean Valjean’s bed.

Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors,

and went and came from one room to another.

Then he sought his own chamber once more, and set his candle on a

table.

He had disengaged his arm from the sling, and he used his right hand as

though it did not hurt him.

He approached his bed, and his eyes rested, was it by chance? was it

intentionally? on the _inseparable_ of which Cosette had been jealous,

on the little portmanteau which never left him. On his arrival in the

Rue de l’Homme Armé, on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round

table near the head of his bed. He went to this table with a sort of

vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise.

From it he slowly drew forth the garments in which, ten years before,

Cosette had quitted Montfermeil; first the little gown, then the black

fichu, then the stout, coarse child’s shoes which Cosette might almost

have worn still, so tiny were her feet, then the fustian bodice, which

was very thick, then the knitted petticoat, next the apron with

pockets, then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still

preserved the graceful form of a tiny leg, were no longer than Jean

Valjean’s hand. All this was black of hue. It was he who had brought

those garments to Montfermeil for her. As he removed them from the

valise, he laid them on the bed. He fell to thinking. He called up

memories. It was in winter, in a very cold month of December, she was

shivering, half-naked, in rags, her poor little feet were all red in

their wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, had made her abandon those rags

to clothe herself in these mourning habiliments. The mother must have

felt pleased in her grave, to see her daughter wearing mourning for

her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and that she

was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed

it together, Cosette and he; he thought of what the weather had been,

of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless

sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on

the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings beside the

shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. She was no taller

than that, she had her big doll in her arms, she had put her louis d’or

in the pocket of that apron, she had laughed, they walked hand in hand,

she had no one in the world but him.

Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical

old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so to speak, in Cosette’s

garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he

would have heard frightful sobs.

CHAPTER IV—THE IMMORTAL LIVER 68

The old and formidable struggle, of which we have already witnessed so

many phases, began once more.

Jacob struggled with the angel but one night. Alas! how many times have

we beheld Jean Valjean seized bodily by his conscience, in the

darkness, and struggling desperately against it!

Unheard-of conflict! At certain moments the foot slips; at other

moments the ground crumbles away underfoot. How many times had that

conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown him! How many

times had the truth set her knee inexorably upon his breast! How many

times, hurled to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! How many

times had that implacable spark, lighted within him, and upon him by

the Bishop, dazzled him by force when he had wished to be blind! How

many times had he risen to his feet in the combat, held fast to the

rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the

upper hand of his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times,

after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning of

egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: “A trip!

you wretch!” How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled

convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance to

God. Funereal sweats. What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed!

What excoriations in his lamentable existence! How many times he had

risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in his heart,

serenity in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself the

conqueror. And, after having dislocated, broken, and rent his

conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him, as it stood over

him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil: “Now, go in peace!”

But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious peace,

alas!

Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean felt that he was passing through

his final combat.

A heart-rending question presented itself.

Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a straight

avenue before the predestined man; they have blind courts, impassable

alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering the choice of

many ways. Jean Valjean had halted at that moment at the most perilous

of these crossroads.

He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that

gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more, as

had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads opened

out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.

Which was he to take?

He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious index

finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes on the darkness.

Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the terrible port and

the smiling ambush.

Is it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate. Frightful thing!

an incurable destiny!

This is the problem which presented itself to him:

In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness

of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had willed that happiness, it was

he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his

entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to

enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on

recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all

smoking, from his own breast.

Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even

riches. And this was his doing.

But what was he, Jean Valjean, to do with this happiness, now that it

existed, now that it was there? Should he force himself on this

happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? No doubt, Cosette

did belong to another; but should he, Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette

all that he could retain? Should he remain the sort of father, half

seen but respected, which he had hitherto been? Should he, without

saying a word, bring his past to that future? Should he present himself

there, as though he had a right, and should he seat himself, veiled, at

that luminous fireside? Should he take those innocent hands into his

tragic hands, with a smile? Should he place upon the peaceful fender of

the Gillenormand drawing-room those feet of his, which dragged behind

them the disgraceful shadow of the law? Should he enter into

participation in the fair fortunes of Cosette and Marius? Should he

render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs still more

dense? Should he place his catastrophe as a third associate in their

felicity? Should he continue to hold his peace? In a word, should he be

the sinister mute of destiny beside these two happy beings?

We must have become habituated to fatality and to encounters with it,

in order to have the daring to raise our eyes when certain questions

appear to us in all their horrible nakedness. Good or evil stands

behind this severe interrogation point. What are you going to do?

demands the sphinx.

This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed. He gazed intently at the

sphinx.

He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.

Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What

was he to do? To cling fast to it, or to let go his hold?

If he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend

again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water drip from his

garments and his hair, he was saved, he should live.

And if he let go his hold?

Then the abyss.

Thus he took sad council with his thoughts. Or, to speak more

correctly, he fought; he kicked furiously internally, now against his

will, now against his conviction.

Happily for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. That relieved

him, possibly. But the beginning was savage. A tempest, more furious

than the one which had formerly driven him to Arras, broke loose within

him. The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them

and sobbed. The silence of tears once opened, the despairing man

writhed.

He felt that he had been stopped short.

Alas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and our duty, when

we thus retreat step by step before our immutable ideal, bewildered,

furious, exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground, hoping

for a possible flight, seeking an escape, what an abrupt and sinister

resistance does the foot of the wall offer in our rear!

To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!

The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!

Then, one is never done with conscience. Make your choice, Brutus; make

your choice, Cato. It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into

that well the labor of one’s whole life, one flings in one’s fortune,

one flings in one’s riches, one flings in one’s success, one flings in

one’s liberty or fatherland, one flings in one’s well-being, one flings

in one’s repose, one flings in one’s joy! More! more! more! Empty the

vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one’s heart.

Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun like that.

Is not one pardonable, if one at last refuses! Can the inexhaustible

have any right? Are not chains which are endless above human strength?

Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying: “It is enough!”

The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit to

the obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, can

perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?

The first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. What was

the Champmathieu affair in comparison with Cosette’s marriage and of

that which it entailed? What is a re-entrance into the galleys,

compared to entrance into the void?

Oh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art thou! Oh, second

step, how black art thou!

How could he refrain from turning aside his head this time?

Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which

consecrates. One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats

oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one’s head the

crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the

sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still remains to be

donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts

and when one abdicates from suffering?

At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of exhaustion.

He weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives, the

mysterious balance of light and darkness.

Should he impose his galleys on those two dazzling children, or should

he consummate his irremediable engulfment by himself? On one side lay

the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other that of himself.

At what solution should he arrive? What decision did he come to?

What resolution did he take? What was his own inward definitive

response to the unbribable interrogatory of fatality? What door did he

decide to open? Which side of his life did he resolve upon closing and

condemning? Among all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him,

which was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of the

gulfs did he nod his head?

His dizzy reverie lasted all night long.

He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude, bent double

over that bed, prostrate beneath the enormity of fate, crushed,

perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms outspread at right

angles, like a man crucified who has been un-nailed, and flung face

down on the earth. There he remained for twelve hours, the twelve long

hours of a long winter’s night, ice-cold, without once raising his

head, and without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse,

while his thoughts wallowed on the earth and soared, now like the

hydra, now like the eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless would

have pronounced him dead; all at once he shuddered convulsively, and

his mouth, glued to Cosette’s garments, kissed them; then it could be

seen that he was alive.

Who could see? Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was no one

there.

The One who is in the shadows.

BOOK SEVENTH—THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP

[Illustration: Last Drop from the Cup]

CHAPTER I—THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN

The days that follow weddings are solitary. People respect the

meditations of the happy pair. And also, their tardy slumbers, to some

degree. The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later on.

On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little past midday

when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm, busy in

setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There

had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the

door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the

drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air

of a field of battle after the joys of the preceding evening.

“_Dame_, sir,” remarked Basque, “we all woke up late.”

“Is your master up?” asked Jean Valjean.

“How is Monsieur’s arm?” replied Basque.

“Better. Is your master up?”

“Which one? the old one or the new one?”

“Monsieur Pontmercy.”

“Monsieur le Baron,” said Basque, drawing himself up.

A man is a Baron most of all to his servants. He counts for something

with them; they are what a philosopher would call, bespattered with the

title, and that flatters them. Marius, be it said in passing, a

militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of

himself. A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection

with this title. It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius

who detached himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: “My

son will bear my title.” Marius obeyed. And then, Cosette, in whom the

woman was beginning to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.

“Monsieur le Baron?” repeated Basque. “I will go and see. I will tell

him that M. Fauchelevent is here.”

“No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to

speak to him in private, and mention no name.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Basque.

“I wish to surprise him.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second “ah!” as an

explanation of the first.

And he left the room.

Jean Valjean remained alone.

The drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder. It

seemed as though, by lending an ear, one might still hear the vague

noise of the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers

which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles,

burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of the

chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the

corners, three or four armchairs, drawn close together in a circle, had

the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole effect was

cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been

a happy thing. On the chairs in disarray, among those fading flowers,

beneath those extinct lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had

succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the

drawing-room.

Several minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot

where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and

so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly disappeared in

their orbits. His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has

been up all night. The elbows were whitened with the down which the

friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.

Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his

feet by the sun.

There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.

Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable

light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant. He

had not slept either.

“It is you, father!” he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean;

“that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air! But you have come

too early. It is only half past twelve. Cosette is asleep.”

That word: “Father,” said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified:

supreme felicity. There had always existed, as the reader knows, a

lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be

broken or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication when

the wall was lowered, when the ice dissolved, and when M. Fauchelevent

was to him, as to Cosette, a father.

He continued: his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine

paroxysms of joy.

“How glad I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you

yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?”

And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself,

he pursued:

“We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You

must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to

do with the Rue de l’Homme Armé. We will have no more of it at all. How

could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is

disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one

is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install

yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with

Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have

your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the

trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all

ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Cosette

has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she

has said to it: ‘Stretch out your arms to him.’ A nightingale comes to

the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two months

more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on

your right. By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle.

Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you,

your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,—Vancouver’s and all your

affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are

attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have

conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you

play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play

whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when I am

at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to,

in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you

shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come,

will you breakfast with us to-day?”

“Sir,” said Jean Valjean, “I have something to say to you. I am an

ex-convict.”

The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well in

the case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: “I am an

ex-convict,” proceeding from the mouth of M. Fauchelevent and entering

the ear of Marius overshot the possible. It seemed to him that

something had just been said to him; but he did not know what. He stood

with his mouth wide open.

Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful.

Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that

moment, observed the other man’s terrible pallor.

Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right arm,

unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb and showed it

to Marius.

“There is nothing the matter with my hand,” said he.

Marius looked at the thumb.

“There has not been anything the matter with it,” went on Jean Valjean.

There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.

Jean Valjean continued:

“It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented

myself as much as was in my power. So I invented this injury in order

that I might not commit a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw

into the marriage documents, in order that I might escape from

signing.”

Marius stammered.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning of it is,” replied Jean Valjean, “that I have been in the

galleys.”

“You are driving me mad!” exclaimed Marius in terror.

“Monsieur Pontmercy,” said Jean Valjean, “I was nineteen years in the

galleys. For theft. Then, I was condemned for life for theft, for a

second offence. At the present moment, I have broken my ban.”

In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact, resist

the evidence, he was forced to give way. He began to understand, and,

as always happens in such cases, he understood too much. An inward

shudder of hideous enlightenment flashed through him; an idea which

made him quiver traversed his mind. He caught a glimpse of a wretched

destiny for himself in the future.

“Say all, say all!” he cried. “You are Cosette’s father!”

And he retreated a couple of paces with a movement of indescribable

horror.

Jean Valjean elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude that he

seemed to grow even to the ceiling.

“It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our

oath to others may not be received in law . . .”

Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral

authority, he added, articulating slowly, and emphasizing the

syllables:

“. . . You will believe me. I the father of Cosette! before God, no.

Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my

living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean.

I am not related to Cosette. Reassure yourself.”

Marius stammered:

“Who will prove that to me?”

“I. Since I tell you so.”

Marius looked at the man. He was melancholy yet tranquil. No lie could

proceed from such a calm. That which is icy is sincere. The truth could

be felt in that chill of the tomb.

“I believe you,” said Marius.

