Our readers will remember the coachman waiting above in case of

need. A moment after the hackney, which came down the incline leading

to the watering-place, was on the bank. Marius was deposited on the

back seat, and Javert sat down by Jean Valjean's side on the front

one. When the door was closed the fiacre started off rapidly along

the quays in the direction of the Bastille. They quitted the quay and

turned into the streets; and the driver, a black outline on his seat,

lashed his lean horses. There was an icy silence in the hackney coach;

Marius motionless, with his body reclining in one corner, his head on

his chest, his arms pendent, and his legs stiff, appeared to be only

waiting for a coffin. Jean Valjean seemed made of gloom, and Javert of

stone; and in this fiacre full of night, whose interior, each time that

it passed a lamp, seemed to be lividly lit up as if by an intermittent

flash, accident united and appeared to confront the three immobilities

of tragedy,--the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.

CHAPTER X.

RETURN OF THE SON PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE.

At each jolt over the pavement a drop of blood fell from Marius's hair.

It was quite night when the hackney coach reached No. 6, Rue des Filles

du Calvaire. Javert got out first, examined at a glance the number

over the gateway, and raising the heavy knocker of hammered steel,

embellished in the old style with a goat and a satyr contending, gave a

violent knock. The folding-door opened slightly, and Javert pushed it

open. The porter half showed himself, yawning, and scarce awake, candle

in hand. All were asleep in the house, for people go to bed early at

the Marais, especially on days of rioting. This good old district,

terrified by the revolution, takes refuge in sleep, like children who,

when they hear "old Bogey coming," quickly hide their heads under the

counterpane. In the mean while Jean Valjean and the driver removed

Marius from the hackney coach, Valjean holding him under the armpits

and the coachman under the knees. While carrying Marius in this way

Jean Valjean passed his hands under his clothes, which were terribly

torn, felt his chest, and assured himself that his heart still beat. It

even beat a little less feebly, as if the motion of the vehicle had

produced a certain renewal of vitality. Javert addressed the porter in

the tone which becomes the government in the presence of the porter of

a factionist.

"Any one live here of the name of Gillenormand?"

"It is here. What do you want with him?"

"We bring him his son."

"His son?" the porter asked in amazement.

"He is dead."

Jean Valjean, who came up ragged and filthy behind Javert, and whom

the porter regarded with some horror, made him a sign that it was not

so. The porter seemed neither to understand Javert's remark nor Jean

Valjean's sign. Javert continued,--

"He has been to the barricade, and here he is."

"To the barricade!" the porter exclaimed.

"He has been killed. Go and wake his father."

The porter did not stir.

"Be off!" Javert continued; and added, "There will be a funeral here

to-morrow."

For Javert, the ordinary incidents of the streets were classified

categorically, which is the commencement of foresight and surveillance,

and each eventuality had its compartment; the possible facts were

to some extent kept in drawers, whence they issued on occasions, in

variable quantities; there were in the streets, disturbance, riot,

carnival, and interments.

The porter limited himself to awaking Basque; Basque awoke Nicolette;

Nicolette awoke Aunt Gillenormand. As for the grandfather, he was left

to sleep, as it was thought that he would know the affair quite soon

enough as it was. Marius was carried to the first-floor, no one being

acquainted with the fact in the rest of the house, and he was laid on

an old sofa in M. Gillenormand's ante-room, and while Basque went to

fetch a physician and Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean

felt Javert touch his shoulder. He understood, and went down, Javert

following close at his heels. The porter saw them depart, as he had

seen them arrive, with a startled sleepiness. They got into the hackney

coach, and the driver on his box.

"Inspector Javert," Jean Valjean said, "grant me one thing more."

"What is it?" Javert answered roughly.

"Let me go home for a moment, and you can then do with me what you

please."

Javert remained silent for a few moments with his chin thrust into the

collar of his great-coat, and then let down the front window.

"Driver," he said, "No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."

CHAPTER XI.

A SHAKING IN THE ABSOLUTE.

They did not speak during the entire ride. What did Jean Valjean want?

To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, tell her where Marius

was, give her perhaps some other useful information, and make, if he

could, certain final arrangements. For his own part, as regarded what

concerned him personally, it was all over; he had been arrested by

Javert, and did not resist. Any other than he, in such a situation,

would perhaps have thought vaguely of the rope which Thénardier had

given him, and the bars of the first cell he entered; but since his

meeting with the Bishop, Jean Valjean had within him a profound

religious hesitation against every assault, even on himself. Suicide,

that mysterious attack on the unknown, which may contain to a certain

extent the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.

On entering the Rue de l'Homme Armé the coach stopped, as the street

was too narrow for vehicles to pass along it. Jean Valjean and Javert

got out. The driver humbly represented to "Mr. Inspector" that the

Utrecht velvet of his coach was quite spoiled by the blood of the

assassinated man and the filth of the assassin,--that is how he

understood the affair,--and he added that an indemnity was due to him.

At the same time taking his license-book from his pocket, he begged

Mr. Inspector to have the kindness to write him a little bit of a

certificate. Javert thrust back the book which the driver offered him

and said,--

"How much do you want, including the time you waited and the journey?"

"It's seven hours and a quarter," the driver answered, "and my velvet

was brand new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector."

Javert took from his pocket four Napoleons, and dismissed the hackney

coach. Jean Valjean thought that it was Javert's intention to take him

on foot to the Blancs Manteaux post, or that of the Archives, which

were close by. They entered the street, which was as usual deserted.

Javert followed Jean Valjean, and, on reaching No. 7, the latter

rapped, and the gate opened.

"Very good," said Javert; "go up."

He added, with a strange expression, and as if making an effort to

speak in this way,--

"I will wait for you here."

Jean Valjean looked at Javert, for this style of conduct was not at

all a habit of Javert's. Still, it could not surprise him greatly that

Javert should now place in him a sort of haughty confidence,--the

confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of

its claw, determined as Jean Valjean was to give himself up and make

an end of it. He thrust open the gate, entered the house, shouted to

the porter, who was lying down and had pulled the string from his bed,

"It is I," and mounted the staircase. On reaching the first story he

paused, for every Via Dolorosa has its stations. The window at the

head of the stairs, a sash-window, was open. As is the case in many

old houses, the staircase obtained light from, and looked out on, the

street. The street lantern, situated precisely opposite, threw some

little light on the stairs, which caused a saving of a lamp. Jean

Valjean, either to breathe or mechanically, thrust his head out of

this window and looked down into the street. It is short, and the lamp

lit it from one end to the other. Jean Valjean had a bedazzlement of

stupor: there was no one in it.

Javert had gone away.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GRANDFATHER.

Basque and the porter had carried Marius, who was still lying

motionless on the sofa on which he had been laid on arriving, into

the drawing-room. The physician, who had been sent for, hurried in,

and Aunt Gillenormand had risen. Aunt Gillenormand came and went,

horrified, clasping her hands, and incapable of doing anything but

saying, "Can it be possible?" She added at intervals, "Everything

will be stained with blood." When the first horror had passed away a

certain philosophy of the situation appeared even in her mind, and was

translated by the exclamation, "It must end in that way." She did not

go so far, though, as "Did I not say so?" which is usual on occasions

of this nature.

By the surgeon's orders a folding-bed was put up near the sofa. He

examined Marius, and after satisfying himself that the pulse still

beat, that the patient had no penetrating wound in the chest, and that

the blood at the corners of the lips came from the nostrils, he had him

laid flat on the bed, without a pillow, the head level with the body,

and even a little lower, the chest bare, in order to facilitate the

breathing. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, seeing that Marius was being

undressed, withdrew, and told her beads in her bed-room. The body had

received no internal injury; a ball, deadened by the pocket-book, had

deviated, and passed round the ribs with a frightful gash, but as it

was not deep, it was therefore not dangerous. The long subterranean

march had completed the dislocation of the collar-bone, and there were

serious injuries there. The arms were covered with sabre-cuts; no scar

disfigured the face, but the head was cut all over with gashes. What

would be the state of these wounds on the head,--did they stop at the

scalp, or did they reach the brain? It was impossible to say yet. It

was a serious symptom that they had caused the faintness. And men do

not always awake from such fainting-fits; the hemorrhage, moreover, had

exhausted the wounded man. From the waist downward the lower part of

the body had been protected by the barricade.

Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages: Nicolette

sewed them and Basque rolled them. As they had no lint, the physician

had temporarily checked the effusion of blood with cakes of wadding.

By the side of the bed three candles burned on the table on which the

surgeon's pocket-book lay open. He washed Marius's face and hair with

cold water, and a bucketful was red in an instant. The porter, candle

in hand, lighted him. The surgeon seemed to be thinking sadly: from

time to time he gave a negative shake of the head, as if answering

some question which he mentally addressed to himself. Such mysterious

dialogues of the physician with himself are a bad sign for the patient.

At the moment when the surgeon was wiping the face and gently touching

with his finger the still closed eyelids, a door opened at the end of

the room, and a tall, pale figure appeared: it was the grandfather.

The riot during the last two days had greatly agitated, offended, and

occupied M. Gillenormand; he had not been able to sleep on the previous

night, and he had been feverish all day. At night he went to bed at a

very early hour, bidding his people bar up the house, and had fallen

asleep through weariness.

Old men have a fragile sleep. M. Gillenormand's bed-room joined the

drawing-room, and whatever precautions had been taken, the noise awoke

him. Surprised by the crack of light which he saw in his door, he had

got out of bed and groped his way to the door. He was standing on

the threshold, with one hand on the door-handle, his head slightly

bent forward and shaking, his body enfolded in a white dressing-gown

as straight and creaseless as a winding-sheet: he was surprised, and

looked like a ghost peering into a tomb. He noticed the bed, and on the

mattress this young bleeding man, of the whiteness of wax, with closed

eyes, open mouth, livid cheeks, naked to the waist, marked all over

with vermilion, wounded, motionless, and brightly illumined.

The grandfather had from head to foot that shudder which ossified limbs

can have. His eyes, whose cornea was yellow owing to their great age,

were veiled by a sort of glassy stare; his entire face assumed in an

instant the earthly angles of a skeleton's head; his arms fell pendent

as if a spring had been broken in them, and his stupor was displayed

by the outspreading of all the fingers of his two old trembling hands.

His knees formed a salient angle, displaying through the opening of his

dressing-gown his poor naked legs bristling with white hairs, and he

murmured,--

"Marius!"

"He has just been brought here, sir," said Basque; "he went to the

barricade, and--"

"He is dead," the old gentleman exclaimed in a terrible voice. "Oh, the

brigand!"

Then a sort of sepulchral transfiguration drew up this centenarian as

straight as a young man.

"You are the surgeon, sir," he said; "begin by telling me one thing. He

is dead, is he not?"

The surgeon, who was frightfully anxious, maintained silence, and M.

Gillenormand wrung his hands with a burst of terrifying laughter.

"He is dead, he is dead! He has let himself be killed at the barricade

through hatred of me; it was against me that he did it! Ah, the

blood-drinker, that is the way in which he returns to me! Woe of my

life, he is dead!"

He went to a window, opened it quite wide, as if he were stifling, and

standing there began speaking to the night in the street.

