Jean Valjean was silent.

BOOK VI.

THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

FEBRUARY 16, 1833.

The night of February 16 was a blessed night, for it had above its

shadow the open sky. It was the wedding-night of Marius and Cosette.

The day had been adorable; it was not the blue festival dreamed of

by the grandfather, a fairy scene, with a confusion of cherubim and

cupids above the head of the married couple, a marriage worthy of being

represented over a door, but it had been sweet and smiling. The fashion

of marrying in 1833 was not at all as it is now. France had not yet

borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of carrying off a wife,

of flying on leaving the church, hiding one's self as if ashamed of

one's happiness, and combining the manœuvres of a bankrupt with the

ravishment of the Song of Songs. We had not yet understood how chaste,

exquisite, and decent it is to jolt one's paradise in a postchaise; to

vary the mystery with click-clacks of the whip; to select an inn bed

as the nuptial couch, and to leave behind one, at the conventional

alcove at so much per night, the most sacred recollection of life,

jumbled with the _tête-à-têtes_ of the guard of the diligence and the

chamber-maid. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in which

we now are, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble,

the law and God, are no longer sufficient; they must be complemented

by the postilion of Lonjumeau; blue jacket with red facings and

bell buttons, a leather-bound plate, green leather breeches, oaths

to the Norman horses with their knotted tails, imitation gold lace,

oil-skin hat, heavy, dusty horses, an enormous whip, and strong boots.

France does not carry the elegance to such an extent as to shower on

the postchaise, as the English nobility do, old shoes and battered

slippers, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough or Malbrouck,

who was assailed on his wedding-day by the anger of an aunt which

brought him good luck. Shoes and slippers do not yet form part of our

nuptial celebrations; but, patience, with the spread of good taste we

shall yet come to it.

In 1833,--it is a century since then,--marriage was not performed at a

smart trot; people still supposed at that epoch, whimsically enough,

that a marriage is a private and social festival, that a patriarchal

banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity; that gayety, even if it

be excessive, so long as it is decent, does no harm to happiness;

and finally, that it is venerable and good for the fusion of these

two destinies from which a family will issue, to begin in the house,

and that the household may have in future the nuptial chamber as a

witness; and people were so immodest as to many at home. The wedding

took place, then, according to this fashion which is now antiquated,

at M. Gillenormand's; and though this affair of marrying is so simple

and natural, the publication of the banns, drawing up the deeds, the

mayoralty, and the church always cause some complication, and they

could not be ready before February 16. Now--we note this detail for the

pure satisfaction of being exact--it happened that the 16th was Mardi

Gras. There were hesitations and scruples, especially on the part of

Aunt Gillenormand.

"A Mardi Gras!" the grandfather exclaimed; "all the better. There is a

proverb that,--

'Mariage un Mardi gras

N'aura point d'enfants ingrats.'

All right. Done for the 16th. Do you wish to put it off, Marius?"

"Certainly not," said the amorous youth.

"We'll marry then," said the grandfather.

The marriage, therefore, took place on the 16th, in spite of the public

gayety. It rained on that day, but there is always in the sky a little

blue patch at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even when

the rest of creation are under their umbrellas. On the previous day

Jean Valjean had handed to Marius, in the presence of M. Gillenormand,

the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs. As the marriage took

place in the ordinary way, the deeds were very simple. Toussaint was

henceforth useless to Jean Valjean, so Cosette inherited her, and

promoted her to the rank of lady's-maid. As for Jean Valjean, a nice

room was furnished expressly for him at M. Gillenormand's, and Cosette

had said to him so irresistibly, "Father, I implore you," that she

had almost made him promise that he would come and occupy it. A few

days before that fixed for the marriage an accident happened to Jean

Valjean; he slightly injured the thumb of his right hand. It was not

serious, and he had not allowed any one to poultice it, or even see

it, not even Cosette. Still, it compelled him to wrap up his hand in

a bandage and wear his arm in a sling, and this, of course, prevented

him from signing anything. M. Gillenormand, as supervising guardian

to Cosette, took his place. We will not take the reader either to the

mayoralty or to church. Two lovers are not usually followed so far,

and we are wont to turn our back on the drama so soon as it puts a

bridegroom's bouquet in its button-hole. We will restrict ourselves to

noting an incident which, though unnoticed by the bridal party, marked

the drive from the Rue des Filles du Calvaire to St. Paul's Church.

The Rue St. Louis was being repaired at the time, and it was blocked

from the Rue du Parc Royal, hence it was impossible for the carriage to

go direct to St. Paul's. As they were obliged to change their course,

the most simple plan was to turn into the boulevard. One of the guests

drew attention to the fact that, as it was Mardi Gras, there would

be a block of vehicles. "Why so?" M. Gillenormand asked. "On account

of the masks." "Famous," said the grandfather; "we will go that way.

These young people are going to marry and see the serious side of

life, and seeing the masquerade will be a slight preparation for it."

They turned into the boulevard: the first of the wedding carriages

contained Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand, and Jean

Valjean. Marius, still separated from his bride, according to custom,

was in the second. The nuptial procession, on turning out of the Rue

des Filles du Calvaire, joined the long file of vehicles making an

endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille

to the Madeleine. Masks were abundant on the boulevard: and though

it rained every now and then, Paillasse, Pantalon, and Gille were

obstinate. In the good humor of that winter of 1833 Paris had disguised

itself as Venus. We do not see a Mardi Gras like this now-a-days, for

as everything existing is a wide-spread carnival, there is no carnival

left. The sidewalks were thronged with pedestrians, and the windows

with gazers; and the terraces crowning the peristyles of the theatres

were covered with spectators. In addition to the masks, they look

at the file--peculiar to Mardi Gras as to Longchamp--of vehicles of

every description, citadines, carts, curricles, and cabs, marching in

order rigorously riveted to each other by police regulations, and, as

it were, running on rails. Any one who happens to be in one of these

vehicles is at once spectator and spectacle. Policemen standing by

the side of the boulevard kept in place these two interminable files

moving in a contrary direction, and watched that nothing should impede

the double current of these two streams, one running up, the other

down, one towards the Chaussée d'Antin, the other towards the Faubourg

St. Antoine. The escutcheoned carriages of the Peers of France and

Ambassadors held the crown of the causeway, coming and going freely;

and certain magnificent and gorgeous processions, notably the Bœuf

Gras, had the same privilege. In this Parisian gayety England clacked

his whip, for the post-chaise of Lord Seymour, at which a popular

sobriquet was hurled, passed with a great noise.

In the double file, along which Municipal Guards galloped like

watch-dogs, honest family arks, crowded with great-aunts and

grandmothers, displayed at windows healthy groups of disguised

children, Pierrots of seven and Pierrettes of six, ravishing little

creatures, feeling that they officially formed part of the public

merriment, penetrated with the dignity of their Harlequinade, and

displaying the gravity of functionaries. From time to time a block

occurred somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the

two side files stopped until the knot was untied, one impeded vehicle

sufficing to block the whole line. Then they started again. The

wedding carriages were in the file, going towards the Bastille on the

right-hand side of the boulevard. Opposite the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux

there was a stoppage, and almost at the same moment the file on the

other side proceeding towards the Madeleine stopped too. At this point

of the procession there was a carriage of masks. These carnages, or, to

speak more correctly, these cartloads of masks, are well known to the

Parisians; if they failed on Mardi Gras or at mid-Lent, people would

say, "There's something behind it. Probably we are going to have a

change of Ministry." A heap of Harlequins, Columbines, and Pantaloons

jolted above the heads of the passers-by,--all possible grotesques,

from the Turk to the savage. Hercules supporting Marquises, fish-fags

who would make Rabelais stop his ears, as well as Mænads who would make

Aristophanes look down, tow perukes, pink fleshings, three-cornered

hats, pantaloons, spectacles, cries given to the pedestrians, hands

on hips, bold postures, naked shoulders, masked faces, and unmuzzled

immodesty; a chaos of effronteries driven by a coachman in a head-dress

of flowers,--such is this institution. Greece felt the want of Thespis'

cart, and France needs Vadé's fiacre. All may be parodied, even parody.

The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, by swelling and

swelling becomes the Mardi Gras: and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned

with vine-leaves, inundated by sunshine, and displaying marble breasts

in a divine semi-nudity, is now flabby under the drenched rags of the

North, has ended by being called a chie-en-lit.

The tradition of the coaches of masks dates back to the oldest times

of the Monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allow the Palace steward

"twenty sous tournois for three coaches of masquerades." In our time

these noisy piles of creatures generally ride in some old coucou the

roof of which they encumber, or cover with their tumultuous group a

landau the hood of which is thrown back. There are twenty in a carriage

intended for six. You see them on the seat, on the front stool, on the

springs of the hood, and on the pole, and they even straddle across

the lamps. They are standing, lying down, or seated, cross-legged, or

with pendent legs. The women occupy the knees of the men, and this

wild pyramid is seen for a long distance over the heads of the crowd.

These vehicles form mountains of merriment in the midst of the mob,

and Collé, Panard, and Piron flow from them enriched with slang, and

the fish-fag's catechism is expectorated from above upon the people.

This fiacre, which has grown enormous through its burden, has an

air of conquest; Hubbub is in front and Hurly-burly behind. People

shout in it, sing in it, yell in it, and writhe with happiness in it;

gayety roars there, sarcasm flashes, and joviality is displayed like a

purple robe; two jades drag in it farce expanded into an apotheosis,

and it is the triumphal car of laughter,--a laughter, though, too

cynical to be frank, and in truth this laughter is suspicious. It has

a mission,--that of verifying the carnival to the Parisians. These

fish-fag vehicles, in which some strange darkness is perceptible,

cause the philosopher to reflect; there is something of the government

in them, and you lay your finger there on a curious affinity between

public men and public women. It is certainly a sorry thought, that

heaped-up turpitudes give a sum-total of gayety; that a people can be

amused by building up ignominy on opprobrium; that spying, acting as

a caryatid to prostitution, amuses the mob while affronting it; that

the crowd is pleased to see pass on four wheels this monstrous living

pile of beings, spangled rags, one half ordure, one half light, who

bark and sing; that they should clap their hands at all this shame,

and that no festival is possible for the multitude unless the police

promenade in its midst these twenty-headed hydras of joy. Most sad this

certainly is, but what is to be done? These tumbrels of beribboned and

flowered filth are insulted and pardoned by the public laughter, and

the laughter of all is the accomplice of the universal degradation.

Certain unhealthy festivals disintegrate the people and convert them

into populace; but a populace, like tyrants, requires buffoons. The

king has Roquelaure, and the people has Paillasse. Paris is the great

mad city wherever it is not the great sublime city, and the carnival

there is political. Paris, let us confess it, willingly allows infamy

to play a farce for its amusement, and only asks of its masters--when

it has masters--one thing, "paint the mud for me." Rome was of the same

humor; she loved Nero, and Nero was a Titanic débardeur.