Jean Valjean bent his head, as though taking note of this, and

continued:

“What am I to Cosette? A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that

she was in existence. I love her, it is true. One loves a child whom

one has seen when very young, being old oneself. When one is old, one

feels oneself a grandfather towards all little children. You may, it

seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She

was an orphan. Without either father or mother. She needed me. That is

why I began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer,

even a man like me, can become their protector. I have fulfilled this

duty towards Cosette. I do not think that so slight a thing can be

called a good action; but if it be a good action, well, say that I have

done it. Register this attenuating circumstance. To-day, Cosette passes

out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for

her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her providence has changed. And Cosette

gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand

francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought,

they are a deposit. How did that deposit come into my hands? What does

that matter? I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me.

I complete the restitution by announcing my true name. That concerns

me. I have a reason for desiring that you should know who I am.”

And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.

All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain

gusts of destiny produce these billows in our souls.

We have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything within us

is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to us, which are not

always precisely those which should be said. There are sudden

revelations which one cannot bear, and which intoxicate like baleful

wine. Marius was stupefied by the novel situation which presented

itself to him, to the point of addressing that man almost like a person

who was angry with him for this avowal.

“But why,” he exclaimed, “do you tell me all this? Who forces you to do

so? You could have kept your secret to yourself. You are neither

denounced, nor tracked nor pursued. You have a reason for wantonly

making such a revelation. Conclude. There is something more. In what

connection do you make this confession? What is your motive?”

“My motive?” replied Jean Valjean in a voice so low and dull that one

would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Marius.

“From what motive, in fact, has this convict just said ‘I am a

convict’? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is out of honesty. Stay,

the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart, which keeps

me fast. It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly

solid. All life falls in ruin around one; one resists. Had I been able

to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, to

go far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are

diligences in the Rue Bouloy; you are happy; I am going. I have tried

to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore

my heart with it. Then I said: ‘I cannot live anywhere else than here.’

I must stay. Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not simply

remain here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is

sincerely attached to me, she said to the armchair: ‘Stretch out your

arms to him,’ your grandfather demands nothing better than to have me,

I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common, I

shall give Cosette my arm . . . Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a

habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same

chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy,

that is happiness, that is everything. We shall live as one family. One

family!”

At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his arms, glared at

the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated an abyss

therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:

“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I

do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among

themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing

of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I

have a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave

that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and

that she is with a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a

kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that house,

and that it was well, I said to myself: ‘Enter thou not.’ I could have

lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and remained Monsieur

Fauchelevent. So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would

be for myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my

peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has forced me

to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very

easy, however. I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it;

you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary

that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in

alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons, I have

done what I could. But there are two things in which I have not

succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and

sealed here by the heart, or in silencing some one who speaks softly to

me when I am alone. That is why I have come hither to tell you

everything this morning. Everything or nearly everything. It is useless

to tell you that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself. You

know the essential points. So I have taken my mystery and have brought

it to you. And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was

not a resolution that was easy to take. I struggled all night long. Ah!

you think that I did not tell myself that this was no Champmathieu

affair, that by concealing my name I was doing no one any injury, that

the name of Fauchelevent had been given to me by Fauchelevent himself,

out of gratitude for a service rendered to him, and that I might

assuredly keep it, and that I should be happy in that chamber which you

offer me, that I should not be in any one’s way, that I should be in my

own little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should

have the idea that I was in the same house with her. Each one of us

would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to be Monsieur

Fauchelevent, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the exception of

my soul. There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my

soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.

Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have

concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion, I

should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday, I

should have had shadows, thus, without crying ‘’ware,’ I should have

simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should have taken my

seat at your table with the thought that if you knew who I was, you

would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself to be served by

domestics who, had they known, would have said: ‘How horrible!’ I

should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right to

dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There would

have existed in your house a division of respect between venerable

white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when

all hearts thought themselves open to the very bottom to all the rest,

when we four were together, your grandfather, you two and myself, a

stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with

you in your existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the

cover of my dreadful pit. Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust

myself upon you who are living beings. I should have condemned her to

myself forever. You and Cosette and I would have had all three of our

heads in the green cap! Does it not make you shudder? I am only the

most crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. And

I should have committed that crime every day! And I should have had

that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! And I should

have communicated to you a share in my taint every day! every day! to

you, my dearly beloved, my children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is

it nothing to hold one’s peace? is it a simple matter to keep silence?

No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my

fraud and my indignity, and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I

should have drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then

swallowed it again, I should have finished at midnight and have begun

again at midday, and my ‘good morning’ would have lied, and my ‘good

night’ would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have

eaten it, with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face,

and I should have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of

the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why

should I do it? in order to be happy. In order to be happy. Have I the

right to be happy? I stand outside of life, sir.”

Jean Valjean paused. Marius listened. Such chains of ideas and of

anguishes cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice once

more, but it was no longer a dull voice—it was a sinister voice.

“You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,

you say. Yes! I am denounced! yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself. It

is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push

myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds

oneself, one is firmly held.”

And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and

extending it towards Marius:

“Do you see that fist?” he continued. “Don’t you think that it holds

that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience is

another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never

understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is

implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it;

but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God

beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at

peace with himself.”

And, with a poignant accent, he added:

“Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It

is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own.

This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it

was a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through

my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am

so. I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever

have anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates

me, and crushes me inwardly, and, in order that I may respect myself,

it is necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again.

I am a galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is

most improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the

fact. I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There

are encounters which bind us, there are chances which involve us in

duties. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me

in the course of my life.”

Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as

though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:

“When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to

make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to

make them slip over one’s own precipice without their perceiving it,

one has not the right to let one’s red blouse drag upon them, one has

no right to slyly encumber with one’s misery the happiness of others.

It is hideous to approach those who are healthy, and to touch them in

the dark with one’s ulcer. In spite of the fact that Fauchelevent lent

me his name, I have no right to use it; he could give it to me, but I

could not take it. A name is an _I_. You see, sir, that I have thought

somewhat, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see

that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured

myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself

under it is dishonest. Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a

purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a

living false key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their

lock, never more to look straightforward, to forever eye askance, to be

infamous within the _I_, no! no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to

bleed, to weep, to tear one’s skin from the flesh with one’s nails, to

pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour oneself body and soul. That

is why I have just told you all this. Wantonly, as you say.”