"Stabbed, sabred, massacred, exterminated, slashed, cut to pieces!

Do you see that, the beggar! He knew very well that I expected him,

and that I had his room ready, and that I had placed at my bed-head

his portrait when he was a child! He knew very well that he need only

return, and that for years I had been recalling him, and that I sat at

night by my fire-side with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to

do, and that I was crazy about him! You knew that very well; you had

only to return and say, 'It is I,' and you would be the master of the

house, and I would obey you, and you could do anything you liked with

your old ass of a grandfather! You knew it very well, and said, 'No,

he is a royalist, I will not go!' and you went to the barricades, and

have let yourself be killed out of spite, in order to revenge yourself

for what I said on the subject of Monsieur le Due de Berry! Is not

that infamous! Go to bed and sleep quietly, for he is dead. This is my

awaking."

The surgeon, who was beginning to be anxious for both, left Marius,

and going up to M. Gillenormand, took his arm. The grandfather turned,

looked at him with eyes that seemed dilated and bloodshot, and said

calmly,--

"I thank you sir, I am calm. I am a man. I saw the death of Louis XVI.,

and can endure events. There is one thing that is terrible,--it is

the thought that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You

have scribblers, speakers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions,

progress, lights, rights of man, liberty of the press, and that is

the way in which your children are brought back to your houses. Oh,

Marius, it is abominable! Killed! dead before me! a barricade! Oh, the

bandit! Doctor, you live in the quarter, I believe? Oh yes, I know

you well. I have seen your cab pass from my window. Well, I will tell

you. You are wrong if you think that I am in a passion, for people do

not get in a passion with a dead man, it would be stupid. That is a

boy I brought up; I was old when he was still quite little. He played

in the Tuileries with his little spade and his little chair, and, in

order that the inspectors should not scold, I used to fill up with my

cane the holes which he made with his spade. One day he cried, 'Down

with Louis XVIII.!' and went off. It is not my fault. He was all pink

and white, and his mother is dead: have you noticed that all little

children are light-haired? He is a son of one of those brigands of the

Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes. I remember

him when he was so high, and he could never manage to pronounce a _d._

He spoke so sweetly and incomprehensibly that you might have fancied

him a bird. I remember one day that a circle was formed in front of the

Farnese Hercules to admire that child, he was so lovely. He had a head

such as you see in pictures. I used to speak loud to him, and threaten

him with my cane; but he knew very well that it was a joke. In the

morning, when he entered my room, I scolded; but it produced the effect

of sunshine upon me. It is not possible to defend yourself against

these brats, for they take you, and hold you, and do not let you go

again. It is the fact that there never was a Cupid like that child. And

now what do you say of your Lafayette, your Benjamin Constant, and your

Tirecuir de Corcelles, who kill him for me? Oh, it cannot pass away

like that!"

He went up to Marius, who was still livid and motionless, and began

wringing his hands again. The old gentleman's white lips moved as it

were mechanically, and allowed indistinct sentences to pass, which

were scarce audible. "Ah, heartless! ah, clubbist! ah, scoundrel! ah,

Septembrizer!"--reproaches uttered in a low voice by a dying man to a

corpse. By degrees, as such internal eruptions must always burst forth,

the flood of words returned; but the grandfather seemed no longer to

have the strength to utter them; his voice was so hollow and choked

that it seemed to come from the other brink of an abyss.

"I do not care a bit; I will die too. And then to think there is not

a wench in Paris who would not be happy to produce the happiness of

that scoundrel,--a scamp, who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying

life, went to fight, and let himself be shot like a brute! And for

whom, and for what? For the republic, instead of going to dance at the

Chaumière, as is the duty of young men! It is really worth while being

twenty years of age. The republic,--a fine absurdity! Poor mothers

bring pretty boys into the world for that! Well, he is dead; that will

make two hearses under the gateway. So you have got yourself served in

that way for love of General Lamarque! What did General Lamarque do for

you? A sabrer! a chatterer! to get one's self killed for a dead man!

Is it not enough to drive one mad? Can you understand that? At twenty!

and without turning his head to see whether he left anything behind

him! Now, see the poor old fellows who are obliged to die all alone.

Rot in your corner, owl! Well, after all, that is what I hoped for, and

is for the best, as it will kill me right off. I am too old; I am one

hundred; I am a hundred thousand, and I had a right to be dead long

ago. Well, this blow settles it. It is all over. What happiness! What

is the use of making him inhale ammonia and all that pile of drugs? You

ass of a doctor, you are wasting your time. There, he's dead, quite

dead! I know it, for I am dead too. He did not do the thing by halves.

Yes, the present age is infamous, infamous, infamous! And that is what

I think of you, your ideas, your systems, your masters, your oracles,

your doctors, your scamps of writers, your rogues of philosophers, and

all the revolutions which have startled the Tuileries ravens during

the last sixty years. And since you were pitiless in letting yourself

be killed so, I will not even feel sorry at your death. Do your hear,

assassin?"

At this moment Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still

veiled by lethargic surprise, settled on M. Gillenormand.

"Marius!" the old man cried; "Marius, my little Marius! My child! My

beloved son! You open your eyes! You look at me! You are alive! Thanks!"

And he fell down in a fainting fit.

BOOK IV.

JAVERT DERAILED.

Javert retired slowly from the Rue de l'Homme Armé. He walked with

drooping head for the first time in his life, and equally for the

first time in his life with his hands behind his back. Up to that day

Javert had only assumed, of Napoleon's two attitudes, the one which

expresses resolution, the arms folded on the chest; the one indicating

uncertainty, the arms behind the back, was unknown to him. Now a change

had taken place, and his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped

with anxiety. He buried himself in the silent streets, but followed a

certain direction. He went by the shortest road to the Seine, reached

the Quai des Ormes, walked along it, passed the Grêve, and stopped, a

little distance from the Place du Châtelet, at the corner of the Pont

Nôtre Dame. The Seine makes there, between that bridge and the Pont

au Change on one side, and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux

Fleurs on the other, a species of square hike traversed by a rapid.

This point of the Seine is feared by sailors; nothing can be more

dangerous than this rapid, at that period contracted and irrigated

by the piles of the mill bridge, since demolished. The two bridges,

so close to each other, heighten the danger, for the water hurries

formidably through the arches. It rolls in broad, terrible waves, it

increases, and is heaped up; the flood strives to root out the piles

of the bridge with thick liquid cords. Men who fall in there do not

reappear, and the best swimmers are drowned.

Javert leaned his elbows on the parapet, his chin on his hand,

and while his hands mechanically closed on his thick whiskers, he

reflected. A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken

place within him, and he must examine into it. Javert was suffering

horribly, and for some hours past Javert had ceased to be simple.

He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost

its transparency, and there was a cloud in this crystal. Javert felt

in his conscience duty doubled, and he could not hide the fact from

himself. When he met Jean Valjean so unexpectedly on the Seine bank,

he had something within him of the wolf that recaptures its prey and

the dog that finds its master again. He saw before him two roads, both

equally straight; but he saw two of them, and this terrified him, as

he had never known in his life but one straight line. And, poignant

agony! these two roads were contrary, and one of these right lines

excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His situation

was indescribable; to owe his life to a malefactor, to accept this debt

and repay him; to be, in spite of himself, on the same footing with

an escaped convict, and requite one service with another service; to

let it be said to him, "Be off!" and to say in his turn, "Be free!"

to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation,

and to feel in these personal motives something general too, and

perhaps superior; to betray society in order to remain faithful to

his conscience,--that all these absurdities should be realized, and

accumulated upon him, was what startled him. One thing had astonished

him,--that Jean Valjean had shown him mercy; and one thing had

petrified him,--that he, Javert, had shown mercy to Jean Valjean.

Where was he? He sought and no longer found himself. What was he to do

now? To give up Jean Valjean was bad, to leave Jean Valjean at liberty

was bad. In the former case, the man of authority fell lower than the

man of the galleys; in the second, a convict rose higher than the law,

and set his foot upon it. In either case, dishonor for him, Javert.

Whatever resolution he might form, there was a fall, for destiny has

certain extremities projecting over the impossible, beyond which life

is only a precipice. Javert had reached one of these extremities: one

of his anxieties was to be constrained to think, and the very violence

of all these contradictory emotions compelled him to do so. Now,

thought was an unusual thing for him, and singularly painful. There is

always in thought a certain amount of internal rebellion, and he was

irritated at having that within him. Thought, no matter on what subject

beyond the narrow circle of his destiny, would have been to him in any

case useless and wearisome; but thinking about the day which had just

passed was a torture. And yet he must after such shocks look into his

conscience, and give himself an account of himself. What he had done

caused him to shudder; he, Javert, had thought fit to decide--against

all police regulations, against all social and judicial organization,

and against the entire codes--a discharge: that had suited him. He

had substituted his own affairs for public affairs; was not that

unjustifiable? Each time that he stood facing the nameless action which

he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. What should he resolve

on? Only one resource was left him,--to return at full speed to the Rue

de l'Homme Armé and lock up Jean Valjean. It was clear that this was

what he ought to do, but he could not do it. Something barred the way

on that side. What! is there anything in the world besides sentences,

the police, and the authorities? Javert was overwhelmed.

A sacred galley-slave! a convict impregnable by justice, and that

through the deed of Javert! Was it not frightful that Javert and Jean

Valjean, the man made to punish and the man made to endure,--that these

two men, who were both the property of the law, should have reached the

point of placing themselves both above the law? What! such enormities

could happen and no one be punished? Jean Valjean, stronger than the

whole social order, would be free, and he, Javert, would continue to

eat the bread of the Government! His reverie gradually became terrible:

he might through this reverie have reproached himself slightly on

the subject of the insurgent carried home to the Rue des Filles du

Calvaire, but he did not think of it. The slighter fault was lost in

the greater; and besides, this insurgent was evidently a dead man,

and, legally, death checks persecution. Jean Valjean,--that was the

weight which he had on his mind. Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All

the axioms which had been the support of his whole life crumbled away

before this man, and the generosity of Jean Valjean to him, Javert,

overwhelmed him. Other facts which he remembered, and which he had

formerly treated as falsehoods and folly, now returned to his mind as

realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two

figures were blended into one, which was venerable. Javert felt that

something horrible, admiration for a convict, was entering his soul.

Respect for a galley-slave, is it possible? He shuddered at it, and

could not escape from it, although he struggled. He was reduced to

confess in his soul the sublimity of this villain, and this was odious.

A benevolent malefactor, a compassionate, gentle, helping, and merciful

convict,--repaying good for evil, pardon for hatred, preferring pity to

vengeance, ready to destroy himself sooner than his enemy, saving the

man who had struck him, kneeling on the pinnacle of virtue, and nearer

to the angels than to man. Javert was constrained to confess to himself

that such a monster existed.

This could not last. Assuredly--and we lay stress on the fact--he

had not yielded without resistance to this monster, to this infamous

angel, to this hideous hero, at whom he felt almost as indignant as

stupefied. Twenty times while in that hackney coach face to face with

Jean Valjean the legal tiger had roared within him. Twenty times he

had felt tempted to hurl himself on Jean Valjean, to seize and devour

him,--that is to say, arrest him. What more simple, in fact,--shout to

the nearest post before which he passed, "Here is a convict who has

broken his ban!" and then go away, leave the condemned man there, be

ignorant of the rest, and interfere no further? This man is eternally

the prisoner of the law, and the law will do what it pleases with him.