Accident willed it, as we have just said, that one of the shapeless

groups of masked men and women collected in a vast barouche stopped

on the left of the boulevard while the wedding party stopped on the

right. The carriage in which the masks were, noticed opposite to it the

carriage in which was the bride.

"Hilloh!" said a mask, "a wedding."

"A false wedding," another retorted, "we are the true one."

And, as they were too far off to address the wedding party, and as

they also feared the interference of the police, the two masks looked

elsewhere. The whole vehicle-load of masquers had plenty of work a

moment after, for the mob began hissing it, which is the caress given

by the mob to masquerades, and the two masks who had just spoken

were obliged to face the crowd with their comrades, and found all

the missiles of the market repertory scarce sufficient to reply to

the atrocious jaw-lashing from the people. A frightful exchange of

metaphors took place between the masks and the crowd. In the mean while

two other masks in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an exaggerated

nose, an oldish look, and enormous black moustaches, and a thin and

very youthful fish-girl, wearing a half-mask, had noticed the wedding

also, and while their companions and the spectators were insulting each

other, held a conversation in a low voice. Their aside was covered

by the tumult and was lost in it. The showers had drenched the open

carriage; the February wind is not warm, and so the fish-girl while

answering the Spaniard shivered, laughed, and coughed. This was the

dialogue, which we translate from the original slang:--

"Look here."

"What is it, pa?"

"Do you see that old man?"

"What old man?"

"There, in the wedding coach, with his arm in a sling."

"Yes. Well?"

"I feel sure that I know him."

"Ah!"

"May my neck be cut, and I never said you, thou, or I, in my life, if I

do not know that Parisian."

"To-day Paris is Pantin."

"Can you see the bride by stooping?"

"No."

"And the bridegroom?"

"There is no bridegroom in that coach."

"Nonsense."

"Unless it be the other old man."

"Come, try and get a look at the bride by stooping."

"I can't."

"No matter, that old fellow who has something the matter with his paw,

I feel certain I know him."

"And what good will it do you, your knowing him?"

"I don't know. Sometimes!"

"I don't care a curse for old fellows."

"I know him."

"Know him as much as you like."

"How the deuce is he at the wedding?"

"Why, we are there too."

"Where does the wedding come from?"

"How do I know?"

"Listen."

"Well, what is it?"

"You must do something."

"What is it?"

"Get out of our trap and follow that wedding."

"What to do?"

"To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste and get down; run, my

daughter, for you are young."

"I can't leave the carriage."

"Why not?"

"I am hired."

"Oh, the devil!"

"I owe the Préfecture my day's work."

"That's true."

"If I leave the carriage, the first inspector who sees me will arrest

me. You know that."

"Yes, I know it."

"To-day I am bought by Pharos" (the government).

"No matter, that old fellow bothers me."

"All old men bother you, and yet you ain't a chicken yourself."

"He is in the first carriage."

"Well, what then?"

"In the bride's carriage."

"What next?"

"So he is the father."

"How does that concern me?"

"I tell you he is the father."

"You do nothing but talk about that father."

"Listen."

"Well, what?"

"I can only go away masked, for I am hidden here, and no one knows I am

here. But to-morrow there will be no masks, for it is Ash Wednesday,

and I run a risk of being nailed. I shall be obliged to go back to my

hole, but you are free."

"Not quite."

"Well, more so than I am."

"Well, what then?"

"You must try to find out where that wedding party is going to."

"Going to?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I know."

"Where to, then?"

"To the Cadran Bleu."

"But that is not the direction."

"Well, then! to La Rapée."

"Or elsewhere."

"They can do as they like, for weddings are free."

"That is not the thing. I tell you that you must try to find out for me

what that wedding is, and where it comes from."

"Of course! that would be funny. It's so jolly easy to find out a week

after where a wedding party has gone to that passed during the Mardi

Gras. A pin in a bundle of hay. Is it possible?"

"No matter, you must try. Do you hear, Azelma?"

The two files recommenced their opposite movement on the boulevard, and

the carriage of masks lost out of sight that which contained the bride.

CHAPTER II.

JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING.

To realize one's dream--to whom is this granted? There must be

elections for this in heaven; we are the unconscious candidates, and

the angels vote. Cosette and Marius had been elected. Cosette, both at

the mayoralty and at church, was brilliant and touching. Toussaint,

helped by Nicolette, had dressed her. Cosette wore over a skirt of

white taffetas her dress of Binche lace, a veil of English point, a

necklace of fine pearls, and a crown of orange-flowers; all this was

white, and in this whiteness she was radiant. It was an exquisite

candor expanding and becoming transfigured in light; she looked like

a virgin on the point of becoming a goddess. Marius's fine hair was

shining and perfumed, and here and there a glimpse could be caught,

under the thick curls, of pale lines, which were the scars of the

barricade. The grandfather, superb, with head erect, amalgamating in

his toilette and manners all the elegances of the time of Barras, gave

his arm to Cosette. He took the place of Jean Valjean, who, owing to

his wound, could not give his hand to the bride. Jean Valjean, dressed

all in black, followed and smiled.

"Monsieur Fauchelevent," the grandfather said to him, "this is a

glorious day, and I vote the end of afflictions and cares. Henceforth

there must be no sorrow anywhere. By Heaven! I decree joy! misfortune

has no right to exist, and it is a disgrace for the azure of heaven

that there are unfortunate men. Evil does not come from man, who, at

the bottom, is good; but all human miseries have their capital and

central government in hell, otherwise called the Tuileries of the

devil. There, I am making demagogic remarks at present! For my part I

have no political opinions left; and all I stick to is that men should

be rich, that is to say, joyous."

When, at the end of all the ceremonies,--after pronouncing before the

mayor and before the priest every yes that is possible, after signing

the register at the municipality and in the sacristy, after exchanging

rings, after kneeling side by side under the canopy of white moire in

the smoke of the censer,--they arrived holding each other by the hand,

admired and envied by all. Marius in black, she in white, preceded by

the beadle in the colonel's epaulettes, striking the flag-stones with

his halbert, between two rows of dazzled spectators, at the church

doors which were thrown wide open, ready to get into their carriage,

--and then all was over. Cosette could not yet believe it. She looked

at Marius, she looked at the crowd, she looked at heaven; it seemed

as if she were afraid of awaking. Her astonished and anxious air

imparted something strangely enchanting to her. In returning they

both rode in the same carriage, Marius seated by Cosette's side,

and M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean forming their vis-à-vis. Aunt

Gillenormand had fallen back a step and was in the second carriage. "My

children," the grandfather said, "you are now M. le Baron and Madame

la Baronne with thirty thousand francs a year." And Cosette, nuzzling

against Marius, caressed his ear with the angelic whisper, "It is

true, then, my name is Marius and I am Madame Thou." These two beings

were resplendent; they had reached the irrevocable and irrecoverable

moment, the dazzling point of intersection of all youth and all joy.

They realized Jean Prouvaire's line; together they did not number

forty years. It was marriage sublimated, and these two children were

two lilies. They did not see each other, but contemplated each other.

Cosette perceived Marius in a glory, and Marius perceived Cosette upon

an altar. And upon this altar, and in this glory, the two apotheoses

blending behind a cloud for Cosette and a flashing for Marius, there

was the ideal thing, the real thing, the meeting-place of kisses and of

sleep, the nuptial pillow.

All the torments they had gone through returned to them in

intoxication; it appeared to them as if the griefs, the sleeplessness,

the tears, the anguish, the terrors, and the despair, by being

converted into caresses and sunbeams, rendered more charming still the

charming hour which was approaching; and that their sorrows were so

many handmaidens who performed the toilette of joy. How good it is to

have suffered! Their misfortunes made a halo for their happiness, and

the long agony of their love ended in an ascension. There was in these

two souls the same enchantment, tinged with voluptuousness in Marius

and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in a whisper,

"We will go and see again our little garden in the Rue Plumet." The

folds of Cosette's dress were upon Marius. Such a day is an ineffable

blending of dream and certainty: you possess and you suppose, and you

still have time before you to divine. It is an indescribable emotion

on that day to be at midday and think of midnight. The delight of

these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and imparted merriment to

the passers-by. People stopped in the Rue St. Antoine, in front of

St. Paul's, to look through the carriage-window,--the orange flowers

trembling on Cosette's head. Then they returned to the Rue des Filles

du Calvaire,--home. Marius, side by side with Cosette, ascended,

triumphantly and radiantly, that staircase up which he had been

dragged in a dying state. The beggars, collected before the gate and

dividing the contents of their purses, blessed them. There were flowers

everywhere, and the house was no less fragrant than the church: after

the incense the rose. They fancied they could hear voices singing in

infinitude; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like

a ceiling of stars; they saw above their heads the flashing of the

rising sun. Marius gazed at Cosette's charming bare arm and the pink

things which could be vaguely seen through the lace of the stomacher,

and Cosette, catching Marius's glance, blushed to the white of her

eyes. A good many old friends of the Gillenormand family had been

invited, and they thronged round Cosette, outvying one another in

calling her Madame la Baronne. The officer, Théodule Gillenormand, now

captain, had come from Chartres, where he was stationed, to be present

at his cousin's marriage: Cosette did not recognize him. He, on his

side, accustomed to be thought a pretty fellow by the women, remembered

Cosette no more than any other.

"How right I was in not believing that story of the lancer!" Father

Gillenormand said to himself aside.

Cosette had never been more affectionate to Jean Valjean, and she was

in unison with Father Gillenormand; while he built up joy in aphorisms

and maxims, she exhaled love and beauty like a perfume. Happiness

wishes everybody to be happy. She found again in speaking to Jean

Valjean inflections of her voice of the time when she was a little

girl, and caressed him with a smile. A banquet had been prepared in

the dining-room; an illumination _à giorno_ is the necessary seasoning

of a great joy, and mist and darkness are not accepted by the happy.

They do not consent to be black: night, yes; darkness, no; and if

there be no sun, one must be made. The dining-room was a furnace of

gay things; in the centre, above the white glistening tables, hung a

Venetian chandelier, with all sorts of colored birds, blue, violet,

red, and green, perched among the candles; round the chandelier

were girandoles, and on the walls were mirrors with three and four

branches; glasses, crystal, plate, china, crockery, gold, and silver,

all flashed and rejoiced. The spaces between the candelabra were

filled up with bouquets, so that where there was not a light there

was a flower. In the anteroom three violins and a flute played some

of Haydn's quartettes. Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in

the drawing-room, behind the door, which, being thrown back, almost

concealed him. A few minutes before they sat down to table Cosette gave

him a deep courtesy, while spreading out her wedding-dress with both

hands, and with a tenderly mocking look asked him,--

"Father, are you satisfied?"

"Yes," said Jean Valjean, "I am satisfied."

"Well, then, laugh."

Jean Valjean began laughing. A few minutes later Basque came in to

announce that dinner was on the table. The guests, preceded by M.