He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:

“In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in

order to live, I will not steal a name.”

“To live!” interrupted Marius. “You do not need that name in order to

live?”

“Ah! I understand the matter,” said Jean Valjean, raising and lowering

his head several times in succession.

A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of

thoughts. Marius was sitting near a table and resting the corner of his

mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. Jean Valjean was

pacing to and fro. He paused before a mirror, and remained motionless.

Then, as though replying to some inward course of reasoning, he said,

as he gazed at the mirror, which he did not see:

“While, at present, I am relieved.”

He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the

drawing-room. At the moment when he turned round, he perceived that

Marius was watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible

intonation:

“I drag my leg a little. Now you understand why!”

Then he turned fully round towards Marius:

“And now, sir, imagine this: I have said nothing, I have remained

Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of

you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in

slippers, in the evening all three of us go to the play, I accompany

Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries, and to the Place Royale, we are

together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there, and I am

there, we are conversing, we are laughing; all at once, you hear a

voice shouting this name: ‘Jean Valjean!’ and behold, that terrible

hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly tears off my

mask!”

Again he paused; Marius had sprung to his feet with a shudder. Jean

Valjean resumed:

“What do you say to that?”

Marius’ silence answered for him.

Jean Valjean continued:

“You see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in

heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content

therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor

damned wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come

forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man.”

Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Jean

Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.

But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not

offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own way, and it seemed to Marius

that he pressed a hand of marble.

“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius; “I will procure your

pardon.”

“It is useless,” replied Jean Valjean. “I am believed to be dead, and

that suffices. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are

supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon.”

And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort of

inexorable dignity:

“Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty;

and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience.”

At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened

gently half way, and in the opening Cosette’s head appeared. They saw

only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids

were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird, which

thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first at her husband, then at

Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed to

behold a smile at the heart of a rose:

“I will wager that you are talking politics. How stupid that is,

instead of being with me!”

Jean Valjean shuddered.

“Cosette! . . .” stammered Marius.

And he paused. One would have said that they were two criminals.

Cosette, who was radiant, continued to gaze at both of them. There was

something in her eyes like gleams of paradise.

“I have caught you in the very act,” said Cosette. “Just now, I heard

my father Fauchelevent through the door saying: ‘Conscience . . . doing

my duty . . .’ That is politics, indeed it is. I will not have it.

People should not talk politics the very next day. It is not right.”

“You are mistaken. Cosette,” said Marius, “we are talking business. We

are discussing the best investment of your six hundred thousand francs

. . .”

“That is not it at all,” interrupted Cosette. “I am coming. Does

anybody want me here?”

And, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawing-room.

She was dressed in a voluminous white dressing-gown, with a thousand

folds and large sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her

feet. In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures, there are

these charming sacks fit to clothe the angels.

She contemplated herself from head to foot in a long mirror, then

exclaimed, in an outburst of ineffable ecstasy:

“There was once a King and a Queen. Oh! how happy I am!”

That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean.

“There,” said she, “I am going to install myself near you in an

easy-chair, we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say anything you

like, I know well that men must talk, and I will be very good.”

Marius took her by the arm and said lovingly to her:

“We are talking business.”

“By the way,” said Cosette, “I have opened my window, a flock of

pierrots has arrived in the garden,—Birds, not maskers. To-day is

Ash-Wednesday; but not for the birds.”

“I tell you that we are talking business, go, my little Cosette, leave

us alone for a moment. We are talking figures. That will bore you.”

“You have a charming cravat on this morning, Marius. You are very

dandified, monseigneur. No, it will not bore me.”

“I assure you that it will bore you.”

“No. Since it is you. I shall not understand you, but I shall listen to

you. When one hears the voices of those whom one loves, one does not

need to understand the words that they utter. That we should be here

together—that is all that I desire. I shall remain with you, bah!”

“You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible.”

“Impossible!”

“Yes.”

“Very good,” said Cosette. “I was going to tell you some news. I could

have told you that your grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is

at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent’s room smokes, that

Nicolette has sent for the chimney-sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette

have already quarrelled, that Nicolette makes sport of Toussaint’s

stammer. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible? you shall

see, gentlemen, that I, in my turn, can say: It is impossible. Then who

will be caught? I beseech you, my little Marius, let me stay here with

you two.”

“I swear to you, that it is indispensable that we should be alone.”

“Well, am I anybody?”

Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word. Cosette turned to him:

“In the first place, father, I want you to come and embrace me. What do

you mean by not saying anything instead of taking my part? who gave me

such a father as that? You must perceive that my family life is very

unhappy. My husband beats me. Come, embrace me instantly.”

Jean Valjean approached.

Cosette turned toward Marius.

“As for you, I shall make a face at you.”

Then she presented her brow to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean advanced a step toward her.

Cosette recoiled.

“Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?”

“It is well,” said Jean Valjean.

“Did you sleep badly?”

“No.”

“Are you sad?”

“No.”

“Embrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content, I

will not scold you.”

And again she offered him her brow.

Jean Valjean dropped a kiss upon that brow whereon rested a celestial

gleam.

“Smile.”

Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.

“Now, defend me against my husband.”

“Cosette! . . .” ejaculated Marius.

“Get angry, father. Say that I must stay. You can certainly talk before

me. So you think me very silly. What you say is astonishing! business,

placing money in a bank a great matter truly. Men make mysteries out of

nothing. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius.”

And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably

exquisite pout, she glanced at Marius.

“I love you!” said Marius.

“I adore you!” said Cosette.

And they fell irresistibly into each other’s arms.

“Now,” said Cosette, adjusting a fold of her dressing-gown, with a

triumphant little grimace, “I shall stay.”

“No, not that,” said Marius, in a supplicating tone. “We have to finish

something.”

“Still no?”

Marius assumed a grave tone:

“I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible.”

“Ah! you put on your man’s voice, sir. That is well, I go. You, father,

have not upheld me. Monsieur my father, monsieur my husband, you are

tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you think that I am going to

return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I

shall wait for you now. You shall see, that it is you who are going to

be bored without me. I am going, it is well.”

And she left the room.