What was fairer? Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to

go further,--to act, apprehend the man,--and then, as now, had been

unable; and each time that his hand was convulsively raised to Jean

Valjean's collar, it fell back as if under an enormous weight, and

he heard in the bottom of his heart a voice, a strange voice, crying

to him, "That is well. Give up your saviour, then send for Pontius

Pilate's basin, and wash your hands in it!"

Then his thoughts reverted to himself, and by the side of Jean Valjean

aggrandized he saw himself degraded. A convict was his benefactor, but

why had he allowed that man to let him live? He had the right of being

killed at that barricade, and should have employed that right. It would

have been better to call the other insurgents to his aid against Jean

Valjean, and have himself shot by force. His supreme agony was the

disappearance of certainty, and he felt himself uprooted. The code was

now only a stump in his hand, and he had to deal with scruples of an

unknown species. There was within him a sentimental revelation entirely

distinct from the legal affirmation, his sole measure hitherto, and

it was not sufficient to remain in his old honesty. A whole order

of unexpected facts arose and subjugated him, an entire new world

appeared to his soul; benefits accepted and returned, devotion, mercy,

indulgence, violence done by pity to austerity, no more definitive

condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear in the eye

of the law, and perhaps some justice according to God acting in an

inverse ratio to justice according to man. He perceived in the darkness

the rising of an unknown moral sun, and he was horrified and dazzled.

He was an owl forced to look like the eagle.

He said to himself that it was true, then, that there were exceptions,

that authority might be disconcerted, that the rule might fall short

in the presence of a fact, that everything was not contained in the

text of a code, that the unforeseen made itself obeyed, that the virtue

of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of a functionary, that

the monstrous might be divine, that destiny had such ambuscades; and

he thought with despair that he had himself not been protected from a

surprise. He was compelled to recognize that goodness existed; this

galley-slave had been good, and he, extraordinary to say, had been good

also. Hence he was becoming depraved. He felt that he was a coward,

and it horrified him. The ideal for Javert was not to be human, grand,

or sublime; it was to be irreproachable,--and now he had broken down.

How had he reached this stage? How had all this happened? He could not

have told himself. He took his head between his hands; but whatever

he might do, he could not succeed in explaining it. He certainly had

had the intention of delivering Jean Valjean over to the law, of which

Jean Valjean was the captive and of which he was the slave. He had not

confessed to himself for a single instant, while he held him, that he

had a thought of letting him go; it was to some extent unconsciously

that his hand had opened and allowed him to escape.

All sorts of enigmatic novelties passed before his eyes. He asked

himself questions and gave himself answers, and his answers terrified

him. He asked himself, "What has this convict, this desperate man, whom

I followed to persecution, and who had me under his heel, and could

have avenged himself, and ought to have acted so, both for his rancor

and his security, done in leaving me my life and showing me mercy,--his

duty? No, something more. And what have I done in showing him mercy in

my turn,--my duty? No, something more. Is there, then, something more

than duty?" Here he was terrified, he was thrown off his balance,--one

of the scales fell into the abyss, the other ascended to heaven; and

Javert felt no less horror at the one above than at the one below.

Without being the least in the world what is termed a Voltairian,

or philosopher, or incredulous man, respectful, on the contrary,

instinctively to the Established Church, he only knew it as an august

fragment of the social _ensemble_; order was his dogma, and sufficient

for him. Since he had attained man's age and office, he had set nearly

all his religion in the police, being,--and we employ the words without

the slightest irony, and in their most serious acceptation,--being,

as we have said, a spy, as another man is a priest He had a superior,

M. Gisquet; but he had never thought up to this day of that other

superior, God. He felt the presence of this new Chief unexpectedly,

and was troubled by Him. He was thrown out of gear by this person; he

knew not what to do with this Superior, for he was not ignorant that

the subordinate is bound always to bow the head, that he must neither

disobey, nor blame, nor discuss, and that when facing a superior who

astonishes him too much, the inferior has no other resource but his

resignation. But how could he manage to give in his resignation to God?

However this might be, one fact to which he constantly returned, and

which ruled everything else, was that he had just committed a frightful

infraction of the law. He had closed his eyes to a relapsed convict

who had broken his ban; he had set a galley-slave at liberty. He had

stolen from the laws a man who belonged to them. He had done this, and

no longer understood himself. He was not certain of being himself. The

very reasons of his deed escaped him, and he only felt the dizziness

it produced. He had lived up to this moment in that blind faith which

engenders a dark probity; and this faith was leaving him, this probity

had failed him. All that he had believed was dissipated, and truths

which he did not desire inexorably besieged him. He must henceforth be

another man, and he suffered the strange pain of a conscience suddenly

operated on for cataract. He saw what it was repulsive to him to

see, and felt himself spent, useless, dislocated from his past life,

discharged and dissolved. Authority was dead within him, and he no

longer had a reason for living. Terrible situation! to be moved. To be

made of granite, and doubt! To be the statue of punishment cast all of

one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to perceive that you

have under your bronze bosom something absurd and disobedient, which

almost resembles a heart! To have requited good for good, though you

have said to yourself up to this day that such good is evil! To be the

watch-dog, and fawn! To be ice, and melt! To be a pair of pincers, and

become a hand! suddenly to feel your fingers opening! To lose your

hold. Oh, what a frightful thing! The man projectile, no longer knowing

his road, and recoiling! To be obliged to confess this: infallibility

is not infallible; there may be an error in the dogma; all is not

said when a code has spoken, society is not perfect, authority is

complicated with vacillation, a crack in the immutable is possible,

judges are men, the law may be deceived, the courts may make a mistake!

To see a flaw in the immense blue window-glass of the firmament.

What was taking place in Javert was the Fampoux of a rectilinear

conscience, the overthrow of a mind, the crushing of a probity

irresistibly hurled in a straight line and breaking itself against

God. It was certainly strange that the fireman of order, the engineer

of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse, could be unsaddled by

a beam of light! That the incommutable, the direct, the correct, the

geometrical, the passive, the perfect, could bend; that there should

be for the locomotive a road to Damascus! God, ever within man, and

Himself the true conscience, refractory to the false conscience; the

spark forbidden to expire, the ray ordered to remember the sun, the

mind enjoined to recognize the true absolute when it confronts itself

with the fictitious absolute, a humanity that cannot be lost; the human

heart inadmissible,--did Javert comprehend this splendid phenomenon,

the most glorious, perhaps, of our internal prodigies? Did he penetrate

it? Did he explain it to himself? Evidently no. But under the pressure

of this incomprehensible incontestability he felt his brain cracking.

He was less transfigured than the victim of this prodigy: he endured it

with exasperation, and only saw in all this an immense difficulty of

living. It seemed to him as if henceforth his breathing was eternally

impeded. He was not accustomed to have anything unknown over his head;

hitherto everything he had above him had been to his eye a clear,

simple, limpid surface; there was nothing unknown or obscure,--nothing

but what was definite, co-ordinated, enchained, precise, exact,

circumscribed, limited, and closed. Everything foreseen, authority

was a flat surface; there was no fall in it or dizziness before it.

Javert had never seen anything unknown except below him. Irregularity,

unexpected things, the disorderly opening of the chaos, and a possible

fall over a precipice,--all this was the doing of the lower regions, of

the rebels, the wicked and the wretched. How Javert threw himself back,

and was suddenly startled by this extraordinary apparition,--a gulf

above him!

What then! the world was dismantled from top to bottom and absolutely

disconcerted! In what could men trust, when what they felt convinced of

was crumbling away! What! the flaw in the cuirass of society could be

formed by a magnanimous scoundrel! What! an honest servant of the law

could find himself caught between two crimes,--the crime of letting a

man escape and the crime of arresting him! All was not certain, then,

in the orders given by the State to the official! There could be blind

alleys in duty! What then? all this was real! Was it true that an

ex-bandit, bowed under condemnations, could draw himself up, and end

by being in the right? Was this credible? Were there, then, cases in

which the law must retire before transfigured crime, and stammer its

apologies? Yes, it was so! and Javert saw it, and Javert touched it!

And not only could he not deny it, but he had a share in it. These were

realities, and it was abominable that real facts could attain such a

deformity. If facts did their duty they would restrict themselves to

bring proofs of the law, for facts are sent by God. Was, then, anarchy

about to descend from on high? Thus, both in the exaggeration of agony

and the optical illusion of consternation, everything which might have

restricted and corrected his impression faded away, and society, the

human race, and the universe henceforth were contained for his eyes

in a simple and hideous outline. Punishment, the thing tried, the

strength due to the legislature, the decrees of sovereign courts, the

magistracy, the government, prevention and repression, official wisdom,

legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on

which political and civil security, the sovereignty, justice, logic

flowing from the code and public truth, were a heap of ruins, chaos. He

himself, Javert, the watcher of order, incorruptibility in the service

of the police, the trusty mastiff of society, conquered and hurled to

the ground; and on the summit of all this ruin stood a man in a green

cap, and with a glory round his brow,--such was the state of overthrow

he had reached, such the frightful vision which he had in his mind. Was

this endurable? No, it was a violent state, were there ever one, and

there were only two ways of escaping from it: one was to go resolutely

to Jean Valjean and restore to the dungeon the man of the galleys; the

other--

Javert left the parapet, and with head erect this time walked firmly

toward the guard-room indicated by a lantern at one of the corners

of the Place du Châtelet. On reaching it he saw through the window a

policeman, and went in. The police recognize each other merely by the

way in which they push open the door of a guard-room. Javert mentioned

his name, showed his card to the sergeant, and sat down at the table

on which a candle was burning. There were also on the table a pen,

a leaden inkstand, and paper, ready for contingent reports and the

records of the night patrols. This table, always completed by a straw

chair, is an institution; it exists in all police offices; it is always

adorned with a boxwood saucer full of sawdust, and a box of red wafers,

and it is the lower stage of the official style. It is here that the

State literature commences. Javert took the pen and a sheet of paper

and began writing. This is what he wrote:--

"A FEW REMARKS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.

"1. I beg M. le Préfet to cast his eyes on this.

"2. Prisoners when they return from examination at the magistrate's

office take off their shoes and remain barefoot on the slabs while they

are being searched. Some cough on re-entering prison. This entails

infirmary expenses.

"3. Tracking is good, with relays of agents at regular distances; but

on important occasions two agents at the least should not let each

other out of sight, because if for any reason one agent were to fail in

his duty, the other would watch him and take his place.

"4. There is no explanation why the special rules of the prison of the

Madelonnettes prohibit a prisoner from having a chair, even if he pay

for it.

"5. At the Madelonnettes there are only two gratings to the canteen,

which allows the canteen woman to let the prisoners touch her hand.

"6. The prisoners called 'barkers,' who call the other prisoners to the

visitors' room, demand two sous from each prisoner for crying his name

distinctly. This is a robbery.

"7. Ten sous are kept back from the pay of a prisoner working in the

weaving room for a running thread: this is an abuse on the part of the

manager, as the cloth is not the less good.