Gillenormand, who gave his arm to Cosette, entered the dining-room, and

collected round the table in the prescribed order. There was a large

easy-chair on either side of the bride, one for M. Gillenormand, the

other for Jean Valjean. M. Gillenormand seated himself, but the other

chair remained empty. All looked round for Monsieur Fauchelevent, but

he was no longer there, and M. Gillenormand hailed Basque:

"Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Basque replied. "Monsieur Fauchelevent requested

me to tell you, sir, that his hand pained him, and that he could not

dine with M. le Baron and Madame la Baronne. He therefore begged to be

excused, but would call to-morrow. He has just left."

This empty chair momentarily chilled the effusion of the wedding feast;

but though M. Fauchelevent was absent M. Gillenormand was there,

and the grandfather shone for two. He declared that M. Fauchelevent

acted rightly in going to bed early if he were in pain, but that it

was only a small hurt. This declaration was sufficient; besides, what

is a dark corner in such a submersion of joy? Cosette and Marius were

in one of those egotistic and blessed moments when people possess no

other faculty than that of perceiving joy; and then M. Gillenormand

had an idea, "By Jupiter! this chair is empty; come hither, Marius;

your aunt, though she has a right to it, will permit you; this chair

is for you; it is legal, and it is pretty,--Fortunatus by the side

of Fortunata." The whole of the guests applauded. Marius took Jean

Valjean's place by Cosette's side, and things were so arranged that

Cosette, who had at first been saddened by the absence of Jean Valjean,

ended by being pleased at it. From the moment when Marius was the

substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God. She placed her little

white-satin-slippered foot upon Marius's foot. When the easy-chair

was occuppied, M. Fauchelevent was effaced, and nothing was wanting.

Five minutes later all the guests were laughing from one end of the

table to the other, with all the forgetfulness of humor. At dessert M.

Gillenormand rose, with a glass of champagne in his hand, only half

full, so that the trembling of ninety-two years might not upset it, and

proposed the health of the new-married couple.

"You will not escape from two sermons," he exclaimed: "this morning

you had the curé's, and this evening you will have grandpapa's. Listen

to me, for I am going to give you some advice: Adore each other. I do

not beat round the bush, but go straight to the point; be happy. There

are no other sages in creation but the turtle-doves. Philosophers say,

Moderate your joys; but I say, Throw the bridle on the neck of your

joys. Love like fiends, be furious. The philosophers babble, and I

should like to thrust their philosophy down their throats for them. Can

we have too many perfumes, too many open rose-buds, too many singing

nightingales, too many green leaves, and too much dawn in life? Can we

love too much? Can we please one another too much? Take care, Estelle,

you are too pretty! Take care, Némorin, you are too handsome! What

jolly nonsense! Can people enchant each other, tease each other, and

charm each other too much? Can they be too loving? Can they be too

happy? Moderate your joys,--oh, stuff! Down with the philosophers, for

wisdom is jubilation. Do you jubilate? Let us jubilate; are we happy

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

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

because it weighs one hundred and six carats? I do not know; and life

is full of such problems: the important thing is to have the Sancy and

happiness. Let us be happy without quibbling. Let us blindly obey the

sun. What is the sun? It is love; and when I say love, I mean woman.

Ah, ah! woman is an omnipotence. Ask that demagogue, Marius, if he

is not the slave of that little she-tyrant, Cosette, and willingly

so, the coward? Woman! There is not a Robespierre who can stand; but

woman reigns. I am now only a royalist of that royalty. What is Adam?

The royalty of Eve. There is no '89 for Eve. There was the royal

sceptre surmounted by the fleur-de-lys, there was the imperial sceptre

surmounted by a globe, there was Charlemagne's sceptre of iron, and the

sceptre of Louis the Great, which was of gold. The Revolution twisted

them between its thumb and forefinger like straws. It is finished, it

is broken, it lies on the ground,--there is no sceptre left. But just

make a revolution against that little embroidered handkerchief which

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

solid? Because it is a rag. Ah! you are the nineteenth century. Well,

what then? We were the eighteenth, and were as foolish as you. Do not

suppose that you have made any tremendous change in the world because

your gallant-trusser is called cholera-morbus, and your bourrée the

cachucha. After all, woman must always be loved, and I defy you to

get out of that. These she-devils are our angels. Yes, love, woman,

and a kiss form a circle from which I defy you to issue, and for my

own part I should be very glad to enter it again. Who among you has

seen the star Venus, the great coquette of the abyss, the Celimène of

ocean, rise in infinite space, appeasing everything below her, and

looking at the waves like a woman? The ocean is a rude Alcestis; and

yet, however much he may growl, when Venus appears he is forced to

smile. That brute-beast submits, and we are all thus. Anger, tempest,

thunder-bolts, foam up to the ceiling. A woman comes upon the stage,

a star rises, and you crawl in the dust. Marius was fighting six

months ago, and is marrying to-day, and that is well done. Yes, Marius,

yes, Cosette, you are right. Exist bravely one for the other, make us

burst with rage because we cannot do the same, and idolize each other.

Take in both your beaks the little straws of felicity which lie on

the ground, and make of them a nest for life. By Jove! to love, to be

loved,--what a great miracle when a man is young! Do not suppose that

you invented it. I too have dreamed, and thought, and sighed. I too

have had a moonlit soul. Love is a child six thousand years of age, and

has a right to a long white beard. Methuselah is a baby by the side

of Cupid. Sixty centuries back man and woman got out of the scrape by

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

more cunning still, took to loving woman. In this way he did himself

more good than the devil did him harm. That trick was discovered

simultaneously with the terrestrial paradise. My friends, the invention

is old, but it is brand new. Take advantage of it; be Daphnis and Chloe

while waiting till you are Baucis and Philemon. Manage so that when

you are together you may want for nothing, and that Cosette may be the

sun for Marius, and Marius the universe for Cosette. Cosette, let your

fine weather be your husband's smiles. Marius, let your wife's tears

be the rain, and mind that it never does rain in your household. You

have drawn the good number in the lottery, love in the sacrament. You

have the prize number, so keep it carefully under lock and key. Do not

squander it. Adore each other, and a fig for the rest. Believe what I

tell you, then, for it is good sense, and good sense cannot deceive. Be

to one another a religion, for each man has his own way of adoring God.

Saperlotte! the best way of adoring God is to love one's wife. I love

you! that is my catechism; and whoever loves is orthodox. The oath of

Henri IV. places sanctity between guttling and intoxication. _Ventre

Saint Gris!_ I do not belong to the religion of that oath, for woman

is forgotten in it, and that surprises me on the part of Henri IV.'s

oath. My friends, long live woman! I am old, so people say; but it is

amazing how disposed I feel to be young. I should like to go and listen

to the bagpipes in the woods. These children, who succeed in being

beautiful and satisfied, intoxicate me. I am quite willing to marry if

anybody will have me. It is impossible to imagine that God has made us

for anything else than this,--to idolize, to purr, to strut, to be a

pigeon, to be a cock, to caress our lovers from morning till night, to

admire ourselves in our little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant, and

to swell. Such is the object of life. That, without offence, is what we

thought in our time, when we were young men. Ah! vertu-bamboche! what

charming women there were in those days! what ducks! I made my ravages

among them. Then love each other. If men and women did not love, I

really do not see what use there would be in having a spring. And for

my part, I would pray the good God to lock up all the fine things he

shows us and take them back from us, and to return to his box the

flowers, the birds, and the pretty girls. My children, receive an old

man's blessing."

The evening was lively, gay, and pleasant; the sovereign good-humor

of the grandfather gave the tone to the whole festivity, and each was

regulated by this almost centenary heartiness. There was a little

dancing and a good deal of laughter; it was a merry wedding, to which

that worthy old fellow "Once on a time" might have been invited;

however, he was present in the person of Father Gillenormand. There

was a tumult and then a silence; the married couple disappeared. A

little after midnight the Gillenormand mansion became a temple. Here

we stop, for an angel stands on the threshold of wedding-nights,

smiling, and with finger on lip; the mind becomes contemplative before

this sanctuary in which the celebration of love is held. There must

be rays of light above such houses, and the joy which they contain

must pass through the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely irradiate the

darkness. It is impossible for this sacred and fatal festival not to

send a celestial radiance to infinitude. Love is the sublime crucible

in which the fusion of man and woman takes place; the one being, the

triple being, the final being, the human trinity issue from it. This

birth of two souls in one must have emotion for the shadows. The lover

is the priest, and the transported virgin feels an awe. A portion of

this joy ascends to God. When there is really marriage, that is to say,

when there is love, the ideal is mingled with it, and a nuptial couch

forms in the darkness a corner of the dawn. If it was given to the

mental eye to perceive the formidable and charming visions of higher

life, it is probable that it would see the forms of night, the unknown

winged beings, the blue wayfarers of the invisible, bending down round

the luminous house, satisfied and blessing, pointing out to each other

the virgin bride, who is gently startled, and having the reflection of

human felicity on their divine countenances. If, at this supreme hour,

the pair, dazzled with pleasure, and who believe themselves alone,

were to listen, they would hear in their chamber a confused rustling

of wings, for perfect happiness implies the guarantee of angels. This

little obscure alcove has an entire heaven for its ceiling. When two

mouths, which have become sacred by love, approach each other in order

to create, it is impossible but that there is a tremor in the immense

mystery of the stars above this ineffable kiss. These felicities

are the real ones, there is no joy beyond their joys; love is the

sole ecstasy, and all the rest weeps. To love or to have loved is

sufficient; ask nothing more after that. There is no other pearl to be

found in the dark folds of life, for love is a consummation.

CHAPTER III.

THE INSEPARABLE.

What had become of Jean Valjean? Directly after he had laughed in

accordance with Cosette's request, as no one was paying any attention

to him, Jean Valjean rose, and unnoticed reached the anteroom. It was

the same room which he had entered eight months previously, black

with mud and blood and gunpowder, bringing back the grandson to the

grandfather. The old panelling was garlanded with flowers and leaves,

the musicians were seated on the sofa upon which Marius had been

deposited. Basque, in black coat, knee-breeches, white cravat, and

white gloves, was placing wreaths of roses round each of the dishes

which was going to be served up. Jean Valjean showed him his arm in the

sling, requested him to explain his absence, and quitted the house.

The windows of the dining-room looked out on the street, and Valjean

stood for some minutes motionless in the obscurity of those radiant

windows. He listened, and the confused sound of the banquet reached

his ears; he heard the grandfather's loud and dictatorial voice, the

violins, the rattling of plates and glasses, the bursts of laughter,

and amid all these gay sounds he distinguished Cosette's soft, happy

voice. He left the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and returned to the

Rue de l'Homme Armé. In going home he went along the Rue St. Louis,

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

little longer, but it was the road by which he had been accustomed to

come with Cosette during the last three months, in order to avoid the

crowd and mud of the Rue Vieille du Temple. This road, which Cosette

had passed along, excluded the idea of any other itinerary for him.