Two seconds later, the door opened once more, her fresh and rosy head

was again thrust between the two leaves, and she cried to them:

“I am very angry indeed.”

The door closed again, and the shadows descended once more.

It was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed the

night, without itself being conscious of it.

Marius made sure that the door was securely closed.

“Poor Cosette!” he murmured, “when she finds out . . .”

At that word Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed on Marius a

bewildered eye.

“Cosette! oh yes, it is true, you are going to tell Cosette about this.

That is right. Stay, I had not thought of that. One has the strength

for one thing, but not for another. Sir, I conjure you, I entreat now,

sir, give me your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell

her. Is it not enough that you should know it? I have been able to say

it myself without being forced to it, I could have told it to the

universe, to the whole world,—it was all one to me. But she, she does

not know what it is, it would terrify her. What, a convict! we should

be obliged to explain matters to her, to say to her: ‘He is a man who

has been in the galleys.’ She saw the chain-gang pass by one day. Oh!

My God!” . . . He dropped into an armchair and hid his face in his

hands.

His grief was not audible, but from the quivering of his shoulders it

was evident that he was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.

There is something of suffocation in the sob. He was seized with a sort

of convulsion, he threw himself against the back of the chair as though

to gain breath, letting his arms fall, and allowing Marius to see his

face inundated with tears, and Marius heard him murmur, so low that his

voice seemed to issue from fathomless depths:

“Oh! would that I could die!”

“Be at your ease,” said Marius, “I will keep your secret for myself

alone.”

And, less touched, perhaps, than he ought to have been, but forced, for

the last hour, to familiarize himself with something as unexpected as

it was dreadful, gradually beholding the convict superposed before his

very eyes, upon M. Fauchelevent, overcome, little by little, by that

lugubrious reality, and led, by the natural inclination of the

situation, to recognize the space which had just been placed between

that man and himself, Marius added:

“It is impossible that I should not speak a word to you with regard to

the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. That is

an act of probity. It is just that some recompense should be bestowed

on you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not

fear to set it very high.”

“I thank you, sir,” replied Jean Valjean, gently.

He remained in thought for a moment, mechanically passing the tip of

his fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice:

“All is nearly over. But one last thing remains for me . . .”

“What is it?”

Jean Valjean struggled with what seemed a last hesitation, and, without

voice, without breath, he stammered rather than said:

“Now that you know, do you think, sir, you, who are the master, that I

ought not to see Cosette any more?”

“I think that would be better,” replied Marius coldly.

“I shall never see her more,” murmured Jean Valjean. And he directed

his steps towards the door.

He laid his hand on the knob, the latch yielded, the door opened. Jean

Valjean pushed it open far enough to pass through, stood motionless for

a second, then closed the door again and turned to Marius.

He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer any tears in

his eyes, but only a sort of tragic flame. His voice had regained a

strange composure.

“Stay, sir,” he said. “If you will allow it, I will come to see her. I

assure you that I desire it greatly. If I had not cared to see Cosette,

I should not have made to you the confession that I have made, I should

have gone away; but, as I desired to remain in the place where Cosette

is, and to continue to see her, I had to tell you about it honestly.

You follow my reasoning, do you not? it is a matter easily understood.

You see, I have had her with me for more than nine years. We lived

first in that hut on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the

Luxembourg. That was where you saw her for the first time. You remember

her blue plush hat. Then we went to the Quartier des Invalides, where

there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet. I lived in a little

back court-yard, whence I could hear her piano. That was my life. We

never left each other. That lasted for nine years and some months. I

was like her own father, and she was my child. I do not know whether

you understand, Monsieur Pontmercy, but to go away now, never to see

her again, never to speak to her again, to no longer have anything,

would be hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see

Cosette from time to time. I will not come often. I will not remain

long. You shall give orders that I am to be received in the little

waiting-room. On the ground floor. I could enter perfectly well by the

back door, but that might create surprise perhaps, and it would be

better, I think, for me to enter by the usual door. Truly, sir, I

should like to see a little more of Cosette. As rarely as you please.

Put yourself in my place, I have nothing left but that. And then, we

must be cautious. If I no longer come at all, it would produce a bad

effect, it would be considered singular. What I can do, by the way, is

to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning to fall.”

“You shall come every evening,” said Marius, “and Cosette will be

waiting for you.”

“You are kind, sir,” said Jean Valjean.

Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door,

and these two men parted.

CHAPTER II—THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN

Marius was quite upset.

The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man

beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained to him. There was

something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned

him.

This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M.

Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.

To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one’s happiness

resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.

Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a

neighborhood? Was this an accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of that

man form a part of the marriage now consummated? Was there nothing to

be done?

Had Marius wedded the convict as well?

In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste

the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force even

the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to

shudder.

As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked

himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Had he

been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he

involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon

this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without

taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He

admitted,—it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves

in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little by little,—he

admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of

internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms

of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes,

and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing

more than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more than once

indicated this characteristic element of Marius’ individuality.

He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet,

during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to

Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken

up such a singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing

flight. How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette?

Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had

not even named the Thénardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he

had encountered Éponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain

his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He

recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love

absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal,

and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled

with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull

instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that

redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did

not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and

in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an

accuser.

Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been

no time for anything except love.

In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his

mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if

he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered

that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius?

Would that have changed her, Cosette? Would he have drawn back? Would

he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained from marrying

her? No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need

reproach himself. All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men

who are called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he

would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. Love had

bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither? To paradise.

But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal

accompaniment.

Marius’ ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this

Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present mingled

with horror.

In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain

surprise.

This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that

deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred thousand francs.

He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all,

he had restored it all.

Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to

this. If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this

avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there

was acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it

is a shelter. A false name is security, and he had rejected that false

name. He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an

honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive?

Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the

irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean

might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There

existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all

appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.

Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar

natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable,

irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered

inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had

said.

Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What

breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. What did Jean Valjean inspire?

confidence.

In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius

struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive

principle, and he tried to reach a balance.

But all this went on as in a storm. Marius, while endeavoring to form a

clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak,

in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal

mist.

The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession—these were

good. This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became

black once more.

Troubled as were Marius’ memories, a shadow of them returned to him.

After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that

man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a

complaint?