"8. It is annoying that visitors to La Force are obliged to pass

through the boys court in proceeding to the speaking-room of Sainte

Marie Égyptienne.

"9. It is certain that gendarmes are daily heard repeating, in the

court-yard of the Préfecture, the examination of prisoners by the

magistrates. For a gendarme, who ought to be consecrated, to repeat

what he has heard in the examination room is a serious breach of duty.

"10. Madame Henry is an honest woman, her canteen is very clean; but it

is wrong for a woman to hold the key of the secret cells. This is not

worthy of the Conciergerie of a great civilization."

Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct handwriting,

not omitting to cross a _t_, and making the paper creak firmly beneath

his pen. Under the last line he signed,--

"JAVERT, _Inspector of the first class._

"At the post of the Place du Châtelet,

about one in the morning, June 7, 1832."

Javert dried the ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed

it, wrote on the back, "Note for the Administration," left it on the

table, and quitted the guard-room. The glass door fell back after

him. He again diagonally crossed the Place du Châtelet, reached the

quay again, and went back with automatic precision to the same spot

which he had left a quarter of an hour previously; he bent down and

found himself again in the same attitude on the same parapet slab;

it seemed as if he had not stirred. The darkness was complete, for

it was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight; a ceiling of

clouds hid the stars; the houses in the Cité did not display a single

light, no one passed, all the streets and quays that could be seen

were deserted, and Nôtre Dame and the towers of the Palace of Justice

appeared lineaments of the night. A lamp reddened the edge of the quay,

and the shadows of the bridges looked ghostly one behind the other.

Rains had swelled the river. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it

will be remembered, precisely above the rapids of the Seine and that

formidable whirlpool which unrolls itself and rolls itself up again

like an endless screw. Javert stooped down and looked; all was dark,

and nothing could be distinguished. A sound of spray was audible,

but the river was invisible. At moments in this dizzy depth a flash

appeared and undulated, for water has the power, even on the darkest

night, of obtaining light, no one knows whence, and changing itself

into a lizard. The glimmer vanished and all became indistinct again.

Immensity seemed open there, and what was beneath was not water, but

the gulf. The quay-wall, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapor,

hidden immediately, produced the effect of a precipice of infinitude.

Nothing could be seen but the hostile coldness of the water, and the

sickly smell of the damp stones could be felt. A ferocious breath rose

from this abyss; and the swelling of the river, divined rather than

perceived, the tragic muttering of the water, the mournful immensity

of the bridge arches, a possible fall into this gloomy vacuum,--all

this shadow was full of horror. Javert remained for some moments

motionless, gazing at this opening of the darkness, and considered the

invisible with an intentness which resembled attention. All at once he

took off his hat and placed it on the brink of the quay. A moment after

a tall black figure, which any belated passer-by might have taken at a

distance for a ghost, appeared standing on the parapet, stooped toward

the Seine, then drew itself up, and fell straight into the darkness.

There was a dull plash, and the shadows alone were in the secret of

this obscure form which had disappeared beneath the waters.

BOOK V.

GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER.

CHAPTER I.

WHERE WE AGAIN MEET THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PATCH.

Some time after the events which we have just recorded, the Sieur

Boulatruelle had a lively emotion. The Sieur Boulatruelle is the

road-mender of Montfermeil of whom we have already caught a glimpse

in the dark portions of this book. Boulatruelle, it will possibly be

remembered, was a man occupied with troubled and various things. He

broke stones and plundered travellers on the highway. Road-mender and

robber, he had a dream: he believed in the treasures buried in the

forest of Montfermeil. He hoped some day to find money in the ground

at the foot of a tree, and in the mean while willingly fished for it

in the pockets of passers-by. Still, for the present he was prudent,

for he had just had a narrow escape. He was, as we know, picked up with

the other ruffians in Jondrette's garret. There is some usefulness in

a vice, for his drunkenness saved him, and it never could be cleared

up whether he were there as a robber or as a robbed man. He was set

at liberty on account of his proved intoxication on the night of the

attack, and returned to the woods. He went back to his road from Gagny

to Lagny, to break stones for the State, under surveillance, with

hanging head and very thoughtful, slightly chilled by the robbery which

had almost ruined him, but turning with all the more tenderness to the

wine which had saved him.

As for the lively emotion which he had a short time after his return

beneath the turf-roof of his road-mender's cabin, it was this:

One morning Boulatruelle, while going as usual to work and to his

lurking-place, possibly a little before daybreak, perceived among the

branches a man whose back he could alone see, but whose shape, so he

fancied, through the mist and darkness, was not entirely unknown to

him. Boulatruelle, though a drunkard, had a correct and lucid memory,

an indispensable defensive weapon for any man who is at all on bad

terms with legal order.

"Where the devil have I seen some one like that man?" he asked.

But he could give himself no reply, save that he resembled somebody

of whom he had a confused recollection. Boulatruelle, however, made

his comparisons and calculations, though he was unable to settle the

identity. This man did not belong to those parts, and bad come there

evidently afoot, as no public vehicle passed through Montfermeil at

that hour. He must have been walking all night Where did he come from?

No great distance, for he had neither haversack nor bundle. Doubtless

from Paris. Why was he in this wood? Why was lie there at such an hour?

What did he want there? Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint

of racking his memory he vaguely remembered having had, several years

previously, a similar alarm on the subject of a man who might very

well be this man. While meditating he had, under the very weight of

his meditation, hung his head, a natural but not clever thing. When he

raised it again the man had disappeared in the forest and the mist.

"By the deuce!" said Boulatruelle, "I will find him again, and discover

to what parish that parishioner belongs. This walker of Patron-Minette

has a motive, and I will know it. No one must have a secret in my

forest without my being mixed up in it."

He took up his pick, which was very sharp. "Here's something," he

growled, "to search the ground and a man."

And as one thread is attached to another thread, covering the steps as

well as he could in the direction which the man must have pursued, he

began marching through the coppice. When he had gone about a hundred

yards, day, which was beginning to break, aided him. Footsteps on the

sand here and there, trampled grass, broken heather, young branches

bent into the shrubs and rising with a graceful slowness, like the

arms of a pretty woman who stretches herself on waking, gave him a

species of trail. He followed it and then lost it, and time slipped

away; he got deeper into the wood and reached a species of eminence. An

early sportsman passing at a distance along a path, and whistling the

air of Guillery, gave him the idea of climbing up a tree, and though

old, he was active. There was on the mound a very large beech, worthy

of Tityrus and Boulatruelle, and he climbed up the tree as high as

he could. The idea was a good one; for while exploring the solitude

on the side where the wood is most entangled, Boulatruelle suddenly

perceived the man, but had no sooner seen him than he lost him out of

sight again. The man entered, or rather glided, into a rather distant

clearing, masked by large trees, but which Boulatruelle knew very well,

because he had noticed near a large heap of stones a sick chestnut-tree

bandaged with a zinc plate nailed upon it. This clearing is what was

formerly called the Blaru-bottom, and the pile of stones, intended no

one knows for what purpose, which could be seen there thirty years ago,

is doubtless there still. Nothing equals the longevity of a heap of

stones, except that of a plank paling. It is there temporarily; what a

reason for lasting!

Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, tumbled off the tree rather

than came down it. The lair was found, and now he had only to seize

the animal. The famous treasure he had dreamed of was probably there.

It was no small undertaking to reach the clearing by beaten paths

which make a thousand annoying windings; it would take a good quarter

of an hour. In a straight line through the wood, which is at that

spot singularly dense, very thorny, and most aggressive, it would

take half an hour at least This is what Boulatruelle was wrong in

not understanding; he believed in the straight line,--a respectable

optical illusion which has ruined many men. The wood, bristling though

it was, appeared to him the right road.

"Let us go by the Rue de Rivoli of the wolves," he said.

Boulatruelle, accustomed to crooked paths, this time committed the

error of going straight, and resolutely cast himself among the shrubs.

He had to contend with holly, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles,

and most irascible roots, and was fearfully scratched. At the bottom

of the ravine he came to a stream which he was obliged to cross, and

at last reached the Blaru clearing after forty minutes, perspiring,

wet through, blowing, and ferocious. There was no one in the clearing.

Boulatruelle hurried to the heap of stones; it was still in its place,

and had not been carried off. As for the man, he had vanished in the

forest. He had escaped. Where? In which direction? Into which clump of

trees? It were impossible to guess. And, most crushing thing of all,

there was behind the heap of stones and in front of the zinc-banded

tree a pick, forgotten or abandoned, and a hole; but the hole was empty.

"Robber!" Boulatruelle cried, shaking his fists at heaven.

CHAPTER II.

MARIUS LEAVING CIVIL WAR PREPARES FOR A DOMESTIC WAR.

Marius was for a long time neither dead nor alive. He had for several

weeks a fever accompanied by delirium, and very serious brain symptoms

caused by the shocks of the wounds in the head rather than the wounds

themselves. He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights with the

lugubrious loquacity of fever and the gloomy obstinacy of agony. The

width of certain wounds was a serious danger, for the suppuration of

wide wounds may always be absorbed into the system, and consequently

kill the patient under certain atmospheric influences; and at each

change in the weather, at the slightest storm, the physician became

anxious. "Mind that the patient suffers from no emotion," he repeated.

The dressings were complicated and difficult, for the fixing of

bandages and lint by the sparadrap had not been imagined at that

period. Nicolette expended in lint a sheet "as large as a ceiling," she

said; and it was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions

and nitrate of silver reached the end of the gangrene. So long as there

was danger, M. Gillenormand, broken-hearted by the bedside of his

grandson, was like Marius, neither dead nor alive.

Every day, and sometimes twice a day, a white-haired and well-dressed

gentleman,--such was the description given by the porter,--came to

inquire after the wounded man, and left a large parcel of lint for

the dressings. At length, on September 7th, four months, day by day,

from the painful night on which he had been brought home dying to his

grandfather, the physician declared that he could answer for him, and

that convalescence was setting in. Marius, however, would be obliged

to lie for two months longer on a couch, owing to the accidents

produced by the fracture of the collar-bone. There is always a last

wound like that which will not close, and eternizes the dressings, to

the great annoyance of the patient. This long illness and lengthened

convalescence, however, saved him from prosecution: in France there

is no anger, even public, which six months do not extinguish. Riots,

in the present state of society, are so much everybody's fault, that

they are followed by a certain necessity of closing the eyes. Let

us add that Gisquet's unjustifiable decree which ordered physicians

to denounce their patients having out-raged opinion, and not merely

opinion, but the king first of all, the wounded were covered and

protected by this indignation, and, with the exception of those taken

prisoners in the act of fighting, the courts-martial did not dare to

molest any one. Hence Marius was left undisturbed.

M. Gillenormand first passed through every form of agony, and then

through every form of ecstasy. Much difficulty was found in keeping

him from passing the whole night by Marius's side; he had his large

easy-chair brought to the bed, and he insisted on his daughter taking

the finest linen in the house to make compresses and bandages.