Jean Valjean returned home, lit his candle, and went upstairs. The

apartments were empty; not even Toussaint was in there now. Jean

Valjean's footsteps made more noise in the rooms than usual. All the

wardrobes were open; he entered Cosette's room, and there were no

sheets on the bed. The pillow, without a case or lace, was laid on the

blankets folded at the foot of the bed, in which no one was going to

sleep again. All the small feminine articles to which Cosette clung had

been removed; only the heavy furniture and the four walls remained.

Toussaint's bed was also unmade, and the only one made which seemed to

be expecting somebody was Jean Valjean's. Jean Valjean looked at the

walls, closed some of the wardrobe drawers, and walked in and out of

the rooms. Then he returned to his own room and placed his candle on

the table; he had taken his arm out of the sling, and used it as if

he were suffering no pain in it. He went up to his bed and his eyes

fell--was it by accident or was it purposely?--on the _inseparable_

of which Cosette had been jealous, the little valise which never left

him. On June 4, when he arrived at the Rue de l'Homme Armé, he laid

it on a table; he now walked up to this table with some eagerness,

took the key out of his pocket, and opened the portmanteau. He

slowly drew out the clothes in which, ten years previously, Cosette

had left Montfermeil; first, the little black dress, then the black

handkerchief, then the stout shoes, which Cosette could almost have

worn still, so small was her foot; next the petticoat, then the apron,

and lastly, the woollen stockings. These stockings, in which the

shape of a little leg was gracefully marked, were no longer than Jean

Valjean's hand. All these articles were black, and it was he who took

them for her to Montfermeil. He laid each article on the bed as he took

it out, and he thought and remembered. It was in winter, a very cold

December; she was shivering under her rags, and her poor feet were

quite red in her wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, had made her take off

these rags and put on this mourning garb; the mother must have been

pleased in her tomb to see her daughter wearing mourning for her, and

above all, to see that she was well clothed and was warm. He thought

of that forest of Montfermeil, he thought what the weather was, of the

trees without leaves, of the wood without birds and the sky without

sun; but no matter, it was charming. He arranged the little clothes on

the bed, the handkerchief near the petticoat, the stockings along with

the shoes, the apron by the side of the dress, and he looked at them

one after the other. She was not much taller than that, she had her

large doll in her arms, she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of

this apron, she laughed, they walked along holding each other's hand,

and she had no one but him in the world.

Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, his old stoical heart

broke, his face was buried in Cosette's clothes, and had any one passed

upstairs at that moment he would have heard frightful sobs.

CHAPTER IV.

IMMORTALE JECUR.

The old formidable struggle, of which we have already seen several

phases, began again. Jacob only wrestled with the angel for one night.

Alas! how many times have we seen Jean Valjean caught round the waist

in the darkness by his conscience, and struggling frantically against

it. An extraordinary struggle! At certain moments the foot slips,

at others the ground gives way. How many times had that conscience,

clinging to the right, strangled and crushed him! How many times

had inexorable truth set its foot on his chest! How many times had

he, felled by the light, cried for mercy! How many times had that

implacable light, illumined within and over him by the Bishop,

dazzled him when he wished to be blinded! How many times had he

risen again in the contest, clung to the rock, supported himself by

sophistry, and been dragged through the dust, at one moment throwing

his conscience under him, at another thrown by it! How many times,

after an equivocation, after the treacherous and specious reasoning

of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ears,

"Trickster! wretch!" How many times had his refractory thoughts groaned

convulsively under the evidence of duty! What secret wounds he had,

which he alone felt bleeding! What excoriations there were in his

lamentable existence! How many times had he risen, bleeding, mutilated,

crushed, enlightened, with despair in his heart and serenity in his

soul! And though vanquished, he felt himself the victor, and after

having dislocated, tortured, and broken him, his conscience, erect

before him, luminous and tranquil, would say to him,--"Now go in

peace!" What a mournful peace, alas! after issuing from such a contest.

This night, however, Jean Valjean felt that he was fighting his last

battle. A crushing question presented itself; predestinations are not

all straight; they do not develop themselves in a rectilinear avenue

before the predestined man; they have blind alleys, zigzags, awkward

corners, and perplexing cross-roads. Jean Valjean was halting at this

moment at the most dangerous of these cross-roads. He had reached the

supreme crossing of good and evil, and had that gloomy intersection

before his eyes. This time again, as had already happened in other

painful interludes, two roads presented themselves before him, one

tempting, the other terrifying; which should he take? The one which

frightened him was counselled by the mysterious pointing hand which

we all perceive every time that we fix our eyes upon the darkness.

Jean Valjean had once again a choice between the terrible haven and

the smiling snare. Is it true, then? The soul may be cured, but not

destiny. What a frightful thing,--an incurable destiny! The question

which presented itself was this: In what way was Jean Valjean going

to behave to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? That happiness he

had willed, he had made; and at this hour, in gazing upon it, he

could have the species of satisfaction which a cutler would have who

recognized his trade-mark upon a knife when he drew it all smoking

from his chest. Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette; they

possessed everything, even wealth, and it was his doing. But now that

this happiness existed and was there, how was he, Jean Valjean, to

treat it? Should he force himself upon it and treat it as if belonging

to himself? Doubtless Cosette was another man's; but should he, Jean

Valjean, retain of Cosette all that he could retain? Should he remain

the sort of father, scarce seen but respected, which he had hitherto

been? Should he introduce himself quietly into Cosette's house? Should

he carry his past to this future without saying a word? Should he

present himself there as one having a right, and should he sit down,

veiled, at this luminous hearth? Should he smilingly take the hands

of these two innocent creatures in his tragic hands? Should he place

on the andirons of the Gillenormand drawing-room his feet, which

dragged after them the degrading shadow of the law? Should he render

the obscurity on his brow and the cloud on theirs denser? Should he

join his catastrophe to their two felicities? Should he continue to be

silent? In a word, should he be the sinister dumb man of destiny by the

side of these two happy beings? We must be accustomed to fatality and

to meeting it, to raise our eyes when certain questions appear to us

in their terrible nudity. Good and evil are behind this stern note of

interrogation. What are you going to do? the Sphinx asks. This habit

of trial Jean Valjean had, and he looked at the Sphinx fixedly, and

examined the pitiless problem from all sides. Cosette, that charming

existence, was the raft of this shipwrecked man; what should he do,

cling to it, or let it go? If he clung to it, he issued from disaster,

he remounted to the sunshine, he let the bitter water drip off his

clothes and hair, he was saved and lived. Suppose he let it go? Then

there was an abyss. He thus dolorously held counsel with his thoughts,

or, to speak more correctly, he combated; he rushed furiously within

himself, at one moment against his will, at another against his

convictions. It was fortunate for Jean Valjean that he had been able

to weep, for that enlightened him, perhaps. Still, the beginning was

stern; a tempest, more furious than that which had formerly forced him

to Arras, was let loose within him. The past returned to him in the

face of the present; he compared and sobbed. Once the sluice of tears

was opened, the despairing man writhed. He felt himself arrested, alas!

in the deadly fight between one egotism and one duty. When we thus

recoil inch by inch before our ideal, wildly, obstinately, exasperated

at yielding, disputing the ground, hoping for a possible flight, and

seeking an issue, what a sudden and sinister resistance behind us is

the foot of the wall! To feel the holy shadow standing in the way! The

inexorable, invisible,--what a pressure!

Hence we have never finished with our conscience. Make up your mind,

Brutus; make up your mind, Cato. It is bottomless, for it is God. You

cast into this pit the labor of your whole life,--your fortune, your

wealth, your success, your liberty, or your country, your comfort, your

repose, your joy. More, more, more! Empty the vase, tread over the

urn, you must, end by throwing in your heart. There is a barrel like

this somewhere in the Hades of old. Is it not pardonable to refuse at

last? Can that which is inexhaustible have any claim? Are not endless

chains beyond human strength? Who then would blame Sisyphus and Jean

Valjean for saying, It is enough! The obedience of matter is limited

by friction: is there not a limit to the obedience of the soul? If

perpetual motion be impossible, why is perpetual devotion demanded?

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

was the Champmathieu affair by the side of Cosette's marriage? What

did it bring with it? What is returning to the hulks by the side of

entering nothingness? Oh, first step to descend, how gloomy thou art!

oh, second step, how black thou art! How could he help turning his head

away this time? Martyrdom is a sublimation, a corrosive sublimation,

it is a torture which consecrates. A man may consent to it for the

first hour; he sits on the throne of red-hot iron, the crown of red-hot

iron is placed on his head,--he accepts the red-hot globe, he takes

the red-hot sceptre, but he still has to don the mantle of flame, and

is there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and he flies

from the punishment? At length Jean Valjean entered the calmness of

prostration; he wished, thought over, and considered the alternations,

the mysterious balance of light and shadow. Should he force his galleys

on these two dazzling children, or consummate his own irremediable

destruction? On one side was the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other his

own.

On which solution did he decide? What determination did he form?

What was in his inner self the definitive reply to the incorruptible

interrogatory of fatality? What door did he resolve on opening? Which

side of his life did he make up his mind to close and condemn? Amid

all those unfathomable precipices that surrounded him, which was his

choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of these gulfs did he

nod his head? His confusing reverie lasted all night; he remained till

daybreak in the same position, leaning over the bed, prostrate beneath

the enormity of fate, perhaps crushed, alas! with hands convulsed, and

arms extended at a right angle like an unnailed crucified man thrown

with his face on the ground. He remained thus for twelve hours,--the

twelve hours of a long winter's night, frozen, without raising his

head or uttering a syllable. He was motionless as a corpse, while his

thoughts rolled on the ground or fled away; sometimes like a hydra,

sometimes like the eagle. To see him thus you would have thought him

a dead man; but all at once he started convulsively, and his mouth

pressed to Cosette's clothes, kissed them; then one saw that he was

alive.

What One, since Jean Valjean was alone and nobody was there?

The One who is in the darkness.

BOOK VII.

THE LAST DROP IN THE BITTER CUP.

CHAPTER I.

THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHT HEAVEN.

The day after a wedding is solitary, for people respect the retirement

of the happy, and to some extent their lengthened slumbers. The

confusion of visits and congratulations does not begin again till a

later date. On the morning of Feb. 17 it was a little past midday

when Basque, with napkin and feather-brush under his arm, dusting the

anteroom, heard a low tap at the door. There had not been a ring, which

is discreet on such a day. Basque opened and saw M. Fauchelevent; he

conducted him to the drawing-room, which was still topsy-turvy, and

looked like the battle-field of the previous day's joys.

"Really, sir," observed Basque, "we woke late."

"Is your master up?" Jean Valjean asked.

"How is your hand, sir?" Basque replied.

"Better. Is your master up?"

"Which one, the old or the new?"

"Monsieur Pontmercy."

"Monsieur le Baron!" said Basque, drawing himself up.