Here Marius found the answer. Because that man was a fugitive from

justice, who had broken his ban.

Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?

For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had

reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of

heat. This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. What

had he come there for? In the presence of this question a spectre

sprang up and replied: “Javert.”

Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean

dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard

behind the corner of the little Rue Mondétour that frightful pistol

shot. Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the

galley-slave. The one was in the other’s way. Jean Valjean had gone to

the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived

late. He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican

vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law

there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but

half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a

criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the

matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean

Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that seemed to be evident.

This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no

reply. This question Marius felt like pincers. How had it come to pass

that Jean Valjean’s existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a

period?

What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that

child in contact with that man? Are there then chains for two which are

forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with

the demon? So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the

mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned

persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side,

the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the

divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of

an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing

off? In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community

of life been established between this celestial little creature and

that old criminal?

Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more

incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf

loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for,

during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her

point of support. Cosette’s childhood and girlhood, her advent in the

daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been

sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to

speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of

abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without

becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice?

The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it

now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there

will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the

one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to

evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian

religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her,

rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure

as he was himself, with purity?

What was that cesspool which had venerated that innocence to such a

point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What was this Jean Valjean

educating Cosette? What was this figure of the shadows which had for

its only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every

shadow and from every cloud?

That was Jean Valjean’s secret; that was also God’s secret.

In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled. The one, in

some sort, reassured him as to the other. God was as visible in this

affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He makes use of

the tool which he wills. He is not responsible to men. Do we know how

God sets about the work? Jean Valjean had labored over Cosette. He had,

to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what

then? The workman was horrible; but the work was admirable. God

produces his miracles as seems good to him. He had constructed that

charming Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean. It had pleased him

to choose this strange collaborator for himself. What account have we

to demand of him? Is this the first time that the dung-heap has aided

the spring to create the rose?

Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself that they

were good. He had not dared to press Jean Valjean on all the points

which we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that he

did not dare to do it. He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette, Cosette

was splendidly pure. That was sufficient for him. What enlightenment

did he need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He

had everything; what more could he desire? All,—is not that enough?

Jean Valjean’s personal affairs did not concern him.

And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast,

convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy wretch: “I am

nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not know that she was in

existence.”

Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself. Well, he had

passed. Whatever he was, his part was finished.

Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence to

Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in a person like herself, in her

lover, her husband, her celestial male. Cosette, as she took her

flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her

hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned to a

certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we

have just pointed out, he felt a _quid divinum_ in that man. But do

what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly

forced to fall back upon this: the man was a convict; that is to say, a

being who has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower

than the very lowest rung. After the very last of men comes the

convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of the

living. The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity of

which it can deprive a man.

Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system, though

he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the law on the

subject of those whom the law strikes. He had not yet accomplished all

progress, we admit. He had not yet come to distinguish between that

which is written by man and that which is written by God, between law

and right. He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes to

dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not shocked by

the word _vindicte_. He found it quite simple that certain breaches of

the written law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he

accepted, as the process of civilization, social damnation. He still

stood at this point, though safe to advance infallibly later on, since

his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress.

In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him hideous and

repulsive. He was a man reproved, he was the convict. That word was for

him like the sound of the trump on the Day of Judgment; and, after

having reflected upon Jean Valjean for a long time, his final gesture

had been to turn away his head. _Vade retro_.

Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact, while

interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point that Jean Valjean had said:

“You are confessing me,” had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three

decisive questions.

It was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind, but that

he had been afraid of them. The Jondrette attic? The barricade? Javert?

Who knows where these revelations would have stopped? Jean Valjean did

not seem like a man who would draw back, and who knows whether Marius,

after having urged him on, would not have himself desired to hold him

back?

Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures, to

stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after we have

asked a question? It is especially when one loves that one gives way to

these exhibitions of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister

situations to the last point, particularly when the indissoluble side

of our life is fatally intermingled with them. What a terrible light

might have proceeded from the despairing explanations of Jean Valjean,

and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have darted forth as

far as Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not

have lingered behind it on the brow of that angel? The spattering of a

lightning-flash is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture

where innocence itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the

reflections which give color. The purest figures may forever preserve

the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius

had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to dull his senses

rather than to gain further light.

In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean

Valjean.

That man was the night, the living and horrible night. How should he

dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible thing to interrogate

the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened

forever by it.

In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth, come

into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending perplexity to

Marius.

He now almost reproached himself for not having put those formidable

questions, before which he had recoiled, and from which an implacable

and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too

good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say the word. This weakness had

led him to an imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be

touched. He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely

rejected Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean played the part of fire, and that

is what he should have done, and have freed his house from that man.

He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions

which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away. He was displeased

with himself.

What was he to do now? Jean Valjean’s visits were profoundly repugnant

to him. What was the use in having that man in his house? What did the

man want? Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he did

not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. He had

promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise; Jean

Valjean held his promise; one must keep one’s word even to a convict,

above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short,

he was carried away by the repugnance which dominated him.

Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind, passing

from one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence arose a profound

trouble.

It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette, but love is

a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.

However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette, who was as

candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing; he talked of her

childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that

that convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a

man can be towards Cosette. All that Marius had caught a glimpse of and

had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved and protected

that lily.

BOOK EIGHTH—FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT

[Illustration: The Twilight Decline]

CHAPTER I—THE LOWER CHAMBER

On the following day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the

carriage gate of the Gillenormand house. It was Basque who received

him. Basque was in the courtyard at the appointed hour, as though he

had received his orders. It sometimes happens that one says to a

servant: “You will watch for Mr. So and So, when he arrives.”

Basque addressed Jean Valjean without waiting for the latter to

approach him:

“Monsieur le Baron has charged me to inquire whether monsieur desires

to go upstairs or to remain below?”

“I will remain below,” replied Jean Valjean.

Basque, who was perfectly respectful, opened the door of the

waiting-room and said:

“I will go and inform Madame.”

The room which Jean Valjean entered was a damp, vaulted room on the

ground floor, which served as a cellar on occasion, which opened on the

street, was paved with red squares and was badly lighted by a grated

window.