Mademoiselle Gillenormand, as a sensible and elderly lady, managed

to save the fine linen, while making her father believe that he was

obeyed. M. Gillenormand would not listen to any explanation, that for

the purpose of making lint fine linen is not so good as coarse, or

new so good as worn. He was present at all the dressings, from which

Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. When the dead

flesh was cut away with scissors he said, "Aïe, aïe!" Nothing was so

touching as to see him hand the wounded man a cup of broth with his

gentle senile trembling. He overwhelmed the surgeon with questions,

and did not perceive that he constantly repeated the same. On the day

when the physician informed him that Marius was out of danger he was

beside himself. He gave his porter three louis d'or, and at night, when

he went to his bed-room, danced a gavotte, making castagnettes of his

thumb and forefinger, and sang a song something like this:--

"Jeanne est née à Fougère,

Vrai nid d'une bergère;

J'adore son jupon

Fripon.

"Amour, tu vis en elle;

Car c'est dans sa prunelle

Que tu mets ton carquois,

Narquois!

"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,

Plus que Diane même,

Jeanne et ses dure tetons

Bretons."

Then he knelt on a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the

crack of the door, felt certain that he was praying. Up to that day he

had never believed in God. At each new phase in the improvement of the

patient, which went on steadily, the grandfather was extravagant. He

performed a multitude of mechanical actions full of delight: he went up

and down stairs without knowing why. A neighbor's wife, who was very

pretty, by the way, was stupefied at receiving one morning a large

bouquet: it was M. Gillenormand who sent it to her, and her husband

got up a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw Nicolette on his

knees: he called Marius Monsieur le Baron, and shouted, "Long live the

Republic!" Every moment he asked the medical man, "There is no danger

now, is there?" He looked at Marius with a grandmother's eyes, and

gloated over him when he slept. He no longer knew himself, no longer

took himself into account. Marius was the master of the house; there

was abdication in his joy, and he was the grandson of his grandson. In

his present state of merriment he was the most venerable of children:

through fear of wearying or annoying the convalescent he would place

himself behind him in order to smile upon him. He was satisfied,

joyous, ravished, charming and young, and his white hair added a gentle

majesty to the gay light which he had on his face. When grace is

mingled with wrinkles it is adorable; and there is a peculiar dawn in

expansive old age.

As for Marius, while letting himself be nursed and petted, he had

one fixed idea,--Cosette. Since the fever and delirium had left him

he no longer pronounced this name, and it might be supposed that he

had forgotten it; but he was silent precisely because his soul was

there. He knew not what had become of Cosette: the whole affair of the

Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows almost

indistinct floated through his spirit. Éponine, Gavroche, Mabœuf,

the Thénardiers, and all his friends mournfully mingled with the smoke

of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that

blood-stained adventure produced upon him the effect of an enigma in

a tempest: he understood nothing of his own life, he knew not how or

by whom he had been saved, and no one about knew it either: all they

were able to tell him was that he had been brought there at night in

a hackney coach. Past, present, future,--all this was to him like the

mist of a vague idea; but there was in this mist one immovable point, a

clear and precise lineament, something made of granite, a resolution, a

will,--to find Cosette again. For him the idea of life was not distinct

from the idea of Cosette: he had decreed in his heart that he would

not receive one without the other, and he unalterably determined to

demand of his grandfather, of destiny, of fate, of Hades itself, the

restitution of his lost Eden.

He did not conceal the obstacles from himself. Here let us underline

one fact: he was not won or greatly affected by all the anxiety and

all the tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place he was not

in the secret of them all, and next, in his sick man's reveries,

which were perhaps still feverish, he distrusted this gentleness as a

strange and new thing intended to subdue him. He remained cold to it,

and the poor grandfather lavished his smiles in pure loss. Marius said

to himself that it was all very well so long as he did not speak and

let matters rest; but when he came to Cosette, he should find another

face, and his grandfathers real attitude would be unmasked. Then he

would be rough; a warming up of family questions, a comparison of

positions, every possible sarcasm and objection at once. Fauchelevent,

Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, wretchedness, the stone on the neck,

the future a violent resistance, and the conclusion--a refusal. Marius

stiffened himself against it beforehand. And then, in proportion as

he regained life, his old wrongs reappeared, the old ulcers of his

memory reopened, he thought again of the past. Colonel Pontmercy placed

himself once more between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius, and he said

to himself that he had no real kindness to hope for from a man who

had been so unjust and harsh to his father. And with health came back

a sort of bitterness against his grandfather, from which the old man

gently suffered. M. Gillenormand, without letting it be seen, noticed

that Marius, since he had been brought home and regained consciousness,

had never once called him father. He did not say Sir, it is true,

but he managed to say neither one nor the other, by a certain way of

turning his sentences.

A crisis was evidently approaching, and, as nearly always happens in

such cases, Marius, in order to try himself, skirmished before offering

battle; this is called feeling the ground. One morning it happened

that M. Gillenormand, alluding to a newspaper which he had come

across, spoke lightly of the Convention, and darted a Royalist epigram

at Danton, St. Just, and Robespierre. "The men of '93 were giants,"

Marius said sternly; the old man was silent, and did not utter another

syllable all the day. Marius, who had the inflexible grandfather of his

early years ever present to his mind, saw in this silence a profound

concentration of anger, augured from it an obstinate struggle, and

augmented his preparations for the contest in the most hidden corners

of his mind. He determined that in case of refusal he would tear off

his bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, expose all the wounds still

unhealed, and refuse all food. His wounds were his ammunition; he must

have Cosette or die. He awaited the favorable moment with the crafty

patience of sick persons, and the moment arrived.

CHAPTER III.

MARIUS ATTACKS.

One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was arranging the phials

and cups on the marble slab of the sideboard, leaned over Marius, and

said in his most tender accent,--

"Look you, my little Marius, in your place I would rather eat meat than

fish; a fried sole is excellent at the beginning of a convalescence;

but a good cutlet is necessary to put the patient on his legs."

Marius, whose strength had nearly quite returned, sat up, rested his

two clenched fists on his sheet, looked his grandfather in the face,

assumed a terrible air, and said,--

"That induces me to say one thing to you."

"What is it?"

"That I wish to marry."

"Foreseen," said the grandfather, bursting into a laugh.

"How foreseen?"

"Yes, foreseen. You shall have your little maid."

Marius, stupefied and dazzled, trembled in all his limbs, and M.

Gillenormand continued,--

"Yes, you shall have the pretty little dear. She comes every day in

the form of an old gentleman to ask after you. Ever since you have

been wounded she has spent her time in crying and making lint. I made

inquiries; she lives at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé. Ah, there we are!

Ah, you want her, do you? Well, you shall have her. You're tricked this

time; you had made your little plot, and had said to yourself, 'I will

tell it point-blank to that grandfather, that mummy of the Regency and

the Directory, that old beau, that Dorante who has become Géronte; he

has had his frolics too, and his amourettes, and his grisettes, and

his Cosettes; he has had his fling, he has had his wings, and he has

eaten the bread of spring; he must surely remember it, we shall see.

Battle!' Ah, you take the cock-chafer by the horns; very good. I offer

you a cutlet, and you answer me, 'By the bye, I wish to marry,' By

Jupiter! Here's a transition! Ah, you made up your mind for a quarrel,

but you did not know that I was an old coward. What do you say to that?

You are done; you did not expect to find your grandfather more stupid

than yourself. You have lost the speech you intended to make me, master

lawyer, and that is annoying. Well, all the worse, rage away; I do what

you want, and that stops you, stupid! Listen! I have made my inquiries,

for I too am cunning; she is charming, she is virtuous; the Lancer does

not speak the truth, she made heaps of lint. She is a jewel; she adores

you; if you had died there would have been three of us, and her coffin

would have accompanied mine. I had the idea as soon as you were better

of planting her there by your bedside; but it is only in romances that

girls are introduced to the beds of handsome young wounded men in whom

they take an interest. That would not do, for what would your aunt say?

You were quite naked three parts of the time, sir; ask Nicolette, who

never left you for a moment, whether it were possible for a female to

be here? And then, what would the doctor have said? for a pretty girl

does not cure a fever. Well, say no more about it; it is settled and

done; take her. Such is my fury. Look you, I saw that you did not love

me, and I said, 'What can I do to make that animal love me?' I said,

'Stay, I have my little Cosette ready to hand. I will give her to him,

and then he must love me a little, or tell me the reason why.' Ah! you

believed that the old man would storm, talk big, cry no, and lift his

cane against all this dawn. Not at all. Cosette, very good; love, very

good. I ask for nothing better; take the trouble, sir, to marry; be

happy, my beloved child!"

After saying this the old man burst into sobs. He took Marius's head

and pressed it to his old bosom, and both began weeping. That is one of

the forms of supreme happiness.

"My father!" Marius exclaimed.

"Ah, you love me, then!" the old man said.

There was an ineffable moment; they were choking and could not speak.

At length the old man stammered,--

"Come! the stopper is taken out of him; he called me father."

Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said

gently,--

"Now that I am better, father, I fancy I could see her."

"Foreseen, too; you will see her to-morrow."

"Father?"

"Well, what?"

"Why not to-day?"

"Well, to-day; done for to-day. You have called me father thrice, and

it's worth that. I will see about it, and she shall be brought here.

Foreseen, I tell you. That has already been put in verse, and it is

the denouement of André Chénier's elegy, the 'Jeune Malade,'--André

Chénier, who was butchered by the scound--by the giants of '93."

M. Gillenormand fancied he could see a slight frown on Marius's face,

though, truth to tell, he was not listening, as he had flown away

into ecstasy, and was thinking much more of Cosette than of 1793.

The grandfather, trembling at haying introduced André Chénier so

inopportunely, hurriedly continued,--

"Butchered is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary

geniuses who were not wicked, that is incontestable, who were heroes,

Pardi, found that André Chénier was slightly in their way, and they

had him guillo--that is to say, these great men on the 7th Thermidor,

in the interest of the public safety, begged André Chénier to be kind

enough to go--"

M. Gillenormand, garroted by his own sentence, could not continue.

Unable to terminate it or retract it, the old man rushed, with all the

speed which his age allowed, out of the bed-room, shut the door after

him, and purple, choking, and foaming, with his eyes out of his head,

found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was cleaning boots

in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar and furiously shouted

into his face, "By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those

brigands assassinated him!"

"Whom, sir?"

"André Chénier."

"Yes, sir," said the horrified Basque,

CHAPTER IV.

MLLE. GILLENORMAND HAS NO OBJECTIONS TO THE MATCH.

Cosette and Marius saw each other again. We will not attempt to

describe the interview, for there are things which we must not attempt

to paint: the sun is of the number. The whole family, Basque and

Nicolette included, were assembled in Marius's chamber at the moment

when Cosette entered. She appeared in the doorway, and seemed to be

surrounded by a halo: precisely at this moment the grandfather was

going to blow his nose, but he stopped short, holding his nose in his

handkerchief and looking over it.

"Adorable!" he cried.