A baron is before all a baron to his servants; a portion of it comes

to them, and they have what a philosopher would call the spray of the

title, and that flatters them. Marius, we may mention in passing,

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

of himself. A little revolution had taken place in the family with

reference to this title; it was M. Gillenormand who was attached to

it, and Marius who had fallen away from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had

written, "My son will bear my title," and Marius obeyed. And then

Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to germinate, was delighted at

being a baroness.

"Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque; "I will go and see. I will tell

him that Monsieur Fauchelevent is here."

"No, do not tell him it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to speak to

him privately, and do not mention my name."

"Ah!" said Basque.

"I wish to surprise him."

"Ah!" Basque repeated, giving himself his second "Ah!" as an

explanation of the first.

And he left the room, and Jean Valjean remained alone. The

drawing-room, as we said, was all in disorder, and it seemed as if you

could still hear the vague sounds of the wedding. On the floor were all

sorts of flowers, which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses, and

the candles burned down to the socket added wax stalactites to the

crystal of the lustres. Not an article of furniture was in its place;

in the corner three or four easy-chairs, drawn close together, and

forming a circle, looked as if they were continuing a conversation. The

_ensemble_ was laughing, for there is a certain grace left in a dead

festival, for it has been happy. Upon those disarranged chairs, amid

those fading flowers and under those extinguished lamps, persons have

thought of joy. The sun succeeded the chandelier, and gayly entered the

drawing-room. A few moments passed, during which Jean Valjean remained

motionless at the spot where Basque left him. His eyes were hollow, and

so sunk in their sockets by sleeplessness that they almost disappeared.

His black coat displayed the fatigued creases of a coat which has been

up all night, and the elbows were white with that down which friction

with linen leaves on cloth. Jean Valjean looked at the window designed

on the floor at his feet by the sun. There was a noise at the door, and

he raised his eyes. Marius came in with head erect, laughing mouth, a

peculiar light over his face, a smooth forehead, and a flashing eye.

He, too, had not slept.

"It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on perceiving Jean Valjean; "why,

that ass Basque affected the mysterious. But you have come too early;

it is only half-past twelve, and Cosette is asleep."

That word, father, addressed to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified

supreme felicity. There had always been, as we know, a cliff, a

coldness and constraint between them; ice to melt or break. Marius

was so intoxicated that the cliff sank, the ice dissolved, and M.

Fauchelevent was for him, as for Cosette, a father. He continued, the

words overflowed with him, which is peculiar to these divine paroxysms

of joy,--

"How delighted I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you

yesterday! Good-day, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?"

And, satisfied with the favorable answer which he gave himself, he went

on,--

"We both spoke about you, for Cosette loves you so dearly. You will not

forget that you have a room here, for we will not hear a word about the

Rue de l'Homme Armé. I do not know how you were able to live in that

street, which is sick, and mean, and poor, which has a barrier at one

end, where you feel cold, and which no one can enter! You will come and

install yourself here, and from to-day, or else you will have to settle

with Cosette. She intends to lead us both by the nose, I warn you. You

have seen your room; it is close to ours, and looks out on the gardens.

We have had the lock mended; the bed is made; it is all ready, and you

have only to move in. Cosette has placed close to your bed a large old

easy-chair, of Utrecht velvet, to which she said, 'Hold out your arms

to him!' Every spring a nightingale comes to the clump of acacias which

faces your windows, and you will have it in two months. You will have

its nest on your left, and ours on your right; at night it will sing,

and by day Cosette will talk. Your room faces due south; Cosette will

arrange, your books in it; the Travels of Captain Cook, and the other,

Vancouver's Travels, and all your matters. There is, I believe, a

valise to which you are attached, and I have arranged a corner of honor

for it. You have won my grandfather, for you suit him. We will live

together. Do you know whist? You will over-whelm my grandfather if you

are acquainted with whist. You will take Cosette for a walk on the day

when I go to the Courts; you will give her your arm, as you used to do,

you remember, formerly at the Luxembourg. We are absolutely determined

to be very happy, and you will share in our happiness, do you hear,

father? By the bye, you will breakfast with us this morning?"

"Sir!" said Jean Valjean, "I have one thing to say to you. I am an

ex-convict."

The limit of the perceptible acute sounds may be as well exceeded for

the mind as for the ear. These words, "I am an ex-convict," coming

from M. Fauchelevent's mouth and entering Marius's ear went beyond

possibility. Marius did not hear. It seemed to him as if something

had been just said to him, but he knew not what. He stood with gaping

mouth. Jean Valjean unfastened the black handkerchief that supported

his right arm, undid the linen rolled round his hand, bared his thumb,

and showed it to Marius.

"I have nothing the matter with my hand," he said.

Marius looked at the thumb.

"There was never anything the matter with it," Jean Valjean added.

There was, in fact, no sign of a wound. Jean Valjean continued,--

"It was proper that I should be absent from your marriage, and I was

so as far as I could be. I feigned this wound in order not to commit a

forgery, and render the marriage-deeds null and void."

Marius stammered,--

"What does this mean?"

"It means," Jean Valjean replied, "that I have been to the galleys."

"You are driving me mad!" said the horrified Marius.

"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years at the

galleys for robbery. Then I was sentenced to them for life; for robbery

and a second offence. At the present moment I am an escaped convict."

Although Marius recoiled before the reality, refused the facts, and

resisted the evidence, he was obliged to yield to it. He was beginning

to understand, and as always happens in such a case, he understood too

much. He had the shudder of a hideous internal flash, and an idea that

made him shudder crossed his mind. He foresaw a frightful destiny for

himself in the future.

"Say all, say all," he exclaimed; "you are Cosette's father!"

And he fell back two steps, with a movement of indescribable horror.

Jean Valjean threw up his head with such a majestic attitude that he

seemed to rise to the ceiling.

"It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir, although the

oath of men like us is not taken in a court of justice---"

Here there was a silence, and then with a sort of sovereign and

sepulchral authority he added, speaking slowly and laying a stress on

the syllables,--

"You will believe me. I, Cosette's father! Before Heaven, no, Monsieur

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

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

Valjean. I am nothing to Cosette, so reassure yourself."

Marius stammered,--

"Who proves it to me?"

"I do, since I say it."

Marius looked at this man: he was mournful and calm, and no falsehood

could issue from such calmness. What is frozen is sincere, and the

truth could be felt in this coldness of the tomb.

"I do believe you," said Marius.

Jean Valjean bowed his head, as if to note the fact, and continued,--

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

she existed. I love her, it is true, for men love a child which they

have seen little when old themselves; when a man is old he feels like

a grandfather to all little children. You can, I suppose, imagine that

I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan, without

father or mother, and needed me, and that is why I came to love her.

Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like myself, may

be their protector. I performed this duty to Cosette. I cannot suppose

that so small a thing can be called a good action: but if it be one,

well, assume that I did it. Record that extenuating fact. To-day

Cosette leaves my life, and our two roads separate. Henceforth I can do

no more for her; she is Madame Pontmercy; her providence has changed,

and she has gained by the change, so all is well. As for the six

hundred thousand francs, you say nothing of them, but I will meet your

thought half-way: they are a deposit. How was it placed in my hands?

No matter. I give up the deposit, and there is nothing more to ask of

me. I complete the restitution by stating my real name, and this too

concerns myself, for I am anxious that you should know who I am."

And Jean Valjean looked Marius in the face. All that Marius experienced

was tumultuous and incoherent, for certain blasts of the wind of

destiny produce such waves in our soul. We have all had such moments of

trouble in which everything is dispersed within us: we say the first

things that occur to us, which are not always precisely those which we

ought to say. There are sudden revelations which we cannot bear, and

which intoxicate like a potent wine. Marius was stupefied by the new

situation which appeared to him, and spoke to this man almost as if he

were angry at the avowal.

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

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

denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked. You have a motive for making the

revelation so voluntarily. Continue; there is something else: for what

purpose do you make this confession? For what motive?"

"For what motive?" Jean Valjean answered in a voice so low and dull

that it seemed as if he were speaking to himself rather than Marius.

"For what motive, in truth, does this convict come here to say, 'I

am a convict'? Well, yes, the motive is a strange one: it is through

honesty. The misfortune is that I have a thread in my heart which holds

me fast, and it is especially when a man is old that these threads are

most solid. The whole of life is undone around, but they resist. Had I

been enabled to tear away that thread, break it, unfasten or cut the

knot, and go a long way off, I would be saved and needed only to start.

There are diligences in the Hue du Bouloy; you are happy, and I am off.

I tried to break that thread. I pulled at it, it held out, it did not

break, and I pulled out my heart with it. Then I said, I cannot live

anywhere else, and must remain. Well, yes, but you are right. I am a

fool; why not remain simply? You offer me a bed-room in the house.

Madame Pontmercy loves me dearly, she said to that fauteuil, 'Hold out

your arms to him;' your grandfather asks nothing better than to have

me. I suit him, we will live all together, have our meals in common, I

will give my arm to Cosette,--to Madame Pontmercy, forgive me, but it

is habit,--we will have only one roof, one table, one fire, the same

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

happiness, that is everything. We will live in one family."

At this word Jean Valjean became fierce. He folded his arms, looked

at the board at his feet, as if he wished to dig a pit in it, and his

voice suddenly became loud.

"In one family? No. I belong to no family; I do not belong to yours,

I do not even belong to the human family. In houses where people are

together I am in the way. There are families, but none for me; I am

the unhappy man, I am outside. Had I a father and mother? I almost

doubt it. On the day when I gave you that child in marriage, it was

all ended; I saw her happy, and that she was with the man she loved,

that there is a kind old gentleman here, a household of two angels, and

every joy in this house, and I said to myself, Do not enter. I could

lie, it is true, deceive you all, and remain Monsieur Fauchelevent; so

long as it was for her, I was able to lie, but now that it would be

for myself I ought not to do so. I only required to be silent, it is

true, and all would have gone on. You ask me what compels me to speak?

A strange sort of thing, my conscience. It would have been very easy,

however, to hold my tongue; I spent the night in trying to persuade

myself into it. You are shriving me, and what I have just told you is

so extraordinary that you have the right to do so. Well, yes, I spent

the night in giving myself reasons. I gave myself excellent reasons,

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

succeed; I could neither break the string which holds me by the heart,

fixed, sealed, and riveted here, nor silence some one who speaks to me

in a low voice when I am alone. That is why I have come to confess all

to you this morning,--all, or nearly all, for it is useless to tell

what only concerns myself, and that I keep to myself. You know the

essential thing. I took my mystery, then, and brought it to you and

ripped it up before your eyes. It was not an easy resolution to form,

and I debated the point the whole night. Ah! you may fancy that I did

not say to myself that this was not the Champmathieu affair, that in

hiding my name I did no one any harm, that the name of Fauchelevent was

given me by Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered,

and that I might fairly keep it, and that I should be happy in this

room which you offer me, that I should net be at all in the way, that

I should be in my little corner, and that while you had Cosette I

should have the idea of being in the same house with her; each would

have his proportioned happiness. Continuing to be Monsieur Fauchelevent

arranged everything. Yes, except my soul; there would be joy all over

me, but the bottom of my soul would remain black. Thus I should have

remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. I should have hidden my real face in

the presence of your happiness; I should have had an enigma, and in

the midst of your broad sunshine I should have had darkness; thus,

without crying 'Look out,' I should have introduced the hulks to your

hearth, I should have sat down at your table with the thought that if

you knew who I was you would expel me, and let myself be served by

the servants who, had they known, would have said, 'What a horror!'