This chamber was not one of those which are harassed by the

feather-duster, the pope’s head brush, and the broom. The dust rested

tranquilly there. Persecution of the spiders was not organized there. A

fine web, which spread far and wide, and was very black and ornamented

with dead flies, formed a wheel on one of the window-panes. The room,

which was small and low-ceiled, was furnished with a heap of empty

bottles piled up in one corner.

The wall, which was daubed with an ochre yellow wash, was scaling off

in large flakes. At one end there was a chimney-piece painted in black

with a narrow shelf. A fire was burning there; which indicated that

Jean Valjean’s reply: “I will remain below,” had been foreseen.

Two armchairs were placed at the two corners of the fireplace. Between

the chairs an old bedside rug, which displayed more foundation thread

than wool, had been spread by way of a carpet.

The chamber was lighted by the fire on the hearth and the twilight

falling through the window.

Jean Valjean was fatigued. For days he had neither eaten nor slept. He

threw himself into one of the armchairs.

Basque returned, set a lighted candle on the chimney-piece and retired.

Jean Valjean, his head drooping and his chin resting on his breast,

perceived neither Basque nor the candle.

All at once, he drew himself up with a start. Cosette was standing

beside him.

He had not seen her enter, but he had felt that she was there.

He turned round. He gazed at her. She was adorably lovely. But what he

was contemplating with that profound gaze was not her beauty but her

soul.

“Well,” exclaimed Cosette, “father, I knew that you were peculiar, but

I never should have expected this. What an idea! Marius told me that

you wish me to receive you here.”

“Yes, it is my wish.”

“I expected that reply. Good. I warn you that I am going to make a

scene for you. Let us begin at the beginning. Embrace me, father.”

And she offered him her cheek.

Jean Valjean remained motionless.

“You do not stir. I take note of it. Attitude of guilt. But never mind,

I pardon you. Jesus Christ said: Offer the other cheek. Here it is.”

And she presented her other cheek.

Jean Valjean did not move. It seemed as though his feet were nailed to

the pavement.

“This is becoming serious,” said Cosette. “What have I done to you? I

declare that I am perplexed. You owe me reparation. You will dine with

us.”

“I have dined.”

“That is not true. I will get M. Gillenormand to scold you.

Grandfathers are made to reprimand fathers. Come. Go upstairs with me

to the drawing-room. Immediately.”

“Impossible.”

Here Cosette lost ground a little. She ceased to command and passed to

questioning.

“But why? and you choose the ugliest chamber in the house in which to

see me. It’s horrible here.”

“Thou knowest . . .”

Jean Valjean caught himself up.

“You know, madame, that I am peculiar, I have my freaks.”

Cosette struck her tiny hands together.

“Madame! . . . You know! . . . more novelties! What is the meaning of

this?”

Jean Valjean directed upon her that heartrending smile to which he

occasionally had recourse:

“You wished to be Madame. You are so.”

“Not for you, father.”

“Do not call me father.”

“What?”

“Call me ‘Monsieur Jean.’ ‘Jean,’ if you like.”

“You are no longer my father? I am no longer Cosette? ‘Monsieur Jean’?

What does this mean? why, these are revolutions, aren’t they? what has

taken place? come, look me in the face. And you won’t live with us! And

you won’t have my chamber! What have I done to you? Has anything

happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Well then?”

“Everything is as usual.”

“Why do you change your name?”

“You have changed yours, surely.”

He smiled again with the same smile as before and added:

“Since you are Madame Pontmercy, I certainly can be Monsieur Jean.”

“I don’t understand anything about it. All this is idiotic. I shall ask

permission of my husband for you to be ‘Monsieur Jean.’ I hope that he

will not consent to it. You cause me a great deal of pain. One does

have freaks, but one does not cause one’s little Cosette grief. That is

wrong. You have no right to be wicked, you who are so good.”

He made no reply.

She seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face with

an irresistible movement, she pressed them against her neck beneath her

chin, which is a gesture of profound tenderness.

“Oh!” she said to him, “be good!”

And she went on:

“This is what I call being good: being nice and coming and living

here,—there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet,—living with

us, quitting that hole of a Rue de l’Homme Armé, not giving us riddles

to guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us,

breakfasting with us, being my father.”

He loosed her hands.

“You no longer need a father, you have a husband.”

Cosette became angry.

“I no longer need a father! One really does not know what to say to

things like that, which are not common sense!”

“If Toussaint were here,” resumed Jean Valjean, like a person who is

driven to seek authorities, and who clutches at every branch, “she

would be the first to agree that it is true that I have always had ways

of my own. There is nothing new in this. I always have loved my black

corner.”

“But it is cold here. One cannot see distinctly. It is abominable, that

it is, to wish to be Monsieur Jean! I will not have you say ‘you’ to

me.

“Just now, as I was coming hither,” replied Jean Valjean, “I saw a

piece of furniture in the Rue Saint Louis. It was at a cabinet-maker’s.

If I were a pretty woman, I would treat myself to that bit of

furniture. A very neat toilet table in the reigning style. What you

call rosewood, I think. It is inlaid. The mirror is quite large. There

are drawers. It is pretty.”

“Hou! the villainous bear!” replied Cosette.

And with supreme grace, setting her teeth and drawing back her lips,

she blew at Jean Valjean. She was a Grace copying a cat.

“I am furious,” she resumed. “Ever since yesterday, you have made me

rage, all of you. I am greatly vexed. I don’t understand. You do not

defend me against Marius. Marius will not uphold me against you. I am

all alone. I arrange a chamber prettily. If I could have put the good

God there I would have done it. My chamber is left on my hands. My

lodger sends me into bankruptcy. I order a nice little dinner of

Nicolette. We will have nothing to do with your dinner, Madame. And my

father Fauchelevent wants me to call him ‘Monsieur Jean,’ and to

receive him in a frightful, old, ugly cellar, where the walls have

beards, and where the crystal consists of empty bottles, and the

curtains are of spiders’ webs! You are singular, I admit, that is your

style, but people who get married are granted a truce. You ought not to

have begun being singular again instantly. So you are going to be

perfectly contented in your abominable Rue de l’Homme Armé. I was very

desperate indeed there, that I was. What have you against me? You cause

me a great deal of grief. Fi!”

And, becoming suddenly serious, she gazed intently at Jean Valjean and

added:

“Are you angry with me because I am happy?”