And then he blew a sonorous blast. Cosette was intoxicated, ravished,

startled, in heaven. She was as timid as a person can be through

happiness; she stammered, turned pale and then pink, and wished to

throw herself into Marius's arms, but dared not. She was ashamed of

loving before so many people; for the world is merciless to happy

lovers, and always remains at the very moment when they most long to

be alone. And yet they do not want these people at, all. With Cosette,

and behind her, had entered a white-haired man, serious, but still

smiling, though the smile was wandering and poignant. It was "Monsieur

Fauchelevent,"--it was Jean Valjean. He was _well-dressed_, as the

porter had said, in a new black suit and a white cravat. The porter

was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this correct citizen, this

probable notary, the frightful corpse-bearer who had arrived at the

gate on the night of June 7, ragged, filthy, hideous, and haggard,

with a mask of blood and mud on his face, supporting in his arms the

unconscious Marius; still his porter's instincts were aroused. When M.

Fauchelevent arrived with Cosette, the porter could not refrain from

confiding this aside to his wife, "I don't know why, but I fancy that I

have seen that face before." M. Fauchelevent remained standing by the

door of Marius's room, as if afraid; he held under his arm a packet

rather like an octavo volume wrapped in paper. The paper was green,

apparently from mildew.

"Has this gentleman always got books under his arm like that?"

Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who was not fond of books, asked Nicolette

in a whisper.

"Well," M. Gillenormand, who had heard her, answered in the same key,

"he is a savant; is that his fault? Monsieur Boulard, whom I knew,

never went out without a book either, and like him had always had an

old book near his heart."

Then bowing, he said in a loud voice,--

"M. Tranchelevent."

Father Gillenormand did not do it purposely, but an inattention to

proper names was an aristocratic way of his.

"Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of requesting this lady's

hand for my grandson, M. le Baron Marius Pontmercy."

Monsieur "Tranchelevent" bowed.

"All right," the grandfather said.

And turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended in

benediction, he cried,--

"You have leave to adore each other."

They did not let it be said twice, and the prattling began. They talked

in a whisper, Marius reclining on his couch and Cosette standing by

his side. "Oh, Heaven!" Cosette murmured, "I see you again: it is you.

To go and fight like that! But why? It is horrible. For four months

I have been dead. Oh, how wicked it was of you to have been at that

battle! What had I done to you? I forgive you, but you will not do it

again. Just now, when they came to tell me to come to you, I thought

again that I was going to die, but it was of joy. I was so sad! I did

not take the time to dress myself, and I must look frightful; what will

your relation say at seeing me in a tumbled collar? But speak! you let

me speak all alone. We are still in the Rue de l'Homme Armé. It seems

that your shoulder was terrible, and I was told that I could have put

my hand in it, and that your flesh was as if it had been cut with

scissors. How frightful that is! I wept so that I have no eyes left. It

is strange that a person can suffer like that Your grandfather has a

very kind look. Do not disturb yourself, do not rest on your elbow like

that, or you will hurt yourself. Oh, how happy I am! So our misfortunes

are all ended! I am quite foolish. There were things I wanted to say

to you which I have quite forgotten. Do you love me still? We live in

the Rue de l'Homme Armé. There is no garden there. I made lint the

whole time; look here, sir, it is your fault, my fingers are quite

rough."

"Angel!" said Marius.

_Angel_ is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out; no

other word would resist the pitiless use which lovers make of it. Then,

as there was company present, they broke off, and did not say a word

more, contenting themselves with softly clasping hands. M. Gillenormand

turned to all the rest in the room, and cried,--

"Speak loudly, good people; make a noise, will you? Come, a little row,

hang it all! so that these children may prattle at their ease."

And going up to Marius and Cosette, he whispered to them,--

"Go on; don't put yourselves out of the way."

Aunt Gillenormand witnessed with stupor this irruption of light into

her antiquated house. This stupor had nothing aggressive about it; it

was not at all the scandalized and envious glance cast by an owl at

two ring-doves: it was the stupid eye of a poor innocent of the age of

fifty-seven; it was a spoiled life looking at that triumph, love.

"Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder," her father said to her, "I told

you that this would happen." He remained silent for a moment, and

added,--

"Look at the happiness of others."

Then he turned to Cosette.

"How pretty she is! how pretty she is! she is a Greuze! So you are

going to have all that for yourself, scamp? Ah, my boy, you have had

a lucky escape from me; for if I were not fifteen years too old we

would fight with swords and see who should have her. There, I am in

love with you, Mademoiselle; but it is very natural, it is your right.

What a famous, charming little wedding we will have! St. Denis du

Saint-Sacrament is our parish; but I will procure a dispensation, so

that you may be married at St. Paul, for the church is better. It was

built for the Jesuits, and more coquettish. It is opposite Cardinal

Birague's fountain. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at

Namur, and is called St. Loup; you should go and see that when you are

married, for it is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am entirely of

your opinion; I wish girls to marry, for they are made for it. There is

a certain Sainte Catharine whom I would always like to see with hair

disordered. To remain a maid is fine, but it is cold. Multiply, says

the Bible. To save the people a Joan of Arc is wanted; but to make a

people we want Mother Gigogne. So marry, my darlings; I really do not

see the use of remaining a maid. I know very well that they have a

separate chapel in church, and join the confraternity of the Virgin;

but, sapristi! a good-looking young husband, and at the end of a year a

plump bantling, who sucks at you bravely, and who has rolls of fat on

his thighs, and who clutches your bosom with his pink little paws, are

a good deal better than holding a candle at vespers and singing _Turris

Eburnea."_

The grandfather pirouetted on his nonagenarian heels, and began

speaking again, like a spring which had been wound up:--

"Ainsi, bornant le cours de tes rêvasseries,

Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries."

"By the bye?"

"What, father?"

"Had you not an intimate friend?"

"Yes, Courfeyrac."

"What has become of him?"

"He is dead."

"That is well."

He sat down by their side, made Cosette take a chair, and took their

four hands in his old wrinkled hands.

"This darling is exquisite! This Cosette is a masterpiece! She is a

very little girl and a very great lady. She will be only a baroness,

and that is a derogation, for she is born to be a marchioness. What

eyelashes she has! My children, drive it well into your pates that

you are on the right road. Love one another; be foolish over it, for

love is the stupidity of men and the cleverness of God. So adore one

another. Still," he added, suddenly growing sad, "what a misfortune!

More than half I possess is sunk in annuities; so long as I live it

will be all right, but when I am dead, twenty years hence, ah! my poor

children, you will not have a farthing! Your pretty white hands, Madame

la Baronne, will be wrinkled by work."

Here a serious and calm voice was heard saying:

"Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent has six hundred thousand francs."

It was Jean Valjean's voice. He had not yet uttered a syllable; no one

seemed to remember that he was present, and he stood motionless behind

all these happy people.

"Who is the Mademoiselle Euphrasie in question?" the startled

grandfather asked.

"Myself," said Cosette.

"Six hundred thousand francs!" M. Gillenormand repeated.

"Less fourteen or fifteen thousand, perhaps," Jean Valjean said.

And he laid on the table the parcel which Aunt Gillenormand had taken

for a book. Jean Valjean himself opened the packet; it was a bundle of

bank-notes. They were turned over and counted; there were six hundred

bank-notes for a thousand francs, and one hundred and sixty-eight for

five hundred, forming a total of five hundred and eighty-four thousand

francs.

"That's a famous book," said M. Gillenormand.

"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" the aunt murmured.

"That arranges a good many things, does it not, Mademoiselle

Gillenormand the elder?" the grandfather continued. "That devil of a

Marius has found a millionnaire grisette upon the tree of dreams! Now

trust to the amourettes of young people! Students find studentesses

with six hundred thousand francs. Cherubin works better than

Rothschild."

"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" Mademoiselle

Gillenormand repeated; "five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!

We may as well say six hundred thousand."

As for Marius and Cosette, they were looking at each other during this

period, and hardly paid any attention to this detail.

CHAPTER V.

DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY.

Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanation

will be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair was

enabled by his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdraw

in time from Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M.

Madeleine at M.-sur-M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which in

fact happened to him shortly after, he buried this sum in the forest

of Montfermeil, at the spot called the Blaru bottom. This sum, six

hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, occupied but

little space, and was contained in a box; but in order to protect

the box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled with chips of

chestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure, the

Bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off these

candlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previous

evening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever Jean

Valjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, and

hence his absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealed

somewhere in the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone.

When he found Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour was

at hand when this money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and it

was also he whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the

morning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pick.

The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred

francs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs for

himself. "We will see afterwards," he thought. The difference between

this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn

from Laffitte's represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823

to 1833. The five years' residence in the convent had cost only five

thousand francs. Jean Valjean placed the two silver candlesticks on

the mantel-piece, where they glistened, to the great admiration of

Toussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean knew himself freed from Javert;

it had been stated in his presence, and he verified the fact in the

_Moniteur_ which had published it, that an Inspector of Police of the

name of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-woman's boat

between the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a letter left by

this man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs,

led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth,"

thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, he

must have been mad at that time."

CHAPTER VI.

THE TWO OLD MEN, EACH IN HIS FASHION, DO EVERYTHING FOR COSETTE'S

HAPPINESS.

All preparations were made for the marriage, and the physician, on

being consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was

now December; and a few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness slipped

away. The least happy man was not the grandfather: he sat for a whole

quarter of an hour contemplating Cosette.

"The admirably pretty girl!" he would exclaim, "and she has so soft

and kind an air! She is the most charming creature I have ever seen in

my life. Presently she will have virtues with a violet scent. She is

one of the Graces, on my faith! A man can only live nobly with such a

creature. Marius, my lad, you are a baron, you are rich; so do not be a

pettifogger, I implore you."

Cosette and Marius had suddenly passed from the sepulchre into

paradise: the transition had not been prepared, and they would have

been stunned if they had not been dazzled.

"Do you understand anything of all this?" Marius would say to Cosette.

"No," Cosette answered; "but it seems to me as if the good God were

looking at us."

Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed everything, conciliated

everything, and rendered everything easy. He hurried toward Cosette's

happiness with as much eagerness and apparently with as much joy

as Cosette herself. As he had been Mayor, he was called to solve a

delicate problem, the secret of which he alone possessed,--the civil

status of Cosette. To tell her origin openly might have prevented the

marriage; but he got Cosette out of all the difficulties. He arranged

for her a family of dead people, a sure method of not incurring any

inquiry. Cosette was the only one left of an extinct family. Cosette

was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent. Two

brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Little

Picpus. They proceeded to this convent; the best testimonials and most

satisfactory character were given; for the good nuns, little suited and

but little inclined to solve questions of paternity, had never known

exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter.

They said what was wanted, and said it zealously. An instrument was

drawn up by a notary and Cosette became by law Mademoiselle Euphrasie

Fauchelevent, and was declared an orphan both on the father's and

mother's side. Jean Valjean managed so as to be designated, under the

name of Fauchelevent, as guardian of Cosette, with M. Gillenormand as

supervising guardian. As for the five hundred and eighty-four thousand

francs, they were a legacy left to Cosette by a dead person who wished

to remain unknown. The original legacy had been five hundred and

ninety-four thousand francs, but ten thousand had been spent in the

education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand of which had been

paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third

party, was to be handed over to Cosette upon her majority, or at the

period of her marriage. All this was highly acceptable, as we see,

especially when backed up by more than half a million francs. There

were certainly a few singular points here and there, but they were not

seen, for one of the persons interested had his eyes bandaged by love,

and the others by the six hundred thousand francs.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of the old man whom

she had so long called father; he was only a relation, and another

Fauchelevent was her real father. At another moment this would have

grieved her, but in the ineffable hour she had now reached it was only

a slight shadow, a passing cloud; and she had so much joy that this

cloud lasted but a short time. She had Marius. The young man came; the

old man disappeared: life is so. And then, Cosette had been accustomed

for many long years to see enigmas around her; every being who has had

a mysterious childhood is ever ready for certain renunciations. Still

she continued to call Jean Valjean "father." Cosette, who was among the

angels, was enthusiastic about Father Gillenormand; it is true that

he overwhelmed her with madrigals and presents. While Jean Valjean

was constructing for Cosette an unassailable position in society, M.