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

feel offended at, and swindled you out of shakes of the hand. There

would have been in your house a divided respect between venerable gray

hairs and branded gray hairs; in your most intimate hours, when all

hearts formed themselves to each other, when we were all four together,

the grandfather, you two, and I, there would have been a stranger

there. Hence I, a dead man, would have imposed myself on you who are

living, and I should have sentenced her for life. You, Cosette, and

I would have been three heads in the green cap! Do you not shudder?

I am only the most crushed of men, but I should have been the most

monstrous. And this crime I should have committed every day, and this

falsehood I should have told every day, and this face of night I

should have worn every day, and to you I should have given a portion

of my stain everyday,--to you, my beloved, to you, my children, to

you, my innocents! Holding one's tongue is nothing? Keeping silence is

simple? No, it is not simple, for there is a silence which lies; and

my falsehood, and my fraud, and my indignity, and my cowardice, and my

treachery, and my crime I should have drunk drop by drop; I should have

spat it out, and then drunk it again; I should have ended at midnight

and begun again at midday, and my good day would have lied, and my

good night would have lied, and I should have slept upon it, and eaten

it with my bread; and I should have looked at Cosette, and responded

to the smile of the angel with the smile of the condemned man; and I

should have been an abominable scoundrel, and for what purpose? To be

happy. I, happy! Have I the right to be happy? I am out of life, sir."

Jean Valjean stopped, and Marius listened, for such enchainments of

ideas and agonies cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his

voice again, yet it was no longer the dull voice, but the sinister

voice.

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

you say. Yes, I am denounced! Yes, I am pursued! Yes, I am tracked!

By whom? By myself. It is I who bar my own passage, and I drag myself

along, and I push myself, and I arrest myself, and execute myself, and

when a man holds himself he is securely held."

And, seizing his own collar, and dragging it toward Marius, he

continued,--

"Look at this fist. Do you not think that it holds this collar so as

not to let it go? Well, conscience is a very different hand! If you

wish to be happy, sir, you must never understand duty; for so soon

as you have understood it, it is implacable. People may say that it

punishes you for understanding it; but no, it rewards you for it, for

it places you in a hell where you feel God by your side. A man has no

sooner torn his entrails than he is at peace with himself."

And with an indescribable accent he added,--

"Monsieur Pontmercy, that has no common-sense. I am an honest man. It

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

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

nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be one if you had, through

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

so. I have this fatality upon me, that as I am never able to have any

but stolen consideration, this consideration humiliates and crushes

me internally, and in order that I may respect myself people must

despise me. Then I draw myself up. I am a galley-slave who obeys his

conscience. I know very well that this is not likely; but what would

you have me do? It is so. I have made engagements with myself and keep

them. There are meetings which bind us; there are accidents which drag

us into duty. Look you, Monsieur Pontmercy, things have happened to me

in my life."

Jean Valjean made another pause, swallowing his saliva with an effort,

as if his words had a bitter after-taste, and he continued,--

"When a man has such a horror upon him; he has no right to make others

share it unconsciously; he has no right to communicate his plague to

them; he has no right to make them slip over his precipice without

their perceiving it; he has no right to drag his red cap over them,

and no right craftily to encumber the happiness of another man with

his misery. To approach those who are healthy and touch them in the

darkness with his invisible ulcer is hideous. Fauchelevent may have

lent me his name, but I have no right to use it: he may have given it

to me, but I was unable to take it. A name is a self. Look you, sir,

I have thought a little and read a little, though I am a peasant, and

you see that I express myself properly. I explain things to myself, and

have carried out my own education. Well, yes; to abstract a name and

place one's self under it is dishonest. The letters of the alphabet

may be filched like a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in

flesh and blood, to be a living false key, to enter among honest folk

by picking their lock, never to look, but always to squint, to be

internally infamous,--no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, bleed,

weep, tear one's flesh with one's nails, pass the nights writhing in

agony, and gnaw one's stomach and soul That is why I have come to tell

you all this,--voluntarily, as you remarked."

He breathed painfully, and uttered this last remark,--

"Formerly I stole a loaf in order to live; to-day I will not steal a

name in order to live."

"To live!" Marius interrupted; "you do not require that name to live."

"Ah! I understand myself," Jean Valjean replied, raising and drooping

his head several times in succession. There was a stillness; both

remained silent, sunk as they were in a gulf of thought. Marius was

sitting near a table, and supporting the corner of his mouth on one of

his fingers. Jean Valjean walked backwards and forwards; he stopped

before a glass and remained motionless. Then, as if answering some

internal reasoning, he said, as he looked in this glass, in which he

did not see himself,--

"While at present I am relieved."

He began walking again, and went to the other end of the room. At the

moment when he turned he perceived that Marius was watching his walk,

and he said to him, with an indescribable accent,--

"I drag my leg a little. You understand why, now."

Then he turned round full to Marius.

"And now, sir, imagine this. I have said nothing. I have remained

Monsieur Fauchelevent. I have taken my place in your house. I am one of

your family. I am in my room. I come down to breakfast in my slippers;

at night we go to the play, all three. I accompany Madame Pontmercy to

the Tuileries and to the Place Royale; we are together, and you believe

me your equal. One fine day I am here, you are there. We are talking

and laughing, and you hear a voice cry this name,--Jean Valjean! and

then that fearful hand, the police, issues from the shadow and suddenly

tears off my mask!"

He was silent again. Marius had risen with a shudder and Jean Valjean

continued,--

"What do you say to that?"

Marius's silence replied, and Jean Valjean continued:---

"You see very well that I did right in not holding my tongue. Be happy,

be in heaven, be the angel of an angel, be in the sunshine and content

yourself with it, and do not trouble yourself as to the way in which

a poor condemned man opens his heart and does his duty; you have a

wretched man before you, sir."

Marius slowly crossed the room, and when he was by Jean Valjean's side

offered him his hand. But Marius was compelled to take this hand which

did not offer itself. Jean Valjean let him do so, and it seemed to

Marius that he was pressing a hand of marble.

"My grandfather has friends" said Marius. "I will obtain your pardon."

"It is useless," Jean Valjean replied; "I am supposed to be dead, and

that is sufficient. The dead are not subjected to surveillance, and are

supposed to rot quietly. Death is the same thing as pardon."

And liberating the hand which Marius held, he added with a sort of

inexorable dignity,--

"Moreover, duty, my duty, is the friend to whom I have recourse; and I

only need one pardon, that of my conscience."

At this moment the door opened gently at the other end of the

drawing-room, and Cosette's head appeared in the crevice. Only her

sweet face was visible. Her hair was in admirable confusion, and her

eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird

thrusting its head out of the nest, looked first at her husband, then

at Jean Valjean, and cried to them laughingly,--it looked like a smile

issuing from a rose,--

"I will bet that you are talking politics. How stupid that is, instead

of being with me!"

Jean Valjean started.

"Cosette," Marius stammered, and he stopped. They looked like two

culprits; Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both, and there

were in her eyes gleams of Paradise.

"I have caught you in the act," Cosette said; "I just heard through

this, Father Fauchelevent saying, 'Conscience, doing one's duty.' That

is politics, and I will have none of it. People must not talk politics

on the very next day; it is not right."

"You are mistaken, Cosette;" Marius replied, "we are talking of

business. We are talking about the best way of investing your six

hundred thousand francs."

"I am coming," Cosette interrupted. "Do you want me here?"

And resolutely passing through the door, she entered the drawing-room.

She was dressed in a large combing gown with a thousand folds and large

sleeves, which descended from her neck to her feet. There are in the

golden skies of old Gothic paintings, these charming bags to place an

angel in. She contemplated herself from head to foot in a large mirror,

and then exclaimed with an ineffable outburst of ecstasy,--

"There was once upon a time a king and queen. Oh, how delighted I am!"

This said, she courtesied to Marius and Jean Valjean.

"Then," she said, "I am going to install myself near you in an

easy-chair; we shall breakfast in half an hour. You will say all you

like, for I know very well that gentlemen must talk, and I will be very

good."

Marius took her by the arm and said to her lovingly,--

"We are talking about business."

"By the way," Cosette answered, "I have opened my window, and a number

of sparrows [pierrots] have just entered the garden. Birds, not masks.

To-day is Ash Wednesday, but not for the birds."

"I tell you that we are talking of business, so go, my little Cosette;

leave us for a moment. We are talking figures, and they would only

annoy you."

"You have put on a charming cravat this morning, Marius. You are very

coquettish, Monseigneur. No, they will not annoy me."

"I assure you that they will."

"No, since it is you, I shall not understand you, but I shall hear you.

When a woman hears voices she loves, she does not require to understand

the words they say. To be together is all I want, and I shall stay with

you,--there!"

"You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible."

"Impossible?"

"Yes."

"Very good," Cosette remarked; "I should have told you some news. I

should have told you that grandpapa is still asleep, that your aunt is

at Mass, that the chimney of my papa Fauchelevent's room smokes, that

Nicolette has sent for the chimney-sweep, that Nicolette and Toussaint

have already quarrelled, and that Nicolette ridicules Toussaint's

stammering. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah, it is impossible? You

shall see, sir, that in my turn I shall say, 'It is impossible.' Who

will be caught then? I implore you, my little Marius, to let me stay

with you two."

"I assure you that we must be alone."

"Well, am I anybody?"

Jean Valjean did not utter a word, and Cosette turned to him.

"In the first place, father, I insist on your coming and kissing me.

What do you mean by saying nothing, instead of taking my part? Did

one ever see a father like that? That will show you how unhappy my

marriage is, for my husband beats me. Come and kiss me at once."

Jean Valjean approached her, and Cosette turned to Marius.

"I make a face at you."

Then she offered her forehead to Jean Valjean, who moved a step towards

her. All at once Cosette recoiled.

"Father, you are pale; does your arm pain you?"

"It is cured," said Jean Valjean.

"Have you slept badly?"

"No."

"Are you sad?"

"No."

"Kiss me. If you are well, if you sleep soundly, if you are happy, I

will not scold you."

And she again offered him her forehead, and Jean Valjean set a kiss on

this forehead, upon which there was a heavenly reflection.

"Smile."

Jean Valjean obeyed, but it was the smile of a ghost.

"Now, defend me against my husband."

"Cosette--" said Marius.