Ingenuousness sometimes unconsciously penetrates deep. This question,

which was simple for Cosette, was profound for Jean Valjean. Cosette

had meant to scratch, and she lacerated.

Jean Valjean turned pale.

He remained for a moment without replying, then, with an inexpressible

intonation, and speaking to himself, he murmured:

“Her happiness was the object of my life. Now God may sign my

dismissal. Cosette, thou art happy; my day is over.”

“Ah, you have said _thou_ to me!” exclaimed Cosette.

And she sprang to his neck.

Jean Valjean, in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. It

almost seemed to him as though he were taking her back.

“Thanks, father!” said Cosette.

This enthusiastic impulse was on the point of becoming poignant for

Jean Valjean. He gently removed Cosette’s arms, and took his hat.

“Well?” said Cosette.

“I leave you, Madame, they are waiting for you.”

And, from the threshold, he added:

“I have said _thou_ to you. Tell your husband that this shall not

happen again. Pardon me.”

Jean Valjean quitted the room, leaving Cosette stupefied at this

enigmatical farewell.

CHAPTER II—ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS

On the following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came.

Cosette asked him no questions, was no longer astonished, no longer

exclaimed that she was cold, no longer spoke of the drawing-room, she

avoided saying either “father” or “Monsieur Jean.” She allowed herself

to be addressed as _you_. She allowed herself to be called Madame.

Only, her joy had undergone a certain diminution. She would have been

sad, if sadness had been possible to her.

It is probable that she had had with Marius one of those conversations

in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing, and

satisfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of lovers does not extend

very far beyond their own love.

The lower room had made a little toilet. Basque had suppressed the

bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.

All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He

came every day, because he had not the strength to take Marius’ words

otherwise than literally. Marius arranged matters so as to be absent at

the hours when Jean Valjean came. The house grew accustomed to the

novel ways of M. Fauchelevent. Toussaint helped in this direction:

“Monsieur has always been like that,” she repeated. The grandfather

issued this decree:—“He’s an original.” And all was said. Moreover, at

the age of ninety-six, no bond is any longer possible, all is merely

juxtaposition; a newcomer is in the way. There is no longer any room;

all habits are acquired. M. Fauchelevent, M. Tranchelevent, Father

Gillenormand asked nothing better than to be relieved from “that

gentleman.” He added:—“Nothing is more common than those originals.

They do all sorts of queer things. They have no reason. The Marquis de

Canaples was still worse. He bought a palace that he might lodge in the

garret. These are fantastic appearances that people affect.”

No one caught a glimpse of the sinister foundation. And moreover, who

could have guessed such a thing? There are marshes of this description

in India. The water seems extraordinary, inexplicable, rippling though

there is no wind, and agitated where it should be calm. One gazes at

the surface of these causeless ebullitions; one does not perceive the

hydra which crawls on the bottom.

Many men have a secret monster in this same manner, a dragon which

gnaws them, a despair which inhabits their night. Such a man resembles

other men, he goes and comes. No one knows that he bears within him a

frightful parasitic pain with a thousand teeth, which lives within the

unhappy man, and of which he is dying. No one knows that this man is a

gulf. He is stagnant but deep. From time to time, a trouble of which

the onlooker understands nothing appears on his surface. A mysterious

wrinkle is formed, then vanishes, then reappears; an air-bubble rises

and bursts. It is the breathing of the unknown beast.

Certain strange habits: arriving at the hour when other people are

taking their leave, keeping in the background when other people are

displaying themselves, preserving on all occasions what may be

designated as the wall-colored mantle, seeking the solitary walk,

preferring the deserted street, avoiding any share in conversation,

avoiding crowds and festivals, seeming at one’s ease and living poorly,

having one’s key in one’s pocket, and one’s candle at the porter’s

lodge, however rich one may be, entering by the side door, ascending

the private staircase,—all these insignificant singularities, fugitive

folds on the surface, often proceed from a formidable foundation.

Many weeks passed in this manner. A new life gradually took possession

of Cosette: the relations which marriage creates, visits, the care of

the house, pleasures, great matters. Cosette’s pleasures were not

costly, they consisted in one thing: being with Marius. The great

occupation of her life was to go out with him, to remain with him. It

was for them a joy that was always fresh, to go out arm in arm, in the

face of the sun, in the open street, without hiding themselves, before

the whole world, both of them completely alone.

Cosette had one vexation. Toussaint could not get on with Nicolette,

the soldering of two elderly maids being impossible, and she went away.

The grandfather was well; Marius argued a case here and there; Aunt

Gillenormand peacefully led that life aside which sufficed for her,

beside the new household. Jean Valjean came every day.

The address as _thou_ disappeared, the _you_, the “Madame,” the

“Monsieur Jean,” rendered him another person to Cosette. The care which

he had himself taken to detach her from him was succeeding. She became

more and more gay and less and less tender. Yet she still loved him

sincerely, and he felt it.

One day she said to him suddenly: “You used to be my father, you are no

longer my father, you were my uncle, you are no longer my uncle, you

were Monsieur Fauchelevent, you are Jean. Who are you then? I don’t

like all this. If I did not know how good you are, I should be afraid

of you.”

He still lived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, because he could not make up

his mind to remove to a distance from the quarter where Cosette dwelt.

At first, he only remained a few minutes with Cosette, and then went

away.

Little by little he acquired the habit of making his visits less brief.

One would have said that he was taking advantage of the authorization

of the days which were lengthening, he arrived earlier and departed

later.

One day Cosette chanced to say “father” to him. A flash of joy

illuminated Jean Valjean’s melancholy old countenance. He caught her

up: “Say Jean.”—“Ah! truly,” she replied with a burst of laughter,

“Monsieur Jean.”—“That is right,” said he. And he turned aside so that

she might not see him wipe his eyes.

CHAPTER III—THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET

This was the last time. After that last flash of light, complete

extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more good-morning with a

kiss, never more that word so profoundly sweet: “My father!” He was at

his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his

happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after

having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to

lose her again in detail.

The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In

short, it sufficed for him to have an apparition of Cosette every day.

His whole life was concentrated in that one hour.

He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he

talked to her of years gone by, of her childhood, of the convent, of

her little friends of those bygone days.