Gillenormand attended to the wedding trousseau. Nothing amused him so

much as to be magnificent; and he had given Cosette a gown of Binche

guipure, which he inherited from his own grandmother. "These fashions

spring up again," he said; "antiquities are the great demand, and

the young ladies of my old days dress themselves like the old ladies

of my youth." He plundered his respectable round-bellied commodes of

Coromandel lacquer, which had not been opened for years. "Let us shrive

these dowagers," he said, "and see what they have in their paunch." He

noisily violated drawers full of the dresses of all his wives, all his

mistresses, and all his female ancestry. He lavished on Cosette Chinese

satins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, gros de Naples dresses, Indian

handkerchiefs embroidered with gold that can be washed, Genoa and

Alençon point lace, sets of old jewelry, ivory bonbon boxes adorned

with microscopic battles, laces, and ribbons. Cosette, astounded, wild

with love for Marius and with gratitude to M. Gillenormand, dreamed of

an unbounded happiness, dressed in satin and velvet. Her wedding-basket

seemed to her supported by seraphim, and her soul floated in ether

with wings of Mechlin lace. The intoxication of the lovers was only

equalled, as we stated, by the ecstasy of the grandfather, and there

was something like a flourish of trumpets in the Rue des Filles du

Calvaire. Each morning there was a new offering of _bric-à-brac_ from

the grandfather to Cosette, and all sorts of ornaments were spread out

splendidly around her. One day Marius, who not unfrequently talked

gravely through his happiness, said, with reference to some incident

which I have forgotten,--

"The men of the revolution are so great that they already possess the

prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them

seems a mémoire antique."

"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "thank you, Marius, that

is the very idea which I was seeking for."

And on the morrow a splendid tea-colored moire antique dress was added

to Cosette's outfit. The grandfather extracted a wisdom from this

frippery:--

"Love is all very well, but this is required with it. Something

useless is required in happiness; happiness is only what is absolutely

necessary, but season it, say I, with an enormous amount of

superfluity. A palace and her heart; her heart and the Louvre. Give

me my shepherdess, and try that she be a duchess. Bring me Phillis

crowned with corn-flowers, and add to her one thousand francs a year.

Open for me an endless Bucolic under a marble colonnade. I consent

to the Bucolic and also to the fairy scene in marble and gold. Dry

happiness resembles dry bread; you eat it, but you do not dine. I wish

for superfluity, for the useless, for extravagance, for that which is

of no use. I remember to to have seen in Strasburg Cathedral a clock

as tall as a three-storied house, which marked the hour, which had the

kindness to mark the hour, but did not look as if it was made for the

purpose; and which, after striking midday or midnight,--midday, the

hour of the sun, and midnight, the hour of love, or any other hour

you please,--gave you the moon and the stars, earth and sea, birds

and fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and a heap of things that came

out of a corner, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles V.,

and Éponine and Sabinus, and a number of little gilt men who played

the trumpet into the bargain, without counting the ravishing chimes

which it scattered in the air on every possible occasion, without your

knowing why. Is a wretched, naked clock, which only marks the hours,

worth that? I am of the opinion of the great clock of Strasburg, and

prefer it to the Black Forest cuckoo clock."

M. Gillenormand talked all sorts of nonsense about the marriage, and

all the ideas of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell into his

dithyrambs.

"You are ignorant of the art of festivals, and do not know how to get

up a day's pleasure in these times," he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth

century is soft, and is deficient in excess: it is ignorant of what

is rich and noble. In everything it is close-shorn. Your third estate

is insipid and has no color, smell, or shape. The dream of your

bourgeoises, who establish themselves, as they call it, is a pretty

boudoir freshly decorated with mahogany and calico. Make way, there!

The Sieur Grigou marries the Demoiselle Grippesou. Sumptuousness and

splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a wax candle. Such is the

age. I insist on flying beyond the Sarmatians. Ah, so far back as

1787 I predicted that all was lost on the day when I saw the Due de

Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de

Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, Peer of France, go to Longchamps in a

_tapecul_: that bore its fruits. In this century men have a business,

gamble on the Stock Exchange, win money, and are mean. They take care

of and varnish their surface: they are carefully dressed, washed,

soaped, shaved, combed, rubbed, brushed, and cleaned externally,

irreproachable, as polished as a pebble, discreet, trim, and at the

same time,--virtue of my soul!--they have at the bottom of their

conscience dungheaps and cess-pools, at which a milkmaid who blows

her nose with her fingers would recoil. I grant the present age this

motto,--dirty cleanliness. Marius, do not be annoyed; grant me the

permission to speak, for I have been saying no harm of the people,

you see. I have my mouth full of your people, but do let me give the

bourgeoisie a pill. I tell you point-blank that at the present day

people marry, but no longer know how to marry. Ah, it is true, I regret

the gentility of the old manners; I regret it all,--that elegance, that

chivalry, that courteous and dainty manner, that rejoicing luxury which

every one possessed, the music forming part of the wedding, symphony

above and drums beating below stairs, the joyous faces seated at table,

the spicy madrigals, the songs, the fireworks, the hearty laugh, the

devil and his train, and the large ribbon bows. I regret the bride's

garter, for it is first cousin of the girdle of Venus. On what does

the siege of Troy turn? Parbleu! on Helen's garter. Why do men fight?

Why does the divine Diomedes smash on the head of Merioneus that grand

brass helmet with the ten points? Why do Achilles and Hector tickle

each other with lances? Because Helen let Paris take her garter. With

Cosette's garter Homer would write the Iliad; he would place in his

poem an old chatterer like myself, and call him Nestor. My friends, in

former times, in those amiable former times, people married learnedly:

they made a good contract and then a good merry-making. So soon as

Cujas had gone out, Gamacho came in. Hang it all! the stomach is an

agreeable beast, that demands its due, and wishes to hold its wedding

too. We supped well, and had at table a pretty neighbor without a

neckerchief, who only concealed her throat moderately. Oh, the wide

laughing mouths, and how gay people were in those days! Youth was a

bouquet, every young man finished with a branch of lilac or a posy of

roses; if he were a warrior, he was a shepherd, and if by chance he

were a captain of dragoons, he managed to call himself Florian. All

were anxious to be pretty fellows, and they wore embroidery and rouge.

A bourgeois looked like a flower, and a marquis like a precious stone.

They did not wear straps, they did not wear boots; they were flashing,

lustrous, gilt, light, dainty, and coquettish, but it did not prevent

them wearing a sword by their side; they were humming-birds with beak

and nails. It was the time of the _Indes galantes._ One of the sides of

that age was delicate, the other magnificent; and, by the vertu-choux!

people amused themselves. At the present day they are serious; the

bourgeois is miserly, the bourgeoise prudish,--your age is out of

shape. The Graces would be expelled because their dresses were cut too

low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as an ugliness. Since the

revolution all wear trousers, even the ballet girls; a ballet girl

must be serious, and your rigadoons are doctrinaire. A man must be

majestic, and would feel very much annoyed at not having his chin in

his cravat. The idea of a scamp of twenty, who is about to marry, is

to resemble Monsieur Royer-Collard. And do you know what people reach

by this majesty? They are little. Learn this fact: joy is not merely

joyous, it is grand. Be gayly in love; though, hang it all! marry, when

you do marry, with fever and amazement and tumult, and a hurly-burly

of happiness. Gravity at church, if you will; but so soon as the mass

is ended, sarpejeu! you ought to make a dream whirl round your wife.

A marriage ought to be royal and chimerical, and parade its ceremony

from the Cathedral of Rheims to the Pagoda of Chante-loup. I have a

horror of a scrubby marriage. Ventre-goulette! Be in Olympus at least

upon that day. Be gods. Ah, people might be sylphs, jests and smiles,

Argyraspides, but they are scrubs! My friends, every newly-married man

ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Take advantage of this unique moment

of life to fly into the Empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if

you fall back to-morrow into the bourgeoisie of frogs. Do not save upon

the hymeneal rites; do not nibble at this splendor, nor split farthings

on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not housekeeping. Oh,

if I had my way it should be a gallant affair, and violins should be

heard in the trees. Here is my programme: sky-blue and silver. I would

mingle in the fête the rustic divinities, and convene the Dryads and

the Nereids. The wedding of Amphitrite, a pink cloud, nymphs with

their hair carefully dressed and quite nude, an academician offering

quatrains to the Deess, a car drawn by marine monsters.

'Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque,

Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!'

There is a programme for a fête, or I'm no judge, sac à papier!"

While the grandfather, in the heat of his lyric effusion, was

listening to himself, Cosette and Marius were intoxicating themselves

by looking freely at each other. Aunt Gillenormand regarded all this

with her imperturbable placidity; she had, during the last five or

six months, a certain amount of emotions; Marius returned, Marius

brought back bleeding, Marius brought from a barricade, Marius dead,

then living, Marius reconciled, Marius affianced, Marius marrying a

poor girl, Marius marrying a millionnaire. The six hundred thousand

francs had been her last surprise, and then the indifference of a

leading communicant returned to her. She went regularly to her mass,

told her beads, read her euchology, whispered in one corner of the

house her _Aves_, while "I love you" was being whispered in another,

and saw Marius and Cosette vaguely like two shadows. The shadow was

herself. There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the

mind, neutralized by torpor, and a stranger to what might be called

the business of living, does not perceive, with the exception of

earthquakes and catastrophes, any human impressions, either pleasant

or painful. "This devotion," Father Gillenormand would say to his

daughter, "resembles a cold in the head; you smell nothing of life,

neither a good odor nor a bad one." However, the six hundred thousand

francs had settled the old maid's indecision. Her father was accustomed

to take her so little into account that he had not consulted her as to

the consent to Marius's marriage. He had acted impetuously, according

to his wont, having, as a despot who had become a slave, but one

thought, that of satisfying Marius. As for the aunt, he had scarce

remembered that the aunt existed, and that she might have an opinion

of her own, and, sheep though she was, this had offended her. Somewhat

roused internally, but externally impassive, she said to herself, "My

father settles the marriage question without me, and I will settle the

question of the inheritance without him." She was rich, in fact, and

her father was not so, and it is probable that if the marriage had

been poor she would have left it poor. "All the worse for my nephew!

If he chose to marry a beggar, he may be a beggar too." But Cosette's

half a million of francs pleased the aunt and changed her feelings

with respect to the loving couple; consideration is due to six hundred

thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise

than leave her fortune to these young people, because they no longer

required it.