"Be angry, father, and tell him I am to remain. You can talk before

me. You must think me very foolish. What you are saying is very

astonishing, then! Business,--placing money in a bank,--that is a great

thing. Men make mysteries of nothing. I mean to say I am very pretty

this morning. Marius, look at me."

And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders and an exquisite pout

she looked at Marius. Something like a flash passed between these two

beings, and they cared little about a third party being present.

"I love you," said Marius.

"I adore you," said Cosette.

And they irresistibly fell into each other's arms.

"And now," Cosette continued, as she smoothed a crease in her

dressing-gown, with a little triumphant pout, "I remain."

"No," Marius replied imploringly, "we have something to finish."

"Again, no?"

Marius assumed a serious tone.

"I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."

"Ah, you are putting on your man's voice, sir; very good, I will go.

You did not support me, father; and so you, my hard husband, and you,

my dear papa, are tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you

believe that I intend to return and talk platitudes to you, you are

mistaken. I am proud, and I intend to wait for you at present. You will

see how wearisome it will be without me. I am going, very good."

And she left the room, but two seconds after the door opened again, her

fresh, rosy face passed once again between the two folding-doors, and

she cried to them,--

"I am very angry."

The door closed again, and darkness returned. It was like a straggling

sunbeam, which, without suspecting it, had suddenly traversed the

night. Marius assured himself that the door was really closed.

"Poor Cosette!" he muttered, "when she learns--"

At these words Jean Valjean trembled all over, and he fixed his haggard

eyes on Marius.

"Cosette! Oh, yes, it is true. You will tell Cosette about it. It is

fair.--Stay, I did not think of that. A man has strength for one thing,

but not for another. I implore you, sir, I conjure you, sir, give me

your most sacred word,--do not tell her. Is it not sufficient for you

to know it? I was able to tell it of my own accord, without being

compelled. I would have told it to the universe, to the whole world,

and I should not have cared; but she,--she does not know what it is,

and it would horrify her. A convict. What! You would be obliged to

explain to her, tell her it is a man who has been to the galleys. She

saw the chain-gang once. Oh, my God!"

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands; it could not be

heard, but from the heaving of his shoulders it could be seen that he

was weeping. They were silent tears, terrible tears. There is a choking

in a sob; a species of convulsion seized on him, he threw himself back

in the chair, letting his arms hang, and displaying to Marius his face

bathed in tears, and Marius heard him mutter so low that his voice

seemed to come from a bottomless abyss, "Oh! I would like to die!"

"Be at your ease," Marius said; "I will keep your secret to myself."

And, less affected than perhaps he ought to have been, but compelled

for more than an hour to listen to unexpected horrors, gradually seeing

a convict taking M. Fauchelevent's place, gradually overcome by this

mournful reality, and led by the natural state of the situation to

notice the gap which bad formed between himself and this man, Marius

added,--

"It is impossible for me not to say a word about the trust money

which you have so faithfully and honestly given up. That is an act of

probity, and it is but fair that a reward should be given you; fix the

sum yourself, and it shall be paid you. Do not fear to fix it very

high."

"I thank you, sir," Jean Valjean replied gently.

He remained pensive for a moment, mechanically passing the end of his

forefinger over his thumb-nail, and then raised his voice,--

"All is nearly finished; there is only one thing left me."

"What is it?"

Jean Valjean had a species of supreme agitation, and voicelessly,

almost breathlessly, he stammered, rather than said,--

"Now that you know, do you, sir, who are the master, believe that I

ought not to see Cosette again?"

"I believe that it would be better," Marius replied coldly.

"I will not see her again," Jean Valjean murmured. He walked toward the

door; he placed his hand upon the handle, the door opened, Jean Valjean

was going to pass out, when he suddenly closed it again, then opened

the door again and returned to Marius. He was no longer pale, but

livid, and in his eyes was a sort of tragic flame instead of tears.

His voice bad grows strangely calm again.

"Stay, sir," he said; "if you are wilting, I will come to see her,

for I assure you that I desire it greatly. If I had not longed to see

Cosette I should not have made you the confession I have done, but have

gone away; but wishing to remain at the spot where Cosette is, and

continue to see her, I was obliged to tell you everything honestly.

You follow my reasoning, do you not? It is a thing easy to understand.

Look you, I have had her with me for nine years: we lived at first in

that hovel on the boulevard, then in the convent, and then near the

Luxembourg. It was there that you saw her for the first time, and you

remember her blue plush bonnet. Next we went to the district of the

Invalides, where there were a railway and a garden, the Rue Plumet. I

lived in a little back yard where I could hear her pianoforte. Such

was my life, and we never separated. That lasted nine years and seven

months; I was like her father, and she was my child. I do not know

whether you understand me, M. Pontmercy, but it would be difficult to

go away now, see her no more, speak to her no more, and have nothing

left. If you have no objection, I will come and see Cosette every now

and then, but not too often, and I will not remain long. You can tell

them to show me into the little room on the ground-floor; I would

certainly come in by the back door, which is used by the servants, but

that might cause surprise, so it is better, I think, for me to come by

the front door. Really, sir, I should like to see Cosette a little,

but as rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place. I have only

that left. And then, again, we must be careful, and if I did not come

at all it would have a bad effect, and appear singular. For instance,

what I can do is to come in the evening, when it is beginning to grow

dark."

"You can come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will expect

you."

"You are kind, sir," said Jean Valjean.

Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness accompanied despair to the

door, and these two men parted.

CHAPTER II.

THE OBSCURITY WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN.

Marius was overwhelmed; the sort of estrangement which he had ever felt

for the man with whom he saw Cosette was henceforth explained. There

was in this person something enigmatic, against which his instinct

warned him. This enigma was the most hideous of shames, the galleys.

This M. Fauchelevent was Jean Valjean the convict. To find suddenly

such a secret in the midst of his happiness is like discovering a

scorpion in a turtle-dove's nest. Was the happiness of Marius and

Cosette in future condensed to this proximity? Was it an accomplished

fact? Did the acceptance of this man form part of the consummated

marriage? Could nothing else be done? Had Marius also married the

convict? Although a man may be crowned with light and joy, though he be

enjoying the grand hour of life's purple, happy love, such shocks would

compel even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demi-god in his

glory, to shudder.

As ever happens in sudden transformation-scenes of this nature, Marius

asked himself whether he ought not to reproach himself? Had he failed

in divination? Had he been deficient in prudence? Had he voluntarily

been headstrong? Slightly so, perhaps. Had he entered upon this

love-adventure, which resulted in his marriage with Cosette, without

taking sufficient precaution to throw light upon the surroundings? He

verified,--it is thus, by a series of verifications of ourselves on

ourselves, that life is gradually corrected,--he verified, we say,

the visionary and chimerical side of his nature, a sort of internal

cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which in the paroxysms of

passion and grief expands, as the temperature of the soul changes,

and invades the entire man to such an extent that he merely becomes a

conscience enveloped in a fog. We have more than once indicated this

characteristic element in Marius's individuality. He remembered that

during the intoxication of his love in the Rue Plumet, during those six

or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Cosette about the

drama in the Gorbeau hovel, during which the victim was so strangely

silent both in the struggle and eventual escape. How was it that he

had not spoken to Cosette about it, and yet it was so close and so

frightful? How was it that he had not even mentioned the Thénardiers,

and especially on the day when he met Éponine? He found almost a

difficulty in explaining to himself now his silence at that period,

but he was able to account for it. He remembered his confusion, his

intoxication for Cosette, his love absorbing everything, the carrying

off of one by the other into the ideal world, and perhaps, too, as the

imperceptible amount of reason mingled with that violent and charming

state of the mind, a vague and dull instinct to hide and efface from

his memory that formidable adventure with which he feared contact, in

which he wished to play no part, from which he stood aloof, and of

which he could not be narrator or witness without being an accuser.

Moreover, these few weeks had been a lightning flash; he had not had

time for anything except to love. In short, when all was revolved, and

everything examined, supposing that he had described the Gorbeau trap

to Cosette, had mentioned the Thénardiers to her, what would have been

the consequence, even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a

convict; would that have changed him, Marius, or his Cosette? Would he

have drawn back? Would he have loved her less? Would he have refused

to marry her? No. Would it have made any change in what had happened?

No. There was nothing, therefore, to regret, nothing to reproach, and

all was well. There is a God for those drunkards who are called lovers,

and Marius had blindly followed the road which he had selected with his

eyes open. Love had bandaged his eyes to lead him whither? To paradise.

But this paradise was henceforth complicated by an infernal proximity,

and the old estrangement of Marius for this man, for this Fauchelevent

who had become Jean Valjean, was at present mingled with horror; but

in this horror, let us say it, there was some pity, and even a certain

degree of surprise. This robber, this relapsed robber, had given up

a deposit, and what deposit? Six hundred thousand francs. He alone

held the secret of that deposit, he could have kept it all, but he

gave it all up. Moreover, he had revealed his situation of his own

accord, nothing compelled him to do so; and if he, Marius, knew who

he was it was through himself. There was in this confession more than

the acceptance of humiliation; there was the acceptance of peril.

For a condemned man a mask is not a mask but a shelter, and he had

renounced that shelter. A false name is a security, and he had thrown

away that false name. He, the galley-slave, could conceal himself

forever in an honest family, and he had resisted that temptation, and

for what motive? Through scruples of conscience. He had explained

himself with the irresistible accent of truth. In short, whoever this

Jean Valjean might be, his was incontestably an awakened conscience.

Some mysterious rehabilitation had been begun, and according to all

appearances scruples had been master of this man for a long time

past. Such attacks of justice and honesty are not peculiar to vulgar

natures, and an awakening of the conscience is greatness of soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere; and this sincerity, visible, palpable,

irrefragable, and evident in the grief which it caused him, rendered

his statements valuable, and gave authority to all that this man said.

Here, for Marius, was a strange inversion of situations. What issued

from M. Fauchelevent? Distrust. What was disengaged from Jean Valjean?

Confidence. In the mysterious balance-sheet of this Jean Valjean which

Marius mentally drew up, he verified the credit, he verified the debit,

and tried to arrive at a balance. But all this was as in a storm,

Marius striving to form a distinct idea of this man, and pursuing Jean

Valjean, so to speak, to the bottom of his thoughts, lost him, and

found him again in a fatal mist.

The honest restoration of the trust-money and the probity of the

confession were good, and formed as it were a break in the cloud;

but then the cloud became black again. However confused Marius's

reminiscences might be, some shadows still returned to him. What, after

all, was that adventure in the Jondrette garret? Why, on the arrival of

the police, did that man, instead of complaining, escape? Here Marius

found the answer,--because this man was a convict who had broken his

ban. Another question, Why did this man come to the barricade? For at

present Marius distinctly saw again that recollection, which reappeared

in his emotions like sympathetic ink before the fire. This man was

at the barricade and did not fight; what did he want there? Before

this question a spectre rose and gave the answer,--Javert. Marius

perfectly remembered now the mournful vision of Jean Valjean dragging

the bound Javert out of the barricade, and heard again behind the

angle of the little Mondétour Lane the frightful pistol-shot. There

was probably a hatred between this spy and this galley-slave, and

one annoyed the other. Jean Valjean went to the barricade to revenge

himself; he arrived late, and was probably aware that Javert was a

prisoner there. Corsican Vendetta has penetrated certain lower strata

of society, and is the law with them; it is so simple that it does not

astonish minds which have half returned to virtue, and their hearts

are so constituted that a criminal, when on the path of repentance,

may be scrupulous as to a robbery and not so as to a vengeance. Jean

Valjean had killed Javert, or at least that seemed evident. The last

question of all admitted of no reply, and this question Marius felt

like a pair of pincers. How was it that the existence of Jean Valjean

had so long brushed against that of Cosette? What was this gloomy sport

of Providence which had brought this man and this child in contact?

Are there chains for two forged in heaven, and does God take pleasure

in coupling the angel with the demon? A crime and an innocence can,

then, be chamber companions in the mysterious hulks of misery? In that

defile of condemned men which is called human destiny, two foreheads

may pass along side by side, one simple, the other formidable,--one

all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other eternally

branded? Who can have determined this inexplicable approximation? In

what way, in consequence of what prodigy, could a community of life

have been established between this celestial child and this condemned

old man? Who could have attached the lamb to the wolf, and even more

incomprehensible still, the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the

lamb, the ferocious being adored the weak being, and for nine years

the angel had leaned on the monster for support. The childhood and

maidenhood of Cosette and her virgin growth toward life and light had

been protected by this deformed devotion. Here questions exfoliated

themselves, if we may employ the expression, into countless enigmas;

abysses opened at the bottom of abysses, and Marius could no longer

bend over Jean Valjean without feeling a dizziness: what could this

man-precipice be? The old genesiacal symbols are eternal: in human

society, such as it now exists until a greater light shall change it,

there are ever two men,--one superior, the other subterranean; the one

who holds to good is Abel, the one who holds to bad is Cain. What was

this tender Cain? What was this bandit religiously absorbed in the

adoration of a virgin, watching over her, bringing her up, guarding

her, dignifying her, and though himself impure, surrounding her with

purity? What was this cloaca which had venerated this innocence so

greatly as not to leave a spot upon it? What was this Valjean carrying

on the education of Cosette? What was this figure of darkness, whose

sole care it was to preserve from every shadow and every cloud the

rising of a star?

That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's secret, and Marius

recoiled before this double secret. The one, to some extent, reassured

him about the other, for God was as visible in this adventure as was

Jean Valjean. God has his instruments, and employs whom he likes as

tool, and is not responsible to him. Do we know how God sets to work?

Jean Valjean had labored on Cosette, and had to some extent formed

her mind; that was incontestable. Well, what then? The workman was

horrible, but the work was admirable, and God produces his miracles

as he thinks proper. He had constructed that charming Cosette, and

employed Jean Valjean on the job, and it had pleased him to choose

this strange assistant. What explanation have we to ask of him? Is it

the first time that manure has helped spring to produce the rose?

Marius gave himself these answers, and declared to himself that they

were good. On all the points which we have indicated he had not dared

to press Jean Valjean, though he did not confess to himself that

he dared not. He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette; Cosette was

splendidly pure, and that was sufficient for him. What enlightenment

did he require when Cosette was a light? Does light need illumination?

He had everything; what more could he desire? Is not everything

enough? Jean Valjean's personal affairs in no way concerned him, and

in bending down over the fatal shadow of this wretched man he clung to

his solemn declaration, "I am nothing to Cosette; ten years ago I did

not know that she existed." Jean Valjean was a passer-by; he had said

so himself. Well, then, he passed, and whoever he might be, his part

was played out. Henceforth Marius would have to perform the functions

of Providence toward Cosette; she had found again in ether her equal,

her lover, her husband, her celestial male. In flying away, Cosette,

winged and transfigured, left behind her on earth her empty and hideous

chrysalis, Jean Valjean. In whatever circle of ideas Marius might turn,

he always came back to a certain horror of Jean Valjean; a sacred

horror, perhaps, for, as we have stated, he felt a _quid divinum_ in

this man. But though it was so, and whatever extenuating circumstances

he might seek, he was always compelled to fall back on this: he was a

convict, that is to say, a being who has not even a place on the social

ladder, being beneath the lowest rung. After the last of men comes

the convict, who is no longer, so to speak, in the likeness of his

fellow-men. The law has deprived him of the entire amount of humanity

which it can strip off a man. Marius, in penal matters, democrat

though he was, was still of the inexorable system, and he entertained

all the ideas of the law about those whom the law strikes. He had not

yet made every progress, we are forced to say; he had not yet learned

to distinguish between what is written by man and what is written by

God,--between the law and the right. He had examined and weighed the

claim which man sets up to dispose of the irrevocable, the irreparable,

and the word _vindicta_ was not repulsive to him. He considered it

simple that certain breaches of the written law should be followed by

eternal penalties, and he accepted social condemnation as a civilizing

process. He was still at this point, though infallibly certain to

advance at a later date, for his nature was good, and entirely composed

of latent progress.

In this medium of ideas Jean Valjean appeared to him deformed and

repelling, for he was the punished man, the convict. This word was

to him like the sound of the trumpet of the last Judgment, and after

regarding Jean Valjean for a long time his last gesture was to turn

away his head--_vade retro._ Marius,--we must recognize the fact

and lay a stress on it,--while questioning Jean Valjean to such an

extent that Jean Valjean himself said, "You are shriving me," had not,

however, asked him two or three important questions. It was not that

they had not presented themselves to his mind, but he had been afraid

of them. The Jondrette garret? The barricade? Javert? Who knew where

the revelations might have stopped? Jean Valjean did not seem the man

to recoil, and who knows whether Marius, after urging him on, might

not have wished to check him? In certain supreme conjunctures has it

not happened to all of us that after asking a question we have stopped

our ears in order not to hear the answer? A man is specially guilty of

such an act of cowardice when he is in love. It is not wise to drive

sinister situations into a corner, especially when the indissoluble

side of our own life is fatally mixed up with them. What a frightful

light might issue from Jean Valjean's desperate explanations, and who

knows whether that hideous brightness might not have been reflected

on Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal gleam might not have

remained on that angel's brow? Fatality knows such complications,

in which innocence itself is branded with crime by the fatal law of

coloring reflections, and the purest faces may retain forever the

impression of a horrible vicinity. Whether rightly or wrongly, Marius

was terrified, for he already knew too much, and he tried rather to

deafen than to enlighten himself. He wildly bore off Cosette in his

arms, closing his eyes upon Jean Valjean. This man belonged to the

night, the living and terrible night; how could he dare to seek its

foundation? It is a horrible thing to question the shadow, for who

knows what it will answer? The dawn might be eternally blackened by it.

In this state of mind it was a crushing perplexity for Marius to think

that henceforth this man would have any contact with Cosette; and he

now almost reproached himself for not having asked these formidable

questions before which he had recoiled, and from which an implacable

and definitive decision might have issued. He considered himself too

kind, too gentle, and, let us say it, too weak; and the weakness

had led him to make a fatal concession. He had allowed himself to

be affected, and had done wrong. He ought simply and purely to have

rejected Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean was an incendiary, and he ought

to have freed his house from the presence of this man. He was angry

with himself; he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions which had

deafened, blinded, and carried him away. He was dissatisfied with

himself.

What was he to do now? The visits of Jean Valjean were most deeply

repulsive to him. Of what use was it that this man should come to

his house? What did he want here? Here he refused to investigate the

matter; he refused to study, and he was unwilling to probe his own

heart. He had promised; he had allowed himself to be drawn into a

promise. Jean Valjean held that promise, and he must keep his word even

with a convict,--above all with a convict. Still, his first duty was

toward Cosette. On the whole, a repulsion, which overcame everything

else, caused him a loathing. Marius confusedly revolved all these ideas

in his mind, passing from one to the other, and shaken by all. Hence

arose a deep trouble which it was not easy to conceal from Cosette;

but love is a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it. However, he

asked, without any apparent motive, some questions of Cosette, who was

as candid as a dove is white, and suspected nothing. He spoke to her

of her childhood and her youth, and he convinced himself more and more

that this convict had been to Cosette as good, paternal, and respectful

as a man can be. Everything which Marius had imagined and supposed, he

found to be real: this sinister nettle had loved and protected this

lily.

BOOK VIII.

TWILIGHT DECLINES.

CHAPTER I.

THE GROUND-FLOOR ROOM.

On the morrow, at nightfall, Jean Valjean tapped at the gateway of the

Gillenormand mansion, and it was Basque who received him. Basque was

in the yard at the appointed time, as if he had had his orders. It

sometimes happens that people say to a servant, "You will watch for Mr.

So-and-so's arrival." Basque, without waiting for Jean Valjean to come

up to him, said,--

"Monsieur le Baron has instructed me to ask you, sir, whether you wish

to go upstairs or stay down here?"

"Stay down here," Jean Valjean replied.

Basque, who, however, was perfectly respectful in his manner, opened

the door of the ground-floor room, and said, "I will go and inform

her ladyship." The room which Jean Valjean entered was a damp,

arched, basement room, employed as a cellar at times, looking out on

the street, with a flooring of red tiles, and badly lighted by an

iron-barred window. This room was not one of those which are harassed

by the broom and mop, and the dust was quiet there. No persecution of

the spiders had been organized; and a fine web, extensively drawn out,

quite black, and adorned with dead flies, formed a wheel on one of the

window-panes. The room, which was small and low-ceiled, was furnished

with a pile of empty bottles collected in a corner. The wall, covered

with a yellow-ochre wash, crumbled off in large patches; at the end was

a mantel-piece of panelled black wood, with a narrow shelf, and a fire

was lighted in it, which indicated that Jean Valjean's reply, "Stay

down here," had been calculated on. Two chairs were placed, one in each

chimney-corner, and between the chairs was spread, in guise of carpet,

an old bed-room rug, which displayed more cord than wool. The room was

illumined by the flickering of the fire, and the twilight through the

window. Jean Valjean was fatigued; for several days he had not eaten or

slept, and he fell into one of the arm-chairs. Basque returned, placed

a lighted candle on the mantelpiece, and withdrew. Jean Valjean, who

was sitting with hanging head, did not notice either Basque or the

candle, till all at once he started up, for Cosette was behind him: he

had not seen her come in, but he felt that she was doing so. He turned

round and contemplated her; she was adorably lovely. But what he gazed

at with this profound glance was not the beauty, but the soul.

"Well, father," Cosette exclaimed, "I knew that you were singular, but

I could never have expected this. What an idea! Marius told me that it

was your wish to see me here."

"Yes, it is."

"I expected that answer, and I warn you that I am going to have a scene

with you. Let us begin with the beginning: kiss me, father."