It was arranged that the couple should reside at M. Gillenormand's,

and the grandfather insisted on giving them his bed-room, the finest

room in the house. "It will make me younger," he declared. "It is an

old place. I always had the idea that the wedding should take place

in my room." He furnished this room with a heap of old articles of

gallantry; he had it hung with an extraordinary fabric which he had

in the piece, and believed to be Utrecht, a gold satin ground with

velvet auriculas. "It was with that stuff," he said, "that the bed

of the Duchess d'Anville à la Rocheguyon was hung." He placed on the

mantel-piece a figure in Saxon porcelain carrying a muff on its naked

stomach. M. Gillenormand's library became the office which Marius

required; for an office, it will be borne in mind, is insisted upon by

the council of the order.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EFFECTS OF DREAMING BLENDED WITH HAPPINESS.

The lovers saw each other daily, and Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent.

"It is turning things topsy-turvy," said Mademoiselle Gillenormand,

"that the lady should come to the gentleman's house to have court paid

to her in that way." But Marius's convalescence had caused the adoption

of the habit, and the easy-chairs of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire,

more convenient for a _tête-à-tête_ than the straw-bottomed chairs of

the Rue de l'Homme Armé, had decided it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent

saw each other, but did not speak, and this seemed to be agreed on.

Every girl needs a chaperon, and Cosette could not have come without

M. Fauchelevent; and for Marius, M. Fauchelevent was the condition of

Cosette, and he accepted him. In discussing vaguely, and without any

precision, political matters as connected with the improvement of all,

they managed to say a little more than Yes and No. Once, on the subject

of instruction, which Marius wished to be gratuitous and obligatory,

multiplied in every form, lavished upon all like light and air, and,

in a word, respirable by the entire people, they were agreed, and

almost talked. Marius remarked on this occasion that M. Fauchelevent

spoke well, and even with a certain elevation of language, though

something was wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a man

of the world, and something more. Marius, in his innermost thoughts,

surrounded with all sorts of questions this M. Fauchelevent, who was to

him simple, well-wishing, and cold. At times doubts occurred to him as

to his own recollections; he had a hole in his memory, a black spot, an

abyss dug by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it, and he

was beginning to ask himself whether it was the fact that he had seen

M. Fauchelevent, a man so serious and so calm, at the barricade.

This was, however, not the sole stupor which the appearances and

disappearances of the past had left in his mind. We must not believe

that he was delivered from all those promptings of memory which compel

us, even when happy and satisfied, to take a melancholy backward

glance. The head which does not turn to effaced horizons contains

neither thought nor love. At moments Marius buried his face in his

hands, and the tumultuous and vague past traversed the fog which he

had in his brain. He saw Mabœuf fall again, he heard Gavroche

singing under the grape-shot, and he felt on his lips the coldness of

Éponine's forehead; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre,

Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose before him, and then

disappeared. Were they all dreams, these dear, sorrowful, valiant,

charming, and tragic beings? Had they really existed? The riot had

robed everything in its smoke, and these great fevers have great

dreams. He questioned himself, he felt himself, and had a dizziness

from all these vanished realities. Where were they all, then? Was it

really true that everything was dead? A fall into the darkness had

carried away everything except himself; all this had disappeared as it

were behind the curtain of a theatre. There are such curtains which

drop on life, and God passes on to the next act. In himself was he

really the same man? He, poor, was rich; he, the abandoned man, had a

family; he, the desperate man, was going to marry Cosette. He seemed

to have passed through a tomb, and to have gone in black and come out

white. And in this tomb the others had remained. At certain times

all these beings of the past, returning and present, formed a circle

round him, and rendered him gloomy. Then he thought of Cosette, and

became serene again, but it required no less than this felicity to

efface this catastrophe. M. Fauchelevent had almost a place among these

vanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent

of the barricade was the same as that Fauchelevent in flesh and bone

so gravely seated by the side of Cosette. The first was probably one

of those nightmares brought to him and carried away by his hours of

delirium. However, as their two natures were so far apart, it was

impossible for Marius to ask any question of M. Fauchelevent. The

idea had not even occurred to him; we have already indicated this

characteristic detail. Two men who have a common secret, and who, by a

sort of tacit agreement, do not exchange a syllable on the subject, are

not so rare as may be supposed. Once, however, Marius made an effort;

he turned the conversation on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and turning to

M. Fauchelevent, he said to him,--

"Do you know that street well?"

"What street?"

"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."

"I have never heard the name of that street," M. Fauchelevent said, in

the most natural tone in the world.

The answer, which related to the name of the street, and not to the

street itself, seemed to Marius more conclusive than it really was.

"Decidedly," he thought, "I must have been dreaming. I had an

hallucination. It was some one that resembled him, and M. Fauchelevent

was not there."

CHAPTER VIII.

TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.

The enchantment, great though it was, did not efface other thoughts

from Marius's mind. While the marriage arrangements were being made,

and the fixed period was waited for, he made some troublesome and

scrupulous retrospective researches. He owed gratitude in several

quarters; he owed it for his father, and he owed it for himself. There

was Thénardier, and there was the stranger who had brought him back to

M. Gillenormand's. Marius was anxious to find these two men again, as

he did not wish to marry, be happy, and forget them, and feared lest

these unpaid debts of honor might cast a shadow over his life, which

would henceforth be so luminous. It was impossible for him to leave

all these arrears suffering behind him, and he wished, ere he entered

joyously into the future, to obtain a receipt from the past. That

Thénardier was a villain took nothing from the fact that he had saved

Colonel Pontmercy. Thénardier was a bandit for all the world excepting

for Marius. And Marius, ignorant of the real scene on the battle-field

of Waterloo, did not know this peculiarity, that his father stood to

Thénardier in the strange situation of owing him life without owing

him gratitude. Not one of the agents whom Marius employed could find

Thénardier's trail, and the disappearance seemed complete on that side.

Mother Thénardier had died in prison before trial, and Thénardier and

his daughter Azelma, the only two left of this lamentable group, had

plunged again into the shadow. The gulf of the social unknown had

silently closed again upon these beings. No longer could be seen on

the surface that quivering, that tremor, and those obscure concentric

circles which announce that something has fallen there, and that a

grappling-iron may be thrown in.

Mother Thénardier being dead, Boulatruelle being out of the question,

Claquesous having disappeared, and the principal accused having

escaped from prison, the trial for the trap in the Gorbeau attic had

pretty nearly failed. The affair had remained rather dark, and the

assize court had been compelled to satisfy itself with two subalterns,

Panchaud, _alias_ Printanier, _alias_ Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard,

_alias_ Deux Milliards, who had been condemned, after hearing both

parties, to ten years at the galleys. Penal servitude for life was

passed against their accomplices who had escaped; Thénardier, as

chief and promoter, was condemned to death, also in default. This

condemnation was the only thing that remained of Thénardier, casting

on this buried name its sinister gleam, like a candle by the side of a

coffin. However, this condemnation, by thrusting Thénardier back into

the lowest depths through the fear of being recaptured, added to the

dense gloom which covered this man.

As for the other, the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches

had at first some result, and then stopped short. They succeeded in

finding again the hackney coach which had brought Marius to the Rue des

Filles du Calvaire on the night of June 6. The driver declared that on

the 6th of June, by the order of a police agent, he had stopped from

three P. M. till nightfall on the quay of the Champs Élysées, above

the opening of the Great Sewer; that at about nine in the evening the

gate of the sewer which looks upon the river-bank opened; that a man

came out, bearing on his shoulders another man, who appeared to be

dead; that the agent, who was watching at this point, had arrested the

living man and seized the dead man; that he, the coachman, had taken

"all these people" into his hackney coach; that they drove first to

the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and deposited the dead man there; that

the dead man was M. Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him

thoroughly, though he was alive this time; that afterwards they got

into his coach again, and a few yards from the gate of the Archives he

was ordered to stop; that he was paid in the street and discharged,

and the agent took away the other man; that he knew nothing more, and

that the night was very dark. Marius, as we said, remembered nothing.

He merely remembered that he had been seized from behind by a powerful

hand at the moment when he fell backwards from the barricade, and then

all was effaced for him. He had only regained his senses when he was at

M. Gillenormand's.

He lost himself in conjectures; he could not doubt as to his own

identity, but how was it that he, who had fallen in the Rue de la

Chanvrerie, had been picked up by the police agent on the bank of the

Seine, near the bridge of the Invalides? Some one had brought him from

the market district to the Champs Élysées, and how,--by the sewer?

Extraordinary devotion! Some one? Who? It was the man whom Marius was

seeking. Of this man, who was his saviour, he could find nothing, not

a trace, not the slightest sign. Marius, though compelled on this side

to exercise a great reserve, pushed on his inquiries as far as the

Préfecture of Police, but there the information which he obtained led

to no better result than elsewhere. The Préfecture knew less about the

matter than the driver of the hackney coach; they had no knowledge of

any arrest having taken place at the outlet of the great drain on June

6; they had received no report from the agent about this fact which, at

the Préfecture, was regarded as a fable. The invention of this fable

was attributed to the driver; for a driver anxious for drink-money

is capable of anything, even imagination. The fact, however, was

certain, and Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own

identity, as we have just said. Everything in this strange enigma was

inexplicable; this man, this mysterious man, whom the driver had seen

come out of the grating of the great drain, bearing the fainting Marius

on his back, and whom the police agent caught in the act of saving

an insurgent,--what had become of him? What had become of the agent

himself? Why had this agent kept silence? Had the man succeeded in

escaping? Had be corrupted the agent? Why did this man give no sign of

life to Marius, who owed everything to him? The disinterestedness was

no less prodigious than the devotion. Why did this man not reappear?

Perhaps he was above reward, but no man is above gratitude. Was he

dead? Who was the man? What was he like? No one was able to say: the

driver replied, "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette in

their start had only looked at their young master, who was all bloody.

The porter, whose candle had lit up Marius's tragic arrival, had alone

remarked the man in question, and this was the description he gave of

him: "The man was frightful."

In the hope of deriving some advantage from them for his researches,

Marius kept his blood-stained clothes which he wore when he was brought

to his grandfather's. On examining the coat it was noticed that the

skirt was strangely torn, and a piece was missing. One evening Marius

was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean Valjean about all

this singular adventure, the countless inquiries he had made, and the

inutility of his efforts; Monsieur Fauchelevent's cold face offended

him, and he exclaimed with a vivacity which had almost the vibration of

anger,--

"Yes, that man, whoever he may be, was sublime. Do you know what he

did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He was obliged to throw

himself into the midst of the contest, carry me away, open the sewer,

drag me off, and carry me. He must have gone more than a league and

a half through frightful subterranean galleries, bent and bowed in

the darkness, in the sewer, for more than half a league, sir, with a

corpse on his back! And for what object? For the sole object of saving

that corpse; and that corpse was myself. He said to himself, 'There

is, perhaps, a gleam of life left here, and I will risk my existence

for this wretched spark!' and he did not risk his existence once, but

twenty times! And each step was a danger, and the proof is, that on

leaving the sewer he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that this man did

all that? And he had no reward to expect. What was I? An insurgent.

What was I? A conquered man. Oh! if Cosette's six thousand francs were

mine--"

"They are yours," Jean Valjean interrupted.

"Well, then," Marius continued, "I would give them to find that man

again."